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The Psychological Secret That Helped Me Survive Combat
In this episode, a former Navy SEAL shares insights from his combat training and the psychological strategies that helped him endure high-stress situations. He discusses the importance of perspective,...
The Psychological Secret That Helped Me Survive Combat
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Speaker A
When I was in the Air Force and I went through sear school, they put us in a small, I call it a cage in a mock detainment for resistance. And they taught us one of the simplest things that you can change is just how are you sitting?
Speaker B
Training like that gives you perspective. Literally, you're confined in a box and you can't change that. They're not going to let you out early. You can't really escape out of there. You know, at some point there's going to be some interrogation and stuff, but a lot of what they're doing is just trying to soften you using physical discomfort. So. So what can you change or what can you control in that situation? You can control your own body, your posture, the way you sit and what you think about.
Speaker A
Somewhere somebody is hearing us talk right now and they're thinking about quitting. What would you say to that person now?
Speaker B
So we'll go back to the beginning of this conversation when we talk about books.
Speaker A
Gus, I am super excited to have you back in the chair. My first question is a one that I know is going to be relevant to you because you're always reading something, man. And I want to know, what are you reading now and what does it make you think about?
Speaker B
Well, usually for me, I like to have a couple of books that I'm reading at the same time because I don't always feel like reading. You know, it'll usually be one fiction, one nonfiction, maybe one. I hate to use the term self help, but one that's sort of like a self improvement type of book. So right now I'm. I am actually listening to a book on tape called what the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite authors.
Speaker A
One of my favorites too.
Speaker B
And a fantastic storyteller and very insightful. He has a way of looking at everyday things in a sort of taking a perspective on it that we don't always think about. So fantastic read. Or a great listen.
Speaker A
Anyway, on my way up and Gladwell's other books, so Blink, one of my favorites. One of the things that we had to read before we went to CIA actually was assigned reading before we could even show up on day one was Blink. Wow. And then Outliers. I think that was also Gladwell. Excellent book. I remember reading that one when I was in the Air Force. And really every time I read something from Malcolm Gladwell, it gives me a whole new perspective on something I think I would have called mundane beforehand. So what is. What is the book doing in your that you're reading now.
Speaker B
So for me it's again, it's interesting perspective and he's telling stories that everybody's familiar with. So I listened to, he told a story about Cesar Milan. And you know, everybody knows Cesar Millan and he works with dogs. But he explains how Cesar Milan's body movement is communicating with dogs as much or more than his verbal commands and stuff that he's giving the dogs. So that's interesting to me as a dog owner because I'm like, are the messages that I'm sending to my dogs like incongruent? The words that I'm saying and my body language, are those two things not matching up for what the dog is seeing? Is the dog confused by what I'm trying to do? And then it makes me think about like in interpersonal interactions with people that we know, is the message that I'm sending with my body language the same as the message that I'm sending with my mouth? And so that's an interesting thing that I'm thinking about. And then the, the last story that I listened to from that book is about Enron and he's breaking down the Enron collapse and how it should have been easily foreseeable by people who know the markets and who were looking at what Enron was doing, but it wasn't. And then it came as this huge surprise and he kind of, he compares it to Watergate, the Watergate scandal, where Watergate was this very clandestine thing that happened that nobody knew about, you know, and he looks at Enron, he's like, it wasn't clandestine at all. Everybody should have known about this was in their like financial disclosures from Enron, but people just chose not to see it. And so that to me is, it's very interesting because what in our own world do we choose not to see that's right in front of us? That's not even clandestine, it's not even hidden. But we're seeing it and choosing to ignore it.
Speaker A
So what I like about this is the Cesar Milan story was all about looking at a situation essentially through the eyes of a dog, where you don't understand the words, you just get the non verbal feedback. And then the Enron example again is an example of what we don't choose to look at. So it's almost like what we choose to look at, what we don't choose to look at.
Speaker B
Exactly.
Speaker A
Is any of this informed by your background as a seal? Are these interests informed by what you experienced? Or were they always there? Or is there some Third option.
Speaker B
So I think there's. They've always kind of, the interest has always kind of been there. I grew up in a background where my father, when I was growing up, he was a psychologist in private practice. So the psychology of why we make the decisions we make has always been something that interested me. Not a field that I wanted to go into professionally, but a curiosity. Right. 22 years in the SEAL teams allowed me to see decision making and high performing teams and, you know, actions that people take in high stress situations and sort of evaluate that through the lens of both an operator and somebody who's curious about the psychology of why we do certain things. And then the whole, you know, the name of the book is what the Dog Saw. And it's basically his nod to us trying to put ourselves in the viewpoint of the people we're talking to or the situations that we're examining, trying to see it through somebody else's eyes. Like when you're talking about Cesar Millan, you're not talking about what Caesar's seeing, you're talking about what the dog is seeing. Right. And so it's like trying to take, take yourself out of your own sometimes limited perspective and put yourself in the perspective of somebody else who is involved in whatever the action is.
Speaker A
Yeah. This is a lesson that we teach at Everyday Spy called perception versus perspective. Essentially what makes Cesar Milan so good at what he does is that he doesn't just look at it like Caesar, he looks at it like the dog. He looks through the eyes of the dog and says, what do I have to do to get my message across to this specific animal? He doesn't only work with like good dogs either. Right. He doesn't take the easy road.
Speaker B
He doesn't. In fact, I would say that most of the dogs that he works with are very problematic. Some of them are even violently problematic. And he says sometimes that those are the dogs he actually relates to the most because of his upbringing. So which is a really interesting thing and I think, you know, in your line of work or, or the work that you came from at the agency, sometimes you have to put yourself in the perspective of the person that you're talking to or trying to get information from, because it's like you can see it from your own perspective and just keep hammering away the way you think it should go.
Speaker A
Right.
Speaker B
But if you're not able to sort of unplug from yourself and put yourself in the shoes of the person that you're talking to, it's going to be really hard to bridge that gap.
Speaker A
So what is it from your time in the SEAL teams that makes you find this valuable or even better, you're not in the SEAL teams now. So why are these skills still worth reading about?
Speaker B
So I think when people think about the SEAL teams, a lot of times what they think about is the operational aspect of what we do.
Speaker A
That is 100% what people think about, which is. Yeah, and I love talking to you because you are such an incongruent example of what people assume a Navy SEAL is. We assume a Navy SEAL is big, strong, singularly focused. I mean, honestly, nobody ever talks about seals being smart, right? Nobody ever talks about seals being like, debonair or charming or charismatic. They don't talk about that. That is true. But nobody talks about it. That's not what's. What they make the movies look like. So this is such an exciting example. You are such an exciting example of what it actually looks like. So I interrupted you, but please.
Speaker B
No, no, that's good. And I, and I think you're right. And I think that's the people that I know who have come from, you know, my background and the teams that I worked with. I think there's sort of a shift in perspective because people see what those people are doing now post career, and it's sort of changing that mindset of like, oh, seals are, you know, column A and column B. And now people are saying, oh, hey, these guys get out, they start businesses, they work in the professional realm, they start nonprofits. They, you know, do all these other different kind of things. And so I think it is good to see that there's like a very well rounded aspect to that, you know, but also besides the operational stuff that we do, there's, you know, leadership and there's a public speaking aspect to it. And those, I think, are the kind of things when that you don't always think about. Right. Is. So, like, before we ever go out to the battlefield to, you know, conduct combat operations, there's a leadership in training that has to happen. There's a leadership in selection and making sure the right people get to the team. And so those sort of facets of what we do are where these lessons are more applicable, but they're not typically what people think about. People think about shooting guns and jumping out of airplanes and going on target and, you know, taking the fight to the enemy, which is all great stuff. But in the lead up to that, you have to make sure you have the right people in your organization and you're training them the right way. And you're leading in a way that is properly communicative to the people that you're trying to lead.
Speaker A
So let's, I'm going to take a tangent of my own here, right? Let's take just a few minutes to brag on some of these stellar examples of Navy SEALs that the average person would assume is, you know, point, shoot, bang, bang, badass, but who's actually doing something really amazing in the everyday world. Because I know you spend a lot of your time supporting people in the seal, in the, in the Tier one community who are some of the ones that you'd want to throw attention to. Right now. We've got, we've got listeners, we've got watchers. Look these people up because these are other examples like us, of people who are doing amazing things that, that do not fit the stereotypical simple SEAL mold.
Speaker B
So for sure, there's a couple of, just right off the top of my head, there's a couple of nonprofits, one that I work with called Community First Project. My good friend Andrew Sullivan started this to bring Tier one operators to teach essentially like active shooter type engagement to law enforcement who may not always have the time or the funding to get that kind of training. So Community First Project sources donations, takes high level operators, takes them down to the patrol level, officer level, and teaches them proper response tactics. Active shooter. There's another couple of guys who, who started, and this is in the sort of veteran wellness and recovery space, started a nonprofit called Fire Ice Frogs where they take injured service members who are dealing with these, you know, post career, sometimes debilitating conditions. And they take donations and then they get these guys saunas and cold tubs to help them with their recovery and sort of like, and this plays all into like the lifetime athlete aspect of some of what we do, but helping keep those guys healthy long term, way beyond their career and, you know, bringing focus again to the fact that, yeah, while we do the job, we are, you know, very physical and very aggressive. But there's, you know, there's a price to pay for those kind of things. Just like professional athletes, when you get out, there's like, hey, you're done with the career. Thanks for coming out. But, you know, how do you then cope with life and all the stresses of that? And then obviously there's, you know, there's a good number of guys who go into politics. You know, my good friend Eli Crane is, is, you know, Congressman now and Tim Sheehy, who is a SEAL officer in the SEAL teams, he's in Congress now And my bud's executive officer, a guy named Ryan Zinke, is a congressman from Montana. And so I think a lot of people think, well, here's these guys who carry machine guns and they're kind of knuckle draggers and you're more likely to see them in the gym than you are to see them in a suit and tie.
Speaker A
And we couldn't be more wrong.
Speaker B
But yeah, I think it, it's more often the exception than the rule to have somebody who's kind of that knuckle dragger, you know, tattooed up musclehead stereotype. And I think more often than not you see guys who are very intelligent. I went to BUDS with a guy who prior to coming, enlisted in the Navy to be a seal, had his Juris Doctorate from Pepperdine and he just decided post 911 to join up and shout out to him. His name's William Wagassee, but played football at Notre Dame, got his Juris Doctorate of Law from Pepperdine and then enlisted in the Navy. And so you have these guys who are extremely, extremely intelligent, high achieving, you know, doing things in their personal life. A lot of the guys who aren't officers still have college degrees and have, you know, some of them are, have been Olympic swimmers and all these other different things and then they come in and choose to do the career.
Speaker A
So I mean, right off the top of your head, I think you just listed 3, 4, 5, 6, maybe 7, 7 or 8. My math could be off. High achieving, highly successful former SEAL operators who are now doing amazing things in everyday life. And for anybody who missed it, those groups were Community First, Project, Andrew Sullivan, Fire Ice Frogs.
Speaker B
Fire Ice Frogs with Derek, whose last name is totally escaping me right now, and Chris. And I'm not, not coming up with their last names. I just know them as Derek and Chris. But Fire Ice Frogs is the organization. Great, great people.
Speaker A
And then the, the different congressmen, Tim.
Speaker B
Sheehy, Ryan Zinke and Eli Crane and Dan Crenshaw.
Speaker A
So I mean if, if anybody wants to challenge their pre existing notions about what a Navy SEAL is versus what a Navy SEAL isn't, or rather what a Navy SEAL really is, which is so much more than what people assume. These are all excellent people and excellent organizations to look up. I find this interesting because this is part of the same challenge that CIA deals with. You have very dedicated, very professional, very skilled operators who do not want or need attention, accolades, rewards. They're in it for something else. And I'm not saying that they're all in it just for the mission. But the mission is, is usually a major player. But what they don't need is someone to pat them on the back. And what they don't need is a, their name and a headline or their face on a banner. So they do amazing things and nobody talks about it.
Speaker B
Or, you know, the other thing that you get is the people who do go out and sort of seek fame and fortune and publicity and all these different kind of things, they end up being the de facto representation of the community and they aren't always the best representation.
Speaker A
Right.
Speaker B
This is something I'm very mindful of when I do podcasts or public speaking. Is what I say here or what I say in front of an audience of corporate individuals that becomes to them the opinion or the representation of the SEAL teams. And so I have to be very, I don't want to say cautious, but I have to be very measured in how I deliver my opinions or my thoughts or my statements. And make sure and preface that by saying like, this is what I think.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
Because people do. And you know, this is like, well, Andy Bustamante says that's what the CIA thinks. And you're like, well, it's what I think.
Speaker A
Right.
Speaker B
And based on my experience in the CIA, and for me too, you know, it's like I did a number of things prior to coming into the SEAL teams. I was a missionary, I went to college, I was a, you know, multi sport athlete. My experience in the SEAL teams had given me some perspective on a number of different things. But now that I'm out, it's like, I just have to bear in mind that based on my career and what I retired from that people are going to think, oh, this guy speaks for this community.
Speaker A
You know, this is a major challenge for anybody who is a public voice. Right. And I, I am not claiming to be anything other than whatever I appear to be to the person listening or watching. Right. And I think that's the same way you are. We're not trying to be something, we're just being who we are. We're taking action on an opportunity that was given to us. And that's a responsibility as much as it is a gift and a blessing. Right. But you're totally right. People will. There will always be some subset who takes your word and applies it to an organization that you're no longer a part of. I'll always be affiliated with CIA. I'll always have legal obligations to CIA, just like I'm sure you have with the Navy seals and with everything you did that was still classified. Or remains classified. That. That's the reality of it. But you don't speak for the SEAL teams, just like I don't speak for CIA. So how do you. How do you view the responsibility of the listener, the responsibility of the viewer? There has to be some level of responsibility on them to understand that they're listening to, they're observing, they're learning from a voice, whether that's this conversation or whether that's a podcast by Joe Rogan or whether that's a TV show on Discovery Channel, or whether that's a headline from CNN or fo. Like you're learning from a voice. But that doesn't mean that that voice is complete. It doesn't mean that voice is the truth. The facts, that it's everything. We use a term in CIA called assessments. What you hear is only current as of the moment you hear it. As soon as it's said, it's already aging. It's already got a half life. Right. And that's why analysis in Ukraine was. Was current up until it wasn't current anymore. Right. And the same thing happens every day in China and Taiwan and all over the world. Our current. Our assessments are only current until the newest bout of information comes out.
Speaker B
And I think that's a great question going back to the original question is what's the obligation of the listener? You know, And I think when I get up to speak, for me, it's all I can control is what I say, you know, you can't control how the message is received. You can only control how the message is delivered. And I always hope that people listen objectively and, you know, take. Take my word with a grain of salt and just say, hey, this is an individual who did this job. And I know that's not always going to be the case. So like I said, I try to be measured in what I do, but I do think a lot of people don't think like that. They just, you know, they are willing to throw their opinions out there and say, this is what I think, and whatever everybody else thinks about this. So with that in mind, with them not taking that into consideration, I would say to the listener, you know, sort of buyer beware. Understand that that's an individual who is speaking an individual opinion based on his experience or her experience.
Speaker A
And that can apply to anything.
Speaker B
And they can apply to anything, to.
Speaker A
Us, to books, to articles, to magazines. And this is such an important lesson, because I feel very blessed. I'm sure you do, too, to have a voice that people want to hear and to have an opinion that people want to, want to query. But I mean, I'm, I'm putting more faith in what you have learned from others besides me than just what you learn from me, for sure.
Speaker B
You know, and I think many, many years ago, I remember hearing somebody say, you shouldn't hold strong opinions about things that you don't know that much about. And I think we live in a world where people hear snippets of information and they get just like the very, very wave tops, 10,000 foot view of something and then they choose to hold very, very strong opinions about those things. And I think there's a danger to that. So I would say I try to represent my opinions as my opinion. If I'm not informed, I'm not, you know, afraid to say, hey, I don't really know that much about that or I can't speak to that. And that's part of that like, measured response. But you know, it's like again, even when I do speak opinionatedly about something, that's just my opinion based on the information that I have, which may be incomplete.
Speaker A
Could you imagine how different politics would look if people only spoke about. If people only held strong opinions about the things that they knew the most about?
Speaker B
And it's interesting in politics too, because in politics not only do they speak based on a strong opinion, they speak in absolutes.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
About things that sometimes there's very minimal information about and they're willing to come forward and say, hey, this is what's happening.
Speaker A
Right.
Speaker B
And you're like, but is it?
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
And that's where it comes into. You know, and this is what I think when I'm on the other side of that, when I'm the listener, is I have to take into consideration like, well, where is that politician or this public speaker sourcing their information? And they probably have a team of people who are aggregating data for them and saying, hey, this is what we think, or this is what your constituency wants you to say. And so you just have to, you know, sort of that idea of you have to sift through the noise and find what you think is the hardest data points or the things that are the most concretely true or the things that you agree with that seem observably true to you. And then, you know, take those on board and use that information for whatever you're going to use it for.
Speaker A
Really wise words. And, you know, 22 years in the Navy SEAL teams. Thank you for your service.
Speaker B
Thank you.
Speaker A
Proud, proud combat veteran here. The, the next question I have for you is kind of personal because I've had some great conversations with you off camera. And I know that there have been times where you have faced situations where you didn't know if you were gonna complete the task, you didn't know if you were going to finish. You may have even thought about quitting. Somewhere. Somebody is hearing us talk right now, and they're thinking about quitting. They're thinking about quitting a marriage, they're thinking about quitting parenthood, they're thinking about quitting relationship, they're thinking about quitting a job, they're thinking about quitting their family, they're thinking about quitting, maybe even life. What would you say to that person now about how to decide whether to stay the course, whether to quit, or whether to take some third route? And what about your experience informs that opinion?
Speaker B
So we'll go back to the, back to the beginning of this conversation. We were talking about books. One of my favorite books and a books that I've referenced a number of times, is by an author that I really enjoy, a guy named Simon Sinek, and he wrote a book called Start with why. And so anytime you're launching into a career, a relationship, a new path in life, it's a good idea to really do a hard assessment of, like, what is my why here? What is my driving factor? What is pushing me to go in this direction? For me, for example, when I joined the Navy, it was post 9 11, and I had this very strong sense of patriotic obligation. I needed to sign up, I needed to serve, I needed to go defend our country. And that was my why. And that why was enough to get me through some really difficult challenges. So I would say for anybody who's facing that moment of really, like, introspective reflection, where you're looking, taking a hard look, go back to why you started that journey, whether, like I said, whether it's a relationship or a career or just a particularly difficult moment of maybe you're trying to give up a bad habit or something like that and go back and do that assessment of be honest with yourself and say, why did I start down this road? What is my why here? What is my driving factor? And then once you've done that, then understand that it's a journey, right? And it's not always a destination. The things that we do in life, particularly like relationships, there's not like a hard stop. 20 years from now, you're not like, well, I signed up to get married for 20 years and then it's over. It's like a forever thing. And so you have to say, what's a manageable segment of this that I can control? And maybe it's just like, maybe I'm in a strange relationship and maybe the only thing I can control is the next conversation with my wife and the direction that conversation goes and the, you know, sort of the, the intent of that conversation. And then you say, okay, maybe just today, this conversation, and then today and then this week and then this month and before I quit, let me go back and think about why I started and let me control the parts of this that I can control. Because certainly if you look so far down the road, like, oh my gosh, things are bad right now and this is going to last forever, you're going to get into that sort of self defeating mindset where, you know, it's impossible for you to move beyond that moment. But if you just look at your feet and put one foot in front of the other and this is. We talk a lot about Hell week because that tends to be like our reference. But like, you just got to take it the next step, the next evolution, the next training event. And I think, you know, that's solid advice for anything from, you know, careers or relationships or even friendships maybe that seems strained by one thing or another. And you say, what is the measurable segment of this that I can control and why is this relationship important to me? Why did I get into it?
Speaker A
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna push harder on this because you're totally right, it is sound advice. And I would say it's sound advice that most of us have probably in some version or another heard before. But you mentioned two really important things that make your point of view unique. And I want to dig into these because I think it's really valuable. You talked about being honest with yourself. Human beings have a very hard time being objectively honest with themselves. It's actually probably easier for us to be honest with somebody else than to be honest with ourselves. So I'd want to start there. And then the second place I want to go after that is I want to talk about this idea of control. What can we control? Because again, human beings and the way we are wired have a very hard time objectively understanding what elements, what variables you truly can control and which variables you can't. So I want to start by asking you to go deeper into why and how can people become more honest with themselves. And then we'll move into what and how can people take action to really understand what variables they can control?
Speaker B
So the, the honesty thing, I think that's a. It's a complex question. I think being honest with yourself kind of has to start with also having people, like, sourcing outside information from other people. Like, if you're not sure if you're being completely honest with yourself, go ask a close friend. And I don'. Just me and a friend who's like, the guy who's always going to tell you, oh, you're great, you're doing great. This is awesome. But we all have those friends who are totally, unabashedly afraid to tell us the truth. You know, the kind of person that you go to, that you're like, I just bought this new shirt. It was $150. What do you think? And he's like, it's garbage. It looks terrible. You know, and then all your other friends are gonna be like, oh, it's great shirts, fantastic. It's a terrible shirt. Just as an example. But so, you know, go to these people and source realistic information about yourself and what they actually think. And a lot of times, ideally, that information or those perspectives are going to come from the people who are closest to us, our, you know, our significant other, our family. And you should be able to rely on those people and then, you know, take those bits of information and take them on board and be able to. To take that constructive criticism and, like, put down your ego shield and say, okay, this is. This is real and this is true. This isn't just me getting defensive and saying, hey, I messed up in this area, or I'm doing this thing wrong. But if those people who I trust implicitly are telling me this, then maybe there's something to it.
Speaker A
So I want to. This is so good because there's this. You know, we do a lot of teaching where we train people to understand their personality types. And I am an ENTP personality type. I don't know if you know your Myers Briggs. I'll talk about entj. So for those of you who are Myers Briggs nerds, and for those of you who are not the most successful people in the world are entj, the people who are most often considered to be, like, cocky dicks and are ENTPs.
Speaker B
Is that right?
Speaker A
Yeah. So. And that's why I wanted to say this, because.
Speaker B
Interesting.
Speaker A
I remember growing up always thinking I was confident, always thinking I was courageous, always thinking I was like, I was brave. Like, that's what I thought of myself. It wasn't until, like, college, where I finally had a friend who was close enough, where I'm like, dude, why, why don't girls call me back? Why is this guy ignoring me? Why did I not get picked for the team captain? And my friend was finally like, dude, because you're kind of a dick. And it was so anathema to me because I'm talking 21 years of life. Nobody who I trusted ever came out and was like, dude, you're kind of, you're kind of arrogant. You're kind of an asshole.
Speaker B
This is how you come across to people? Yes. Yeah.
Speaker A
And it's not my perception that was accurate. And there were plenty of people out there who called me names, but I did. They didn't have my trust. So to your point, the ego shield was up. Whenever people are throwing bombs labeling you, you have to put that down. So you really do have to ask the people, the few people that you really trust to give you a true assessment. And then you have to be courageous enough to even ask them for that assessment because sometimes those people need to be coached. Sometimes you're like, look, man, I know this is going to be hard for you, or I know this is going to be uncomfortable for you. My wife's a great example. She has anxiety. She's like, she's always trying to keep the peace. She's very, like, wired for harmony. So when I'm like, babes, I need you to tell me the truth. Does this article, is it interesting? Is it not interesting? Did I do a good job writing it? Do I need to rewrite it? Like, am I, am I being unreasonable with this person that works for me or am I doing the right thing? And sometimes you have to encourage them to be honest.
Speaker B
For sure. I remember very distinctly my first experience with receiving brutal honesty, which I would call constructive criticism. I was, I played football in high school. I went to a football camp in Utah. And, you know, throughout the course of the week, the coaches are grading you. These are college level coaches and they're looking at you and they're looking at the high school athletes potentially to come to college later. And, you know, they give you a grade and then at the end they kind of give you a write up, a breakdown of what they saw and whatever. And so I'm going through the motions. I'm doing this whole camp and I'm feeling pretty good about myself. And I get this feedback sheet at the end of this camp and it's like, unathletic, not good at this drill, blah, blah, undersize, whatever, doesn't move well. And. And you know, the first reaction was, ego shield goes up. Screw these people. They don't know me. I'm, you know, I'm going to go out, perform and whatever. And then 16, 17, I was probably 16 or 17.
Speaker A
What a hard time to get that kind of feedback, too.
Speaker B
And it is because, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm starting on the junior varsity, moving to varsity and thinking, you know, I'm pretty good and I'm hitting the weight room and I'm really thinking. But I'm not getting a lot of real honest feedback from my own coaches. They're trying to be constructive and supportive and all that kind of stuff, which I do appreciate. But after that, you know, it was like, it sort of changed my perspective of like, okay, put my ego shield down. I go to the main coach who was coaching my, my group of my player group, and I was like, what can I do to get better? Like, I'm reading this, I'm like, it's, you know, this is kind of devastating to me as an athlete right now, but what can I do? Are there drills, are there videos I can watch and what can I do? And took that on board. And I was never a phenomenal football player. I wasn't going to play in college or anything. But my junior and senior year I got better because I was. Took the information that he gave me, was able to put that ego shield down and actual make real substantive progress in my skill set.
Speaker A
I just have to interrupt. I have to interrupt because the, the whole reason you were able to do that, because I'm sure there are lots of people who are part of this conversation right now who are saying, At 16 years old, I wouldn't have been able to say those words. I, I'm telling you right now, I myself, if I would have gotten feedback like that at 16, 17, I got feedback like that at CIA at 28.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
And I was not able to go to a supervisor and be like, I just want to get better. What can I do?
Speaker B
It's hard.
Speaker A
Well, what's amazing is you're already kind of predisposed to that because your J in your Myers Briggs means that you are solution oriented. Like, you are not feelings dominant. You are solutions oriented. So you had a piece of feedback at some level, you probably were like, this is documented feedback. It must have been important enough for them to write it down. And there is a process I can use to fix this where so many of us who are not wired like you are already starting kind of, you know, quarter mile behind you.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
Where we're pissed and we're angry. We're like, that person's an. And that's just his opinion, and we're gonna write it off completely and not take it to heart. But you.
Speaker B
You and me, too, like, I had to get to the point where I was able to approach that coach and really, like, check my own ego. Like, I had to wade through a lot of, like, hurt feelings and bruised ego, and I don't care what he thinks, and sort of this. This internal dialogue of, like, I don't care. It doesn't matter. Screw football. Screw that guy. And they'd be like, you know what? No, that's. That's the wrong attitude. I know I'm going to play two more years of football. Either I can not ask him and I can continue being what is evidently terrible, or I can go ask him and at least make substantive changes in my training regimen or whatever it is that I'm doing.
Speaker A
So before. Before anybody loses thread here, we're not talking about a football story. We're talking about remembering your why in those moments where you think about quitting. And that's exactly what you. You're just using the football story as an example of how that happened. So from the age of, like, 16, man, you were able to frame this up really effectively. And I love it because you're. I'm going to jump to the conclusion here, but your. Your solution for how you find honesty in yourself isn't to rely on yourself. It's, in fact, to outsource that to a few people that you trust to be honest with you, which is so wise. Tell me if I'm saying it wrong, but it sounds like that's what you're saying is kind of the hack to being honest with yourself.
Speaker B
I think so, for sure, it's definitely sourcing outside information, but I think there's also a component of it that we have to realize that real substantive change comes after some degree of maybe emotional difficulty. I mean, it's a hard thing to expose your ego, to let yourself be vulnerable, to open yourself up to what is sometimes very harsh, brutally honest criticism and say, not only am I going to make myself available to be criticized by this person or this group, I'm going to take that on board, and I'm going to utilize that to make change. And I believe if your why is strong enough, you'll be able to wade through those moments of emotional difficulty and get to the other side.
Speaker A
That's awesome.
Speaker B
If your why isn't strong enough, then maybe you just don't feel like being vulnerable. And maybe you just, you know, ditch that activity or that sport or that friendship that you don't really want to have an honest assessment about, because maybe it's not that important to you, but if you decide that it is, there's going to be some vulnerability before there's actual change.
Speaker A
So there's a second half of this question I want to get into, but before I do, I just want to highlight that you are in a very impressive example of what so many of us wish we could be. Right? Not just as a Navy seal, but also educated and also good looking. And the list goes on. Right. But my point is, your reference points for this conversation have consistently been authors who have written books that you have read. Simon Sinek, Malcolm Gladwell as examples. So for anybody out there who's debating whether or not reading is worth your time, for anybody who wonders whether or not there are original ideas, for anyone who wonders what truly elite human beings do with their time, they invest their time in reading what other people have to say. Not because you think Simon Sinek is right 100% of the time, but because you need data points. And why would you cut yourself off from data points? We've talked about the book Atomic Habits.
Speaker B
I was just about to mention James Clear, Atomic Habits, that, that is one that I reference all the time.
Speaker A
Me too.
Speaker B
It makes things that seem insurmountable or overwhelmingly complicated and it breaks them down to the bare bones and says, here is how you can make small changes to get better.
Speaker A
So these are, these are outstanding examples that I think empower people to understand how simple change in your day to day life really is. It really is just a matter of picking up one book over another book, picking up a book over a TV remote. Like get. Using your audible credits to get something that, that might fall under the personal development category. Instead of using your audible credits to, you know, buy an audiobook for the kids to keep them quiet on a long car drive, whatever it might be. The second half of our question talks about control. Because if you're going to continue to persevere, you have to be able to understand what you control in those moments where you think about quitting, but understanding what you can and can't control, it gets jumbled in people's heads because emotions get involved, just like we talked about, and feelings get involved. And when you start future casting and thinking about, oh, this is what it will look like forever, you really do have to fight against the tidal wave of, of negativity bias. What in your experience has worked in those moments where you are already overwhelmed, how do you regain traction over what you truly can take control of?
Speaker B
And I think this goes hand in glove with the other thing we talked about, which is having the ability to be honest in your assessment. And this isn't an assessment of you. This might be assessment of circumstances, but being able to say, here's the situation I'm in, here's the things I can change. I can't change this leader or this boss or this person. I can't change them, but I can change how they react, or I can change how. Try to change their perspective of how they see me. I can see. I can change what I do when I'm in their company or, you know, whatever. But at the end of the day, you can't break yourself against the rocks of trying to change a person and who they are fundamentally. And you just have to realize I can only change the way I react to that person. You know, and if that's. If that's a job and it's your performance, you can change your output. You can change, you know, you can go to another coworker and say, what can I do to be better here? Please give me honest feedback. But at the end of the day, if you choose to externalize everything and blame circumstance for everything and you don't take some sort of ownership and realize there are things that you can change, you're always just going to be beating your head against the wall trying to change the things that you don't control.
Speaker A
I love this. I love this reframing of the question. For those psychology geeks out there, we. We see it, right? What you're doing here is you're taking a question like, what can I control? And you're changing the question because what can I control? Is a complicated question.
Speaker B
It is a complicated question, but what can I change?
Speaker A
Is actually a very simple question, taking into account your willingness to boil it down to its most simple elements. This reminds me of when I was in the air Force and I went through sear school. I can't even imagine what kind of escape and resistance you must have gone through as a Navy seal. But entry level sear school was actually up in the mountains here, just over the. You saw. You saw the view from my house, and they put us in a small. I call it a cage. It doesn't really fit as a cage, but they. They detained us in a mock detainment for resistance and taught us like, hey, you will be here. Safety. Safety briefing. Because all military exercises have a safety briefing. You'll Be here for a few hours. Make sure that if it's a, if it's injury or if it's, you know, pain, you differentiate between the two. But they, they taught us one of the simplest things that you can change is just how are you sitting, how you're sitting in this uncomfortable place at this uncomfortable temperature during a change in weather, you can change how you're sitting. So when you find yourself, like, curled up and freezing and you're, like, miserable and you want to quit, just remember one thing you can change is just shifting your weight from your left ass cheek to your right ass cheek. And it can change your whole perspective because now you're also looking differently and you get to observe how the guards react to you shifting in your cell. And all this other stuff is really, that's such a, such a small example that I would have never considered until I went through that military training.
Speaker B
And it is training like that gives you perspective because you are literally, you're confined in a box and you can't change that. They're not going to let you out early. You can't really escape out of there. You know, at some point there's going to be some interrogation and stuff, but a lot of what they're doing is just trying to soften you using physical discomfort. So what can you change or what can you control in that situation? You can control your own body, your posture, the way you sit and what you think about. You can control what's going on in here. And so even though that may seem very limited, you know, it's. It's the same, I guess, idea as, like, Viktor Frankl, man's, you know, man's search for meaning. He was in a horrible situation in the Nazi prison camps, and he chose to find ways to make life meaningful and continue to give him a reason to keep pushing forward and keep living. And then, you know, he got out alive fortunately and was able to write a book afterwards and. Fascinating, fascinating read. If you want to talk about mindset through the most adverse circumstances, you know, read that book by Viktor Frankl. But that is the, I think, the one extreme example of what can I control in this situation? Not much, right? Sometimes we, fortunately, in our own daily lives have a lot of control.
Speaker A
But you have to ask yourself question, what can I change before you realize how much control you really have. So what, I mean, that's a, that's a liquid gold tip right there from somebody who's highly qualified to say this kind of thing. If you want to know what you can control, ask Yourself. The question, what can I change? And all of a sudden you'll see that there's a thousand things you can change. You can change when you wake up. You can change when you drink water. You can change what you drink before bed. You can change who you talk to, how you breathe, how you brush your hair, when you take your shower. You can change all sorts of. And it might sound stupid, but when you're facing the question of whether you want to quit, when you're facing the situation of. Of possibly undermining your own why, why you got into this marriage, why you started this job, why you went to school for this topic, that's a big decision. It's worth simplifying it down to its simplest question. What can I change? What can I change to see if I really want to quit?
Speaker B
And I think there's an aspect of it, too, that goes into the minute you start blaming external circumstances, you are abdicating control. You're giving up your control. You're saying that external thing that happened to me takes away my ability to do the thing that I wanted to do, whatever that may be. Right. And so you have given over control of your situation to some external factor and you've decided not to take control. And there are those. You know, there are clearly circumstances where you don't have control, like being in a box at Sears School. But there's a lot of life circumstances that either you say that thing happened to me that changes my ability to control my own destiny, or you say that thing happened, but here's what I can control about my situation now. And if you take that ownership, you sort of regain that control, that ability to change your. Your outcome. And I think that's important for people to understand is that when you point fingers and blame and, you know, decry your circumstances, you're giving up a measure of control. Control that you had, you could choose to have, but you're choosing not to.
Speaker A
Have it, you're giving it to someone.
Speaker B
Giving it to someone else or something.
Speaker A
Else, which is exactly the problem that you're feeling.
Speaker B
Exactly.
Speaker A
I'm going to shift gears into something a little bit more. Okay, uplifting. We're getting away from the box, sincere school and away from the question of quitting.
Speaker B
Victor Frankl is very uplifting, though, if you read that book and.
Speaker A
And I have a story I want to share with you in the world.
Speaker B
Okay.
Speaker A
When I was about maybe 10 years old, possibly 11 years old, my stepdad, who I didn't have a close relationship with, he was your stereotypical stepdad. In 1990, my stepdad decided that I needed to read more, right? And obviously he's, he was a smart enough guy to know that, that well, read people like the man sitting in front of me are going to be successful people. So I'm sure that from his point of view, he just wanted me to be successful. But all I remember through my 10 year old lens was my dad's telling me that I'm stupid and that I have to read. And I didn't know what to read, right? My mom was an avid reader, my dad was not an avid reader by any means. So I remember asking him, well, what do you think I should read? And he told me I should read Moby Dick. And I didn't know anything about Moby Dick. I knew that it was like a famous book. And so I went to the library and I got Moby Dick. And it was like, it's a bit.
Speaker B
Of a slog for a 10 year old.
Speaker A
And I was like, this is crazy. So I told my dad, there's no way I can read this. I remember opening the first page and reading the first few sentences and being like, this isn't even in English. Not 1990, you know, fifth grade English. And he was pissed and he told me I had to read it. So he forced me to read it. And, and for three chapters I read through as best I could with tears in my eyes and arguing with my dad. I must have gotten spanked or whooped at least two or three times over the course of three chapters, which took probably like 10 days. I never got into it. Fast forward. I'm 44 years old now. I'm setting off on a, on a decision to try to pursue a half ironman in 2026. I've told you about this. That's a lot of hours on a bike.
Speaker B
It's a lofty goal.
Speaker A
So I'm like, you know what, maybe it's time to read Moby Dick. Because I'm pretty sure it's like 32 hours of, of audiobook. And I was like, I'll listen to this book while I train on the bike to build my core miles for the triathlon. I go back to chapter one, I open chapter one or I turn on chapter one and it's spectacular. Spectacular. So I have a passage here from the first chapter of Moby Dick. Okay, I'm going to give it to you, but then I'm going to read it to you just so you have a reference. And I want your comments in reaction to this American classic. Literature. Right, right and left. The streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the Battery, where the noble mole is washed by waves and cooled by breezes which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water gazers there circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlear's Hook to Cointus Slip, and from thence by Whitehall northward. What do you see? Posted like silent sentinels all around the town stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles, some seated upon the pier heads, some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China, some high aloft in the rigging as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen a weekdays pent up in lath and plaster, tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? Where? What do they hear? But look, here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange. Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land. Loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No, they must just. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand, miles of them, leagues, Islanders, inlanders all. They come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues, north, east, south and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither? Once more, I say, say you are in the country, in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please and ten to one it carries you down in a dale and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent minded of men be plugged in his deepest reveries. Stand that man on his legs, set his feet a going, and he will infallibly lead you to water. If water there be in all that region. Should you ever be a thirst in the great American desert, try this experiment if your caravan happens to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. But yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever. I am sitting across from a 22 year old, a 22 year Navy SEAL Special Warfare Development Group. DEVGRU SEAL Team 6. Water has had to play a role in your life. What is your reaction to a passage like this where Herman Melville is claiming that man by nature is drawn to water?
Speaker B
So I think, first of all, love this book. I Think it's a great story. It sort of mirrors an actual event that happened with the Essex. And in the book it's the Pequod. But I think it's also a great metaphor for the challenges that we face in life and for overcoming those challenges. And, you know, maybe we're all on our own Pequod and fighting our own white whale or whatever, you know, but for me, you know, it's interesting because I would consider myself an inlander. According to this passage, I grew up here in Colorado near the mountains, you know, but I was drawn to water. Every summer we had a pool pass the municipal pool. I took swim lessons. I, you know, swam on the club swim team in high school, I swam. And it's that draw. And I think, like the passage says, there is a very meditative quality to water. I think there have been scientific studies that show that people who live near water have longer lifespans and, and less stress in their day to day, you know, and if you've ever sat alone and, you know, in the mountains by a Babylon brook, there's something peaceful and, and sort of just serene about it. And I do think that there's, you know, maybe not in the way that Melville saw it a couple hundred years ago, but there's. If you go down on a boardwalk like in Virginia beach, and you watch people stand at the rails and just watch the ocean waves break over and over, and there's something very ethereal about it. You know, there's this idea that those waves are relentless and they just keep coming. And it's meditative, but it's also like sort of a metaphor for life. You know, it's like these waves, these challenges, they just keep coming. They just keep coming. And then I look at it from, you know, the perspective of somebody who went through SEAL training and, and water was one of the ways that they used to mete out punishment. Getting you wet, getting you sandy, laying you down in the surf and letting the waves break over your face, putting you in the cold water at 2 in the morning and, you know, nothing but your tri shorts. And so you, you become to have this very like, love, hate relationship with the water. Like, as seals, this is where we make our career. What differentiates us from the other Special forces? It's our ability to do maritime operations and sometimes the worst of sea conditions. And so you do, you have this complicated relationship with water. But to me, it's, it's always been a draw from the time I swam as a little kid to, you know, when I considered what I wanted to do in the military post 9 11. I went to the army recruiter and the Navy recruiter. And what differentiated it for me was the water and my background in swimming and the fact that I felt like that's where I belonged to.
Speaker A
That's incredible, man. I knew that it was going to be a good answer.
Speaker B
Great book.
Speaker A
I didn't know it was going to be that good an answer, though.
Speaker B
Yeah.
Speaker A
Because I. I am. Water has always been my nemesis. I love water, but water hates me. It is in its relentlessness. You just can't. You can't defeat it. You can only surrender to it. And. And you have to find a way to surrender that doesn't result in it taking you. And whether you're on a sailboat or whether you're free diving or whether you're surfing or whether you're swimming, it is such a challenge. So. So more than anything, while I spend hours on a bike listening to this book, I spend hours in a pool trying to get my relationship with water right. And it sounds like that is a relationship that you learned many years ago and to.
Speaker B
To the earlier section of this conversation. When you get in and you have that combative, sort of conflicted relationship with the water, what can you control? You can control the time you go. You can control how much time you spend in the water, how many laps you do, what strokes you choose to do, and to some extent, you can control your level of enjoyment of being in the water. And I know that for me, and I tell people this sometimes. For probably two years after Buds, I hated the beach. I didn't want to go. It wasn't recreation. It wasn't fun. People were like, oh, you know, I was in San Diego. We're going to go have this beach day. And I'm like, I'm out.
Speaker A
Wow.
Speaker B
I'll go to the park with you guys or whatever. I'll even go down to the boardwalk. But I don't want to be in the sand, and I certainly don't want to be in the water. And, you know, then over time, I reframed my relationship with the water and stuff like that. But, I mean, there was, you know, for a good year, probably after Buds, I would hear the waves breaking. It sent chills down my spine. I'm just like. Because it's, you know, it's changed the way that you view the ocean and the water, you know, and now I. I like you. I train recreationally. I've, you know, I find. Even this morning, I went to a gym here in Colorado Springs, and they have a great pool. So I'm thinking tomorrow morning I need to go get some laps in. And if you'd have told me that in high school, at the end of a hard swim practice, I'd have been like, oh, no, I'll never do this for fun. Just, you know, if my coach isn't yelling at me and making me do it. But you got to frame that relationship and say, this is productive. I'm going to enjoy this. I'm going to enjoy the journey of this. And here's my why. Because when I get in the water to swim that first thousand meters of my triathlon, I want to do it and I want to do it well and I want to enjoy it. And when I come out of there, I want to feel good for my transition. One to the bike, Carl.
Speaker A
Gus Gustafson, awesome conversation. Thank you so much. You have so much wisdom and insight to share. Where can people find you?
Speaker B
You can find me. The easiest place, I think is everyday spy.com forward slash gus. I'm also, you know, there's a handful of podcasts out there that I've been on. The Mickels and Dimes podcast, the Echoes podcast, the Becoming the Lion podcast. More to come, I think, on some of those. So yeah, look me up.
Speaker A
Awesome. I can't wait to have you back in the safe house again, folks. Thank you very much. If you want to learn more about Gus, all of his links are in the description below. If want to you if you want to learn more about how Gus and I think, go ahead and take this quiz also linked in the description below. And you might find out whether or not you think more like Gus or whether you think more like me. We'll see you on the other side. Freedom.
Speaker B
So fresh, so new.
Speaker A
Freedom.