Mark Divine's Blog, page 52

Weekly Monster Mash – 7/1/2017

Baseline: Pre-SOP and box breathing, then ROM Drills.

Work Capacity: 90 min. Ruck (40#) Holding 1 Kettle Bell (35#).

Durability: Hydrate and fuel within 30 minutes.  Journal post training session SOP.

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Weekly Monster Mash – 6/24/2017

Baseline: Pre-SOP and box breathing, then ROM Drills.

Work Capacity: With a swim buddy complete for time:

5 mile run
1 mile Swim (preferably open water)
8 mile ruck

Durability:  Hydrate and fuel within 30 minutes.  Journal post training session SOP.

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A Navy SEAL Commander’s Advice on Developing Mental Toughness

Make positive choices during your weakest moments.

Do life’s events appear random and outside your control? Perhaps you think or say phrases like “I’m stressed,” “this job is killing me,” or “I need a drink.” Do you shrink into yourself, or even quit, when things go sideways? Maybe you get emotionally overwhelmed, and let fear, uncertainty, or frustration derail your mission.

As a retired Navy SEAL Commander with 30 years of martial arts training, and over 15 years of yoga practice, I teach special operations candidates and everyday people how to become mentally tougher and perform at elite levels. The principles are simple, but not easy. Emotional resiliency takes courage and patience.

Here are four ways to get started:

1. Deep breathing.

Mental, emotional, and physical stress can be controlled through deep, controlled, rhythmic breathing. I use the Pranayama Breathing app to “box breathe” for 10 minutes on a morning before Kokoro yoga or pre and post workout. This involves inhaling, holding, exhaling, and holding, for four seconds each.

Breathing is free medicine to control your fight-or-flight response, allowing your body to function rather than be overwhelmed by a stressor. It reduces mental chatter, giving you the clarity to make better decisions.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom, I was quoted in a provocative newspaper article about SEALs. As a SEAL captain read me the riot act, I felt my anger rising.

Beneath the anger, I breathed, detached and recognized a fear of loss from the repercussions of my damaged reputation. I envisioned myself as a respected officer who was doing the right thing — and my superior was just doing his job. Ultimately my reputation was enhanced by the incident.

2. Positive self-talk.

Pay attention to your energy. At SEALFIT camps, we ask sleep deprived trainees — who may be facing a night of surf torture — “What dog are you feeding?” We all have the dog of fear or courage inside our mind fighting for attention. After years of negative programming — from the news, TV, family, friends, own self-talk — fear dog normally wins, eroding performance.

You can interrupt negative thoughts by standing tall and shouting power statements that we use in the Navy like, “Hooyah!” “Easy day,” “Piece of cake,” or “Could be worse.” Long workouts can become effortless with mantras like:

“Feeling good, looking good, ought to be in Hollywood!”

“Day by day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.”

“Remember why you’re here.”

“Stay in the moment. Stay relaxed.”

“Feed your courage. You can do this. It’s easy.”

“Quit now and you’ll quit everything for the rest of your life.”

“I’m doing what I want and know what I’m doing.”

“Not dead, can’t quit.”

SEALs have a saying, “Suffer in silence.” So if a workout or project sucks, don’t complain. Your job is to strengthen your team. Find humor where others can’t. Clinical trials found that a smile can bring the same level of stimulation as eating chocolate!

3. Visualizations.

It’s no secret that athletes use visualization in their training arsenal. Here are two ways to trick your brain into believing an event has happened for real:

Rehearsal: Practice an event in your mind before attempting it. It could be a presentation, an awkward conversation, or gut-busting workout. At SEALFIT, as a standard operating procedure, we have a pre-workout visualization like this: Find a quiet place to prepare our mind. Dirt dive exceptional performance, dominating every evolution with a smile on our face as you help your teammates.
Future Me: Mentally project yourself achieving a major life goal like securing Kokoro camp. Repeatedly doing so plants a seed in your subconscious mind to recruit the resources to nurture the event to fruition. Try this regularly with your eyes closed during a meditation: See yourself as a vibrant person, glowing from your efforts. You’re physically strong, mentally alert, energetic, grounded, and centered. The sun is shining. The sky is clear. You note the date and the time. You knew this day would come. You acknowledge all your massive action to transform this dream into reality by first creating it in your mind.

4. Micro goals.

At 3 a.m. on Monday of Navy SEAL Hell Week (six days of training with just four hours of sleep), “making it to Friday” would have been a terrible goal. Instead, I focused on making it until sunrise, then the next meal, then the next step. Otherwise, the magnitude of the experience would have become overwhelming. So if you have to write a book, focus on writing 1,000 words. If you’ve got a massive project, execute the most important task.

In summary: it’s a myth that stress is your problem. How you interpret and handle external stressors determines if you’ll overcome your woes. From now on, embrace your power to choose how you’ll interpret stressful events. With mental toughness training, you can dominate life’s challenges and be twenty times more capable than you think.

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Weekly Monster Mash – 6/17/2017

Baseline: Pre-SOP and box breathing, then ROM Drills.

Work Capacity: For time with a partner:

1 mile run
30x Rope Climb
1 mile run
50x Man Makers (45/35)
1 Mile run
100x Cutis- P (95/65)

Durability: Journal post training session SOP.

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Weekly Monster Mash – 6/10/2017

Baseline: Pre-SOP and box breathing, then ROM Drills.

Work Capacity: “CIA 7”: 7 Rounds For Time:

7 Handstand Push-Ups
7 Thrusters (135/95 lbs)
7 Knees-to-Elbows
7 Deadlifts (245/165 lbs)
7 Burpees
7 Kettlebell Swings (2/1.5 pood)
7 Pull-Ups

Durability: Hydrate and fuel within 30 minutes.  Journal post training session SOP.

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The Mark Divine BLOG: Unbeatable Leader Chapter 2

Happy day tribe! I know I’ve been MIA here on the blog, but it’s because the team and I are hard at work on what feels like a million different projects. One of those projects is editing my next book, tentatively titled Unbeatable Leader. If you listen to the Unbeatable Mind Podcast, you may have heard me read Chapters 1 and 2 of the new book. Today on the blog, I’m sharing an excerpt from Chapter 2. It’s a look into my experience starting Coronado Brewing Company, and it’s not a story I’ve shared often up until now. Here you go, hope you like it!

 “When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” From Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Awakening naturally causes greater self-awareness. And deeper awareness of what drives your behavior in the stories we live allow us to create a new vision and path that becomes our authentic destiny. Self-awareness unfolds in a progressive manner like peeling an onion. Ultimately showing you that vast 20X potential over time.

In your leadership roles, this expanding awareness also allows you to appreciate the desires, needs, and motivation of other teammates and stakeholders in your sphere of influence and control. Further, you become more attuned to the evolving systems and structures in your life so you can align with and transform them to meet your mission. But this process is not simple, nor immediate, as my first entrepreneurial experience taught me.

Though having had several awakening experiences earlier, my awareness level when I launched the Coronado Brewing Company was still somewhat limited in terms of the leadership capacity we are speaking of in this book. Being a hard-charging Navy SEAL gave me a lot of tools and insights to succeed, but it didn’t automatically propel me to the integrated leadership required to succeed in a complex business environment.

It still had work to do. Imagine that.

I watched the line form outside the new Coronado Brewing Company with anticipation. The year-long journey of financing and guiding this landmark Coronado Island location was coming to an end. But I knew it was also the beginning of the next phase of making it a successful, enduring business and also the next phase of my budding entrepreneurial career. The plan to launch the brewing company was hatched by my brother-in-law Rick and I after he approached me to open a bar with him. “Coronado is home to the West Coast SEAL teams, and a SEAL owned bar could be successful,” I thought. However, after some research, we decided to get into the fledgling brewing business instead. There were just two other breweries in San Diego at the time, which seemed to be doing well. And ours would be a destination for both Coronado residents–which included many of my Navy peers as well as the over-the-bridge folks from San Diego.

The line outside that opening night was a foreshadow of the success we would have. A week before opening and our beer was ready. But the permit hadn’t been issued, so we held an “open house” party. That party was a huge success, and the buzz–so to speak–got out quickly. We were off on a roller coaster ride of business building.

But cracks in our partnership began to show quickly, and it became clear that my vision was different than my partner’s. A large communication gap opened up, which I did not have the skills to solve. Everything I tried made things worse, until we were actively fighting for control of the business. Lawyers, proxies and all. Trust was destroyed and the emotional energy got stuck in quicksand, magnified by the family relationships. This energy pulled me down to an earlier, shadow version of myself which was reactive and negative. I had worked so hard to develop emotional control as a SEAL, and so I was frustrated. What the heck was going on?

That partnership didn’t survive. And after my wife Sandy begged me to get out, I sold my interests to my brothers-in-law and moved on. Licking my wounds.

That’s it folks! Hope you enjoyed that little snippet from my upcoming book. If you would like to hear even more from the new book, head over to the Unbeatable Mind Podcast (it’s available on iTunes and Google Play!) I’m going to try and  Until next time, work hard and stay strong.

Hooyah!

-MD

Looking to gain more leadership skills? Join me and an amazing group of leaders is the areas of nutrition, fitness, business and more at the Unbeatable Mind Summit December 1-3, 2017 in Carlsbad, CA! This 3-day event is an experience like no other. Learn more HERE.

 

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Weekly Monster Mash – 6/3/2017

Baseline: Pre-SOP and box breathing, then ROM Drills.

Work Capacity: 5 Rounds for time with a partner:

1 mile run
100x Air Squat
75x Push up
50x Pull up

* Team must carry 55lb Kettlebell for the entire workout, does not matter who carries it or for how long.

*Team may break up reps however needed, 1 mile run must be completed together.

Durability: Active Stretch. Hydrate and fuel within 30 minutes.  Journal post training session SOP.

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Video Archives

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Weekly Monster Mash – 5/27/2017

Baseline: Pre-SOP and box breathing, then ROM Drills.

Work Capacity: Complete for time with a partner:

In a 20# Weight Vest:

100x Deadlift (205)
800m Run
100x Wall Ball
800m Run
100x Kettle Bell Swing (55/35)
800m Run
100x Burpee
800m Run
100x Slam Ball
800m Run

*One partner works at a time, the partner who is not working must maintain a front leaning rest position.

Durability: Kokoro Yoga or Active Stretch, hydrate and fuel within 30 minutes.  Journal post training session SOP.

 

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Weekly Monster Mash – 5/20/2017

Baseline: Pre-SOP and box breathing, then ROM Drills

Work Capacity: For time

100-90-80-70-60-50-40-30-20-10 reps:

Burpees
Box Step ups (20”/18”)
*800m Run between sets.

Durability: Kokoro yoga or Active Stretch.

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