RV (00:07): Welcome to this Navy seal recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. Whoa. Talking about how personal brands can create an unbeatable mind with long time Navy seal commander, mark divine. I mean this guy. Oh, holy moly. Like hoof. I mean, I don’t know what to say like this, th th th this interview, it blew my mind and I’ve interviewed mark before. We’ve, we’ve known each other for years and every time I interface with him, I am just amazed at like, I mean, the thing that jumps out to me is just like the concept of mental toughness of literally just preparing your mind for battle. I mean, but not just, you know, not just battle in terms of war, which of course he’s got a lot of experience with, but, but, but more than that leadership and, and problem solving and challenges and vision, and just like, you know, there’s so many things that, that you can learn you, you know, like there’s knowledge that you can learn. RV (01:17): But when I think of mark Devine, my, my brain goes, my brain goes to basically going, how do you prepare your brain as a tool as your, as your most important tool and your number one asset in everything that you do. And, you know, I just, I love the brand unbeatable mind. I love him. I mean, obviously he’s extraordinary pedigree and you know, just track record and, you know, does it get much more of a practitioner than what he’s doing? And so I love this and if you haven’t listened to the interview, you need to go listen to it because this is, this is it’s about strengths. It’s, it’s about having a strong mind. It’s about being able to overcome your circumstances. And how do you, how do you, how do you rise above the, the negative thing that’s happened, the negative things that happened to you, and how do you overcome and get around the difficulties that are every part of life and, you know, learning the tactics that mark talks about are super practical and just powerful, right? RV (02:23): Just because of the intensity of the situations that, that he’s been in. And, and if you haven’t listened to the interview yet, or even if you have one of the things that’s amazing to me is, you know, you hear Navy seal, like the mind kind of goes to like war hero, but mark has this, this really elegant, beautiful balance of, of, you know, like Eastern meditation and, and you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a higher level than just, you know, I am strong and I’m going to destroy, like, it’s not that at all. In fact, so let’s just run through, I’ll run through the, my top three takeaways here for personal brands. This truly is an episode that, you know, would apply to anybody though. I mean, a lot of our episodes are very tailored to like, okay, here’s a skill that somebody has mastered and how to build your personal brand. RV (03:11): This is two, but this conversation applies to like everybody and everything that you, you ever do. And so the, my very first takeaway is funny because this was my takeaway years ago when I interviewed him. And it was probably six years ago when I interviewed mark, maybe not that long, maybe four or five years ago, but it was long time ago. And this stuck with me, which is using box breathing as a way of centering yourself. Before, you know, like in his case, he calls it reducing arousal response. That’s what, what Navy seals call it and refer to, which is basically like controlling your emotions to not instantly react, which is what the, the indulgence of the human mind and the human body is just to instantly react. And what I learned in martial arts, which is aligned with what he’s saying here is, you know, you have mind, mind, like water, they call it mind like water, which is like, you know, if you drop a drop of water into a puddle, there are ripples. RV (04:13): The ripples are exactly directly proportionate to the size and velocity, which the drop fall in. So it’s like, it is the perfect, the exact perfect response to the stimulus. Not more or not less. What most of us do is we tend to over respond. We tend to overreact. We tend to overanalyze. We tend to over amp ourself up, we get overly anxious, overly nervous, even overly excited, even overly enthusiastic. And, you know, listening to mark talk about this was both taking me back to last time we talked, but even taking me back to when I was a kid studying martial arts about mind like water, which is just basically receiving the stimulus and reflecting back the exact perfect and proportional response. So box breathing is a technique. This is what I love about him, right? As he makes it. So practical is going okay, here is how you center yourself before going into battle, which is that you breathe in. And so you just do four, four counts of whatever number. Let’s just say four counts of four. So you breathe in for four seconds, one, two, three, four. Then you hold for four seconds. RV (05:27): Then you breathe out for four seconds. Then you hold for four seconds and the breath, and this is so huge. I mean, this is, this is mind blowing to hear Navy seal at his level, talking about how this, this is a technique that he uses in life and death situations. And yet it’s like, it is our breath. It’s how strong are you? It’s not how fast are you? It’s not, how tough are you? How much pain can you endure? It’s going, can you control your breathing, breathing? As he said, I love this. He said, breathing is, is basically the, the glue between mind, body, and soul and breath is something that you can control. And so you learn to control your breath and by learning to control your breath, you learn to control your emotional response, which controls your body, which controls your brain, which allows you to think clearly, which allows you to react appropriately and swiftly and decisively and sharply. RV (06:29): Amazing, amazing. And so, you know, that that certainly applies to a battle, but as a personal brand, when does that show up? It shows up before any presentation, right? It shows up before a keynote before a webinar before you make your offer, right? Like before you get on a big podcast or media interview before, before you turn a video on, right. And you just go, don’t forget to breathe. Like air allows you to think clearly you’re hyperventilating. When it’s time to record your like weekly video blog, like don’t forget to breathe for a second before you hit record and like center yourself. So it’s not so frantic. I think that’s really, really powerful. All right. So that was my first takeaway, which has stuck with me and will continue to stick with me. The second takeaway though, I’ve never heard him say, I’ve actually never heard anybody say, and he said it like very quickly, almost as if like it’s a, you know, it’s like a cliche or it’s like something that is like you know, just kind of a platitude that’s out there in the world. RV (07:30): But I had never heard this before. And it really stuck with me as he said, no plan survives contact with an enemy, no plan survives contact with an enemy that is so good and so important. Like for two reasons, one is to go, don’t spend all day planning. It’s not going to work out according to plan anyways. Right? I’m not saying don’t plan, but I’m saying don’t overplay it. All right? Like at some point you just gotta get out there because it’s gonna adapt, like no plan, survives contact with an enemy. The other thing is you have to be flexible. Like you have to be willing to adapt. Like, and, and the word he uses survive, right? This is a very matter of survival. If you can’t adapt, if it drives you nuts, when people don’t follow the plan, if you overreact to people like deviating from the system, like it’s going to eat you alive. RV (08:33): And I think as an entrepreneur, right? It’s like, we want to create processes and streamlined and checklist. This is how we multiply time and all that sort of stuff. But it’s like, people are not going to do it the way that you do it. And even when you create a launch plan and you think this is how it’s going to go, like, it’s not, it doesn’t work out perfectly. You have to be in order to survive, you have to be able to adapt and not just adapt, create a new plan. I think there’s a deeper part of this is to go, it’s not just create a new plan. It’s to be emotionally prepared for volatility. It’s to be emotionally prepared for imperfection. It is to be emotionally resilient to the idea that, yeah, I got a plan, but I’ll, I’ll adapt accordingly. I never know what the enemy is going to do. RV (09:18): Right. I never know how the project’s going to turn out. I never know what’s going to be thrown at. And so you trust in your, your preparation, but you allow yourself to adapt on the fly. And I think this is really hard. I think this is really hard specifically for entrepreneurs who are, do gooders and checklists and task masters. They like to create the plan, execute the plan. And entrepreneurship is a mess, right? Like success is messy. Success is never perfect. It’s always like, you know, Donald Trump would say, it’s a total disaster. Like it is it. Every time we try to accomplish something, it never works out. There’s always something that shows up that we didn’t expect. No plan survives contact with the enemy, by the way, it reminds me of another, this it’s another one of my favorite quotes, which is kind of like on this subject you know, Mike Tyson said it this way. He said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. RV (10:11): Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. I mean, this is a big deal, right? So a plan is not going to just be the thing that is your shield that causes you to survive like a plan as a starting point. A plan should give you confidence, but it’s like, you can’t hide behind the plan. You can’t expect the plan to go perfectly. You gotta be able to adapt. You gotta be flexible. You gotta be nimble. Because that’s just the way that battle is. And most of us that’s what we’re doing. And so that was super powerful to hear him talk about that. The third takeaway for me, which I’ve I have heard before, maybe not quite in this way, I’ve, you know, we talk about it a lot. You know, this very much points back to the creation principle of integrity in our first book take the stairs, which was, he said an observer or a witness to your own life as a way of help helping yourself better manage your own thoughts. RV (11:11): Right. So that I think is so powerful. It’s so true. And that’s a skill set that I learned, you know, I think of all the way back in college, you know, going door to door and dealing with rejection of just like, you know, you’re you, the real battle is in your own mind. And it’s, what are you telling yourself about yourself? And that’s really, it can be a really discouraging space to be in. And what he’s saying is going, okay, just step out of it for a second and observe what you are saying about yourself, about the situation. And he used this phrase, he said, you know, you have the power change your relationship with the past one when you do this. And I think that’s so true is like, once you step back here and you go, okay, those thoughts that I’m having, that’s not me. Those are just thoughts that I’m having. And it’s like separating your thoughts from yourself, which I know feels a little weird, right? You go, wait a minute. How do I separate my thoughts from myself? Like, isn’t my thoughts who I am, but, but I would say, well, no, it definitely isn’t right. Because I mean, think about it this way. Like your thoughts are your thoughts, because if your thoughts are you then who the hell are you talking to? Right? Speaker 3 (12:32): Like you’re, you’re the RV (12:34): One hearing your thoughts and, and evaluating your thoughts. But I think a lot of us don’t observe, we just kind of allow ourselves to be absorbed and, and assimilated and amalgamated with our thoughts as if they are us not realizing, oh, we have control over our thoughts. And, and even the first step to controlling our thoughts is to observe our thoughts. And, and, and even the, I guess the prerequisite to that is that what you’re doing right now, you’re learning right here that, oh, those thoughts are not you. And you can observe them. So you learn, you know, you realize that then you start to observe them. Then you kind of take note of what you’re saying, and then you naturally go, oh, I don’t like that thought that thought doesn’t serve me. That saw that, that thought, you know, doesn’t give life to me. RV (13:23): That thought drains my energy. And this is what amazing is. If your thoughts aren’t serving you, then throw your thoughts out seriously. Like if your thoughts aren’t serving, you throw your thoughts out, but realize the first step is to be an observer of your own thoughts, be a witness to what your thinking about yourself, to what you are telling yourself about yourself. This is super empowering. And what you’ll find when you do this, you’ll be shocked at how many, any of your thoughts don’t even come from you. So many of your thoughts came from a teacher, a parent, a bully, you know, something that somebody said casually to you. They came from a movie, they came from some other books that you read or some line in a song that you heard you know, or some quote that somebody shared with you that you never even stopped to question like, is this real? RV (14:17): And you go, whoa, like, or the other thing is a huge number of our thoughts come from immediate responses to stimuli. They come from something happened. We immediately responded and we immediately created a story and said, oh, that happened because I’m not smart. Or that happened because I’m not attractive. Or that happened because I’m not good at blank, or I’m not good enough to blank. And this thought it wasn’t even specifically or deliberately or intentionally crafted. We allowed this thought it happened in an overreaction in moment of over response. And that thought entered our mind. We never questioned it. We never scrutinized it. And now we’ve allowed that thought to build a house and set up its home to define our life about what is possible and what is possible. And the first step to breaking free of that is to become an observer of your thoughts and realize your thoughts are not you, your thoughts are your thoughts. You are hearing your thoughts and you are the author and creator of your own thoughts. RV (15:28): This stuff might sound like hooey, phooey. This is one of the other reasons that I love. This is like this kind of stuff, like box breathing and visualization and, you know, be adaptable. And self-talk, these things all sort of feel fluffy, right? Like on their own, they feel you know, they feel decidedly soft and, and kind of like impractical. And maybe even like, you know, I don’t know who he phooey motivationally until you hear commander mark divine, who is an Ivy league graduate has multiple degrees, is best-selling author and has been in the, the most elite of special forces units on the planet and been in war time saying, no, no, no, this is the key. These are the secrets to an unbeatable mind. And if you want to master anything in your life, whether it’s building a personal brand, building a business, making a difference or surviving war, these things are the things that you must do. You must prepare your mind. You must strengthen it, condition it, shape it over and over and over again, because it is the asset that you will have with you for the rest of your life, which is a good reason to keep coming back here to the influential personal brand podcast. We’re so glad that you’re here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.