by Dominic Mann
Repeat this 4x4 breathing into your balls technique for 4–6 minutes and you’ll find it to be one of the most effective techniques for counteracting stress.
It comes down to this: To control your state of mind, control your body. For example, if you're slouching and have closed, contractive body language, you’re going to feel stressed. Similarly, if you’re breathing short, shallow, quick breaths, you’re going to feel stressed.
In The Way of the SEAL, Mark Divine writes:
“In the Teams, we’re taught to use the breath as a method of inhibiting our physiological arousal or our “fight, flight or freeze” response (previously known as “fight or flight”). The breath is the link between the sympathetic nervous system, which leads us into response mode, and the parasympathetic nervous systems, which brings us back into balance when the coast is clear.”
In conclusion, the best way to control your state is to control your breathing. Deep, steady, controlled breathing lets Navy SEALs (and you!) reduce stress and get their mind and body performing at peak levels.
Navy SEAL Principle #6: The 3 components of resilience
In the previous section, we took a look at the four techniques Navy SEALs use to get through the extraordinarily difficult situations they regularly encounter (goal setting, visualization, self-talk, and arousal control).
In this section, we will take a look at the three ways in which U.S. Navy SEALs derive overall mental strength. This is opposed to the techniques discussed in the previous section for pushing through specific situations, such as by utilizing 4x4 breathing or focusing on short-term goals).
So what are these three keys to all-encompassing mental toughness?
Before we get into the exact ones used by Navy SEALs, let’s take a look at Dan Pink’s theory of motivation.
You see, a while ago, I was watching a TED talk by Dan Pink on how people are motivated. Contrary to conventional wisdom, money is not a very good source of motivation (in fact, offering financial incentives actually decreases one’s performance!). Rather, he outlined three motivating factors: Purpose, autonomy, and mastery.
Put simply, to have a higher purpose, to have more control over the way you work, and to actually be improving and becoming better at (i.e. “mastering”) the work you do. This is why you hear all this “change the world” jabber in Silicon Valley, along with employees who work whenever they want, work on their own projects/innovations, etc.
“But wait,” you’re probably thinking. “What does any of this have to do with Navy SEALs? Let alone mental strength?”
Well, surprisingly enough, the U.S. Navy embraces remarkably similar tactics for their SEALs.
If you read any number of books by former Navy SEALs (or their biographies), you’ll find three consistent themes through which they draw their strength:
Purpose, teamwork, and challenge.
In Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win, Jocko Willink writes the following:
“Belief in the mission ties in with the fourth Law of Combat: Decentralized Command (chapter 8). The leader must explain not just what to do, but why. [...] Only when leaders at all levels understand and believe in the mission can they pass that understanding and belief to their teams so that they can persevere through challenges, execute and win.”
In other words, Willink is saying that understanding the why behind the mission—its purpose—is essential to the mental strength of the SEALs and their ability to “persevere through challenges.”
What you are doing is not as important as why.
To take a non-SEAL example, that’s why you hear of SpaceX employees working consistent 100-hour workweeks while your average cubicle worker counts the minutes until 5 o’clock.
The SpaceX employees know why they are doing what they do. They have a higher purpose. They want to colonize Mars and save humanity from the potential risk of extinction. Meanwhile, your average cubicle worker only knows what he should be doing, not why. He has no higher purpose toward which he strives.
When it comes to Navy SEALs, this can be the difference between life and death. The U.S. Navy wants its SEALs to be working with the intensity of SpaceX employees, not Facebook-browsing 9–5 cubicle workers. And so they make sure to always explain the why behind missions—the higher purpose.
The same goes for teamwork. After all, they’re not called SEAL Teams for nothing. SEAL Team Six (the killers of Osama bin Laden) had more than one SEAL. The notion of one man saving the day exists only in Hollywood. As former Navy SEAL Rorke Denver wrote in Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior:
“We are a brotherhood. Our success depends on our team performance.”
Finally, SEALs forge much strength from their ability to reframe hardship as growth.
In the mind of a Navy SEAL, difficulty equals growth. This is reinforced with SEAL sayings such as, “the only easy day was yesterday” and “do today what others won’t; do tomorrow what others can’t.”
Richard Machowicz reaffirms this in his book Unleash the Warrior Within:
“In SEAL Team, when things looked the worst, when the mud was up to our ears, when the night was the coldest, when the mountain looked the highest, when the guns felt the hottest, the only way around it all was through it. “Get amongst it,” we’d say.”
To grow, you need to challenge yourself. And heck, what fun would life be if everything was easy? If there was nothing to work toward? So embrace challenges. Learn from failure. Grow through hardship.
Remember: Purpose. Teamwork. Challenge.
Navy SEAL Principle #7: The 40% rule
THE PRINCIPLE
“He [the Navy SEAL] would say that when your mind is telling you you’re done, you’re really only 40 percent done. And he had a motto: If it doesn’t suck we don’t do it.”
— Jesse Itzler
Imagine you’re working out at the gym. You’re pushing yourself to the very edge of what your body is capable of.
After this intense workout, you’re exhausted. You reach a point where you say to yourself, “I just can’t do anymore. That’s it. I’m spent.”
Well, Navy SEALs have a name for that point you reach where you think you’re “done.” Where you feel like you can’t do anymore.
You know what they call it?
They call it the point at which you’re 40 percent done.
Also known as, “The 40% rule,” it means you’ve still got 60 percent left in the tank. You’re far from done. Heck, you’re not even half way! If you really wanted, if you rolled up your sleeves, grit your teeth together, and clawed your way onward, you could do another 60 percent.
Jesse Itzler, co-founder of Marquis Jet, once did 100 mile race as a relay. While doing that race, he met someone who wasn’t doing it as a relay, but was doing the entire 100 miles alone. As you might’ve guessed, that someone was a Navy SEAL—David Goggins, to be exact.
Deciding that he could do with a little of the SEALs insane mental stamina and ability to put mind over matter, Itzler invited the SEAL to come live with him and his family for a month.
The SEAL agreed on one condition: Itzler do everything he told him to do. (In other words, no “I don’t feel like doing that today” nonsense.)
Apparently Itzler’s experience with the SEAL was life-changing because he wrote a book about it, Living with a SEAL.
Anyhow, Itzler describes his first day living with a Navy SEAL in an interview with Big Think:
“The first day that “SEAL” came to live with me he asked me to do—he said how many pull-ups can you do?
“I did about eight.
“And he said all right. Take 30 seconds and do it again. So 30 seconds later I got up on the bar and I did six, struggling. And he said alright, one more time. We waited 30 seconds and I barely got three or four and I was done. I mean couldn’t move my arms done. And he said all right. We’re not leaving here until you do 100 more. And I thought there’s no—well we’re going to be here for quite a long time because there’s
no way that I could do 100. But I ended up doing it one at a time and he showed me, proved to me right there that there was so much more, we’re all capable of so much more than we think we are. And it was just a great lesson.”
There's a saying—well, not so much a saying as an unspoken rule—that Navy SEALs have. It says, “capability exceeds belief.”
What does that mean?
We all have beliefs about what we are capable of. I personally remember an aunt that used to tell me when I did my school cross country, “I get tired just watching you.” In reality, though, if she really wanted, she could run that very same race. Similarly, you might think that there’s no way you could do a marathon—but in reality, you almost certainly could.
In other words, capability exceeds belief. What you are capable of doing exceeds that which your mind thinks you could do—just as the 40 percent rule stipulates.
Don’t believe it? Think it’s all just a load of motivational phooey?
Well, hold on a second, because science actually backs it up.
A 2008 study found that participants given a placebo caffeine pill were able to lift significantly heavier weights than participants who were actually given the caffeine.
What this shows is that the Navy SEALs are right. It’s 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical. It’s not those who have the biggest biceps that matter, but those that have the most grit.
But where does all this extra strength—60 percent extra, to be precise—come from, you ask?
It doesn’t come from the body. It doesn't even come from the mind. It comes from sheer will.
But wait, where does one’s will come from?
Well, remember Navy SEAL Principle #2? (Hint: “He who has a why a to live can bear almost any how.”)
Your will comes from your mission—your “why”.
Once you have established a definite mission for which you have a burning desire to achieve, mental toughness becomes not-so-tough. The will to pursue your mission and succeed becomes your powerful driving force.
And, of course, there’s also the 4 keys to mental toughness discussed in Navy SEAL Principle #5, such as “master your self-talk” and “set bite-sized goals.”
Nonetheless, when it comes to Navy SEALs, the only trait that matters is their ability to push past their own mind. To endure pain without quitting.
THE ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAY
So next time you’re in pain and want nothing more than to quit, remind yourself of the 40 percent rule. Know that if your “why” is strong enough, you’ll be able to push yourself that extra 60 percent—even when your mind and body are screaming for you not to.
The SEAL Cheat Sheet
Here is a quick recap of the Navy SEAL self-discipline techniques and strategies discussed in this book.
***
NAVY SEAL PRINCIPLE #1: You are responsible for absolutely everything
“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Stop pointing your finger and trying to blame others. Realize that you and you alone are responsible for your own life. If you want to do something, do it. Take extreme ownership as SEALs do. Like Earl Nightingale said, “We are all self-made, but only the successful will admit it.”
NAVY SEAL PRINCIPLE #2: He who has a why to live can bear almost any how
“When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.”
— Eric Thomas
Pursue a mission. When you have a higher purpose—a mission—grit, self-discipline, perseverance, and incredible mental toughness is a natural consequence. So find your “why”.
NAVY SEAL PRINCIPLE #3: Create a mental trigger to get through the direst situations
Create a mental image—a “trigger”—of the one thing in this world that is most important to you. When you face the direst of situations or are on the brink, pull the trigger and remind yourself of this image.
NAVY SEAL PRINCIPLE #4: Systems, processes, and discipline equals freedom
Create a daily routine. Create systems and processes in your life so that you can get things done faster and more efficiently.
NAVY SEAL PRINCIPLE #5: The 4 keys to mental toughness
● Mental Toughness Pillar #1: Set goals like a Navy SEAL. Set bite-sized goals. Focus on what is right in front of you, not on all the pain and suffering yet to come. Create small goals that move you toward a larger goal—your mission, your “higher purpose.”
● Mental Toughness Pillar #2: Mentally Prepare Like a Navy SEAL. Mentally visualize any tough situations you need to go through in order to train your mind to remain calm, cool, and collected during these stressful situations rather than going into it's instinctive "fight, flight, or freeze" mode.
● Mental Toughness Pillar #3: Master your self-talk. Talk to yourself positively. Create a powerful mantra to repeat to yourself in times of hardship.
● Mental Toughness Pillar #4: Arousal control. When in incredibly demanding and stressful situations, practice the 4x4 deep breathing technique. It will help you override your brain's instinctive stress response and get your mind and body back in the game.
NAVY SEAL PRINCIPLE #6: The 3 components of resilience.
● Purpose. Have a mission. A higher purpose. This relates directly back to Navy SEAL Principle #2: He who has a why can bear almost any how.
● Teamwork. If applicable to your own life, use the power of teamwork to achieve specific goals.
● Challenge. Reframe difficulty as growth. See failure, hardship, and pain not as something to be avoided but as something to be embraced as a way to develop oneself. As Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
NAVY SEAL PRINCIPLE #7: The 40% rule.
When you feel like you're done and can't possibly do any more, realize that you're only at the 40 percent mark. You've still got 60 percent left in the tank, so roll up those sleeves, grit those teeth, and push on.
***
Whenever you find yourself in need of a self-discipline boost, review the Navy SEAL techniques in these summary points and get on your way.
Now all you need to do is put this book down and get going!
Good luck!
Before you go…
Nice work on finishing the book! I sincerely hope you found value in all the strategies, tips, tricks, and techniques discussed.
You should be proud of yourself for taking this step toward living a more productive life and achieving your goals. By taking action and arming yourself with actionable knowledge, you’ve already put yourself ahead of the majority of population.
Before you put this book down and go out to start putting what you’ve learned to use, I have just one more thing for you.
I want to give you the opportunity to grab a free copy my exclusive productivity cheat sheet, 61 Productivity Hacks to Get More Done.
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