Navy SEAL Commander: "Winning" At Work Is Costing You At Home | Jon Macaskill

You can run multi-million dollar business operations, but if you can’t sit still and be present at your own dinner table, your system is failing. Many high-performing executives get trained to operate under relentless corporate stress, but no one ever teaches them how to down-regulate their nervous system and return home to their families.

In this deep-dive podcast episode, Zac Armstrong sits down with retired Navy SEAL Commander Jon Macaskill to unpack the psychological, physical, and leadership realities of high-stress performance over a 24-year military career.

Key topics covered:

• The hidden cost of executive stress on marriages and family life
• How Jon lost his first marriage to the SEAL teams,and what he learned from it
• Why box breathing and breathwork are tactical performance tools, not “hippy” fluff
• How down-regulating the vagus nerve signals safety to the brain in 60 seconds
• Shifting from “Mental Illness” stigma to proactive “Mental Fitness”
• The power of saying “I screwed up” to build high-trust team cultures
• “Choose Your Hard”: Why aging and physical decay are choices you make

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• Podcast: Men Talking Mindfulness

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 Well, I mean, it ended up costing me my first marriage completely. You know the guy, maybe he’s you, runs a project across three time zones, closes the deal, does it all. Then he sits down at his own dinner table and he’s gone. Body’s in the chair, but his head 8,000 miles away. His kid is talking to him and he’s nodding at nothing. He got trained to be somewhere else. No one ever trained him to come back. I’m Zach Armstrong, retired Navy commander, over 27 years of service. And this is no hype, just standard. My guest today, John, is a 24-year retired Navy SEAL commander. I asked him here myself, one officer to another. And John does something that many operators don’t do, or that I at least don’t see. He teaches this work to operators and leaders. He co-hosts the Men Talking Mindfulness podcast and wrote the book on building real strength through it. He’s not a therapist, he’s an operator. And he’ll tell you exactly what changed for him, the practice, the timeline, the specifics, not slogans. Hit subscribe, follow along wherever you’re listening,

1:02 And let’s get into it. Hey John, again, thanks for joining us today. So, let’s let’s just jump right into it. Um So, you’re planning an operation, you know, across multiple time zones, and then you sit down at the dinner the same night. What is that like? Yeah, you have to have some type of space between those, whether it’s physical space or emotional space, or just time space. Um cuz a lot of the time, as you well know, um the the commander, whether that’s a literal commander or figurative commander, will show up at the dinner table and that rarely works well. Um I know I’ve got I’ve got three young kids. I’ve got a 9-year-old, a 7-year-old, and a 5-year-old. And I’ve been guilty of throwing the commander hat on at times, and uh they don’t respond like my men did in the SEAL teams, that’s for sure. works. [laughter] But yeah, having space, man, mental, physical, or or time, some type of space in between you have to have it. Um you got to take take that pause and and reset mentally, physically, emotionally.

2:03 Yeah. Um when your body was at the table and your head is somewhere else um is what you’re kind of alluding to. Right. What are those people actually seeing out of you? The people at the dinner table? Correct. Uh [sighs] yeah. It’s probably more what they’re not seeing out of me. It’s It’s they’re not seeing my presence. They’re seeing that my my mind is elsewhere. Uh they’re they’re seeing that I’m disconnected, that I’m I might be nodding along with what it is they’re saying, but I’m not truly paying attention. There’s no emotional connection there. Uh you know, my my daughter Right, exactly. My my 9-year-old has called me out on it before and I’ve seen her do it now to my my 5-year-old My 5-year-old will be doing something that she thinks is cool and will say, “Hey, look at this.” And my 9-year-old will be like, “Oh, yeah, cool.” Well, that’s how I can be at the dinner table, the proverbial dinner table, or wherever else that I am with my family. I might

3:03 Be physically with them, but like you said, physically present, but mentally elsewhere. Yeah. And for you, what was that costing you when you’re you know, you’re mentally somewhere else? Yeah. Well, I mean, it ended up costing me my first marriage completely. Um and you know, that that ended because I was telling my wife at the time that I was committed to her, but really my my first wife was was the SEAL Teams. And um and I couldn’t commit to both of them simultaneously. So, I wasn’t present um in conversations. I wasn’t present on vacations. I wasn’t present uh at the dinner table again. Um and now it it’s cost me connection and trust, right? Like my kids, if they if they’re wanting to share something with me and I nod along, they know. People can pick up when you’re not connected, right? And then

4:03 The trust Oh my gosh, so much more. And and so do our spouses, right? Our spouses, our friends. But so so do our co-workers, right? You you if you’re if you’re say kind of kind of flip that coin, if you got a lot going on outside of work and you’re at work and you’re not present, and you’ve got a colleague that comes to you up to you and presents some type of business proposal, you’re nodding along, but they can tell when you’re not connected when you’re not there. Um, and that costs you all sorts of things. Costs you levels of trust, uh, connection, um, culture as a whole. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, when you retired, what showed up that the uniform had been covering up the whole time? Yeah, I think I put that uniform on for because I was insecure. I put it on originally because I was insecure. And uh, and then went into the SEAL Teams because I was still insecure. So I was just adding layers onto that kind of burying the the insecure little 7-year-old boy underneath all that

5:03 Uh, for the longest time. And um, when I took that uniform off, that that same little 7-year-old boy was still there. Um, you know, I’m a and I’m still that guy. I I want I want to please people. I want to be thanked. I want to be well-liked like so many of us. Uh, I think I think most people are in that world though, right? Yeah. Yeah, and and Nobody wants to be hated. [laughter] Well, right. Right. No, I certainly don’t want to be hated. Although, I mean, there might be some out there who just don’t get if you’re a wrestler, you know, you’re you’re you’re trying to [laughter] get yeah, there. But I mean, Right. most people know. Right. Yeah, I I I think there was um, for any number of reasons there’s a deep underlying insecurity that I’ve been working on my whole life, but then taking the the uniform off where, you know, I I had a trident on my chest and I if I walk in in my uniform, much like you with your wings,

6:03 People see that and there’s like some type of instant uh respect there. It’s like uh if you walk in with a certain number of ribbons and rank and and your different badge for whatever Yeah, there there’s Cuz the people who know what that means are going to instantaneously give respect. And and it still happens, right? I mean, I have I have retired Navy SEAL on my command or retired Navy SEAL commander retired Navy SEAL commander on my social media and I get instant street cred because of that. And whether that’s right or wrong, you know, I’m benefiting from it and I uh you know, that I’m I’m of two mindsets there, but um at the same time, do I have it on there because I I’m benefiting business-wise or is it because I I’ve still got an insecurity and I don’t want I don’t want to turn this into a you know, a therapy session with you, but but yeah, [laughter] that’s what’s that was what was underneath that uniform. There’s it’s earned, so I would never

7:03 Put it under the thing of you’re doing it because of the insecurities. It earned in in the world that we live in, if you’re not getting some kind of instant street cred, as you said, um you’re doing yourself a disservice. Why Why would you not, right? Right. And and and like you said, in the world that we live in, everything is so fast-paced. You you know, the the attention span of everybody is like I I I think I I read somewhere that the attention span of a human being is actually less than the attention span of a goldfish these days because because of social media and because of how quickly things are changing. You scroll and and you’re just getting so much information. If you don’t establish street cred in the first couple seconds, then then yeah, you’re out. for and I’m sure you’re you were in the same boat. Like I went like I think 10 years without a post on social media. And then all of a sudden I go into a world in which I’m trying to operate in all of social media and you you learn things. And anybody who’s really good in social media will tell you the first 3 seconds are the most

8:04 Important part of anything you do on social media. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. That’s goldfish territory for sure. Absolutely, it is. And you know, it’s less and less and less for the the the younger generations and and depending on what platform you’re on, too. But yeah, I hear you. I mean, social media was first kind of pooh-poohed on upon uh within uh within social within special warfare. Uh so, I didn’t have social media until I retired or just before I retired and then yeah, I’ve I’ve learned I’ve learned that, which is crazy. 3 seconds, man. I know. It’s um and I know you work a lot on LinkedIn, so it’s a little bit different, but yeah, it’s it’s a hard it’s a hard thing to tackle. Um Yeah. What is the first time someone suggested meditation to you? Mhm. Yeah, so I don’t know if you can see cuz it’s kind of cut off in the picture back behind me. So, that’s yeah, that’s a meditating special operator and I got it introduced to me in special operations within the the SEAL community originally. It wasn’t called meditation or mindfulness. We got it introduced to

9:06 Us as breathwork. Uh specifically, we called it tactical breathing. And it was on the the shooting range just so we could calm our heart rate down or it was in in the in the shoot house or the kill house so that we could calm our heart rate down or respiratory rate down, kind of chill our nervous systems out so that we could take in more, right? Uh like the first time you ever sat in the cockpit, you were probably looking through a soda straw and you’re like, “Holy cow, there’s so many things happening.” But over time, you you adjusted. Same thing, you know, if you’re if you’re hyper uh if your your nervous system is hyped up, then you’re not going to be seeing things that you need to be seeing. So, I got it introduced to me there, but I didn’t use it outside of a tactical use. And I only started using it for my own personal use in about 2015. In 2005, I was involved in an operation that went sideways, Operation Red Wings, which has become somewhat infamous with

10:06 The Lone Survivor books and and movie. And uh And that operation, when I say I was involved in it, I don’t want to over sell that. I was behind the computer. I was in the operation center in in Bagram, Afghanistan, when all that went down. But as an operator, as a as a SEAL, you want to be out there with your boys, and I was not. And that actually caused me a lot of survivor’s guilt. I was a young lieutenant, my first deployment, I was in charge of guys that we lost. And I came back and I struggled. I struggled, man. And and in 10 years, over 10 years, I lost my marriage, I started to perform poorly, I struggled athletically, all sorts of struggles. And I went and saw a counselor when I was starting to abuse alcohol and and medication, and this counselor recommended it to me, and I pushed back against it at first cuz I thought that

11:08 Meditation Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, like like most most uh hyper masculine guys, they’re going to beat their chest and say, “Hey, I can power through this. I don’t need this hippy dippy stuff over here.” And uh he ended up selling it to me as a performance enhancement, and I started using it for that. And that’s what changed it did in fact change my performance, but also change me mentally and emotionally. And I think it changed my life to the point where yeah, this is what I do now is I teach and and practice mindfulness meditation regularly. That’s amazing. And so for the guy who’s out there who just what you just said, who’s like, “Hey man, that that that’s that’s soft. I’m not going to do that.” What what would you try to tell him? [laughter] Try it. Try it. Tell me how soft it is, man. Yeah, yeah. If you try it yeah, if you try it and you’re successful on your first sit, I would be surprised. I remember I sat down after that counselor

12:08 Recommended it to me and sold it to me as performance enhancement, the next day I sat down and I was planning on on winning meditation, on crushing meditation. And I sat down for about 25 seconds and realized that it’s really hard to do that. So, I would say also that if you look back on ancient warrior history, you look at the the Spartans, you look at the samurai, they practiced some of this stuff before they went on the battlefield so that they would be the best version of themselves on the battlefield, the best warrior version, right? And somewhere along the line between East and West philosophies it changed. And and in the West, these practices that are ancient became known as woo-woo and weak. And they are the farthest thing from that. They they take

13:08 Time, they take effort and discipline, and it’s uncomfortable. And it takes a while. I mean, you’re you’re you take care of yourself physically, right? I know you do based on everything I’ve seen on social media and and that’s that’s kind of what you do is is help people to improve their physical fitness. How often does physical fitness come overnight? It doesn’t, right? You And And And if you do achieve it, if you achieve physical fitness, do you just arrive and stay there? No, right? You You get there, but you have to maintain your physical fitness. Consistency, exactly. So, it’s the same thing with mindfulness and meditation. Somebody will sit down for one meditation, sit there for 2 minutes, and then like, “Okay, this doesn’t work.” Or if they do do it, they’re like, “Okay, I’ll They’ll sit through the the 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes.” And they’re like, “Well, I don’t feel any different.” Well, if you go to the gym one time a month, are you going to feel any different? No.

14:08 Are you going to Are you going to look any different? No. It’s all about consistency. Say I Man, I use the gym as a metaphor. I I also do actually use the gym. I [laughter] do go to the gym myself. But I use it metaphorically uh in my talks all the time because that’s what clicks in people’s minds. They’re like, “Oh yeah, I remember when I went to the gym three times in a month and nothing happened, but I also remember when I went to the gym every other day for 2 months and something happened.” Right. That’s the same thing with meditation. And I don’t necessarily um work with my guys with meditation per se. Um I usually put it under the um the idea of visualization. Yeah. visualization. Like, looking at Where do you want to be in a year? All right, go sit down for 10 minutes a day or 5 minutes a day and thought and like picture your goals one month out, one day out, one year out. And if you visualize yourself on where you’re want to be at, it’s amazing how your mind will help gravitate you towards those goals. And I imagine that’s a lot of what you’re talking about with your meditation. Yeah. Uh well, absolutely, man. Like,

15:09 Sometimes I use the two in conjunction. Uh it is I’ve uh I’ve sat down and I’ve written what what I like to see see as in in 6 months. And I’ve also done the the exact opposite. Sat down and written down, “Hey, this is where I don’t want to be in 6 months.” And then then once I’ve got that visual in my mind, then I’ll sit down and I’ll meditate on it. Mhm. And and sometimes having that visual in your mind, it actually makes meditation easier. A lot of the time if we don’t have something to focus on, our mind is our mind is going to wander regardless. Especially with our goldfish mind now. Yeah. What Where am I? Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. 100% man. When you were carrying whatever you hadn’t put down yet, how did it actually show up in your body? Mhm. Yeah, funny enough, you know, what we were talking about with with regards to the the gym metaphor.

16:10 Um when I was in Bahrain, uh I was stationed there for a year, lived there for a year. And this was kind of right as things were coming to a peak with my my mental state. I actually um I put everything into the gym. Uh I I stayed in the gym. I mean, I was at work, uh you know, I don’t know, 12, 13 hours a day. And then I was at the gym for another two or three. Um and the way that it showed up was it was pain, physical pain. Mhm. And without the gym and without some type of alcohol or something else, I I really struggled. Um now, I’m not knocking the gym. I think that the iron therapist that I like to think of the gym as is fantastic. It’s it’s very helpful. But when you’re starting to use it

17:10 Um to hide from pain, um that’s when it becomes problematic. Um and that’s what I was doing. I was hiding from the the physical pain. It was literally starting to weigh on my chest. My shoulders were always tight. I was always tense. And because of that physical manifestation of the pain, I was barking at people. And I was in a leadership position, you know, I was a at the time what senior 04, which wasn’t terribly senior, but in that in that particular organization that I was in, it was the I was the XO. And I was uh I was less than pleasant at times. So, yeah, I’ll just leave it at that. That [laughter] What about, you know, a guy gets his blood work and it comes back normal, but he still feels off. Where do you think the gap may be there? Yeah, I mean what is normal, right? I think first of all, like there’s the low normal, there’s normal, what’s optimal, too. And

18:10 That’s what I usually I try to go for. Yeah, yeah, and and what I think people miss is they get low normal readings and they don’t realize well, that might be low normal for Zach or for John, but that might be really low for Teddy over here or whatever. And it’s all really, I mean, what are we getting checked as well? A lot of us are just getting our our testosterone or free T checked and then we’re not looking at some of the other things that come into play. Um and and and when I say low, it’s not just low that’s the problem, it’s also some things that are really high. What about your hematocrit? You know, and I’m not I’m not a doctor by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve had these things tested and there’s there are things that really high performers expose themselves to as far as stress for their body, their mind, their nervous system that others

19:11 May not, and their blood work may appear, quote unquote, normal, but for the amount of stress that they expose themselves to, it it’s not. No. And you hit the nail on the head, too, though, cuz usually people just go to their PCM, right? Their primary doctor. And they get a basic blood panel test, you know, 18 or so, 24 markers. And it’s not showing that stuff you just talked about, right? Like half the time they don’t even test test test test There’s no testosterone checked at all by the doctor. Right. Um sometimes there is, sometimes there’s not. But when you’re in that constant fight-or-flight state, what you’re talking about with the high performers, um those things show up on a bigger blood panel on which you’re going to see things that you may not know. Right. I mean, just think about cortisol. Cortisol alone, right? That if you’re a really high performer, you’re exposing yourself to extremely high levels of cortisol. And again, being in the space that you work in now, Zach, um how how much does cortisol affect your

20:12 Body? Physically, mentally, emotionally. Sleep, everything. Yeah. Everything. It’s a loop that people get stuck in. Even what you carry in your face, your gut. I mean, yeah, it’s it’s incredible. And we’re not testing those. We’re not. Not usually, right? Not not not not with your primary. And then even if you do with your primary, what is the primary going to do? He’s going to give you a pill. He’s going to give you a pill. Right? There’s no It’s all reactionary. There’s no preventativeness to it. There’s no If you go talk to many doctors, like I had um a doctor on the show uh the other day, and you know, this guy is a doctor telling you that they’re they’re not trained for nutrition or for physical activity or that that’s never prescribed. You have high blood pressure, you have high cholesterol, here’s a statin. You know, here’s this. And that’s the kind of world we live in. Yeah. Not not not what is called the causation. We treat the symptoms, not the causation. Um And so, how much of what men write off as getting, you know, talking about this “Hey, this is just me getting older.”

21:14 How much truth is in that to you? Yeah. Uh man, I’m I’m on both sides of that coin. Uh there are definitely times when yeah, there’s going to be there’s going to be inflammation the right of our of our joints and and we’re going to respond in different ways to to the stresses that we put on our body. But, I think um my dad has a fantastic saying. My dad’s 84 this year and still gets on his bike and rides 10 to 20 mi a day. That’s impressive. He’s just Oh man, he’s a he’s a beast. He’s a total beast. Yeah. And uh he says and I know he’s he’s kind of paraphrased this to make it his own, but he he has friends that stopped riding long ago and he said and their excuse to him was “Hey, we got old, so we got off the bikes.” And his ex- his retort is “Hey, hey, did you stop riding because you got old or did you get old because you stopped riding?”

22:14 And I think that’s what so many of us do is we give ourselves this excuse. We reach, I don’t know, 40 and that’s when people say “Oh well, when you hit 40, the wheels fall off.” And then you start you start believing that and you start telling yourself that. Yeah, if you start believing that or rather you start telling yourself that and then believing it, yeah, the wheels are going to fall off. You’re going to manifest that. But, if you if you do the other way around, you’re like, “You know what? 40 is not old.” You think about the about Clint Eastwood’s what? Early 90s? Yes. Beast. Still directing, still acting. Yeah, yeah. Uh Arnold Schwarzenegger, he’s older. And granted now, I mean, he’s he’s had a very different youth than most of us, but [laughter] But, but we can uh we can take care of ourselves and live our our longevity is that that’s being researched more today than ever before. And I would say, you know, the the it may sound trite, but 40 is the the new 30.

23:16 Like like 50 is the new 30, hell. Yeah. It’s And people don’t understand it. Like it’s I I can say without a doubt, and you know, I’m about to be 45, and I’m in better shape now than I was when I was 25. Yeah. And and [snorts] not just from a physical standpoint, from a mental standpoint, too, right? These things And if you take care of yourself, and like I love what your dad says there. Like, “Would you get old cuz you stop riding?” Right? Yeah. Yeah. We And as human beings, the thing you said, we we just when we can find an excuse to give our a way out of something, we do it. Why do you think that is? Man, uh well, it’s we’re we’re wired to take the easy route. That the what what uh business was it? Office Depot or something that had the easy button that you could push? It was a good commercial. Staples. Man, it’s it was Staples, okay, that’s what it was. I remember people had that easy button on their desk at work. It was yeah, it was hilarious. It was really good great marketing thing until, you know, Amazon took over and Staples and everything went under, but that’s

24:17 That’s another whole conversation. But yeah, I I think um we are wired to seek comfort. Um have you have you read Michael Easter’s book, the the Comfort Crisis? I’m not. Um yeah, phenomenal read. Um you know, here we are again in today’s day and age where yes, we have a short attention span. Well, I think we also have a very low threshold for pain. Um we we live in our homes that are set at 72°. We walk from our house [snorts] to our car. Our car is preheated or precooled to 72°. We get in there. Um we we rarely expose ourselves to any kind of discomfort. Or at least, when I say rarely, that that’s relative compared to what our our ancestors did, right? I mean, our ancestors crossed the plains with their horse and carriage and were exposed to the elements. Um, and now if we’re exposed to the elements between our house and our car, it’s it’s tough. Um, and I and I’m not

25:18 Doing any anyone any favors. I’ve got, again, my young kids. I will go out there and I’ll preheat my car in the winter so that they don’t have to be cold. But at the same time, what am I What am I doing? What am I doing? What I’m doing to them is I’m making them accept that life is going to be easy. And I’ve started telling them, “Hey, look, you choose your hard, right?” Like, everything is hard in one way or another. It’s it’s hard to be in shape, but it’s also hard to be out of shape. Yep. It’s hard It’s hard to It’s hard to be poor, but it’s also hard to be rich. You got to You got to work your butts off, ideally. Um, there’s there’s all sorts of uh divorce is hard. Marriage is hard. Love is hard. Without it is hard. So, I and my kids, I’m telling them that because I want them if you start to realize that you can choose your hard, then you put in the effort and then the things that shouldn’t be hard become easier. Right? It’s basically

26:20 That. Yeah. Yeah, right. Exactly. You know, obviously you didn’t coin it, but like choosing your hard, that is so well put for many people. Choose your hard. The 84-year-old riding a bike, okay? Yeah. Guess what? His heart’s probably that, but the Does he see the same problems with his health? Probably not. No. No. The person who stopped that. Where’s his health? Zero meds. My dad is on zero meds. And I mean, how many 45-year-olds are there that are on zero meds? I can tell you most people I talked to is there’s a great deal of people that are on medication and been on it for years. Yeah, and I’m not knocking meds, right? I mean, if but but yeah, it’s It’s it’s usually it’s it’s a state of mind. button. Yeah, the easy button. It’s the easy button. Yeah, and that’s what the doctors prescribe. Um I know you’re a component um of box breathing. Can you kind of talk me through like why does that work? How does that work, man? Yeah. Yeah, sure, man. So, again, this is kind of what was introduced to us in

27:20 The in the SEAL Teams was some form of this and and for some reason uh in if you look up box breathing now, somehow the the SEALs have been credited with creating it and or something and that’s that is not true by any stretch of the imagination. But, I will say uh Yeah, so what’s happening is our nervous system, we have two sides to the nervous system. Mhm. The nervous system that is the the sympathetic state of the nervous system, which is fight, flight, or freeze. That’s there to keep us alive just in case there’s a threat, right? And and and we don’t want to do away with that side of the nervous system. Clearly, there are still threats out there. The downside is that a lot of us are living in that state, that sympathetic state. We we get an email from our boss that says come see me and we’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to get fired.” We start assuming the worst. We’re wired to assume the worst. Always. Yep. And and and and again, that that was all for survival. Uh and you know, ancient cavemen and women, if they assumed the worst when they left their cave and they were

28:21 Wrong, no big deal. If they assumed the best that everything was hunky-dory as soon as they left that cave they and and they were wrong, then they die, then the species dies. Mhm. But, what’s the other side of the nervous system is the parasympathetic side of the nervous system, the rest and digest. And that’s controlled by what’s called the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve runs from our neck all the way down through our gut. And it’s basically the light switch for that parasympathetic side of the nervous system. And when you’re doing box breathing, your breath is [snorts] activating that vagus nerve and it’s telling your mind that it’s safe. So, we all like to think that our body is controlled by our mind. And that’s true to a sense, but there’s actually more signals coming from your body to your mind than the other way round. And our body, if our body senses that it’s safe,

29:21 Then our body can tell our mind that it’s safe and we can calm down. And that’s what’s happening with box breathing is your body is telling your your mind, “Hey, it’s it’s all good. We’re safe.” And that’s when things can carry on as normal. And why do you call this training instead of self-help or, you know, therapy? Oh, I mean, how do those words even feel coming out of your mouth? I know. Right. [laughter] Because therapy, amongst I will say therapy is gaining traction and gaining acceptance, and that’s good. I believe in therapy. I’ve been going to therapy for decades and I think there’s a lot of goodness in there. But, when people hear self-help or therapy, they’re like, “Oh, that’s for That’s for people who need help. That’s for people who are broke.” that guy. Yeah, that’s for people who are broken. But, when you say training, then that’s that’s completely different, right? If you say, “Hey,

30:21 Physical fitness versus physical illness, what’s the difference?” Well, if you say mental illness versus mental fitness, there’s a big difference there, right? Well, same thing. Like, you work on mental fitness, nobody’s going to have this stigma. I used to have um in my office back in the teams, I had this big calendar behind my my uh desk. And I would just have uh if I was going to therapy, I’d have a little block on there and it wouldn’t say anything. It would just say John’s time. And then uh and then I was like, “Hey man, I I I want my guys to start going to therapy uh or at least counseling or seek seeking some type of mental fitness support maintenance.” So, I started putting mental fitness on my calendar. Now, if I put therapy, people would be like, “What Hey man, you okay?” I said mental men- mental fitness block and people are like, “Hey Hey boss, what’s that all about? What’s mental fitness?” And I’ll be like, “Hey, I’m going to go

31:21 See the I’m going to go see the counselor.” And then they my guys started going because of the the uh stigma that has been surrounding mental health is associated with mental illness. But, if you can flip that and associate mental health with fitness and training, it it’s a it’s a it’s a game changer. Perception. Yeah, it’s a perception. about perception. 100% 100%. the guy who’s out there going to try meditation for the first time, uh what’s the smallest thing that’s going to actually count for him in that first time? Yeah. Don’t I would tell them don’t sit down to meditate the first time. Like again, like I like I said man, I tried to I tried to meditate for an hour and and lasted 20 seconds and I felt that I was a miserable failure. Um, yeah, start small. Like box breathing like you just mentioned. So, for the for the listeners, viewers who are not familiar with what box breathing is, that’s just breathing in for a count of four, holding for a count of four, breathing out for a count of four, holding for a count of four. And each one of those little counts is an edge to

32:21 The box. And you do that three, four, five times, um you you mentioned having Mark Divine on. He says do it for 20 minutes a day. That’s and that’s great if you can get up to that, right? And then that’s just the maintaining consistency. It doesn’t have to be this long hour-long meditation. It could be three, four minutes of breath work like the box breathing multiple times a day for several weeks. That’s when things are going to change. But I will tell you do not just like you would not jump well, I’d say most people do not jump into the CrossFit Murph workout every without having touched a barbell or done a single pull-up. But but there are people who do. But I recommend against it, right? You’re going to hurt yourself. You’re going to hurt yourself and it’s not going to feel good. You’re not going to get anything out of it. If you jump into an hour-long meditation, it’s the same thing and you’re not going to get much out of it except hate and discontent towards meditation. Yeah, I imagine a lot of people would

33:21 Especially the alpha personalities that you’re talking about, too. It’s like anything like building up and then being consistent, right? That’s definitely something that we we discount like small changes in being consistent with the small changes and how much impact that will have on you with the small changes. What changes, you know, for the guy or you’re in your own head when you go from leading like a small team to, you know, a couple thousand people or these larger teams? What kind of mental block or is in there? Yeah. Yeah, well I I I moved up gradually you know, leading a platoon or even prior to that a fire team within the platoon moving up to leading 2,500 people dispersed all over the the Middle East. Um So moving from, you know, leading yourself to leading a huge team overnight, I honestly I can’t talk to that. But I can talk to leading a large a large you know, at least medium-size mid-size 2,500 people

34:22 Dispersed Um You got to just remember you’re leading people and there’s going to be there’s going to be drama, there’s going to be emotions, there’s going to be there’s going to be mistakes made and if you’re leading from a point of failure is not an option then people are going to present no failures to you. Even though there are failures underlying and ultimately that under that undermines the level of trust, it undermines the the culture, the foundation that the whole organization is built upon. So I think you have to you have to realize that failure is going to happen. There’s going to be some failures that are going to be catastrophic and you can work towards mitigating failure but that doesn’t mean failure is not an option. It can’t you can’t eliminate it. I think that’s the the the big piece and yeah, understanding like you said you’re leading people and

35:22 People are not machines, they’re not AI. There’s going to be there’s going to be drama, there’s going to be culture problems, there’s going to be I mean health, there’s going to be times when um when there’s the romantic situations. I mean I married my wife, clearly I married my wife but my wife was my my ops or I was ops officer when she was my medical officer at SEAL Team 10. [laughter] So I I understand all too well that there’s going to be uh human um aspects to leading a large organization. Right and you know the culture is so big cuz culture is so hard to fix when it’s broken um and for that senior leaders are just not getting taught um that’s costing them you know whether it’s culture, their job, their performance. What what are some things that they should be taught? Yeah. Um have you ever read The Culture Code? I have not. Yeah, Daniel Coyle another great read. Um so there’s a there’s a whole lot of

36:22 Greatness in that book but there’s one piece um that I I will agree with and I I learned it in the SEAL Teams, but I also learned the opposite in the SEAL Teams. And that’s to admit when you’ve screwed up. Yeah. Um, like as a as a Exactly. As a as a leader, we’ve kind of built up these these guards and shields and armor and masks that we wear and we’re like, “Hey, we’re we’re not going to screw up and if we do, we’re not going to tell anybody about it.” And I screwed up at at SEAL training at Buds there in in San Diego um, and to the point where one of my guys paid the price. It wasn’t anything dramatic. It was just he he had to do extra push-ups or whatever. And I was and I was like afterwards, I was like, “Hey, man, I’m sorry about that.” And one of my instructors came up to me, he’s like, “Sir, come here.” Pulled me off to the side. He’s like, “Never ever apologize to your people. Never apologize to your men. That undermines you as a leader.” Now, granted, this was in 2001. But I I think that was some of the worst

37:23 Advice I ever got. I agree. I was about to say. It was terrible. Terrible. Yeah, I I don’t don’t worry. I’m not going down that path telling you, “Hey, don’t ever apol- No, I’m going down the other path in that when you screw up as a leader, if you can admit it to your people and own it. and own it. And that’s in That’s in real life and it’s also, uh, covered in the The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. Um, those three words, I screwed up, I mean, trust is built upon that. That’s exactly what I was about to go to. Um, it’s amazing if you can admit that stuff to your people. You’re not what we we might perceive as, “Oh, I’m showing weakness.” You’re not. What you’re actually showing is, “Hey, I’m a human.” And the trust and rapport and what you gain from that from that person invaluable. Because, hey, if he can say that to me, like obviously he has my best interest or he he trusts me. I’m going to trust him back. Right. And dude, and and like you said, um, it’s not portraying weakness at all. Like, it is so much harder to say I

38:23 Screwed up than it is than it is to just carry on like nothing happened. Are you kidding me? That’s Yeah, that’s that’s uh underpinning foundation to to developing trust. 100%. Yeah. And that’s it’s just so big. And I imagine that’s a lot of what your meditation’s around, right? Is trying to get in that headspace to where you’re comfortable being uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. As a matter of fact, I I led a meditation on on Tuesday night and it was all about that. Right? Everybody thinks that that meditation is hey, I’m I’m going to get into this relaxate uh relaxing state. And it can You can get into that relaxing state, but it’s not all about that. That’s not the goal. The goal is just to really try to settle your mind and nervous system so that you can be aware of what’s happening. And what’s happening is quite often not comfortable. And I don’t mean just physically like cuz you’re the way you’re sitting, but you may realize, oh man,

39:24 I’m going through some through some stuff. And I haven’t even given myself time to recognize it, right? I’m hiding again like I mentioned before, kind of hiding my pain by going to the gym. Well, maybe you’re hiding your pain by working 18-hour days. You’re you’re hiding behind something. And if you stop long enough to let all the dust settle, now what do you see? Oh, I’ve got some stuff going on and this stuff needs to be worked on. Without seeing it, how do you know what needs to be worked on? So, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um, I think it’s a good note to end on right there. Um, and just importance of being comfortable being uncomfortable. And uh the way I like to end these um uh is always doing what I call rapid fire. I’m going to ask you a few questions. First thing that comes to your mind, don’t put a lot of thought to it, and uh see where we go. Uh you ready? All right. Uh I’m ready. I don’t All box breathing count. Right now, you’re sitting beside somebody in airp- uh on a plane. Why are you What would you tell them? Why is that important?

40:24 What would I tell the person on the plane? Why am I doing it? Yeah, I’ll well, I would tell them that I don’t like them and I’m trying to ease myself [laughter] off the bridge off the ledge. No, I’m I’m kidding. So, yeah, I’ll tell them exactly what I told you is, “Hey, this is just an opportunity to really reset my mind, my nervous system, and my body uh so that I can be the best version of myself for those around me and and uh and uh yeah, carry on.” Makes sense. Um What about your first practice ever? The very first mindful practice you ever did, what actually stuck? Yeah, well, aside from the the mindfulness practice that I mentioned uh on the shooting range where we really didn’t call it that, it was in the in that counselor’s office when he had told it told me that it was going to be um something that would improve my performance, then he introduced me to uh some box breathing cuz initially I was like, “Well, I’m going to go home and crush meditation, do this hour long.” I went back to him the following week and

41:24 I was like, “Hey, man, this stuff sucks.” Well, he introduced me to box breathing and what happened was immediately after I left his office, I got cut off by some jerk in traffic and I was like, “I’m going to chase this down this dude down and I’m going to show him who’s boss by flipping him in the bird.” And then I realized, “Hey, man, this is an opportunity to try that box breathing.” And I did it right there behind the steering wheel, clearly with my eyes open. Um and it reset. It it turned my reaction into a more rational response and I realized, “You know what? I don’t need to go chase that guy down. I don’t know what was going on in that guy’s mind or life.” So, Yeah. He could have been something and it just happened or he was in a hurry cuz his kid was sick. You You never know. Exactly. Exactly. Sometimes Too many times we don’t put ourselves in other person’s shoe. We just assume. Um That’s right. Hippies and monks, you filed uh meditation under hippies and monks once. What word would have gotten younger you to actually try it? Uh warriors. Yeah, uh if if somebody had said something about the Spartans and

42:25 The samurai back then, I actually have a Japanese kanji symbol on my shoulder. Um, it was supposed to say warrior. It was the first tattoo I ever got. Got it when I was 18 years old on my 18th birthday. And uh I picked it and the guy picked the wrong tattoo off the wall and put dangerous on my shoulder. Um, I don’t know that I want to be known as dangerous, but I want to be known as a warrior. And if somebody had told me, “Hey, this is what warriors do.” I would have I would have jumped at it. Yeah. Uh all about that perception that we were talking about earlier, right? Yeah. Um, body in the room. The last time your body was at the table and your head was 8,000 miles away. Yeah. Probably last night. [laughter] I’m I’m not kidding, man. Like even as a as a avid meditator, I can find myself uh being other places. Um, I was at at home alone with the kids last night. My wife was out. And uh you know, I was I was trying to get them all settled and um

43:26 My my mind was elsewhere. Um, but the thing is I caught it. And that’s the difference, right? So many of us, if we if we’re not mindful, and I’m not not not necessarily saying a meditator, but if you’re not mindful, you’re going to let that happen and continue to happen. I caught I caught myself happening and I was like, I got to reset. Let me put my phone down. Let me be with my kids. Let me be here and now. Mhm. Um, skeptic to believer. The moment you stopped thinking this was just for hippies and monks. The Well, initially I would say when that when the guy when the counselor sold it to me as a performance enhancement. Okay. Um you know, type A personality as so many of us are. Um if there’s some kind of pill that’s going to give us an edge, I would probably take it. And if there’s something that I Yeah. And if there’s something that I can do that’s going to give me an edge, then I’m going to do it. And it was it was then. Now, I did struggle with it for several months

44:28 Afterwards, but once I was uh sold once it was sold to me repackaged to me as something that was going to help my performance, then that’s when I I gravitated toward it. Makes sense. Um Ruston, Louisiana, is there anything that still stays with you being from a such a small place? Yeah. Yeah, man. Uh I still call my track and cross country coach coach. Uh he he lives in Bentonville, Arkansas, now, and I’m I’m still going to go visit him. I’m going to go visit him next month. Um It’s a it’s a fairly small town, not not not you know, it’s not one-stop sign or anything, but it’s a fairly small. But uh my roots are are there still as much as I I like to act like they’re not. My roots are still in Louisiana. I still eat crawfish. As a matter of fact, my wife’s going to make some crawfish étouffée here this weekend. There you go. And uh yeah. some crawfish étouffée. Oh, boy. [laughter] Don’t get me started. Yeah, I’m I’m from the South myself, and

45:28 I it is when I visited my grandfather, and what you just said is very reminiscent of what I was feeling when I was back down there in the South uh last weekend. Uh the rigger, you worked ejection seats as an enlisted sailor before Annapolis. What did that job teach you that the officer path didn’t? Oh, man. [laughter] One, um I worked on a the parachute rigger or the air crew survival equipment man. Um I always I always felt bad for the pilots who had to fly knowing that somebody else had rigged their seats. But uh but yeah, um I I there was a time it happened to me twice in my career. Um I was walking down the street and I saluted I got saluted by junior sailor. And I saluted them back and they stopped me. This happened twice. And they said Hey sir, you were enlisted before, weren’t you? And I was like I was. How did How did you know that? They’re like I can just tell.

46:28 Now if I could put my finger on what that was, I wish I could, but I can’t. But I I guess it may have had something to do with humility or I think that you learn on the enlisted side much faster than the officer side. Uh it’s and I you’re I’m I was enlisted as well, so it’s definitely something that is can’t be taught on the officer side. It’s just something that it’s within you. Um what about Annapolis? Was there anything that you know, the Naval Academy kind of stuck with you throughout your career? [laughter] Now I love the Naval Academy. I love Annapolis. I love that I went there. But my ex-wife I used to joke with her that the the only thing that I walked away from Annapolis with was the ability to put up with a lot of BS. In a good way. Now don’t I I don’t think that’s true now looking back on it. But man, there was a time there where I was like, what did I learn there? Cuz my degree I have a degree in mathematics. I don’t use my degree in mathematics at all. But I I learned to think differently. I

47:30 Learned to lead you know, peers, right? Going through leading your your fellow classmates. I think that’s important is being able to lead your peers. Yeah, I agree. And that that’ll also help coming from the enlisted side cuz you have a better understanding how to lead. Um What about off mic? What is something that guys won’t say on mic to you, but they’ll say off mic? Uh man, I I I hear a lot off mic. Um, and and I think the biggest one is talking about being being scared. Um, right? Being being scared as a dad. Failure or usually, right? Some kind of failure. It’s being afraid of failure. Being afraid of Yeah, being afraid of perception. It’s not It’s not like being afraid of the big bad guy that’s going to come through my door here. It’s being afraid of failure, I think is the biggest one. What about inner strength? One sentence. On inner strength in your How would you explain inner strength in one sentence? Man, that was That’s a rapid-fire one,

48:35 Huh? Okay. Um, the one sentence inner strength, I think it’s the ability to sit with things as they’re happening and pause and then respond versus react. Um, you know, quite often too too many of us have the instinct to just react and do something. Sometimes it’s harder to do nothing. No No different than you know, what you talked about with the guy on the road in that little bit of road rage in that in that moment and then being able to pull back from Um, and then let’s end on this one. All right. You’re in a room, but you’re not in the room, right? How’s How’s a guy if you’re telling a guy, what’s the quickest way to bring yourself back into that room? Breathe. Breathe. Bring yourself to your breath specifically, man. Like pay attention to that physical sensation that you’re you’re feeling with each inhalation and each exhalation.

49:35 It’s not going to turn the noise of the outside world off, [snorts] but it’s going to turn it down enough to where you can pay attention to the here and the now. Yeah, cuz it’s hard to be present especially in the world we’re in now. Well, hey. I really appreciate uh you coming on the show, and I’m looking forward to uh uh continuing to follow you on social media. Hey, back at you, man. Keep doing what you’re doing. John, thank you again. This was a conversation that I had hoped it would be. And here’s what I want you to take from this. The guy who can still run the op and can’t sit still at his own table isn’t broken, and he isn’t soft. He got trained to be somewhere else, and nobody trained him on how to come back. Coming back is trainable. John laughed at this once, filed it under hippies and monks. And now he does it every day and teaches operators to do it, too. That’s not a personal transplant. That’s a skill. And here’s the part that ties everything we do on the show together. The load a man carries doesn’t always show up on lab results. It shows up in his sleep, his focus, his cortisol, the way he recovers, whether he’s actually present

50:35 With the people that actually matter in the most to him. Standard labs can read normal while a man feels wrong or that something’s off, because normal is just the average of the population that’s inflamed and worn down. That gap is real, and it’s trainable, as well. So, if you’re driven guy over 40 who looks like he’s winning, but feels empty on the inside, this one’s for you. Try the breathwork. 60 seconds. See what it does for you. If this landed, do me a favor, rate and review the show. Quite frankly, it’s the thing that helps other men find it. Subscribe wherever you’re listening, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and send it to the guy you’re thinking about right now. This is No Hype, Just Standards.