Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet

by Jesse Itzler

“When you think you’re done, you’re only at forty percent of what your body is capable of doing. That’s just the limit that we put on ourselves.”

Any success I have ever had in my life usually occurred when I was not chasing the money but was doing things out of passion.

I just go one step at a time. One rep at a time. And when I’m done, I worry about the next step or rep. I’m finding that there’s some crossover to my life as well. Now I finish the first thing on my list with 100 percent focus and then attack the next.

Don’t try to multitask. If you focus on one thing you will be able to be fully present with it and get the best results

With fitness there’s never a finish line. You can always do better. For me personally, I guess I probably have thirty or forty years left on earth. And how many of those am I going to be young enough and healthy enough to do things? I want to experience the best stuff I can. I’ve never jumped off a cliff—I should just jump off a cliff because I’m only here once. That’s how I approach things now. That’s how I feel about things. That’s how I live my life.

you don’t challenge yourself, you don’t know yourself. —SEAL

If you can see yourself doing something, you can do it. If you can’t see yourself doing something, usually you can’t achieve it.

sometimes would be on the couch and not want to do whatever needed to be done and I’d be like “Fuck it,” and blow it off. Procrastinate. I don’t think like that anymore. Just get off the couch and do it is what I remind myself. SEAL would never say, “Fuck it.” He’d get off the couch and do it. Regardless of the time, the temperature, or how tired he was.

Our minds sometimes tell us little lies about ourselves, and we believe them. We think we can’t do this or that. It’s not true.

The simplicity that SEAL has is one of the most important things in life. He gets to do what he loves every day. He lives stress-free.

“It’s about protecting what you have,” he said to me about being a SEAL.

SEAL taught me that you only get one shot at life and you should find out what’s in your reserve tank. Coasting is for “pussies” as SEAL would say and it’s when you dig deep that you feel the most alive. He lives his life that way.

learned that by constantly doing things that are hard and making myself uncomfortable, I improve my ability to handle obstacles. I get comfortable being uncomfortable—and that’s real mental toughness.

And by constantly putting myself in situations that are challenging, I’ve created an environment in my head that makes me want to keep going even when things get ridiculously hard. In these situations, I have trained myself not to quit, but to attack.