Mark Divine's Journey from Boring Finance Auditor to Navy SEAL

Why do top-tier executives and world-class athletes break when the pressure peaks? In this episode of No Hype, Just Standards, host Zac Armstrong sits down with retired Navy SEAL Commander, founder of SEALFIT & Unbeatable Mind, and NYT bestselling author Mark Divine.

Mark traces his path from working as a CPA and pursuing an MBA at NYU Stern to becoming the Honor Man of BUD/S Class 170. Together, Zac and Mark explore the difference between horizontal skills acquisition and true vertical development, why most high performers overcomplicate their health and mindset, and how to forge unshakeable internal standards.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

ABOUT MARK DIVINE:

Mark Divine is a retired Navy SEAL Commander, founder of SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind, host of The Mark Divine Show, and author of NYT bestsellers including The Way of the SEAL, Unbeatable Mind, Staring Down the Wolf, Kokoro Yoga, and Uncommon.

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No shortcuts. No excuses. Just standards.

Transcript

Auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly formatted. Each timestamp links to that moment in the video.

0:00 In that moment, I couldn’t remember why I wanted to be a Navy Seal. Here’s what nobody tells you about hitting your 40s with a track record. You’ve pushed hard for 20 years and then one day the needle stops moving. You wonder if this is just aging. It isn’t. The standard went soft and you cannot outwork the wrong target. I’m Zach Armstrong, retired naval commander, over 27 years of service, performance coach for high performing men over 40. And this is no hype, just standards. My guest today is Mark Divine, a retired Navy Seal commander, Arthur of Uncommon, and the founder of Silit. I brought him on this show because he’s watched thousands of driven people walk into a 50-hour event. He knows exactly who breaks and who holds. That is the question every man listening is quietly asking about himself. If you want more conversations like this, follow the show wherever you listen and leave a rating. It genuinely helps. Let’s get into it. Again, thank you for joining us today. Um, so let’s just jump right into it. So, take me back to the consulting desk. Um, what were you actually feeling before you decided to leave it?

1:00 Well, I was hired as a junior auditor. You know, that that’s the entry position at Coopers in the day. So, um, and I really didn’t find much joy in auditing. [laughter] Yeah, that’s uh not not what people aspire to grow up to be, right? Yeah. I mean, most people go into that profession are accountants. they know they want to be accountants and so they go to school for accounting or auditing or whatever bookkeeping. Um I went to Colgate University and it was an econ major. But when I was graduating and looking at, you know, what’s next, Coopers and Librand and a couple of the big A’s were were recruiting out of like high-end liberal arts schools like mine, Colgate, and it was a cohort program where they they had this brilliant idea that um there well they found that accountants were good accountants, but they weren’t good leaders necessarily. And so by the time the you know, they rose up the accounting firms, uh someone needed to lead the accounting firm. and you couldn’t hire some someone from the outside who didn’t understand the industry, but they’re left with all

2:00 These kind of typ leftrain accountants to run the firms. So they thought uh a solution would be to um recruit from the Ivy League or the lower Ivy League like Colgate Williams, Amherst, Harvard, Yale um a liberal arts graduate and then teach them the accounting with the knowledge that you don’t expect them to be the hardcore accountant, but they’re going to grow grow up to be a really good leader someday. Interestingly enough, it actually worked. And I I hold out not me as an example [laughter] because I lasted a whopping four years, but um my really good friend Carmine Dibio was also in that program with me and he went on to run um EY as global chairman and CEO, just retired last year. It’s really cool, right? So anyways, I was auditing and then [clears throat] two years later I got recruited by Arthur Anderson into their special services division. I thought that sounded pretty cool, you know, it had the word special in it.

3:00 And um that was really like bankruptcy workout type stuff. So I was getting a little bit more specialized and I could call myself a consultant instead of a auditor which made me feel better. So here you go. That was a long time ago though. You know, I had the Navy Seals gave me a total frontal labbotomy from all of that, you know, real detail oriented stuff, right? I couldn’t What’s that? Go ahead. Uh speaking of the sills, what made you, you know, from go from there to the seals and choose that path? Because, you know, that’s not an easy path by any means. No, I mean that I tell a story in my book, The Way of the Seal. I mean, what got me on the path was a um like a a passion for growth spurred on and this is this I wouldn’t have articulated it this way then, but I had a passion for growth which was spurred on by being um or activated by being um brought up in a kind of a turbulent um abusive family environment, right? Lots

4:01 Of alcohol and and kind of trauma. Um, and so I felt really my my experience was really to be shut down and kind of locked in emotionally and at the same time I was extremely talented physically uh and athletically and I was smart. Um, and so sports gave me an outlet and and training and working out gave me an outlet. And I had an early success with mental development through uh especially through my competitive swimming and um and triathlon training because it requires a lot of mental discipline and especially with swimming. I was participating in what I now know as a form of breath control practice and I had I had an early form of a mantra training going on. I was doing mental training without any training in mental training. Uh but it had quite an effect on me. And anyway, so when I got to New York City and was doing that accounting consulting gig, I wanted to continue on my training and and um so I was running in the morning and I would go to the gym and work out and that was all great for

5:02 Physical stuff, but I was like, what can I do for my mind? And um I recalled seeing a my freshman roommate who uh when I met him as a freshman at Colgate, he was really kind of an irreverent jerk and he got into karate at Colgate and by the time he graduated he was a black belt and he had completely transformed like he was extremely calm, quiet, respectful, heading off to Japan to continue his studies and to teach English. And I thought to myself, there was something about that martial arts that obviously had an effect on this guy’s overall character, how his mind worked, way more than just athletics had on me, even though it did affect me at somewhat. So I started looking for a martial art and I I stumbled upon a real doozy because the grand the founder of the art called sedo karate s e I id o grandmaster taicho kao tadashi Nakamura was also a zen master. And so I started studying karate with him and a few weeks

6:02 Later uh maybe a few months later actually I started studying zen meditation under his watchful eye. And um we would do it every Thursday night for an hourlong sit. And then we’d go up to the Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York for these 4-day long sessions twice uh two to three times a year. And I bought myself a little Zazen wooden bench and started practicing every day. And I’ve never stopped since then. So of course this is 1985 to89. There wasn’t much information, at least in America, about mental training and meditation and the power that it can have, especially on a young mind that’s still developing, right? The neuroplastic effect and the changes that can happen. But it literally cracked me wide open, Zach. I mean, it changed the way I my brain worked. It changed the way I perceived the world. It changed the way I perceived myself. And I I started to be able to see the stories that I was telling myself that I was brought up with and started to feel and experience that they weren’t my it wasn’t my story. It was all conditioning and otherwise I didn’t I stop I stopped

7:02 Believing the story. It was kind of But the problem is that led to like an early existential crisis because then I had to say, “Okay, if I am if I’m not that right, if I’m not that guy who’s supposed to be an MBA, CPA, you know, climb the corporate ladder, make millions of dollars, um maybe even go after that go back and run the family business, then who the hell am I?” Yeah. An identity crisis. Young identity crisis. Yeah. But it also from a spiritual perspective it it backed me into what’s called the dangerous question. Ramano Maharshi’s dangerous question. Who am I or who are asking yourself who you really are? And if you and if you sit with that as a serious meditative practice which I was uh you end up deconstructing everything that you are not and you’re left with who you really are. And so as I sat with that and this this isn’t a quick uh process. It took like two years. But as I sat with kind of

8:02 This raw blank slate asking myself who I am, I I started to get um I guess a feeling state or this sensation that I was a warrior, that I was meant to be a warrior. Mhm. And so um and again I wasn’t a warrior at the time. I was an accountant getting my MBA at Stern School of Business. But um I was studying this martial arts. So obviously that gave me kind of a little taste of it. But in my meditation, in my deepest meditation, when I would fall off into the void and come back, I kept coming back with this sense that I’m a warrior. I’m meant to be a warrior. So I started to ask questions around that, like how could that be? How could I how am I supposed to show up as a warrior? And when I started to ask that question, that’s when I learned about the seals. I mean, I’d heard about them, but never, you know, been serious about it. But um you know synchronicity starts to play a role in your life when you when you get close to um asking good questions and close to doing what you’re supposed to

9:02 Be doing, right? That alignment. So long story short that I learned I I found the seals and I said that’s how I’m supposed to be a warrior. Four four years after going down to New York City, I got my MBA, I got my CPA, got my first degree black belt and then I left it all behind to go to officer Canada school. Uh, I have was one of two people selected that year out of the civilian world to go to SEAL training um after officer Canada school. That’s great. Um, let’s talk about like the guy who’s over 40 who’s already achieved a lot and he’s still feeling restless. Um, what is that restlessness actually telling him? Um, it could be a couple things, right? It could be imbalance, right? So it’s it’s it’s just the body’s way of saying, “Dude, you got to slow down. You’re burnout.” And I see this all the time with people that I coach. So do I. Um you know, we have one setting in our western culture in America especially, and it’s go. [laughter] We are massively biased toward action. Yes.

10:04 And um and I I used to kind of buy into that until I really, you know, kind of sank into this and said, “Learn what what’s what’s going on?” So everyone’s burned out. Most, not everyone, most people are burned out and are stuck in hyperarousal because they’re always on go and stimulating their sympathetic nervous system. Their cortisol is spiking all the time. Their sleep sucks. Um, and so your body is going to send you signals and the first early signs of signals are just anxiety kind of little bit of discomfort in the body. You’re feeling like something’s wrong or you’re missing something. So, it’s good to pay attention to that and say, “Well, maybe I need to take a break.” And I need to and the best way to take a break is just to take a break and do nothing, including from your phone, ideally for a few days, if not a week. But then when you get back, don’t just go charging again 100 miles an hour. Build some recovery practices into your day so it doesn’t happen and you bleed off all that excess stress. So what I mean by recovery practices are like breath control in the morning and the evening. What a great bookend for for your day. Just 20 minutes or 10 minutes of box breathing in the morning and the

11:05 Afternoon. major recovery benefits. Um time in nature, right? Uh time away from your uh digital distractions or attractions, right? So your your phone and and social media and all that. So like get just take a little detox of that. Um stuff like that. And also this is a big one for producers or for really highly productive people. I don’t know if you’re ever like this, Zach, but I was where I, you know, I had so much going on. I would just stack meetings one after another after another. Oh yeah, I got it tomorrow. Yeah. And and I dreaded those days because it’s like it’s just like ice pick chip chipping away at your your motivation, your energy, your willpower until by the mid afternoon, like you don’t even want to have one more call. But if you were to book those calls for either 45 or or even 50 minutes and just left 10 minutes between each one, and in that 10-minute block, you’re going to do a quick recovery drill. you know, just walk outside and breathe fresh air or do 10 rounds of box breathing or, you know,

12:05 Do some gratitude practice or journaling or just lay down and take a five minute nap. It has enormous benefits, right, for recharging you for the next thing. And uh also letting your mind process what it just went through for the last hour so it’s not all doing it at night. I those are things. Anyway, so that’s the first place I would look, right? Imbalance. Your body’s out of balance and so it’s sending you signals. the second place. And by the way, this could also be, you know, bolted to the first, right? The second one could also be um symptomatic of the first. But if you find yourself feeling like you’re out of sorts or something’s not working, it’s plausible that you’ve lost your vision. And what I mean by that is like the vision that set you on your course. Like I talked about my vision to be an NBA CPA and make a lot of money. It seemed right at the time. Mhm. And maybe it was because it led me to Nakamura and the Seals, but um something’s not right about it anymore. And so guys in their 40s and and uh even

13:07 Later, it’s it’s a real challenge because you’ve invested 20 years in this path and now you’ve got a lot of um a lot of shackles around it, right? You you got prestige, you got status, you got money, you got sometimes you’ve even created organization around it and you’re the leader. You can’t just walk away from it. you got a family, mortgages, right? All that. And so, it’s very challenging to say, “Oh, you know what? This this worked for a while, but it’s not working for me anymore.” And to take the time to really reflect and meditate, uh, contemplate, etc., on what could be the new vision that’s trying to emerge for me, like where is my spirit trying to take me? Um, and so you’re just going to end up with this sense that you you’re missing something and obstacles are going to start to show up in your life. You might, you know, have some injury or disease because you’re you’re just not happy and you’re not content in the path, but you feel trapped by it.

14:07 We all feel that, right? Because like you said, you have all these external factors uh that play a role in you not being able to change or take that path. In human nature, we’re already reluctant to change already. So, we usually avoid. Um, and so you you know, you you’re big on this, too, because you’ve watched thousands of people hit a wall, right? Um, when someone quits, what is the real reason underneath that they’re kind of giving away to that? Um, it’s funny. I I was just uh yesterday working with a professional bull riding team. I didn’t even know before this that [laughter] was such a thing. The New York Mavericks. These guys were freaking awesome. I think four of the guys in the team or five of them were Brazilian bull riders. No joke. And didn’t speak only two of them didn’t speak any English. One of them spoke a little bit and one of them was the interpreter because he was bilingual. And [snorts] the rest of the guys in the team are are hashtag Americans. Anyways, um we talked about this, right? And one of the primary reasons that people quit is because they they they literally in

15:08 The moment of most extreme stress like pressure. Um they forget why they were doing what they’re doing. Right? So let me relate that to Navy Seal training. Like I had um I went to BUDS with a guy that I met at Officer Kennedy School who was just like extraordinarily fit and um had the same you know academic credentials as me except he didn’t have an NBA but he went to Bucknell I think um incredible athlete and had wanted to be a SEAL for like six years and I had just learned about it 18 months or two years earlier. Anyways, like he was so gung-ho there was no question in my mind that he was going to be a sale. Right. First day of training, right? We’re like four or five hours in of this classic beatdown. Just non-stop, you know, hell raining down on us. And yours truly is thinking, man, compared to sitting in a suit in a cubicle on on Wall Street, this is awesome. I’m in

16:08 Coronado, California. The sun’s out. I’m in and out of the ocean. I’m doing push-ups. I got these scary instructors over here, but they can’t hurt me because they got nothing on my dad. And this guy, Bill, seems to be going fine, but he’s I just see him, you know, getting really really more and more quiet. And then one uh evolution, the instructor says, “Okay, now you know, hit the surf, get back up here, roll around the sand, sand cookie, and I turn around to go hit the surf.” And I look for my friend Bill, and he’s running the other way. And a moment later, I hear the bell go ding, ding, ding. And I knew that was him quitting. And I went and asked him later on that night when I found him, said, “Bill, what the bleep?” Like, dude, I thought for sure you were gonna be standing with me on graduation day. You know, this is day one. And he said, Mark, you know, in that moment, I couldn’t remember why I wanted to be a Navy Seal. And that was that stuck with me like ever since then. Of course it would. Yeah. I couldn’t remember why. So your why, your why for what you’re doing has to be

17:10 So strong that it carries you through the most dark night of the soul moment, right? Yeah. So it’s not about the physical pain. Rarely would somebody quit rarely. It’s always it’s just the emotional psych psycho emotional 100%. And for you when you’re when you when you’re observing this, what are some of those emotions that you you think are bringing that out in somebody to say, you know, maybe they forgot, but what are some of the other emotions? Okay, so um first of all, all any emotion you have, you can change your relationship with it with a little bit of work. Mhm. Right. I had to do that, right? because of the trauma, you know, informed and negative thinking of my family got kind of baked into me. And so when I recognized that when I started training for seals and when I started meditating, I had to like um override that like writing a new tape, you know, like you

18:10 Used to be able to overwrite CDs and tapes and you know, same hardware but different software. Um well this guy if you don’t learn how to do that then that then that software that’s running in the in the deep subconscious will ultimately come to the surface under the most you know when you’re under extreme pressure right and so the way that’s experienced is a chipping away of your self-esteem right it’s we used to say have a saying everyone wants to be a frogman on a sunny day like it’s easy to be a frogman on a sunny day frogman meaning Navy Seal maybe not easy but Um, it’s when it’s nasty, right? It’s when when the bullets are flying and you haven’t slept for days and you’re freezing ass cold, right? And you just your everything in your body is screaming that you want to get the e heck out of there and do something else. Um, and and that’s when, right, if the untrained mind, the emotions that come up will be like fear. Yeah. Well, that’s always one, right?

19:13 That that goes back to change. People don’t want to change because of fear. They they don’t want to change because of fear. They fear the unknown. They fear this the pain. They fear the you know the continued discomfort even though we know that eventually everything bad stops and and on the other side is something you know nicer and also um accompanied by shame. Right. Yes. So some level you just don’t feel like you’re worthy of accomplishing this. like Bill when he forgot like why he wanted to be a SEAL. What he was really saying is I don’t think I’m worthy of this, right? And so he hadn’t really um surfaced relationship to that. Mhm. The reason people like any any champion, right, let’s you you let’s Navy Seals like are freaking really good warrior athletes. like they’re they’re champion athletes and we have a lot of Olympians who come through SEAL training and and because they’ve got that mindset. And what I learned is that, you know, if you

20:13 Have two equal athletes or two two equal competencies, it doesn’t have to be, you know, athletic or physical. The person who’s going to win consistently more and over the long run is the one who believes in themselves, right? They have a high degree of self-esteem because their confidence isn’t built on external measures. It’s built on the feeling that they’re worthy and that they’re a winner. Right? And so anybody who quits ultimately doesn’t feel like they’re worthy and they’re a winner. And that’s unfortunate, but it’s you just it’s just a fact. And so you’ve got to take an honest assessment of that and begin to work on the feeling of being worthy and being a winner, right? Yeah. And I mean that stems from so many things like trauma like your trauma that you had. I have similar trauma. You can let it steer you in the right direction or you can let it take you down that path that you just talked about, right? That selfidentification, that self harm, um self value and how we do it. And you actually run an event,

21:15 Correct? Um that goes around some of this stuff. We have a couple events. Um most of the work now is with private organizations or coaching you know high high you know not high net worth but you know coaching individuals who have teams. Um we did have we’ve we’ve temporarily or maybe permanently um retired the event that you’re talking about. It’s called Kakoro. This is extraordinary. It was it was 50 hours of non-stop physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and spiritual team training. Uh, no no sleep around the clock. It was modeled after the Navy Seals held week. We ran 65 of these events over the past 20 years. Uh, pretty extraordinary for for thousands of people. But what we found is um, fewer and fewer people were electing to do it in the last few years, right? I think especially since co co really sucked the life out of a lot of people. Um a lot of fear in our culture, a lot fewer people willing to take the risk or

22:18 To even do the work because it takes about a year or more to train for this event. It’s like it’d be like saying you want to go up Everest, you don’t just go climb Everest, you know. So same thing with Kakoro. If you want if you want to do Kakoro, we’ve had people planning to do it for years. In fact, I got a flood of emails after we can’t that we cancel. We we basically terminated at the top, right? It’s good good to end something when it’s still successful rather than write it down to where we have like two participants, you know, because no one’s willing to do the work. Um, anyways, that event we do that for private organizations still, but not necessarily 50 hours. Like the the bull riders, we put them through one day of prep work, which is all the mental skills and, you know, how to how it’s going to play out, and then 12 hours of a crucible from 3:00 a.m. until 3 p.m. Okay. That that’s Yeah. challenging. And you you talk a lot about vertical development. Um, in plain terms, what is that for you? And like how is it different from just learning new skills?

23:19 Sure. Well, just learning new skills is something we call horizontal, meaning it doesn’t the vertical is really a reference to uh the verticality of your growth. It’s not really accurate because growth is more like what we call like hierarchic. It’s trans you transcend in all directions but it includes earlier version of yourself whereas vertical feels hierarchical. So it’s not a great term but it is not I didn’t create it right. It’s it came out of um psychology you know psychology profession. So horizontal development would be like if I go to a leader like a a leadership training or personal development and I’m sitting in a classroom and I’m like learning new concepts and maybe doing some tabletop exercises and and getting an assessment like a MyersBriggs or something like that and it’s interesting. I’m learning some new skills but it doesn’t change who I am. Okay. Vertical development is the type of training that actually will transform who you are, how your mind works, your perception of the world, and also how

24:20 The world perceives you. In other words, it it leads to permanent growth. So, what we’ve learned is that that type of um growth, that type of verticality and and development can be achieved with a certain type of training. And that type of training is integrative and immersive, right? Just like the Navy Seals like I you know you go into the Navy Seals as one person you come out training as another completely different person and that’s vertical growth. So that’s what we try to attempt with our training at unbeatle mind uh in this seal fit program is is you know you come in as one person and you leave as another and with the skills and tools to continue your journey right so integrative what do we integrate we integrate physical training mental development emotional training and development awareness intuitional training and what we call kakoro which is heart mind merge and action that would be your spiritual development but we don’t like to we didn’t use the word spiritual in our company because people have you know associations with that. So

25:21 It’s integrative and we and we treat those all as like one you know we can train them all together in the way we’ve developed it through different practices and also just shifting your perspective and then immersive like you can do this work on your own at home you know and whatnot and you will get uh results but you’re going to get better results and you’re going to accelerate if you can also um like that idea of that crucible. If you can also create or or join some scenarios, you know, either once or twice a year where you’re you’re going to be cooked literally boiled right down and you’re going to have to like transform, right, uh the the base metals into gold in you, right? You’re gonna have to forge your character under the fire of pressure. You know, easy makes you weak and people who avoid People who avoid the unc

26:21 Discomfort and uncomfortable things and typically don’t grow. Growth comes through steady daily disciplined practice of growth drivers like meditation, visualization, breath work, uh sematic movement practices, etc. But then it’s stimulated and and accelerated with um with distinct challenges. Right? That’s what our That’s what our crucible events are all about to help, you know, facilitate that that stimulative accelerated growth. Yeah. Growth is it’s a weird thing. It’s not linear, is it? Right. Not usually. It’s not linear. It goes like this and then you might have a spike and then a circle back and you feel like you’re backsliding and then suddenly one day you’re like, “Wow, I just broke through. I had this whole new paradigm.” And that’s that’s like another vertical level where you your your perspective completely shifts and changes and you see where you were stuck before, but you’re not stuck anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And you know when you hit those you talking about those hard

27:22 Experiences, you know, high will usually come from that. Um but it’ll fade for a lot of people. In your opinion, what what is that about? Why why does it fade so quickly? And how do how do you maintain that uh to continue with the change and growth? Yeah. Well, that’s a great question and you’re right. I think it um I mean I’m reminded of like Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins gets you amped up. Yeah, he does. He’s good at it. He’s very good at getting you amped up and that feeling lasts for about four or five days afterwards and then it just it just goes away because it’s not it’s not connected to any practices to sustain it. It’s not sustainable, right? It is basically a high. So what we are looking for is not to stimulate the high experience. Um because like you can imagine people coming out of our events they feel really good but they’re absolutely exhausted. They’re exhausted. They’re not high. I mean they’re exhausted but they are content. They’re very content. Um and they’re very happy. They’re happy that

28:24 They they they accepted the challenge. They’re happy that they endured the challenge, didn’t quit. They’ve got these tremendous insights and learning, but most importantly, what they found is that the skills that they’ve developed can access a a real subtle form of permanent flow state, which isn’t the, you know, like mindblowing flow state that you might, you know, hear about in, you know, by like Steven Cutotler or some of these other folks who study flow, um, or like the extreme athletes. It’s life flow, right? where you are simply content, right, or happy, but not because of some external circumstance changing, right? Um it’s it’s more of an equinimity and a um a joy of just being alive. Yeah. Right. And so that’s what we’re looking for. And if you if the training doesn’t give you that touchstone where you can just touch within yourself and recognize that you know that who you are really question I talked about earlier you know

29:26 That you are not the externals you’re you’re not the accomplishments you’re not the degrees you’re not the money in the bank right you’re not even you’re ultimately not even this body right and so the practices of vertical development lead you toward that to where suddenly you’re like the the Buddhist tradition would call it your ground of being being and they they say that you you are already that and there’s nothing that you need and then everything is fine right here right now when you realize that all the externals to include your the conditions of your life your body your health uh the dramas the people all of that changing stuff is always going to change and so if you hook your happiness to the change then you’re always going to be disappointed, right? Which is something you alluded to earlier, right? Anyway, so um ultimately it does take a little practice. It’s not like, you know, in

30:26 One week you’re going to suddenly open up to experience. No, it goes back to what you talked about earlier, being the consistent person. Consistent, right? I have a a philosophy that life is a practice, right? In fact, it’s not just my philosophy. In the martial arts tradition, they call it shugio. In the yoga tradition they call it sada. Sada is a practice. And every individual has their own kind of practice toolkit or need right because one size doesn’t fit all. Every human being has different drivers, different needs or different developmental paths. But ultimately if you look at your life as a practice then you say okay when do I practice? Well today because today is the only day you have. Yesterday is a memory. Tomorrow is a hope right? So, so all you have is today. Great. When what time do I have today? How about now? Okay. But I don’t know how to do it now. Great. At least you’re re recognizing that today’s your day. So, let’s carve out time in the morning and in the afternoon or or in the evening, right?

31:26 So, you got three blocks of time right now. When you wake up, what do you do? Well, I do this. I grab my phone. I have my coffee. Okay. So, that’s a routine. Now, let’s take that routine and turn it into a ritual. and make that ritual about practicing becoming the real you or practicing become better, what, however you want to say this, practicing tapping your unlimited potential, practicing being you. And so it’s that time and it doesn’t take more than 20 or 30 minutes that you would add your your breath work and your visualization, your gratitude practice, your journaling, maybe a little sematic movement. Um, and you just do it every single day. Same thing in the evening. You know, we have an evening ritual which is a little bit different, but it could be uh have those qualities to it. the the physical training, you know, everyone needs to move their body. Like, forget it. If if you’re not moving your body every day, then then you need to because the body is built to move and and that alone will lead you to, you know, greater motivation and health and mood and everything. Just move your body. That includes exercise and actually movement practices.

32:27 Yes. So, when you take a look at that time, most people actually spend quite a bit of time, most healthy adults spend a lot of time. But if you could take that time and shift it to be an integrated practice instead of just looking good in a bathing suit practice, then that’s a whole another block of time. So what you’re what I’m talking about here is training happens today. If you’re not training yourself, the world is training you. The inputs are going to train you. If you look at yourself as a blank slate or a clay or a recordable um you know device, you’re getting recorded into every day by the inputs. So you what you want to do is be very cautious about what you let in because most of it’s junk and negative and programming and then be then curate other stuff to put in, right? And that’s going to be your you know positive uh ideas about yourself and gratitude and forgiveness, the things that are going to raise your frequency and and attract more of those things to yourself. So you got to take responsibility for training yourself and

33:28 It’s a and it’s an everyday thing because the time to train is today. So you develop the skills in these training sessions and eventually they just start following you into your day. Right. Right. So instead of thinking, oh, I’ve got to practice box breathing or slow down my breathing to five counts in, five counts out, six breaths per minute, it’s just how you breathe. Yeah. And and it has enormous benefits, right? And mindfulness, a great example. Mindfulness, people think, “Oh, I got to practice mindfulness.” Ultimately, mindfulness just is. It happens. It just happens. Yeah. And I like what you’re saying there, too, because I think too many times people just don’t put enough into effort into just being consistent and creating some habits like you talked about the breathing and all these things. When we create those little small habits in our life, they can have such profound impacts. Um and in your in your book um that you just uncommon um what what what do you think like maybe the simplest principle that most people are getting wrong? Um I think they well you just said it.

34:28 It’s they over complicate things. Yeah. Human beings are very good at doing that. You see this in the buyer hacker community, right? Or the guy who’s trying to live forever, you know, taking like he spends a million half dollars on his longevity and Yeah. And I think he just got cancer. Yeah. I know he’s got some weird, you know, some weird autoimmune disease from it or something like that. It just it’s not that complicated, right? Um nature loves veers towards simplicity and the human mind likes simplicity. But simple is not easy, right? So in order to get to simple, you got to ask what what can what needs to go? What can go? You know, what can I let go of? You know in this when it comes to performance it’s generally speaking people are trying to grab at new ideas new new things new practices new habits new hacks and what they really should be doing is saying what what can I let go of what’s holding me back right what

35:28 Don’t I need and ultimately that becomes the practice when when you’re looking at all the concepts and all the you know people are just packing their minds with knowledge And knowledge then becomes the obstacle, right? Because they’re just chasing. It’s like it’s akin to the story about, you know, the Zen practitioners saying, you know, you just need just choose one path up the mountain and follow it and you’ll get to the top of the mountain. But modern seekers are running around the base of the mountain, you know, trying to taste every path thinking, you know, okay, like, oh, I did Mark’s program. Great. Now I’m going to go do Steven Cutotler’s program. And and when I’m done with that, I’m going to go and do, you know, Andy Heberman’s program. I mean, when I’m done with that, I’m going to go and do whatever. Tony Robbins and they’re just downloading content. They’re listening to this podcast or for that podcast and reading this book and for that book and it’s just confusing them. Yeah. They’re chasing stuff that um filling filling knowledge, feeling

36:28 Better about themselves. All the things you were kind of hitting at. Yeah. They’re chasing things without practicing. Yeah. And so, and but and you also can’t practice everything that’s out there. There literally are thousands of different ways you could train your mind and your heart and you know your body. You just got to choose a simple integrated practice and just do it every day. One of my teachers, David Hawkins, used to say that you he said you could start anywhere. You could start with loving kindness and have that be your practice. It’ll lead you where you need to go. You can start with forgiveness and that was like Jesus with the course of miracles. That was his practice. Start with forgiveness and that will lead you where you need to go. Or the Buddhist practice of loving kindness. You could start there and that will lead you. You can start with a Zen uh practice of concentration and that will lead you where you need to go, but just find something that resonates with you and stick with it. Be and be consistent with it. Right. And then be consistent. Yeah. And I think that’s a a good thing to kind of end on there is like that’s the what we need to do is focus on is just getting consistent. Pick your direction.

37:28 Get consistent. Instead of running around that base of the mountain like you said, get the path and go. Just get the path and stay on it. Right. Yeah. Um, and so like I I I usually like to close these up with what I call rapid fire. It’s going to be a few questions I’ll throw at you and the point of it is just first thing that comes to your mind, not a lot of thought put into it. Um, you ready? Sure. All right, cool. All right, Coronado, you have deep roots in this town. Um, if you’re buying the table around tonight, what’s in your hand? Um, hang on a sec. What did I missed the first sentence? Just say that over again. Coronado, you have deep roots in this town. Um, if you’re buying the table around tonight, what’s in your hand? If I’m buying the table around, it’s a it’s a it’s a Swami’s IPA. I know that one. Um, by the way, it’s not a Coronado Brewing Company beer. That’s the That’s the company that I started. So, [laughter] yeah, that’s that’s a three beer story to tell you about that one. That’s funny. Uh, Zen Death Days Price Water Cooper. Uh, you or Sealu, who has the more stressed Monday morning?

38:30 Oh. Um, Price Waterhouse Coopers. Me had way more stress. That’s most people probably wouldn’t guess that. All right. Your event at 4 a.m. What’s this one smell or sound from those 50 hours you’ll never get out of your head? Just the the smell of the beach at night. Yes. Okay. It’s just unique. Yes, it is. Yes, it is indeed. Um why did yoga practice earn its own book from you? yoga the way um I understand it not the stretchy bendy American yoga but the integrated practice the tanali’s eight limbs and whatnot um is an extraordinary integrative developmental tool and it’s a massive gift to humanity and that alone would be probably one of the best paths for people and even within the path of yoga you know you got

39:30 To be thoughtful about how to um which path math specifically within yoga would be right for you. But [snorts] gotcha. Yoga is extraordinary. It’s been around for thousands of years and it it has every tool that you could ever need to become an enlightened human being. That’s amazing. So, the recruiting line, if you had to write the one line that gets the right person to walk towards the standard today, what does it say? Uh, do the common things uncommonly. Well, I like that. I’m gonna I’m gonna actually take that from I’m gonna steal that one. Uh, San Diego Seal Town. You built all of this in the same town. The term uh the teams call home. What does the that community give you that could not build anywhere else? Well, the teams gave me a sense of knowing what it’s like to have someone who’s not your family be so freaking close to you that they’re

40:33 Willing to give up their life for you. It’s amazing. Yeah. Um and that’s carried that for the rest of my life. Yeah. To have that level of teamwork is amazing. It is. Um, Zen before the Navy, the meditation practice you had before you ever joined, what did it give you that the SEAL teams could not? Well, it it I don’t think I would have made it to or through SEAL training without that. It g it gave me the separation from my thoughts and emotions so that I could see them in real time but not react as if I was them. That had enormous benefit in SEAL training. I imagine it did. Um, what about your books? Um, which one do you find yourself going back and rereading? Um, my philosophy [snorts] of life is exposed in unbeatable mind if you want to learn about life practice. And I I go back and reread that one a lot because I’ve actually updated it four times. I I fourth time I updated it was uh during

41:33 COVID. I actually haven’t I haven’t published that yet due to some technical issues because Amazon would consider it a brand new book because it’s got 65% new content. So, I’m going to have to figure that out. But, yeah. Unbeatable mind is um probably my favorite. Yeah. Uh yoga mat versus a squat rack. You only got 30 minutes in the day. Which one are you doing? Uh yoga is like dental floss. So, if if I only have 30 minutes, I do the yoga. Okay. Nice. Uncommon in three words. The whole book, three words. How to tap three words? Um, yeah, developing your whole self. All right, I I like it. Well, hey, I want to thank you for coming on and really appreciate your time. Um, I know the impact you’re making on life is meaningful to so many people in this world and I can’t thank you enough for being on. Yeah, it’s been great. I appreciate you letting me share. Mark, thank you. This conversation is exactly what I hoped it to be. And

42:34 Here’s what I want you to take from this. The ceiling you’re feeling is probably not your effort. You probably have plenty of effort. You’ve proven that for 20 to 30 years. The ceiling is a standard you’ve been measuring against. And somewhere it’s gone soft. Mark spent his whole life watching who breaks and who holds. And the thing that separates them was almost never the body. It was a standard that they carried within them. And whether they raised it or just let it be the same. And that’s the whole game. Not more programming, just a higher standard and the willingness to have it tested. If this one hit home, do something with it. Follow no hype, just standards wherever you’re listening. Leave a rating and send it to the guy in your life who is grinding harder than ever and is wondering why the needle won’t move. Go check out Mark’s work, his book Uncommon, and the Mark Nine Show. This is no hype, just standards. And I’ll see you next time.