One of the other common areas I think that people are struggling with, you speak to a lot of young men, train men. What's your advice to young men that are struggling with direction in life? Like there are a bunch of young men out there and they are getting after it. whether they're linemen, whether they're on oil rigs, whether they're software developers, like there's all kinds of people that are out there crushing. And so when I hear about people that would you say are lost or — directionless? — Directionless. Yeah. I mean, what do you want to do with your life? I guess that's my question. Because you got one life. It's going by quickly. And this is something that uh years ago I I spent a good chunk of my I guess it was my 30s training MMA fighters. And you know, we had a jiu-jitsu gym, we had an MMA gym. And so in the beginning when a potential fighter would come in and they'd be 22 years old and I'd say, "Hey, how old are you? " And they'd say, "I'm 22. " And they say, "You know, I want to fight. I want to there's a fight card coming up. I want to be on it. " And I was like, I'd tell them, "Listen, you got plenty of time. like get better, train, up your skills. And I said that for probably 3 or 4 years. And then after 3 or 4 years, when guys would come in, I would start telling them the opposite, which is you need to get on it. You need to be in here every day. The you're almost out of time. You're 22. You're late. because I realized I saw a lot of people that didn't have any sense of urgency in their life. And when you don't have a sense of urgency, things aren't going to happen. You need to make things happen. As we already discussed, they're not just going to happen for you. You're not going to become a good fighter unless you make it happen. And you're not going to do anything in life unless you make it happen. So, if you feel like right now you're looking around with and you're lost or directionless, I would take about 15 minutes and figure out what the hell you want to do with your life and I would start getting after it. So, that's my advice. Take 15 minutes, figure out something that you're into, and go crush that thing and and make it happen. For better or worse, life is really short. And it's this ridiculous irony that you only see in retrospect how short it is, right? It doesn't feel short at the time, but I bet when you get to your 80s and you look back, you think, "Holy [ __ ] that went by in no time at all. " Yeah. I had that conversation with my mom a couple years ago and, you know, she said, you know, I was like, "Oh, how's it going talking on the phone? " She said, "Oh, it's been a pretty rough couple months because this person died, this person died. " And you know, she's almost 80 or something like that. And so I kind of I said to her, you know, Mom, all those people that you're talking about that are 80, 85, 87 years old, like they've had a full run at it. I'm like, I I've buried my friends that are 27 years old, 30 years old, 31 years old. Like, that's horrible. And so, people that got this full run, man, be thankful that they got that full run. — It is. I understand why some people have degrees of regret around that because they think like, I I don't know where that time went. I wish I'd known this thing sooner. But again, if action is the antidote to anxiety, the only way that you can work out what it is that you need to do is by hurrying up and doing it. And again, if the fear of failure, uh, the fear of the unknown is worse than the actual thing, you know, it all ties together, I think, everything that we've spoken about, — like, yeah, you're going to blow some stuff, you're going to make some bad decisions, you're going to screw some things up. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Like that those make for good stories, man. Go get them. Go make them happen. — Mhm. And right now, if you're a dude and you're 22 years old and you feel like you're directionless, get your [ __ ] together, man. And go start making things happen.
When we deployed to Iraq in 2006, we'd been fighting since 2003, and we'd had very few casualties in the SEAL teams. The amount of guys that had experienced their teammates killed in action was minuscule. And so, there was no preparation other than what I had taken away from reading about combat for my whole life. What I did was what I knew how to do, which was work. And that's literally what I told my guys was we've crossed a line and there's no possible way to replace or describe or overcome the amount of just heartwrenching sadness that you feel when you lose a teammate. I didn't know what to do and say. First time, — first time, second time, third time, — irrelevant, but time. — What I did was, and I told my guys, I don't know what to do. tell you. The only thing that I know to do is to go back to work. And I do know this. If Mark was here, he would want us to go back to work. And so, we're going to lock and load our weapons, and we're going to go do what we do. in World War II, in World War I, there would be days where thousands upon thousands were killed. And so that offered me a small bit of perspective to think to myself that human beings, we can feel like we're special and no one's ever been through what I've been through and the world is hard for me and easier for everyone else. Well, the reality is that's not true and we're not special. And the things that people go through, other people have gone through most likely much worse and much more significant. So that to me was a it gave me at least some level of perspective to realize that other warriors had gone through this before. This was my turn and this is how I'm going to try and handle it. I've got that going on and and I need to control it. So when people start getting emotional, when guys get killed, how do I get control over that? I absolutely have to control my own emotions because it's your guys. And believe me, when you lose one of your guys, you want to kill everyone. And you know you can't shouldn't. So you have to detach from your emotions. You have to get control of them and you have to make sure that you lead your men in the right direction so they don't do something that is not the right thing to do. One of my answers for people when they say, "Hey, how can I get better at detaching and control my emotions emotions? " I tell them to start training jiu-jitsu because you're going to get tapped out in jiu-jitsu. Your ego is going to get smacked around so hard you're going to lose your mind. and what you and the wor the more the matter you get, the more aggressive you are, the more you're going to get beat down and the worse it's going to be. So, you have to learn to control your emotions. No doubt about it. And then what you have to do is you have to start practicing it all the time. paying attention to the the red flags that go up when I start raising my voice at you. I go, "Oh, that's your emotion getting. " And for me, like the minute I feel some sort of anger, some sort of jealousy, some sort of frustration, most of the time I go, "Oh, you're getting mad. That's your ego. That's your That's you're getting emotional about this. " Take a step back and listen to what the other person is saying. Take a step back and try and see it from their perspective. understand what they're trying to say. Because sometimes, you know, if you're not a very articulate person, you're just making me mad. It's only because I don't understand what you're trying to say. Take a step back. Let's talk through it. So, pay attention to, you know, I always talk about when you're sending an email to someone and you're typing like this. Don't send that email. That's not a good email to send. That's an emotional email. Wait. Write it out fine. And then save it and read it later and you'll realize, oh yeah, I was really mad about something and I was really frustrated. So, how do you do it? You practice it. You pay attention to your emotions and you get control over them.
