This week Rich Diviney delves into his latest work, ‘The Masters of Uncertainty,’ which offers strategies for managing stress and performing under pressure. Rich shares the importance of understanding and deconstructing attributes, the concept of dynamic subordination in teams, and the critical role of trust. The conversation also touches on the neuroscience behind dealing with uncertainty, the practice of moving horizons, and practical breathing techniques for managing autonomic arousal. Rich emphasizes the need for purpose-driven leadership and how mastering uncertainty can empower individuals to thrive in complex environments.
Episode Highlights:
03:57 Writing and Impact of ‘The Masters of Uncertainty’
08:30 Applying SEAL Strategies to Everyday Life
24:07 Navigating Adversity with Micro Strategies
25:58 The Power of Breathing Techniques
41:51 The Four Pillars of Trust
44:34 Dynamic Subordination in Leadership
Rich Diviney is a retired Navy SEAL Commander. In a career spanning more than twenty years, he completed more than thirteen overseas deployments-eleven of which were to Iraq and Afghanistan. As the officer in charge of training for a specialized command, he spearheaded the creation of a SEAL directorate that fused physical, mental, and emotional disciplines. He led his small team to create the first ever “Mind Gym” in Naval Special Warfare that helped SEALs train their brains to perform faster, longer, and better, especially in high-stress environments. Since his retirement, Diviney has worked as a speaker, facilitator, and consultant, training more than five thousand business, athletic, and military leaders. Rich also works with Simon Sinek’s organization, Start With WHY.
You can learn more about Rich here: theattributes.com
Episode Transcript:
00:32
Now here’s your host, Marcus Aurelius Anderson. Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you want to know what somebody truly believes, do not listen to their words, instead observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Rich Diviney is a best-selling author, leadership and human performance expert.
01:02
and retired Navy SEAL commander. In more than 20 years of his career, he completed more than 13 overseas deployments as the officer in charge of training for the elite SEALs Team Six. He was eminently involved with the highly specialized selection process, which parred down a group of already exceptional candidates to a small cadre of the most elite optimal performers. He just released his second book, The Masters of Incertency, which I absolutely recommend. And I would also recommend the attributes as well because they pair each other so well.
01:31
Drawing upon parallels with Navy SEALs resilience, the book aims to impart strategies on stress management that are fundamental, can be employed by elite military forces and obviously your businesses as well. Rich, thank you so much for coming back again. I always enjoy our conversations. I learned so much from you. Well, thanks for having me. It’s good to be back. Good to see you. Yeah, it’s fantastic. So we were touching on a of these things, but a lot of people are going to say, Dr. Andrew Huberman, tell us about how you met him, how these conversations evolved.
02:00
Yeah, so Andrew and I met about seven years ago. It was before his podcast. I had just gotten on the Navy. was still a professor, but he was still running his lab there at Stanford around fear. so, in fact, a friend had said, hey, you got to meet this guy, this neuroscientist. You guys are going to get along great. And someone had told him about me. so immediately gravitated towards each other. were at this conference. wasn’t even a conference. It was just planning session for some executives. was actually Goggins was there too. David was there too.
02:28
So we had a pretty good crew. Anyway, all this to say we really gelled immediately on the fact that he was studying fear in a lab and he was interested in how we as Navy SEALs dealt with fear in the real world. And we began to talk about how that stuff combines in terms of the neuroscience going on and then what we in fact do. A lot of the things that SEALs do, we do without really thinking about it. It’s kind of unconscious. so I’ve always been really keen on deconstructing some of that because if you can deconstruct it, articulate it, you can then
02:57
talk about it, teach it and practice and train it. And so we started, we worked on a ton of stuff for about a year or so. The impetus of the attributes was because we were actually working on a book together. He had a solo book. We decided for me to do a solo book. I went solo book, he went podcast. He obviously is doing pretty well. But we still talk as much as we…
03:20
He’s a very busy guy obviously, but the the neuroscience in this second book as with the first book but the neuroscience is specifically in the second book is all stuff that we Developed and talked about together. So he was a huge part of that and that’s why he was kind enough to write the the four Yeah, he has some great things to say and it’s also interesting because we write a book to the best of our capacity We’re not sure how it’s gonna be received. We’re aiming at a target and then we sort of walk it in
03:48
after the fact. So we see what lands, what doesn’t. You go out, you teach on it, and then that really informs how we write our second book and how we teach and how we do things. Can you tell us a little bit of what that evolution was like for you from the attributes into where you are currently? Yeah, ironically, it was a little bit reversed. Masters of Uncertainty is the book I’ve always wanted to write. It’s what I’ve always been interested in. And this idea that I knew even the SEAL teams, I said to myself, it was never about the skydiving or the shooting or the
04:17
or the scuba diving was about the fact that we were individuals and teams that could drop into deep complexity and chaos and still perform. And so I used to define us. said, we were, we are, and we were masters of uncertainty. And so I always was very interested in what are those aspects and factors that allow for individuals and teams to become masters of uncertainty. In that deconstruction process, one of the
04:42
One of the factors, one of the most important factors in understanding your own performance at your most raw was attributes. And so it was almost a little bit of unconscious, unconscious luck there that I wrote the attributes first because the attribute is kind of a very big topic and inclusive. so, so writing the attributes first and getting that baseline, that foundation laid with both the book and the business and the assessments.
05:05
allowed for now me to take this bigger idea and say, okay, what are these factors? And so as you know, because you’ve read it, but people who read it will see it. The attributes is a chapter in the book and the masters of uncertainty book, because it’s one aspect that we have to understand about ourselves. So the other aspects in the book, I do plan on diving more deeply into. think they’re fascinating, but yeah, it was almost a little bit of the reverse order there. And I love the, first of all, the size of it. So if you’re a cadet or in any kind of military service, you can probably put this right in your little cargo pocket with you.
05:34
So you have it, it’s about 140 discipline pages. Yeah, so when you write a book, you don’t go by pages, you go by word count, right? Yes. I knew, so the attributes ended up being around 65, 70,000 words, some of that, which translates into a couple hundred pages. I knew that this book, wanted this book to be shorter, I wanted it to be punchier and more actionable. And so this one runs about 28,000 words, I think.
06:00
and it is just that smaller. You can throw it. I wanted people to be able to read it on an airplane ride or something like that, or put it in their pocket and walk around with it. So yeah, that’s the point. And again, yeah, the attributes, I am very proud of the attributes as a book in terms of the way it’s written. I love it. It’s a long one though. And after you read the attributes, you are very well informed. There’s a couple things you think you can do with it, which is great.
06:25
I wanted to write the Master of Uncertainty so as you read it, you’re like, okay, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. So it’s not only informing you, but it’s telling you this is exactly what you need to go and do. And that’s how I endeavored to put it together. Well, I would almost say this is the equivalent of like a modern day Musashi or Ueshiba or even Dao De Jing or Lao Tzu where this is small enough to where people can go back to it over and over and over again. And like you said, it’s punchy, you have just enough in there, but it’s not.
06:54
So profluence in any capacity. when they go back and they say, oh, these, you know, four domains of trust, it’s right there. And now they can take it and really apply it. becomes part of who they are. And that allows them to lead influence and do everything from this very informed decision as opposed to, again, I’m the same way you are. I love the attributes. I love the depth, but masterism and certainty is something that even people to say, oh, I don’t read books. like, you can do the audible in two hours. Get rid of your excuses.
07:22
consume this thing, learn it, and put it into play. If you really want to help people, this is it. If you don’t necessarily like reading, every chapter I’ve ended with some bullet points, some summary points, say, what do you need to take away from these key takeaways just so people can get those? I do encourage, like you said, it’s not a hard read, it’s a short read, so I encourage getting that background. But yeah, again, you learn this stuff as you’re writing, and then of course you want to explore and experiment with different ideas and different.
07:50
processes, but I appreciate the compliment. You throw out some very heavy hitter names out there. so to be lumped in with those folks, that’s very flattering. It’s the truth. I, uh, I’m about to finish my second book and it’s very much in the same sort of vein where I talked to Steven Pressfield and I was getting in my own head about what’s the second book need to be like. And I had these experiences and how do I put that in there? He was like, you don’t need to put everything into this book, put every effort into it, but finish this.
08:17
move to the next one. He’s like, it doesn’t happen because if that’s the case, we’ll never get this thing published because there’s always something, right? Always a process, always something we can learn. Oh, I can put that in the book, put it in the next one, move on, help the people with what you have, where you stand right now. And I also love this idea of mastering uncertainty because once we master uncertainty, we feel confident enough now if we’re on the battlefield, so to speak, or if we’re against an adversary, we can manufacture uncertainty. Yeah. And now we’re prepared for it. One, because we see it coming.
08:47
Two, because we’re already sort of comfortable in that environment while the other, the opponent may be hesitant, they’re not sure what to do. A hundred percent correct. So the couple do outs are, my hope for people in reading this book is one, obviously to be able to deal with uncertainty better. We know this is, it hits, we don’t know when it’s going to hit. We’re in it. Can we in fact on those moments do better?
09:11
However, if you practice this stuff, if you understand the concepts, then you can begin to practice this stuff with those micro moments of uncertainty so that you get to the point where you’re not only doing, you’re not only operating and effectively dealing with uncertainty when it happens without thinking, because that’s, you’re unconscious about it, you then be going to go seek it out. We know growth in human beings happens outside of our comfort zone. So we have to step out of our comfort zones to grow, to develop, to evolve.
09:40
And so the more we deliberately do that, the more effectively we are as human beings, increasing our chances of growing and evolving. mean, we are, we’re wired to do this by the way. I this is exactly why as human beings, we’ve gone from cave dwellers to space explorers because we’re wired to do this stuff. But I think, I think part of this is that, yes, I can, I’m comfortable in dealing with it when it happens, but I also can effectively throw myself into it. A great story, a friend of mine is a guy named Josh Waitzkin. Josh Waitzkin,
10:09
Wrote a book called, yeah, The Art of Learning. Art of Learning, yes. Yeah. And the, what is it? The Searching for Bobby Fischer. was, that movie was about Josh. was a chess champion. By the age of 16, I think he’s a world chess champion. He and I are good friends. although we haven’t seen each other for a while because he’s, he’s, he’s moved out of New York City, moved out years ago, but he and I used to have lunch quite a bit when I was there. And he used to tell me one of his strategies in playing chess was that he would deliberately throw the game.
10:37
into chaos. the reason why he now by doing that, he had to let go of the outcome. You know, he said, you know, when this happens, I may not win, but I’m actually okay. And I am confident the fact that I’m probably more comfortable in chaos than my opponent, right? So so that’s what his strategy was to throw it into chaos, because he knew he was more comfortable than his opponent in that environment. That is a superpower, as far as I’m concerned, and can be applied to many different domains. Yeah, his book is incredible. He’s very much a fan of the Dow daisying with that idea of
11:06
he leans into whatever it is. He would even say what you’re describing where people would try to, you know, all the psychological warfare that would go on, he would lean into it with that opponent. And all of sudden they would, they would, it would put them on their heels because they’re like, wait a minute, why is he so comfortable leaning towards this thing that I’m trying to create around him that makes him uncomfortable? And then his famous quote of it’s a marathon and it’s a sprint. It’s a marathon of sprints. All of these things come together very much. Yeah. Yeah. 100 % incredible guy.
11:33
I had Emily Kwok was on, she’s a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu world champion and she’s studied under him, but she’s also been under his two lich for the last decade. Incredible stuff. yeah, these things all come together. And then we were also discussing how the attributes, these masters in the circuit, these components, it works in sports, it works in a professional environment. And even with sports, it happens so quickly, but yet the lesson is still the same.
12:00
So because of all these things you’re discussing with understanding the person who they are, what their I am statement is, what their identity is, what the mission, the objective. Now, when we coach that person, if we have the guys get ready to go back on the field, we can give them a very direct cue and let it go. Now he has something to act on as opposed to you can’t turn into a 15 minute dissertation and expect this person to able to execute. You’re just going to slow them down and inhibit their capacity. Yeah, it really is. It’s applicable in.
12:30
Domain even even in domains of less certainty you can you can apply this move the horizon process because what you’re effectively doing and what what the book at least in the beginning parts does is really effectively teach people how to effectively compartmentalize and compartmentalization is amazingly important in any high stakes fast-moving environment or any environment where you need to basically figure it out and act
12:55
because what you’re doing is you’re saying, what is the thing I need to focus on in this moment? What can I control and focus on in this moment? Focus on that block out everything else. One of the things you’ll never see Navy SEALs do is worry about stuff they can’t control. We just don’t do it. It’s a waste of our time and energy. Now that doesn’t mean we don’t plan. Planning is different. Planning is I’m going to in fact look ahead. I’m going to look at what might happen and I’m gonna just create some contingency plans. What planning in fact does is it actually, it starts to,
13:24
minimize uncertainty to an agree because what happens is if you come up with some plans, you know, we would plan in an operation, every operation would have five different phases. Every phase might have two or three contingency plans. This might happen. If this happens, we do this. What that does effectively is it takes out off the plate of uncertainty because if that happens, you know what you’re going to do, you know, and it opens up your brain and your aspect for stuff you can’t plan.
13:52
What you can’t do is A, over plan. can’t suffer paralysis or analysis, so you can’t do that. But what you also don’t want to do is once you have a plan, don’t try to plan or worry about stuff you can’t control. Because if you can’t anticipate it, just don’t worry about it. Jumping out of an airplane is a very dangerous evolution. there’s, I don’t know the exact number, but there’s at least seven known common.
14:17
malfunctions that could happen when you jump out of an airplane. And so what you do when you’re training to do this is you train in all seven of those. If this happens, I do this. If this happens, I do this. And you rehearse those. You know, prior to a jump, you rehearse it every time. What you can’t rehearse or anticipate is something that happens outside of those seven. But you also can’t worry about it. You basically say, hey, I’m going to get out of the airplane and whatever happens, I will deal with it in the moment. But right now I’m going to focus on getting out.
14:44
Nailing my exit, because if you don’t nail your exit and you’re all unstable, your chute’s not going to properly open. Once that exit’s nailed, okay, now I’m going to focus on opening my parachute. Once that parachute’s open, I’m going focus on getting on heading and all that stuff. And so you just go step by step and work it out. so, and you can do, I would, you can do the same thing in the, in the athletic realm too. The, athlete that runs out and is doing the thing can say, know what, I’m focusing on this thing in the moment. I’m not going to worry about other things. I would guarantee that some of the superstars you see who are
15:14
The buzzer beaters, they’re the folks who, I’m just gonna worry about doing my thing right now. I’m not gonna worry about the clock. I’m just gonna worry about doing the thing. And that’s what makes them the excellence performers that they are. And I think that’s so important because literally everything you’re describing is essentially a practice in mindfulness and presence. Yes. And the beautiful thing is, like you said, if you’re in combat, if you’re jumping out of an airplane, or even if we’re really sleep deprived.
15:44
We have no other choice than to be as present as we possibly can because that is going to be the thing that maximizes our survivability, first of all, and then gives us the best opportunity to accomplish the mission. So if I’m tired, if I’m fatigued, it really helps me understand I don’t have time for anything outside of this. I have these objectives right now. And even though it may not be ideal, it still allows me to perform as you would say, optimally, maybe not at peak, but whatever the peak is for that moment.
16:13
I can muster it and really push it towards this thing and then everything else will take care of itself. if I don’t… you’re absolutely right. And we have to remember the present is all that exists. That’s it. Everything else is, you know, the past is history, the future is fiction, you know, that it’s just… And by the way, we never hit either. We’re never in either. We’re never in history, we’re never in the future. We’re always in the present. So that’s all we should and can focus on. Again, this is not an excuse to not plan and look ahead.
16:40
But you do so with a with a deliberacy and a calmness that is not anxiety. Again, even anxiety, anxiety is future. That’s what it is. It’s worrying about things that have not yet happened. Stress is present. Okay. Anxiety is future. so, anxiety in many cases is wasteful because it’s worrying about fiction and we don’t want to waste our time or energy doing that. And it’s another great example of like you’re saying anxiety.
17:06
Anxiety the definition is choosing not to choose because we cannot choose it because it’s in the future It’s right this hypothetical and what you’re talking about too is now we’re not in rumination. I’m not asking Why is this happening? Why did my shoot not open? Why did I get my foot caught? No, you’re you’re asking what what’s my next step? What is my next contingency? How do I move to the next thing and that’s empowering? So if I am asking why? It’s a disempowering premise. I can’t get to an empowering movement from there. I’m asking how what’s next? I’ve done this like you said it’s a malfunction
17:36
you’re almost doing it watching your body accomplish it because you’re stepped outside of yourself in this motion mentality. Yes. And our brain works interestingly in those moments, in the present moments when we are in mindfulness, in presence, our brain begins to slice time in different ways. so this is why when things are very visceral and intense, and in some cases fast, like things are like the car accident,
18:02
when you think about that, it’s like things almost moved in slow motion is because your brain is actually slicing time thinner, which means you’re paying attention, which means time is effect, seemingly slow for you. That’s an advantage. That’s very advantageous if you are present in that slowness, because you are noticing things like the matrix type stuff where you are, you are able to determine and make conscious decisions in those moments. But you can only do that if you are in, the moment and in your presentness.
18:31
and moving our horizons and DPO and duration pathway outcome, is what I know we’ll get into is the way to do this. And even back to Josh Waitzkin, he’s been on Tim Ferriss’ podcast many times. And if you guys haven’t heard that by his book, The Art of Learning, listening to those conversations for sure, he mentions in Jiu Jitsu, for example, if he has me in side control and I’m moving, he’s taking thousands of small snapshots.
18:57
He sees the small adaptation of me counterbalancing and me trying to push. So he’s already anticipated, like you’re saying, these additional things. So he’s already multiple steps ahead as a chess master, clearly. But I think that’s a great example of that as well. And the DPO and the movement of these horizons, can you give us an example? I mean, you talk about it in the book, but I think, again, it’s very actionable.
19:18
Yeah, so let’s just talk about the neurology first. So neurology that’s going on in our brains and our systems during uncertainty is this idea that our brains are trying to figure out these three aspects of our environment, and that’s duration, pathway, outcome. So duration is how long is this going to last, whatever we’re in. Pathway is the route in, out, or through. And then outcome is what happens at the end. What’s the end state? And so if we are in absence of one or more of these, we begin to feel and physiologically
19:47
show up with uncertainty. It shows up in our system. An example would be this, and it’s going to sound familiar. Imagine you get the flu. No, not the flu. Let’s go strep throat. You get strep throat. Strep throat is a known disease, and it has an antibiotic that can cure it. So you know the outcome, and you know the pathway. I’m going to get some antibiotics, and I know them to be better. What you don’t know is duration. You just don’t know exactly how long it’s going take for you to get better.
20:15
So you’re in absence of one, your uncertainty level is mild. Imagine we get the flu. Flu is now something that is, we know that most people, if you’re healthy, don’t die from the flu. So the outcome is that you’ll get better, but there’s no real medicine for it, because it’s a virus. So you don’t really know exactly the pathway. You’re gonna do your best to the pathway, and you don’t exactly know the duration. So you’re in absence of two, you have mild uncertainty, or medium uncertainty, I should say.
20:42
Now imagine where we there’s something shows up in the world that we have never seen before and there’s no known cure and there are people dying from it and we don’t know how long it’s going to last. Now we’re in absence of duration, pathway and outcome. This might sound familiar because this is exactly what the thing was, at least at the beginning for everybody, right? We all we were all the whole world was in absence of all three. We didn’t know how long this last. We didn’t know the outcome. We didn’t know the pathway through it. So this is when we have.
21:11
deep uncertainty, challenge and stress, or deep uncertainty showing up. The way we combat these moments is that we take charge of our neurology by doing what I call picking or moving horizons. By moving horizons, what that means is you pick something, you pick a horizon to focus on, and then you move towards that. As soon as you do that, you’ve in effect, in essence, created your own duration pathway outcome, your own DPL. So an example for this would be,
21:40
So in Navy SEAL training, you spend hundreds of hours running around with big heavy boats on your head, especially during Hell Week. And I remember it was the middle of the night during Hell Week. We were running with this damn boat on our head. We had been running with it for hours. We were miserable. We were on the beach and we were next to a sand berm. didn’t know how long we would be doing. It was just miserable. I remember saying to myself in that moment, you know what? I’m just going to focus on getting to the end of the sand berm.
22:03
And what I didn’t realize I did in that moment was I picked a horizon and in picking a horizon, I created a duration pathway outcome. Duration was from now until end of sand berm. Pathway was from here to end of sand berm and outcome was end of sand berm. As soon as I hit the end of the sand berm, that’s an accomplishment. That’s a reward. And that registers in your neurology. You get a dopamine reward for that in your brain, which allows us, if we’re cognizant of this, to pull out, pick another horizon and do it again.
22:32
And so we can, in essence, and we, every human being has done this by the way, in some capacity and whether you’re running marathons or going through trauma or whatever, every human being has experienced this. What we’re trying to do and what I’m trying to do is articulate it so you can start practicing it and doing it more, but, but yeah, and doing it very deliberately. So in essence, if you are in a situation and you, you, start picking these horizons, you’re creating certainty by creating a DPO and you’re also rewarding yourself so that you can continue the cycle.
23:01
until one of three things happens. One, you move through it. Two, the environment becomes certain enough. In other words, as you step through, your cone of certainty opens up to a degree that now you understand what’s going on. Or three, you accomplish your goal. One of those three things is going to happen. But you can, in essence, use this strategy. And then what you have to do, of course, is you have to modulate those horizon distances based on your own subjective.
23:30
perspective. other words, the dopamine chemical only works. Dopamine, by the way, I know your audience is in tune to this, but it’s a motivation chemical. It’s not a reward chemical. tells us this is good, keep doing this. Kids, good, keep doing this. And what we need to understand is that if we aren’t appropriately picking our horizons, then we may pick something that too easy, which means we don’t get dopamine, or too hard, which means we run out of dopamine.
23:58
run out of the chemical, the dopamine that’s driving us before we get there. So those horizons are constantly shifting for the individual based on intensity of environment and they’re very subjective. In other words, the intensity of environment could make that horizon very short. I remember being freezing in the surf zone during surf torture and seal training. And I would be like, I sometimes feel like I’m just going to count five waves. That was my horizon at the moment. Sometimes I’d be like, I’m going to wait till I’m going to get to the next meal.
24:26
That’s a longer horizon. but these are all very subjective and based on the intensity of what’s going on. And we have to remember that, but this is exactly the strategy to move through this stuff. And that’s so powerful. We break the big adversity into these micro adversities that are more, we can, these are bite sides. This is the, this is the neurological equivalent of eating the elephant one bite at a time. This is exactly what it is. Yeah. It’s perfect. And this also kind of breaks into this grit myth that you discuss in the book as well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, grit, have to, we have to understand that
24:56
People, successful people aren’t successful because they just power through and they’re just monsters, they’re just super people, right? It’s the grit myth. It’s like that all you need is just to struggle and power through and just put your head down and roll. No, there’s a strategy that is required to actually make it through this stuff because that struggle may be long-term and none of us have energetically what it takes to do that long-term without at least damaging ourselves or going down a spiral.
25:26
So the grit myth is just something I wrote about because I think people think that, all it takes is grit. No, no, it actually takes thoughts. It takes grits, yes, but part of grit is resilience. Part of grit is adaptability. Part of grit is perseverance. Part of grit is courage. And so you have to be able to manage those. Resilience, by the way, is recovery. That’s what it is. have to understand what are those ways we can actually move through an environment effectively. We use the attributes that…
25:53
Great Fred, but we also use neurological strategies and that’s moving horizons. And I think that that’s fantastic because you also discussed this, the physiology component when it comes to breathing, the now famous box breathing, which a lot of people don’t know came from the Navy SEALs. The 478 is also pretty powerful in my opinion. I even do a 4812 with the, psi at the top of the eight on this, which gives us that additional component. So I know that it came from the Navy SEALs, but
26:23
who introduced the box breathing to the SEALs or was it something? I think it came from the Navy SEALs only because, I would say it came from Navy SEALs as a broad term. Guy named Mark Devine was a SEAL and Mark and I were, it’s funny, he was getting out of the Navy as I was starting my career. I think it was in the mid 90s, but then he came back in as a reservist. So we never really connected while we were in the teams or while he was reserved.
26:50
and I was in the teams, but we did connect on the podcast. We know each other. Mark really, I think, and I don’t know if he takes credit for creating box breathing. I’m not sure, but he certainly popularized this idea of box breathing and has taught it to folks in the SEAL teams. I hesitate to say the SEALs use this stuff because I never was trained in breathing as a SEAL ever. No one ever talked about breathing in SEALs. So I don’t know, and I don’t know if that’s changed now, but what we have to understand about breathing and box breathing is one technique.
27:20
When we’re talking about anxiety and we’re talking about stress, what happens is our autonomic arousal, as we get stressed and anxious, our autonomic arousal goes up. It starts to, and we start to devour into our sympathetic nervous system. So our stress response is starting to get us agitated and get us excited and all that stuff. That’s our autonomic arousal goes up. As we begin to get higher and higher autonomic arousal and possibly fear, so amygdala is getting tickled, our amygdala is getting tickled.
27:48
Something very interesting is happening with our brain. Our frontal lobe, our conscious decision-making part of our brain is beginning to recede and start to take a backseat to our limbic brain. Our limbic brain is our emotional brain center. It’s our lizard brain. It’s just because a lot of what we do without thinking is done by our limbic. If we reach autonomic overload or amygdala hijack, what has happened in that case is that our frontal lobe, our conscious decision-making brain,
28:17
has taken a complete back seat and we are now running on our limbic brain. In other words, we are acting without thinking, okay? This comes in very handy for things like jumping out of the way of a moving train or even pulling your hand away from a burning hot stove or whatever, running from a bear, whatever that is. It doesn’t come in very handy for the other 99.9 % of the things that happen in life that are stress inducing because we really do want to have our frontal lobe, our conscious decision-making brain online.
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The only way we can move horizons effectively is if we’re doing it through our, we don’t move horizons, you know, with our limbic, we do it with our frontal lobe. All right. So all this to say what breathing does, breathing techniques do is breathing because it’s connected to our vagus nerve and our respiratory system is connected to all that and our sympathetic and parasympathetic symptoms is breathing can in fact manipulate
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the levels of autonomic arousal we have. And depending on the breathing, we can up our autonomic arousal, we can get ourselves more charged and exciting, or we can calm our autonomic arousal, we get ourselves calmer or peaceful. I think it’s a three, two, one, but it’s even a guy like, who’s the Iceman guy? Oh, Hoff, Wim Hoff. Yeah, Wim Hoff breathing, right? And some of the techniques I talk about in the book, they are designed to bring up autonomic arousal. Sometimes we’re not.
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we are not excited enough, we need to actually up our excitement. Those are designed to get us into a better state, excited state, so we’re actually being charged, okay? More often, all right, more often if we’re finding ourselves in uncertainty, we need to decrease our autonomic arousal. In some cases, we need to keep our autonomic arousal the same. So in other words, we may be at a point where like, know what, I’m completely where I need to be, I don’t wanna go up, I don’t wanna go down. This is exactly where box breathing comes in handy, okay? Box breathing is perfect for maintaining
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your current autonomic arousal state. that’s, know, those people are familiar. It’s safe. Same as a box. So four count as you’re breathing in, four count, hold on top, four count, exhale, four count, on bottom. That’s box breathing. That maintains your current level of autonomic arousal. If in fact you want to decrease autonomic arousal, which is oftentimes what has to happen if you find yourself approaching panic or procrastination or autonomic overload, you need to induce or start doing the
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uh… c o two blow up reading where you’re breathing away this blowing c o two out of your system and this is where you get into the um… psych the physiological side type breath where you’re taking all the pressure on a nice long exhale that is going to calm you and what’s that’s doing is not only calling you it’s bringing your frontal lobe back online so you can engage in the moving her move horizons process so so the techniques in the book just highlights in different breathing techniques depending on where you’re at autonomically
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to allow you to get in the best states to make your conscious decisions and move your horizons. And I think that people underestimate that because as you’re saying, as we’re approaching a horizon or as we’re approaching a target, they say 30 seconds out, usually you’re pretty clicked up. Yes. And we escalate naturally, but most people do not understand the importance of and necessity of deescalating as well after the fact you have to walk yourself down as well. the box breathing does that, the 478 does that. Are you familiar with?
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parachute breathing. I don’t think I am. The irony is you would know much about it, but it’s simply the same thing. We’re just taking a very quick inhale through the nose and then that big CO2 blow out through the mouth. Three of those resets us from sympathetic to parasympathetic. So if I have a person that is on zoom, they can turn the camera off, mute it. They can do this or they can excuse themselves from the room or go to the restroom or whatever it is. If they have the time and the capacity for seven, eight box breathing is beautiful.
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but in a pinch, this is like the triage that can give them the capacity to detach, breathe. If they’re in a safe environment, they can even close their eyes. So we have 20 seconds that can reset them. And now, like you said, they’re calibrated, they’re back to neutral, and they can actually act the way they want to as opposed to react without thinking. That sounds like the physiological sigh. think there’s different meanings. people have to understand about this, because people might think it’s counterintuitive, is that we actually have to understand that stress in our system
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is from a buildup of CO2. So in other words, when we’re holding our breath, whether underwater or on land, the stress we begin to feel in our system is not because of a lack of oxygen, it’s because of a buildup of CO2. Now, people understand, like free divers understand this, Navy SEALs to an extent understand this, because they know that you can push past that limit, right? You can actually push past that discomfort and go way longer because you’re accessing different parts of your oxygen in your system.
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I do not recommend it because it’s very dangerous because honestly, if you push past that initial discomfort, you’ll be able to go longer, but you won’t get another warning. This is why people who are free divers, you pass out in your debt, right? And there’s no more warning, so you will just go black. That all said, so I’m just gonna say it one more time, don’t try this at home, okay? Don’t try this at home. But that all said.
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Our stress is because of a buildup of CO2. So these breathing techniques you’re talking about, the parachute breathing or the physiological sigh, what you’re doing is you’re blowing out excess carbon dioxide and getting that out of your system and that’s calming you. And that’s why this stuff works physiologically. And they call it parachute because the idea is if you can close your eyes, you want to imagine that you’re just slowly floating on a parachute. Not a high-ho parachute type thing, but more like it’s just a very calming.
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environment with perfect weather and sunny to and sunny kind of ideas. And I like that idea as well. There’s also this you talk about this relationship of purpose and objective and how important it is to have them because people seem to think that sometimes they’re they’re different, but you’re showing how that they need to dovetail and that creates that alignment, not just for the individual, but for the team and the mission and the objective. Yeah, the way I way I define it is that objectives are
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purpose made concrete, right? Purpose or grade? What’s my purpose? Okay, a climber can look at a big mountain and say, my purpose is to climb rocks. Okay, my objective is to climb this cliff. It’s a concrete goal. It’s very difficult to break into horizons a purpose. Purposes are generally a little bit more vague, sometimes ethereal. You want to be able to create a concrete objective that
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you can then begin to take steps inside of to accomplish. that could be, you know, again, I grew up wanting to serve my country, wanting to do something cool, be a warrior of some sort. Okay. That’s a purpose. My objective became become a Navy SEAL. All right. Now, even that objective can be quite large. So so that objective has to be understood, but then released because you have to release. So if my purpose is to or my objective is to eat the elephant, great.
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But now I have to release that and start looking at how to do that one chunk at a time. This is the moving horizons. But the objective, what we have to understand, the reason why it’s a chapter in the book is because that is for certain driving your behavior in uncertainty, challenge, and stress. It’s still there. It’s in the background, if it’s concrete enough. My objective to become a Navy SEAL was driving me in all of my aspects of SEAL training when it was getting hard.
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And during the real specific times when I was shifting horizons and DPOing heavily, I wasn’t thinking about Navy SEAL and very few people do. This is by the way why people quit. know, someone can have this objective of becoming a Navy No, very few guys who start SEAL training don’t have the objective of becoming a Navy SEAL. What they fail to do is in fact let that go to an extent where they can focus and
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and shift horizons and DPO effectively. The guys who quit are the guys who cannot DPO effectively. They focus too much on what’s gonna happen and what’s happening, what’s already happened and all this stuff versus I’m just gonna focus on the moment. So we have to understand that the objectives are driving our behavior and that’s where we’re creating our horizons, but we’re letting it go. We’re not letting it, it dominates and loom too largely in our horizon because, or in our minds because it’s just too much of a chunk.
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It is and like you said, if you had this idea that I’ll quit tomorrow that keeps you in that horizon or like you said, even the smaller ones of these five waves or this breath or get to the next meal, it’s much more manageable. And it also comes back to the two most important words that we have, which you’ve mentioned, which is I am. Yeah. Yeah. I saw the I am the identity chapter. of actually probably the chapter I had the most fun writing because I’ve actually explored this. I explored this concept for years. I mean, I’m talking decades. I’ve thought about identity. I think one of the reasons is because
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I grew up as a twin, an identical twin. And when you’re an identical twin growing up, you’re never just one person. You’re always with another person. Now I say that with deep love, and I couldn’t imagine not being a twin. And I don’t say that with any kind of woe is me type aspect. I say it with an interest in the sense that I became, I’ve been fascinated with what these aspects of creating identity are and how we as human beings start to put together who we are based on.
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these identities we collect. And the idea is as we move through life, human beings, collect identities. And some of them are, some of them are big and important, and some of them are fairly small and benign. I mean, it could be everything from, went to this high school, to I’m a lacrosse player, to I’m a Nady Seal, to I’m a husband or father, and or father, I’m a Metallica fan, I’m a, know, whatever that is. But every one of these identities comes with them.
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rules and conditions and in some cases biases that define what being that identity looks like. And what we have to understand is we’re biased and we’re influenced by these. We behave towards these because of these identities we carry. And especially in a certainty challenge of stress, we are going to behave towards and with deference to whichever identities are the most powerful, okay? Whether it’s one or two, usually the most powerful identity.
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is the one we will default to. So we have to become very clear as human beings as to what A, our list of identities are and which ones are the most powerful and which ones are the ones we defer to. Now, the example for me, of course, would be I had two very powerful identities when I was in the Navy. I was a Navy SEAL. That was one identity. Another identity was I was a husband and father. Okay. Now I always, always prioritized husband and father.
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That’s always been my most important identity. However, the Navy was sometimes like, no, no, Navy SEAL needs to come first. And I was okay with that because when I went to, when I deployed overseas, Navy SEAL was up first. It had to be, and I was okay with that. Sometimes we’d be on target and something would happen and you’d shift because you’d have to take care of people or something and you say, okay, have been father’s now first. Right? So, I think the essence of the greatest warriors are those who understand these identities to a very detailed degree and can shift between them
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depending on environment. We all know that true warriors aren’t the ones who are fighting wars all the time. They can actually really, they can ebb and flow and they can be the peaceful warrior, they can be the violent warrior, they can execute precision violence, they can execute precision kindness, and they could do so based on what’s required at the time. These are identity shifts. And so the chapter goes into this and encourages people to understand that about themselves because that is for certain going to drive you.
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because it drives you, by the way, even when you are in panic mode or you’re overly autonomically aroused. This is why you get sports fans beating the crap out of other teams that they dislike. And then afterwards being in front of the judge being like, I don’t know what came over me. Well, I know what came over you is your autonomic arousal hit. You weren’t thinking and you were behaving towards an identity that you prioritized and you didn’t understand what’s going on in the moment because you weren’t thinking. But you were certainly behaving towards that identity.
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And that can be destructive. the same time, we can also, if we’re conscious and present in the moment, and we understand, can pick and choose identities. We can say, what identity is necessary for this moment, right? That is also a superpower because you can also start to say, okay, well, right now, even though husband-father identity is powerful, that’s not what I need right now. I need Navy SEAL identity or vice versa.
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Um, so understanding this about ourselves starts to drive a deeper, uh, deeper and more precise knowledge of what and how we’re going to perform in these environments. And I love that you talked about that multifaceted component of the warrior. A true warrior has all those things. Yeah. It’s not just this barbarian that swings a sword. And honestly, for some people to say, well, why do I have to have all these aspects of a warrior? Well, if you survive on the battlefield, you’re going to need more than just the art of war to be able to be a great husband, a great father.
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What good is it to survive the battle or to defend your country or your people and not be able to truly enjoy and flourish in the freedom that you’ve sacrificed so much for in the first place? Yeah, I agree. I agree. Yeah. It’s a huge, it’s a huge aspect of this. And warriorship is, it encompasses a great deal of modalities, if you will. And we know those, those that we look at in present day and in history who we consider warriors.
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They showcased those modalities and the ability to flex in between them. And that’s important. Yeah, again, that ability to be a master of uncertainty during peace or during war. I know that we are on a certain amount of time here, but I would love to talk about something that a lot of people discuss, but they are very ambiguous about, and it’s this concept of trust. And you broke it down to these four beautiful domains, these four Cs, if you will. Competence, consistency, character, and compassion, which sort of touches on what we were discussing.
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And I love it because when people say, trust, well, again, you have to understand that I had to be able to trust you. You have to demonstrate that, these things. But also, I have to trust the fact that I am worthy of the trust from other people as well, which all of these come together to give us the ability. If I’m the CEO, I’m the leader and everybody trusts me, but I don’t trust myself, it’s because I’m lacking one of these areas. Yeah, yeah. The idea behind trust is trust is not.
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simply a feeling. Trust is a belief that it’s a feeling that’s been rationalized in some way. In other words, someone has done something. It’s behavior. And one of things we have to understand is if we want to build a trusting environment around us, the nonsensical concept of waiting until other people prove it to you is not going to work. We have to go first. We have to behave in a way that allows other people to trust us.
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and then they will likely reciprocate. If they don’t, it’s our choice whether or not we want to continue to associate with them, but we have to go first. These behaviors are broken down in these four elements. So competence is defined as really do the thing right. Consistency is do the thing right over time. Character, which is a big word, I’d say integrity, right? So it’s do the thing right, do the thing right over time, do the right thing. And then compassion, do the right thing because you care about me as a human being. so each one of these aspects, you can actually build a trusting environment or begin to build one inside of any one of these.
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Confidence can make certainly, mean, listen, if you and I are in a building together and it starts to smoke, smoke starts to bellow on the room and someone runs in and says, hey, follow me, I know the way out. And they lead us out. just trust that way. I mean, we now trust that person based on competence. Okay. There hasn’t been anything else in there. We’ve just seen confidence. So you can build that environment there. But if you want the longest lasting, most durable trust, you need to build and focus on building all four. All four come with very specific behaviors that allow for someone else to feel that about you.
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And that’s how you build the highest performing teams. And there’s a great story in the book, which I don’t want you to talk about because I want people to read the book to hear the example that you gave. Again, it was actions, not words. It was octanonverbal. You did it in real time. There was pressure. There were consequences. so if people haven’t picked up the book yet, you absolutely need to. And you also really wrote down, which I loved, you mentioned a little bit in the attributes, but this idea of dynamic subordination, which is literally what all the most
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high achieving teams are doing in real time. Yeah, yeah. Dynamics of Ordination really is, it turns all of the other leadership or task organization models aside and says, listen, Dynamics of Ordination implies that a leader is wherever the leader needs to be in the moment, which means a team understands problems and challenges and issues can come from any angle at any moment. And when one does, the person who’s closest to that problem and the most competent immediately steps up and makes lead and everybody supports and follows.
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and then something else happens, someone else steps up. And so this is a, it’s a dynamic swap between leader and follower. I also call it alpha hopping, the alpha position hops to wherever it needs to be. And so what I say is, listen, I was an officer in the SEAL teams and I went on hundreds of missions and I was in charge of every single one. It did not mean I was always being supported. In fact, most of the time it was the opposite. I was supporting other people. Sometimes the environment would shift and they’d support me, but all this to say is that our position and responsibility on a team has nothing to do with our hierarchy or rank.
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It has everything to do with what we are there to contribute to the team. And in the moment, you are contributing or you’re supporting. And as leaders, it’s our responsibility to create that environment. We have to create an environment where people understand they can step up and step back and lean on each other. The way we do that is trust. You build trust and you understand attributes because you understand what everybody is there to contribute, what they can, what they can’t, where are we going to be leaning. And then you start to give people the opportunity.
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to step forward and in some cases fail and you have your back and they learn. We learn way more from failure than we do achievement. So we have to allow for people to step up and sometimes trip up and make mistakes. But that’s how we create that environment. And if you do that, you create a team. You actually, well, you solve what I always used to call, I used to tell junior officers, I said, listen, you have to understand the irony of leadership. And the irony of leadership is if you do your job correctly, you work your stuff out of a job.
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because you create a team that can run without you. And in some cases, most cases outpace you. That’s what every leader should desire to do. Now in the military, was obviously necessary because I could get killed at any moment. The team has to be able to operate. But any leader should have the overall goal of building a team that eventually just becomes so fast, so good that they have to step aside and say, you guys, you team, you’re just.
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Great, that’s you. If you’ve done it correctly, that’s you. And the truest leaders, that’s what drives them. It’s not the ego of the position or the ranking or whatever that drives them to be able to help create a team of humans that can do that. And if we’re really honest as leaders, if we’re trying to build something bigger than us, if it’s a CEO or a visionary, however you want to verbalize it, that person cannot know everything about every piece of minutiae. if you’re asking this, it’s like, talk to the CFO, talk to the COO about this, talk about what this next thing is.
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Talk to my assistant, schedule this for me. But if we’re trying to go fast, we cannot have this luxury of thinking that we can micromanage everything because we’re literally stymieing their capacity to do what they need to do well and we’re never growing. Well, and also you’re not allowing for the space to think about the things you’re supposed to think about. The CEO is not supposed to think about minutia. CEO is supposed to think up and out. As the commanding officer of a SEAL squadron,
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I’m not supposed to think about how much explosives we need on the door. I’m supposed to be thinking about the overall operation and what we need to be doing. And if I’m not allowed to do that, or if I’m, if I’m deliberately forcing myself or, or I would say making the excuse to not do it by focusing on the minutia, a lot of, a lot of leaders do that. They, they, they, they hide away in the details because they’re comfortable there because they don’t want to do this. All right. But if I’m not allowing to do that, I am not serving the team in my best capacity. I’m just not. And I’m not allowing for.
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what I’m there to be doing to be done because I’m focusing on other stuff. So we have to, as leaders, understand that we are a team is a amorphous blob of humans that step up and step back and are constantly working together and supporting and leaning and moving together on this. And it’s our job to create and foster that environment. Absolutely. Rich, I could talk to you for hours and I have and I look forward to doing that in the future.
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The attributes, where can we learn more about this? You have an attributes website that has some incredible resources in addition to your newest book, Masters of Uncertainty. Where would you direct all of our listeners to learn more about you, your work, everything you have to? Well, the best one stop shop is the attributes.com. That’s our website. And there you can learn, you can find both books there. You can learn about everything we do in terms of helping high performing teams. Obviously you can find both books on Amazon and some of those sites, but I think the best is the attributes.com is the website.
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Obviously I’m also on Instagram and LinkedIn. can follow me there and encourage you to do so. yeah. Absolutely. Rich, thank you so much again. I look forward to shaking your hand in person at some point in the future soon. Thank you, my brother. really do too. So thank you for having me again. Thank you, brother. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
