Mark Divine
Scott:Mark, how're you doing, man?Mark Divine:Doing great Scott,
how are you?Scott:I am so excited and you know it's not everyday
that you get to talk to somebody who has trained some of the most
elite warriors around; both mentally and physically, built
businesses and wrote awesome books that have personally inspired
me. So, I just want to first thank you for coming on the show
today.Mark Divine:Yeah, you're welcome; I'm privileged to be here
so, looking forward to it.Scott:Mark, you have a philosophy called
Unbeatable Mind that is just so captivating to me, just from the
name you chose; can you talk a little bit about Unbeatable
Mind?Mark Divine:Sure Scott; the philosophy is something that I
have been living my life by for the last 10 years or so and I kind
of came to it through trial and error. I've got a background of
course as a Navy SEAL for 20 years and so with that background
functional fitness was extremely important and also a lot of mental
training that I developed for myself plus also [Inaudible 0:01:08]
but then I also got heavily into martial arts; I've been a martial
artist for about 25 years. So a lot of the training in martial arts
I find very useful for developing emotional control and my
intuition as well as my spirit and then also yoga. I've been
involved in yoga through Ashtanga and Vin Yoga and some -- a lot of
different aspects of yoga for about 15 years. And so anyways, those
have been my influences and through that process, I've come to
understand that we're leaving a lot on the table as human beings in
terms of our performance and capabilities. And I call this the 20X
factor and essentially what I'm saying is that you are capable and
you and I and everyone else is capable of at least 20 times more
than they think they are at any one time and we can tap into that
potential through training. And so I elevate training to the same
level as eating, sleeping and hydrating and yet I dont look at
training just as physical training. I actually have a path I call
the Five Mountain Training Path and so I look at training as
covering five fundamental capacities that we have as human beings
and that's physical, mental, emotional, intuitional and
spiritual.
So in a nutshell, the philosophy of Unbeatable Mind is that
we're capable of so much more and we can unlock and tap into that
potential through training in an integrated manner on these five
mountains of physical mental emotional intuitional and spiritual
capacities or intelligences that we all possess as human
beings.Scott:Mark, I love it and I want to dive into those
specifically but the first question I have is when did you realize
that we have this 20X potential, was there a particular moment?Mark
Divine:Well, there are a couple of moments that stood out to me
quite clearly; one is when I was training to be a SEAL way back
when -- I think it was 1989. Now I had gone from being a CPA MBA
and working on Wall Street to deciding that that was a complete
misfit and that I wanted to be a SEAL. And I was fortunate enough
to be part of a martial arts program back then with a grandmaster,
one of these living masters, very rare to come by; his name is
Tadashi Nakamura and what he had us dong is hardcore, physical
training, sweating on the Dojo floor and beating each other up
followed by long periods of sitting in silence in classic Zen
meditation. And through that Zen practice, I began to develop
visualization routine and so I was kind of combining concentration
with visualization and I was just doing it on my own and it seemed
to make sense to me. I'd use the visualization [technical
difficulty] help calm my mind down and then I would practice the
classic Zen. So anyway, fast-forward to three years later after
starting this routine and being in the job of being a CPA and now
I'm 24 years old and I start to wake up a little bit because
meditation has its effect on you and to realize that I'm completely
misaligned in this career and that I wanted to be a Navy SEAL
actually. So, I made the choice that I was going to be a SEAL and I
kind of shifted my training plan physically to start to do the
things I needed to do to SEAL training in BUD/S but I also started
to develop myself mentally. Meaning I started to visualize myself
and to practice mentally in my mind. And so that was pretty rare,
at 24 to be practicing in my mind was new territory for me but I
took it on faith.It worked for my with my martial arts and I
figured I've got to do everything in my power to make sure I'm not
at statistics with the SEALs because the chances of me becoming a
SEAL were pretty low. I mean most people dont make it; I mean out
of the thousands who try every year, we only mint about 175 new
SEALs a year and for officers, which was, it's a much smaller
percentage. And so it's like getting into the astronaut program. So
I wanted to stack the decks in my favor. And what happened was, the
visualization took root after about six to nine months to where I
had the sense that it was my destiny to be a SEAL.
But I had already won in my mind and that was powerful and 25
years later, that is one of the things that I teach is that first
we must win our mind, it's super-powerful. The second -- your
question was what kind of led me to uncover this philosophy that we
are capable 20 times more. The second, really powerful event was
the actual Hell Week training of the SEALs. Again, happened at a
very formative time in my life, 26 years old, now going through
SEAL training, probably still 25 by the time I got into BUD/S and
the Hell Week training is as you are probably aware, six days long
-- five days no sleep, around the clock training.
So you are training for hundreds of hours, around the clock,
non-stop, hardcore physical training and it's intense. And what
happened for me was I went into it expecting that my body and mind
would fall through and I'd just be clinging on for dear life but I
wasnt going to quit. And what I found was that by the third or
fourth day I was getting stronger and I had the perception that I
was gaining clarity even though I think that was a false perception
now but I was getting much stronger and people were quitting around
me and because I had done all that mental training and because I
had sense of certainty and really understood my why, my purpose for
being there and I was totally jazzed to be there in spite of the
fatigue and the constant numbing cold, that I actually got stronger
and I found myself to be capable of more than anything I could have
ever imagined. [technical difficulty] experience.Scott:Let's talk
about the specific types of visualization that you were doing and
what you teach today. Because this is actually a practice that I do
myself and it is insanely powerful for changing your belief
structures or confidence or conviction even before we actually do
something. Mark Divine:Right.Scott:Can you dig into that a little
bit?Mark Divine:Sure. Visualizations, that's one of the things as
you are aware, it takes some time and some refining and it really
-- what it is, we're learning to use our mind in a new way. I wrote
a lot about this in my books; this thing about visualization that's
really cool is that it's one of those ways that we can tap into our
whole mind concept and so in the West we are mostly been taught to
use our rational, linear mind to think to solve problems.
Cognition; and what I have come to believe represents about 10%-15%
of our total thought power and mental power and our entire nervous
system is part of our mind, our heart and our bellies are part of
our mind structure, our mind exists even outside of our bodies,
it's just a mystery.
And science thinks that the mind is just the brain and if we map
the brain then we can recreate the mind. That's just simply not
true in my opinion. And so, the language of the rational mind is
words and the language of the other part of your mind 90% your
subconscious and your heart and your belly and your intuition and
your emotional intelligence, the language of that is imagery and
sensations. And so when we are learning to visualize, it's like
learning a new language. Would you agree with
that?Scott:Absolutely.Mark Divine:And so the first thing that we
have to do is, if I were to stair-step people through the process,
the first thing we have to do in order to learn that language of
visualization and imagery is to get control of our rational mind
because [technical difficulty] we let it be so dumb and for so long
that it's hard for us to think that we can think in another way.
So, first in order to do that we really have to stop thinking. It
sounds kind of counter intuitive; we have to stop thinking with our
rational minds so we can open up the thinking of the rest of our
mind. And that's really what the meditation did for me when back in
the late '80s is that I started to meditate not really
understanding what was happening.
And what I was doing was, stopping the rational thinking and
then I was allowing the rest of my mind, it was like cracks a door
open to the rest of your mind. Now once that door is opened and
this is where meditation training stops is like, okay great you
cracked the door open and sure, you're going to have insights and
create a verse that filters through and that's all fine and good
and we want that, that's the next step really and you pay attention
to that stuff. But the visualization is the way to then go deeply
through that door and to communicate and to plant seeds of future
desires, future plans into that subconscious mind where it can take
root. So, the first process like I said is to sit down and quiet
your mind, you can do that in any number of ways, I'm going to
teach a few with unbeatable mind -- Scott:Let's give people one way
to quiet their mind real quick.Mark Divine:Okay, well, just
literally sitting down and doing a breath-awareness is a great way
to do it and so this can be done by anybody at any time during the
day. Just close your computer, close your door and literally just
bring your attention to your breath and then deepen your breath
cycles. So you are doing a four-count inhale and then a four-count
exhale. And then we would like to add a little hold at the top and
the bottom and I call 'box-breathing' which is an incredibly
powerful technique for getting control of your mind. It also has a
great stress-management kind of effect as well. So that's one way
to get a control of your mind, just slow down and stop
thinking.
And what happens when you actively stop thinking, you do that by
concentrating on something and that was kind of the Zen approach;
concentrate on one thing and that was your breath, just concentrate
on your breath and nothing else. If a thought comes up, just
acknowledge it, let it go, come back to the breath. And so now
you're slowing your mind down from a beta to an alpha state which
is about half the brainwave cycles per second and that slowing of
the brainwave patterns, that's the core to what's happening in your
mind, in your consciousness which is a sense that things are
slowing down and time is slowing down and that's when you can kind
of metaphorically crack that door open to your rest of the mental
person.Scott:So tactically, if you are trying to focus on one
thing, because I have done a lot of meditation and I think one of
the biggest challenges that people have is they sit there and they
start to work on the breathing and they -- next thing, before they
know, they are thinking about what they are going to eat for
breakfast or whatever it might be. And the best strategy for that
is just revert back to the breathing? What do you usually tell
people?Mark Divine:Yeah, first of all, that's very common, the
Buddhist call it [technical difficulty] monkey mind when it's
untrained. And so this is getting to the out of the matter; you got
to train our minds. Our minds have been running amok and we've
trained it to be super IQ-smart and unless you get into a martial
art or endurance athletes have better control of their mind because
they have to spend long periods of times kind of in a run or swim
or bike and so breath control and mental control become more common
to them and so they understand the language pretty quickly. But,
yeah, so what we do is, we collapse; it's not really meditation
Scott, meditation is thinking of nothing, it's like just pure
presence.So what we do is concentration, it's a bridge to
meditation. So all I'm saying is you forget about meditation;
you're not going to have to put a turban on or wear some fancy
clothes. Literally just going to learn how to concentrate better
which is a great tool for any professional whether you are
businessman or an athlete or whatever. And so we have to learn how
to concentrate. So in order to learn how to concentrate, you have
to [technical difficulty] one thing. Now, if you like reading,
maybe you concentrate on a Bible verse and try to memorize it or
but what I find that the breath awareness is super powerful because
you dont have to do anything special, it's just right there for you
all the time. So, you just focus on that breath.And like you said,
when a thought arises, because it will, the whole point is to not
to dissect your thinking organ and so you can't think anymore. It
makes you think better and gets you in control of your thoughts and
then you can be more direct in how you think, what you think and
you can also eradicate any negative thinking, any thinking that is
not productive for you and moving forward. So, this training has a
huge effect on your ability to achieve goals because not only are
you able to focus on the goal that you do select, but you are able
to do much more conscious about selecting the right goals because
you are able to think more clearly, because you are able to focus
on that one thing and really get into the essence and the meaning
and the [technical difficulty] the importance of thinking about
it.And I guess more specifically to finish this dialogue here is
that when thoughts arise, you acknowledge them and say, okay that's
interesting, where did that thought come from and then just let it
go. So you can examine the thought and then you can let it go or
you can replace the thought with something else that's more
positive and powerful. So there's a whole host of options that
start to arise when you gain control. Now, one last thing I will
say is I use this concept of the witness and what we do when we are
learning to concentrate is when we are just concentrating is, when
you are just concentrating on our breath, literally just seeing the
breath coming in and out and feeling the breath coming in and out
and then when a thought arises and you say, oh there's a thought,
well, who's seeing the thought?It's an interesting question, who is
the person seeing that thought or experiencing that thought
arising? Well, it's you of course, it's your witnessing self, it's
your deeper kind of self, you become less identified with your
thoughts and that then gives you that choice back, that space
between the thought and the reaction or the thought and the
response. Does that make sense?Scott:That makes total sense. I want
to talk about transitioning now into visualization; once you have
achieved, I guess a quieter mind or a more concentrated focus, just
before we get into this, a lot of people are going to hear this and
they're going to think, 'these guys are crazy, this doesnt work,
I'm going to sit in it with my legs folded on my knees thinking
about the things that I want and are magically going to appear to
me' because the truth is, getting anything you want, takes hard
work -- Mark Divine:Takes a lot of work.Scott: -- and sacrifice but
this is an insanely valuable tool and I'm wanting to first talk
about before we kind of set this up in a way that talks about some
of the ways that visualization can be so powerful.Mark
Divine:Right. So, once youve learnt to control your mind, then like
I said, the language of the sub conscious, you create a
subconscious, visualization imagery. The way that I teach imagery
is first get clear -- there are few ways to use it. Let me speak in
more broader terms; one is to become the kind of person that you
need to become to achieve the highest aspirations in life. I call
that a 'future me' visualization and that's essentially what I was
doing when I decided I wanted to be a SEAL. The first thing I
wanted to do was to see myself visually, see myself in my mind's
eye as a SEAL, as a person who is worthy of wearing a Navy SEAL
trident who was capable of being a SEAL leader, who had the
self-esteem and the honor and the integrity and the courage to
become a SEAL, be a SEAL and to succeed in that.
And obviously, I was a different person than I was at that time.
I was a CPA and I was an athlete, but I wasnt a SEAL. So I had to
conjure that image in my mind, it had to be very powerful and
infused with emotional energy let's say and I had to practice it in
my mind until I actually believed that I was that person; does that
make sense? So that's the 'future me'.Scott:Got it.Mark Divine:And
then we can also do skill development in our mind's eye; now my
first experience with visualization as a skill development process
was in my competitive swimming career. I had a swimming coach at
Columbia University who was pretty advanced and trying this out in
the '80s and so he had me visualize me my stroke whish was
[technical difficulty] with a stopwatch at night before I went to
bed. And I tell you what, this is brutal, especially for 20-year
old guy. Half the time, I was just saturating with beer and
[Laughter] -- Scott:Sounds oddly familiar [Laughter].Mark
Divine:Yeah exactly, I'm sure it does but I was serious enough
about it and I trusted him enough that I spent the time to actually
do it and it took me about -- yeah, it took me almost three to four
months before I could even swim the entire race in my mind's eye.
When I started, I could get maybe a lap and then finally I could
get like half a -- eventually, I was able to swim the whole race
and then I kept practicing it and refining it and after about nine
months, I was able to swim pretty consistently the same time. I
would click the watch metaphorically dove off the blocks and then
clicked it again when I touched the pad at the end and I was
getting the same time almost every time or really close.And
interestingly enough, the time was about three seconds faster than
I had ever actually swum in the water until the final championship
race and when I jumped in the water and swam that exact time and it
just had a profound effect on me. Like holy shit, I had swum that
in my mind and my body and psychology knew that I could swim that
and it wasnt until I had swam the race and when the stakes were so
high at the championship that I actually swam what I was capable of
in my subconscious.Scott:Yeah, that'll make you believe it.Mark
Divine:Yeah, it totally did and I call that a practice
visualization and so you can use this to practice skills. I used it
to practice martial arts skills when I was trying to refine them, I
teach this to my [Inaudible 0:20:25] athletes while we are going
through and demonstrating a lift and we have them visualize it
happening perfectly, with perfect form and safely and visualizing
in our mind's eye and you can see the practice skills just as
easily you can practice becoming a type of person or having the
attributes of a new person that you want to become. That was two
pretty powerful ways; there's others of course, but those are two
that are probably pretty relevant to your -- Scott:Yeah, I really
like those. I think a lot of my audience is -- and the people
listening are people that are entrepreneurs, people that are in
business; what are some of the ways that you can use this technique
in those settings?Mark Divine:Certainly, I use this all the time
for my business. For instance, when you want to get clear about the
vision for our business and the vision that can be seen very
clearly and articulated visually is going to be more powerful than
the one that you dont have a very clear vision on. I mean that
sounds pretty obvious. But then just like the future to me, you did
for yourself in terms of becoming the kind of person you want to do
that with your business or your project or whatever it is that you
are working on, your main thing that you are working on right now.
And so for instance, for me, I visualize where I see Unbeatable
Mind in ten years and I see it very clearly. Now, the details dont
have to be worked out, I just want to see kind of like the result,
the outcome.So I see millions of people being influenced by
Unbeatable Mind through my books and my seminars and digital
training that I offer. And I see myself filling the shoes of the
type of person that can deliver that credibly and authentically.
And so I visualized my business in the future and I try to get more
and more clear and I come back to that pretty much every day and
make sure I touch on that. So that's one way, another way --
Scott:I was going to ask you -- are there tactics -- because a lot
of people that try this visualization stuff they do it and they see
their ideal business and then three days after they are doing this,
they're like, 'okay, this is boring. I'm seeing the same thing,
nothing's happening'; how do you stick with it and then how do you
get the most out of this practice.Mark Divine:It's such an
excellent question. Essentially, there's a few things here, we have
to elevate mental, emotional, intuitional training and spiritual
training in the same level as physical training and so many people
think, I'm going to go, I'm going to schedule three or five times a
week and then I'm going to go to the gym or do a cross-fit workout
or whatever is their thing and then just leave it at that. And they
think okay, well, that's it. Well every one of those training
sessions is an opportunity to do mental training as well as
intuitional training and spiritual training.And so yogis, people in
the audience who are going authentic yoga, get this right away and
they'll be nodding their head but if you got a good yoga practice,
then it is an integrated training practice where you are getting
some physical benefits and flexibility, durability and core
strength; but you're getting a lot of mental and emotional and
spiritual benefit as well. So, it's an integrated training. And the
way I teach [Inaudible 0:24:00] is to turn every workout that we do
into integrated training sessions as well. So, we practice our
breathing, we practice box-breathing before every workout and we
practice visualization and I'm not saying that everybody does it
because I can't tell. I'm not inside their heads but it's something
I teach.And so there's times that we actually go to "train",
instead of just training your body, use it as an opportunity to
train their mind. And so spend five minutes breathing and
visualizing every time you work out; before and after. The second
that I would recommend and then I would have my trainees do, is a
morning and evening ritual and these rituals can be 5 - 15 minutes
long. It doesnt have to take a lot of time but it's where we are
going to then practice those skills that arent -- again
non-physical but it's still a training session. So we practice our
breathing, we practice our visualization and practice our
concentration and we connect to our higher purpose and we then
connect all of that to our main vision/purpose/goal that we are
working on at this stage in our lives. Scott:So the first step is
to elevate and to assign equal or more importance to this as we do
other things. When we actually start doing visualizations though,
how do we make this a less of a mundane experience and one that is
unique every single time you sit down and do it?Mark Divine:Well,
it's not going to be unique every time you sit down because it's
training and practice and just like every workout that you do, it
isnt completely unique. I mean I know we have a lot of variety with
functional training and we try to make every workout distinct but
for sure, every workout we are moving [Inaudible 0:25:43] and we
are moving our body and sweating and sometimes it's just incredibly
fun and sometimes it feels like work. The point is to discipline
yourself, the whole idea of discipline is to be a disciple to
something that is going to make you better, has got a lot of
meaning to you.And so, when you are a disciple to your training,
then you do it every day because A, it does feel good when you're
done and you acknowledge that and B you understand the impact that
it's going to have. It starts out with -- you have to have some
belief and some faith but then very shortly within three months and
lot of times less, you start to see the results very richly and
they show up in places that you may not expect it. You may have
people come to you and say, Scott, what have you been doing? You
just seem so much more grounded or centered or peaceful or you've
been really productive. Last year, Scott, I wrote three books. One
of them became a bestseller in New York Times, the Wall Street
Journal, both of them Amazon and the third one was self-published.
I just saw a lot of those to my [Inaudible 0:26:56] I wrote this in
one year, using the techniques that I am talking about. I had the
vision -- I disciplined myself to keep my training alive every day
and then I was able to focus very intently on the mission of
getting these books written. I didnt stop until they are done. So,
-- Scott:Sounds 20X to me.Mark Divine:Yeah, totally and I'm not
saying I'm ever going to do that again, but that was a good idea.
I'm just saying that this stuff works. [Laughter]Scott:So, I think
actually, the number one thing that people listening to this
interview can get out of it is just general awareness that mental
training and instilling the proper mindset and beliefs, all things
that come with it they need to be elevated in more mainstream.Mark
Divine:Absolutely.Scott:That's my personal -- Mark Divine:That's a
huge message; how to do that is a subject lot of discussion and
training and people might have different paths and so let's say
Unbeatable Mind is my path and what works really well for me in my
trainings because it comes from a western perspective, it is very
much a simplified and powerful belief system and I teach it as if I
am teaching a bunch of people who want to be Navy SEALs or want to
think like a SEAL or have that kind of approach. It's not like
new-age, you know what I'm saying or it doesnt have the cultural
nuances that a lot of "mental training" might have. It's just very
practically oriented towards performance and becoming a better
person.So elevating mental training to the same level as physical
training -- elevating integrated training and taking all your
training and making it integrated training. Now that's a huge
distinction because here's one thing that a lot of my trainees say,
people who are very successful in all walks of life so yeah, I had
been working out for a long time and I had been doing yoga for a
long time and I even meditate but they didnt -- they werent
connected and they didnt seem to really build off of each other.
And so it felt disjoined until I found Unbeatable Mind. And then
what happened is all of a sudden I am doing these in an integrated
manner, I understood how they all supported each other and it did
unlock, like it was a final key that unlocked the performance, the
20X performance that I was talking about.And so it's integrated the
training and this approach is so important because it leads to
accelerated learning. And it's kind of like saying why kids dont
learn in the linear industrial-age public school system is because
they are not integrated, they are not immersed, they are not
learning at all levels, they are learning one-dimensionally.
Hierarchal, top down, memorize this, memorize that and regurgitate
it. But then you take them out and you put in a Montessorial or
Waldorf setting or some of these better, more nuanced approaches
and they are able to immerse themselves and learn physically and
emotionally and intellectually and intuitively and all of a sudden,
they just soak it up like sponges.Well, this is what I am trying to
do with the adult learners in Unbeatable Mind but the whole content
of the process is learning to learn and learning to be a better
person and learning to how to think in ways that are going to make
you more productive and peaceful and try to elevate your
consciousness to a higher level so to speak.Scott:It's like when
you read a book and then you dont take any action and there is no
integration of the actual content. Mark Divine:Yes, exactly. And
the reading of the book is interesting, that's just really the
first step like download some content and then you got to work with
that content.Scott:Yeah, absolutely. Two other mindsets that I want
to talk about that really hit home with me was the first one was
taking on an offensive mindset; because I don't know -- I feel like
my generation is soft as hell. I feel like we are just so focused
on protecting ourselves throughout every single day, or every
single things that we do instead of aggressively pursuing what we
want, can you talk about just this idea of an offensive
mindset?Mark Divine:Sure. Well, let me start by saying that I was
adventurous and risk-oriented probably before I joined the SEALs
but the SEALs hammered it home. That' a super risky endeavor, how
do you encourage any listener who is thinking along that path to
come visit us because this is an extraordinary career; it's very
limited in terms of how many people can do it. But that mindset of
leaning toward risk, of metaphorically running towards the sound of
gunfire and diving into something and risking failure is
extraordinarily powerful and that's what I mean by offensive mind
because that's where the juice is.When you are leaning into
something hard and you risk failure and if you "fail", that's great
because now you've learnt something new, youve learnt what doesnt
work, you've learnt a limitation that you can now overcome and you
dont shirk from that lack of success. Now you lean into how to do
it right, how to do it better, how to find victory where it's at.
And so the whole attitude is one of failing forward fast and
learning to learn by getting out there and getting dirty; and
entrepreneurs get this and it's super powerful because it builds
courage and confidence and momentum. The only time you are stepping
into the arena and stub your toe.Scott:How does somebody, who's
maybe been living defensively and living in a way to protect
themselves, how do you start to build this offensive mindset where
you are leaning into fear, leaning into things that are hard.Mark
Divine:Like I said earlier, first they got to win their mind, so
they have to start setting the conditions for being more pro-risk
in their mind. They have to see themselves as the kind of person
who can step into greater challenges, greater risk. You probably
are in sync with this next statement but there is energy in
boldness, there is magic in boldness. Every time I take a really
bold action, I have been rewarded with a bold response either a
great insight or some reward in the form of success or even partial
success and so it doesnt -- it's not only a harm to think big than
it is to think small with the exception that our own limitations or
nearly thought processes around what your capacities are and what
your limitations are.And so that's why the foundation of the belief
system is got to change to where you truly believe where you are
capable 20X times more and then you go out and prove it to
yourself. And one of the -- how you can do that in a practical
manner is probably the next question. Well, I ask people to go and
challenge themselves with small bites first, so step up their
workout program, step up their training and commit to their
training, make a habit out of the mental training. So there's two
huge things right there and then to visualize yourself into
becoming that more courageous person and then to challenge yourself
again with something a little bit more significant.Some of the
training we do at SEAL Fit is all about challenge; we got a 20X
program which is 12 hours of non-stop training. Well, that's really
challenging for a lot of people but it pales in comparison to the
[Inaudible 0:34:41] Camp which is 50 hours of non-stop training
around the clock, no sleep. And that's obviously based off from my
Navy SEAL Hell Week experience but you do those training events and
wow, you come out of it with a completely new concept of what is
possible for you as a human being and anything that you attack
later on that's hard, you compare it those experiences and say wow,
it's not as hard as that. It's like for me, whenever I do something
hard, I compare it to Hell Week or even a lot of missions that I
did as a SEAL which were far harder than Hell Week and I'm like,
this is easy, there is nothing that will ever compare to that
probably again in my life till I'm on my deathbed. Scott:What do
you think is the number one thing that limits people from achieving
or maximizing their excellence, getting the abundance that they
want in their life?Mark Divine:I just think it's the limiting
belief systems and those can all be changed. Part of our mind is
actually metaphorically like a computer and we can reprogram
ourselves. Now, I mean if you look at someone like Richard Branson
and say wow, that guys' really got it going on. Well, it's only
because he was programmed at a young age to think big and to not
worry about his failures. This guy has started 600 companies, 300
have survived, that's a huge success rate and 300 have failed. His
batting 50% so wow, that's still a pretty good average but it's
only because he thinks big and he is willing to take that bold
action and that's just a thought process. So time is back in, the
thought process, how do you change, how do you reprogram, you got
to get control of your mind and then you got to plant the seeds
through imagery. You got to see yourself as a kind of person who is
worthy of taking that bold action and someone who is willing to
also step up and to take the action. Like you said, nothing happens
without massive action but that massive action or the seeds of it
start from within, you got to do it in your mind first.Scott:Mark,
you do any stuff with incantation of affirmations?Mark
Divine:Absolutely. Yeah, the whole process -- I dont have time to
get really into it but the process of mental control, once you have
control of the mind then you can, like I said, start to use the
visual imagery and then in action throughout the day -- I dont use
the word incantation but I use to use this term positivity. We have
positivity statements that keep us focused, on track and in a
positive mental state. Because without being in a positive mental
state both emotionally and in a dialogue, we really are torpedoing
our success and then negativity is going to affect other people and
everything just goes south from there. Same thing happens when you
are around negative people and you start getting infected just like
a virus and then everything just starts to grind to a halt.
So you got to train your mind to be very diligent towards any
negative thoughts or negative energy whether it's external or
internal and get rid of it and then maintain that positive energy
or positivity with a mantra or a positive statement. One of the
ones that I would like to tell people that I use, I actually
started using it in SEAL training is, 'I'm feeling good, looking
and I ought to be in Hollywood' and so I'd go out on a run and as
soon as the pain set it, I would just start saying to myself, 'I'm
feeling good, looking good, I ought to be in Hollywood'. And after
about five minutes of that the pain would have gone completely away
and everything felt lighter because essentially it's not much
different than focusing on your breath.My mind is now focusing more
on that or a chunk of my mind power is focusing on that and
everything starts to kind of settle into a nice flow state and the
whole run would just slip by in a much more endurable manner, let's
just say.Scott:My personal one is, 'I'm unstoppable' and I keep
telling myself. I was actually in the gym today hitting a PR on and
just telling myself I was unstoppable when it got really tough and
it was easy. And it's so funny, it's like a transformational
vocabulary, it just needs to be so front and centered because the
way that our line works -- and I feel like I'm not supposed to do
this as somebody who is the interviewer but I'm so passionate about
this that I want to make sure that it gets out there. Is that the
questions that we ask ourselves, the words that we use, all that
self-talk it determines the actual experience of realities. So when
somebody - like I have a journal that I keep in the mornings, like
how you doing today, how're you feeling? If I say that I am feeling
good or if I say that I'm feeling stupendous and unstoppable, I'm
going to actually feel different. I am going to feel the words that
I use and so just like every single time people are asking
questions or you are being cognizant of the self-talk that is going
on inside, personally like just having those empowering words and
you talk about this in this SEAL way; having those empowering words
that you use to describe your state how you feel what you are doing
it's just a game-changer because it becomes reality. Mark Divine:I
agree, yeah at first it may not feel like it but over time,
especially if you are doing the other training that we talked
about, it will sink in and overwrite some of that negative or
dis-empowering belief systems. So it a good point of fact that you
touched down and we talked around it but we had an Unbeatable Mind
and it was in a way to say a book, something that I call the big
four of mental toughness and they are like the four critical skills
that you just do without to develop mental toughness and to perform
better.And one of them is breath control, getting control of your
breathing and we talked about a little bit another one is
visualization and we talked a lot about that and the third is this
what you just referenced, this idea of powerful positive
incantations or inner dialogue and essentially maintaining that
dialogue and retraining and rewiring the brain to always be in that
positive state especially in challenging times. And then the fourth
is -- it's really how to select and to articulate proper goals for
you, like the right goals and to make sure that the time frames so
that you are not flailing around but you are able to focus everyday
and nail -- everyday is going to move the dial towards your vision
as a human being.Scott:Can you share a particular story where you
leveraged some of these tools to overcome something that you
thought was insurmountable? Maybe the thousand burpee story would
be a good one.Mark Divine: [Laughter] Well, yeah, that is probably
a good example, it's kind of a fun one. There was this Hell Week, I
mentioned I was getting stronger, I probably was looking a little
froggy to the instructors that -- we had 180 people start at the
SEAL training class and by the end of Hell Week, we got about 40
left and by the end of SEAL training, we had 19 guys there. So out
of 180, only 19 of us made it and I was the Honor man in my class,
number one graduate which is pretty cool because I had these skills
that I had learnt earlier. Anyway, how this played out during Hell
Week, Thursday Hell Week we had another 20-30 hours of training
left, but we'd been up since the prior Sunday.So, no question I was
tired but I was still alert and physically getting stronger as I
mentioned earlier. So one of the instructors thought that maybe I
was just being a little cocky or maybe he was just bored himself,
so he pulled me out of the ranks and said, 'okay Divine, I'm going
to get you to quit. Let's start with a thousand 8-count
body-builder which is really like a burpee most folks probably know
what that is. So anyways, I was like okay, here we go, I knew right
then it was going to be a gut-check that especially after not
sleeping for four and a half days. And anyway, I realized I got to
use the skills and so I broke it down. Micro goals, all that I have
to do is a thousand -- I have to do one 8-count body-builder a
thousand times; I dont have to think about doing it a thousand
times, I just have to do one at a time and then I have to do
another.But I also have to focus on right now is just doing that
one and so, then I said, okay, I can start there. So I started with
one 8-count body-builder and pretty soon I'm at like 20 or 30 just
doing one at a time. And then as the pain set in, so I'm trying to
breathe deeply which I had learnt to do through my martial arts
training and I started to see myself like just floating. So I
visualize myself just kind of floating, lazy feather, no pain, just
relaxing, kind of like I was floating through my yoga moves and
then I started kicking into my feeling good looking -- and so after
every 8-count body-builder I would say, 'feeling good, looking
good, I ought to be in Hollywood' and then I'd be back standing
again.And so I employed the big four and pretty soon I was at like
700 burpees and time literally seemed to disappear in between when
I started to feel pain and when I got to 700. And when I looked
around I remember kind of waking up out of my little "routine" and
the structure was so bored staring up at the rest of the class and
finally he looks at me, and I've got that smile on my face and he
goes, 'geez, get the hell out of here Divine, you're done'. You're
not supposed to be smiling is what he was saying. I always had this
great sense of, 'this is easy, I can do this just one at a time,
easy day.'Scott:That is absolutely awesome, so I want to close this
out and land this plane, and I have a feeling that we can talk
about this kind of stuff literally all day and I have more energy
than ever doing it. But one of the questions that I would love to
finish with here is just getting people a warm takeaway and the
name of the show is The Competitive Edge and we want to give people
an edge in their businesses and their lives; if you could give one
snippet of advice for these people to get an edge, what would it
be?Mark Divine:Tell you what, the one thing, my gift to your
listeners is going to be to box-breathe several times a day and
dont have to take any more than a few minutes but the process for
box-breathing is essentially -- you're going to exhale the air out
of your lungs and then in through your nose. It's very important
that you breathe through your nose as much as possible at all times
by the way and in through your nose, you're going to slow your
breath down and you're going to create like a ocean sound with it;
so in through your nose, you're going to count to five and then
you're going to hold your breath and count to five and they you're
going to exhale through your nose and count to five and then you're
going to hold your breath when you exhale and count to five.Now if
five is hard at the exhale, just do four; the point is not to like
-- you want to try to make it better breath-hold swimmers or
anything like that. This is a really powerful concentration drill
that has, I mentioned earlier, the super-powerful effect of also
shutting off that part of your nervous system that is involved in
stress response. So, by breathing deeply into your diaphragm,
you're sending a message of calm to your nervous system and you
really are maintaining a really calm physiology while you are
focusing your psychology or focusing your mind. And this is
fantastic to do before any kind of -- important meetings or board
meetings or anything where your performance is to be at its
peak.This will help you get into that performance zone or flow
state. And you can do this type of practice, I do it in the morning
and I do it whenever I am not really using my brain for any
strategic or tactical thinking but I'm just going through a motion.
Like driving; so if I drive somewhere, I'll practice box-breathing
instead of just letting my mind wander, I use that as training
time. And then I'll take little brakes during the day, lunch time.
I usually dont go out for lunch, it's great training time and so
I'll do some yoga and I'll do some box-breathing or I'll take a
walk and I'll do some box-breathing or I'll go for a run and I'll
do some box-breathing.And then I'll usually do like some short
training session in the afternoon same things, a little bit of a
somatic movement and then some box-breathing and then I usually do
it in the evening. This is so powerful and it is the bridge to all
those skills that we talked about Scott. Scott:All right Mark, so
if people want to find out more about you about you, about SEAL
Fit, about Unbeatable Mind, what are the best places for them to go
online?Mark Divine:Yes, Sealfit dot com, is a very inspiring web
property of ours and that's where I teach functional fitness and
mental toughness primarily. You can also learn about the Unbeatable
Mind program there or go to UnbeatableMind dot com and that's where
I teach these principles without hardcore fitness for those who
arent really into the hardcore fitness but dont think they are
ready for it. I also, you know, another great place to start is one
of my three books, 'The way of the SEAL' which is the one that you
read, published by Readers Digest, that can be found in Amazon or
Way of the SEAL book dot com and then Unbeatable Mind which is my
self-published book, I love that, it's just very personal to
me.That really talks about all this philosophy. Unbeatable mind,
it's available at Amazon in both hard copy and Kindle. And then my
physical training guide -- unconventional guide for physical and
mental training is called '8 weeks to SEAL Fit' and that's
available at 8 weeks to SEAL Fit dot com or Amazon dot com as
well.Scott:Mark, my wallet's going to be a little bit lighter after
this conversation.Mark Divine:[Laughter] Thanks.Scott:Thanks so
much for coming on, it's been an absolute pleasure. You've taught
us so much, motivated and inspired us elevating the importance of
mental training which I think could be a game-changer for a lot of
people's lives out there. So thank you for that.Mark Divine:Yeah,
my pleasure, it's been a lot of fun Scott, really appreciate
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