How Navy Seals Create an Unbeatable Mind, with Mark Divine – Episode 218 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Best-selling author, CEO of SEALFIT, and retired Navy SEAL commander Mark Divine explains the “20x Factor” and idea of direct perception, talks about shaping your enemies’ minds, and breaks down the 4 step process to achieving an unbeatable mind.

About Mark:

Mark is from upstate New York and did his formal undergraduate education at Colgate University. His years at Colgate University were focused on athletic endeavors such as competitive swimming, rowing and triathlon racing, interrupted by brief episodes of academic activity. After graduation from “the Gate” Mark started his professional career as a CPA with Coopers & Lybrand in New York City. Clients included luminous and no-longer existent financial firms such as Solomon Brothers and Paine Webber.

Four painful years later, with an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business in his briefcase, he left behind the suit to pursue his inner vision to become a Navy SEAL officer. He was 26 when he graduated as honor-man (#1 ranked trainee) of his SEAL BUD/s class 171. Mark was fortunate to serve with many great men and women on active duty for nine year and in the reserves for eleven…retiring at the rank of Commander in 2011.

After leaving active duty in 1997, Mark started his second business career as an entrepreneur. He co-founded the successful Coronado Brewing Company and launched NavySEALs.com in the year he left the active duty Navy. NavySEALs.com is the leading web site for gear and information about the SEALs. US Tactical was next, gaining contracts with Naval Special Warfare Group ONE for training support, and the Navy Recruiting Command for a nationwide mentoring program for SEAL, SWCC, EOD and Diver candidates.

Mark’s business career was interrupted by a stint as an Adjunct Professor of Leadership at the University of San Diego, where he was pursuing his Doctorate in Leadership, then by a one year recall to active duty in 2004. The recall took him to Baghdad with SEAL Team One to conduct a special project for Naval Special Warfare Command surrounding the role of the USMC in Special Operations.

In 2007 he launched his CrossFit affiliate and the now internationally known SEALFIT program to provide transformational personal and team training experiences. The training utilizes an integrated warrior development model he developed, called Unbeatable Mind, which draws from his 20 years as a SEAL and business leader, 25 years as a martial artist and 15 years as yoga practitioner.

SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind are uniquely effective at elevating clients to a higher level of operating, thinking and leading – encompassing the full spectrum of human experience – Body, Mind and Spirit in Self, Team and Organization.

Learn more at MarkDivine.com, UnbeatableMind.com, and SEALFIT.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
Mark Divine has a degree in economics from Colgate University and an MBA in finance from NYU, his first career was as a CPA, but four years after joining mark left and became pursued his vision to become an elite Navy SEAL officer. And what’s cool. Not only was he in the Navy SEALs, but he graduated as the honor man, the number one ranked trainee of his seal class served nine years active duty, and 11 years as a reserve seal. He is the New York Times best selling author of the way of the seal and eight weeks to SEAL Fit, also an accomplished martial artist and just an awesome guy, Mark, welcome to the show, man. You know, this concept of unbeatable mind. I think it’s so relevant. One of the things that you talk about is the 20x factor. Can you tell us what that’s all about?

Mark Divine
Yeah, sure. You know, most people have heard of hell week Hell Week is that one week during the nine months of seal, you know, in dock training, or basic training called buds, and then SQ t. So there’s one week that’s kind of famous, and that’s the week called Hell Week where we train from new Sunday afternoon until Friday, the following Friday around the clock without any sleep, actually, they give us four hours just to mess with us on Thursday. But so it’s kind of legendary, you know, and, and it really is, it’s multi purpose. But I would say the dominant purpose is to teach those that make it through it, that they’re capable of practically anything that they put their mind to. The reason I use the 20x term is because as I was preparing myself, for my own Hell Week, you know, I kind of I had some unique rituals, my teammates were all sitting in messing with their gear, and you know, that we had this big tent set up, set up and buzz and they’re kind of like anxiously awaiting what we call breakout, which was the start, and I had kind of wandered off over the berm, you know, and just sat and looked at the ocean and just, you know, began my breathing and kind of meditation practice what I now call, you know, winning in my mind before the battle. And as I was sitting there, one of the instructors came up to me and he kind of smiled. He, like, he looked at me, and I don’t know what was going through his head, but he must have been thinking, Okay, this guy is a little bit different. And he’s doing something different. And I get it, and it came at me and he goes, Mark, you got nothing to worry about, because you’re capable 20 times more than you think you are, have fun, you know, basically have fun with this one, because he knew for some reason that I was going to make it through. And when the training started, you know, again, the first like, 50, some odd hours are the hardest, because that’s the like, the new reality of this, your life circumstances setting in your body is all of a sudden saying, I am exhausted, I haven’t slept, I’m freezing cold, I’m shaved, I’m bleeding, you know, I’ve just ache all over the place. But your mind says, Okay, that’s all fine and good. But you’re not quitting, you got three and a half more days. And so that was what was going through my mind. In the meantime, my my teammates were quitting left and right, we, you know, we started my class with 185 students, all highly qualified super studs, by the time we get to Hell Week, we’re probably down to like 120 or something like that. And then by the end of 50 hours a hell week, we’re down to like, 60. So they’re just dropping like flies. And I was just telling myself can’t quit, just keep going one foot in front, the other, you know, words to that effect, my body started to get stronger. So you know, after days without sleep, you know, around the clock physical training, most people conventional wisdom would be that you’d be breaking down and you know, you’d be almost catatonic and my body started to build muscle mass and started to get stronger, and I started to get more alert, and I was still probably, you know, if you were to give me some sort of test, I was probably I would probably have, you know, failed any higher cognitive functions or skills, you know, but I was able to stay focused on the tasks that they were giving to me and to stay focused on my team and to, you know, drive through and I was getting stronger and feeling stronger. And so that was really profound to me because I realized you know, afterwards that that that instructor was right, like I truly was capable 20 times more than I thought and how we proved it to me. And so that’s become kind of a central tenet of my my teaching today is that you know, you are capable 20 times more and then 20 times again, but you got to prove it to yourself in order to believe it at a really got a heart level. You know, I mean, it’s not a cognitive thing. You can’t just think yourself that you’re capable that much more because that’s, that’s not enough. You know, you’ve got to get it know it deeply.

Host
Give us an example for some of the people that are not that familiar with hell week, what are some of the other things that you’re doing?

Mark Divine
You know, the evolutions they call every event in evolution is that evolution is range from anywhere from, you know, a couple hours to like six or eight hours long. And they had us doing you know, seal like stuff but not the not super complicated like we weren’t jumping out of helicopters with, you know, live ammunition and bursting down doors because this wasn’t the purpose of the training, training was to attract those people who weren’t mentally tougher or emotionally resilient and couldn’t be good teammates, and prove those of us who were mentally tough, emotionally resilient, and good teammates that were capable of frickin anything. So the types of things we’re doing like one evolution was to take our 350 pound logs, and you know, to take them on like a 10 mile journey, right, carrying them over our heads and on our shoulders without putting them down. And so that was, you know, interesting challenge to say the least in the soft sand. Another was to paddle our little rubber boats that called IBS. I’m not even sure what that acronym was, but we called we called it at bat ship. little rubber boats. And there are seven of us. And we had to paddle these itty bitty ships around Coronado Island in San Diego at night. And that was I think, on like Wednesday night or something of Hell Week, and everybody was hallucinating, including myself. Now it’s like two in the morning. And we’re just stroke stroke stroke. And the guy in front of me, literally, his paddle slipped out of his hand and started floating past me and I grabbed it and his arms kept moving. You know, he kept stroking. So I took the battle, I just smacked him over the head with it. And as I hate dummy years battle, he’s like, holy cow, I didn’t even know I lost that thing a little bit, you know, longer a little bit further along, I saw this massive wave well up in front of me. And I’m like water, water. That’s what we used to say, you know, when we go through surf passage, so in a huge wave came up. And so I ducked down and everyone looks at me, like, what are you doing? I said, Doc water, and then I look up and there’s nothing there. I’m like, so your mind, you know, our mind, the body first goes, and then the mind goes. And that’s that’s kind of the whole point here is that the mind starts to play tricks on you. And it’s your cognitive mind, which is, you know, the reality is is fraying. And the structures that you used to hang on to his real are starting to shift and to fray. And so you can’t rely on that anymore. And so that was a great lesson for me too, as I can’t, I can’t rely on the way my mind the way I used to perceive my mind working. Because it’s not, it’s not working that way for me under stress. So I’m working right under stress.

Host
So if you go okay, that your body is capable, 20 times more, how do you access that?

Mark Divine
I mean, that’s the Holy Grail. So in the seals, it’s just through these intense experiences that you like crack open your body mind system, and reorganize it in ways that I don’t even think anyone really understands, I don’t even think the seals understand it, they just know it works. That’s why they’ll never give up pelvic they’ve had so many, you know, kind of peacetime attempts to get rid of the whole week program because they think it’s kind of inhumane. And you know, then thinking maybe too hard. And you know, there have been people have died in the training and stuff, but very rare, actually. And they’re from natural causes, like, you know, someone dies of a heart attack, or they have an accident and they drowned. But no one’s died from exhaustion that I’m aware of in Hell Week. So anyways, what I’m saying is the seals just that the training is just brilliant. And it’s evolved over, you know, 60 years to really prepare seals for the most rigorous challenges missions and environments in the world. And to believe that anything’s possible to believe that they can accomplish any mission. And so you know, that you look at the success rate of the seals and the kind of bears that out that that’s a pretty effective training method. So I don’t want to mess with it. But I don’t think they really understand beyond kind of like the combat effectiveness and some of the work that David Grossman has done with his understanding about how to condition a warrior for the rigors of combat. I think that’s all that’s all like philosophy and research and it’s really interesting, but I don’t think they understand what’s happening at a emotional, even quasi spiritual level or metaphysical level and also with regard to the brain and the mind, and the nervous system and how all those things are are reorganizing you know, through neuroplasticity and, and also epigenetics so that seals are kind of like turning on and off different genes. And I would say, you know, if there was a warrior gene and then the seals have learned how to turn that on, in a big way to where you get, you get activities like you know, what I’m willing to light might lay my life down for my teammate. You don’t see that very often in modern world that is a very much of a warrior gene that’s been turned on where you put yourself your teammates so far above yourself and that’s one of the reasons that the training is so effective because nothing gets done alone as a seal. That’s why we called the SEAL teams and when you have an individual miss a tick, mark them out Lunch, who knows that he’s capable of 20 times more. And then you put him with a team of 14 others in a platoon, or maybe you know, 35 others in a troop or 40 others in the troop, and every one of those individuals knows that they’re capable of 20 times more. And they’re all watching each other’s back and care about each other, and know that each other is absolutely essential to getting the mission done, then you get an effect. That’s not like 20 times, but like 20 times, 20 times 20 times 20 times, you know, I mean, just multiply it by the number of people’s it’s an it’s an enormous geometric effect.

Host
So take me to preparing yourself, right? Because I think, you know, like most of us are probably never going to be in this situation. But how do you sort of mentally prepare yourself? What do you do when it’s real? Like, right before it’s real?

Mark Divine
That’s great question, because you’re right, not everyone is going to go through SEAL training, nor would you want to, frankly, because it sucks. So I’ve kind of spent the balance of my, you know, the last 15 years trying to figure out how do you train, not that that same experience, even though you know, through my SEAL Fit program, we have recreated the whole week experience, and it has an incredible effect, and civilians can go through it, but but through my unbeatable mind training I looked at I said, Okay, so what’s what’s happening, and I tried to understand what is happening at a mind, body and spirit and nervous system level. And can I kind of parse out those different elements and train them. And so I began doing that with seal candidates back in 2007 2008. Because I started training seal candidates, I wanted to help them succeed the way I did, and SEAL training and to have a better career and be more focused and make better decisions and battle and to avoid PTSD and all those things. And, and so I began to draw them more are kind of like I would say, equal parts from my Navy SEAL days, with my yoga and martial arts training. So I realized that the Eastern practices had a lot of tools. And they were a developmental path for accessing greater power, almost 20x power, and developing internal potential, and integrating and being able to use your mind in a unique way or a better way. And this, this is lacking in the West, there really isn’t any developmental models that that I’m aware of, that didn’t come from either the martial arts or yoga. There were some understanding of it Phillips philosophically, through integral theory, and transpersonal, psychology and stuff like that. But there weren’t any practices or paths, if you know what I mean, in the traditional sense. And so I looked at my own millet martial arts training and my own now I was deep into yoga and into teach, I’ve been to multiple teacher trainings, and was even developing our own yoga to teach to seals, which I you know, handled, to really simplify and chunk it out into drills and, and discard any woowoo. You know what I mean, that took the fool out of the Kung Fu and took the woowoo out of the yoga to teach it. And so I came up with these skills, I call them well, they lined sort of with what the seals called the Big Four. But there’s, there’s more than four. But the biggest and most powerful ones are, first is to develop control over your breath, and to use your breath as a center post of your training, right? Because the breath is what will lead you to being in physiological control of your body. And so the studies have now verified the power of breath control for stress management, stress release, and for triggering the parasympathetic nervous system to bleed off stress. So it’s really, really healthy for you and health view nervous system, but beyond that, the breath is a way to stay focused, because after all, the brain is a organ of the body. And when your body is calmer, your brain is calmer, I mean, it’s experienced subjectively as literally a lower brain, you know, cycle rate and you kind of an alpha beta, when you’re really calm. And, and it’s healthier, right, and you’re detoxing when you breathe deeply in so quickly, and you know, you know, you don’t have the choppy patterns associated with an anxious emotional states. So the breath controls that first skill that I started teaching the seal candidates, and that alone and I call the practice box breathing, that alone had a profound impact on their ability to focus and remain clear in the heat of battle and that type of thing. And then I said, Okay, so once I am physically, physiologically and physically in control, and I’m clear headed and able to focus, then it’s about creating the conditions in my mind, so that I can stay focused on the right thing at the right time, stay focused on on my teammates and stay focused on a positive outcome. Whereas you know, the common individual will seize upon you know, some something that’s going wrong and that could be like I’m suffering because this sucks, or, you know, I’m I’m in pain. Normally, my back hurts, or I can’t do this because it’s too hard, I can’t lift this 300 pound log up anymore. There’s always something, you know, whether it’s physical or mental or something really practical, some challenge or crisis in your life, there’s always something great because that’s the human condition every day of your life, there’s going to be something that doesn’t go well. Or right, there’s going to be something that’s negative, there’s going to be some discomfort. And most people will seize upon that, and focus on that. And then, of course, that what you focus on tends to grow or to, you know, it attracts energy to it. And so I learned and I taught the seals that, you know, we accept and be non attached to what happens to us. And we take control in a positive sense of what’s happening in our mind, and both our rational mind as well as our emotional mind. And so we maintain a really positive, energetic attitude and mindset, I call this positivity, the train mind, as soon as that resistance is experienced, will begin to dialogue in a way that generates power instead of weakness. And so when that log starts to rub the shoulder or starts to get hard, you know, instead of saying, holy cow, I don’t think I can do this or man, this thing’s heavy, or how long do we have to do this another three hours, you basically shift that to some sort of powerful statement that you also associate with an energetic and emotional state, you know, so one of the classic ones that I have is this is, this is an easy day, I got this piece of cake isn’t easy day, I got this piece of cake, I’m feeling good. And I’m looking in order to be in Hollywood. And so then your internal dialogue, this takes over, and starts to drown out any of that other that other dialogue and, and then you begin to, you know, this ties into the third skill. The third skill is imaging. So that includes visualization, image projection, in terms of the future, what you know, desired outcomes, you know, because if you can see the wind in your mind, then you can achieve the win if you believe it and act forcefully on it, right. And that’s, that clip comes straight from Sunsoo, the victorious warrior wins in his mind first, and then enters the battle. And so the combination of the second skill, which is maintaining and develop, developing and maintaining a positive direction, and a positive routine, and a positive emotional pattern associated with your thoughts. So this is requires like training the brain training the mind, to act this way, all the time, especially when the challenges appear. This then connects to your ability to see yourself succeeding in those challenge, see yourself dominating in those challenging environments, being able to maintain a clear picture of the wind, in spite of the dark night of the soul moments that might come over you or the team and you know, you can connect back to that image of the wind and go, Oh, yeah, that’s it. That’s why I’m here. Right. And so, so this, this goes, I mean, there’s so many subtle skills that are involved, how we use our eyes is important. So if I’m, you know, if I need to lift the log up, and put it on my other shoulder, then I then I shift my mind and my gaze into a very practical This is my one task right here, right now I look at the log I, you know, I coordinate the movements with my team, you know, we breathe together and hoisted up on the command and lowered over the and that’s, that’s the only thing I’m doing and thinking of in that moment, K, but then let’s say right, when that’s done, and we’re like, get a little relief, it’s on the other shoulder now, and we’re going to take another 100 paces or so then I softened my gaze, and my gaze, you know, my eyes literally go from, you know, pupils dilated, I’m focused on a task. And I’m outwardly focused to where my eyes go really soft, and almost like they go wide. And I like I’m using my peripheral vision. And in that state, your mind will soften. And it’s almost like, you know, just letting go and turning inward. And in that inward, even though my eyes are open, I have access to my imagery. And I can go back and check in with it, or the image is there for me. Does that make sense? So again, this is the tools are how do we use our mind effectively, our, our minds are so much more powerful when we learn how to use them, right? And so we’ve been trained here in the West to really dominantly we focused on our cognition, our rational mind our thinking, right? And then if you’re creative, they say, oh, yeah, you’re creative. So you’re using that right brain and you have creative powers. Reality is we all have the capacity to think better and to avoid our cognitive bias. So that’s a skill that we have to train for. But we all and we also have the capacity to release that to literally put that back area of our mind that activate your mind to rest like to turn the dial down significantly so that you can open up to what I call direct perception perceive thinking things just the way they are right now without having to judge or analyze or anything. And a massive amount of information flows into that. The fourth skill, by the way, is task orientation. But if you show up doing everything that I just explained, because you’ve trained to do it, right, it’s not a cognitive thing. It’s an actually, you know, this is a very visceral process, then, you know, what you’re going to get on the other side is energetic synchronization.

Host
You know, when I think Navy Seal, I think tough as nails, I think physical but everything you’re describing here, this is all mental.

Mark Divine
Yeah, absolutely. Well, the mental I mean, you’re essentially the human being has a body in the mind and spirit, if you all you focus on it as a body, you’re going to be a one dimensional being, the body follows the mind. You know, we learned that in SEAL training as a tenant of what I teach a SEAL Fit, the body follows the mind. And so you could be physically fit and still fail at a sporting event, if your mind is not conditioned properly, you could be the most talented athlete, you know, we’ve seen this over and over again and still fail, you might win one one or two times, but you’re gonna fail if your mind isn’t conditioned, right? So really the mind is is is the preeminent everything flows from the mind. And then behind the mind is the Spirit knows beyond the scope of this conversation, but I could almost make that same statement that once you connect with the Spirit, with your Spirit, then everything flows from that. And the mind becomes even more refined, and finely tuned with universal principles. And, and that’s when like, your ultimate power comes out. So you’re truly at your most complete fullest self, when body mind and spirit are all aligned. And working together, you know, I mean, SEALs who are aligned like that, and everyone’s operating that way, you know, they literally are shaping their enemy’s minds, they, you know, seal shape their enemies mind with their violence of action and offensive mindset. You know, because everyone is thinking, we got this, we are not we are running toward the sound of gunfire, we’re going to dominate this battle, we’re going to take it to the enemy, whatever everyone’s thinking that way. And like I said, at a very subtle level that that breeds fear and the enemy and the way we act, and the way we think and the way we show up on the battlefield breeds fear and the enemy, and they may not even know it, but it happens, right. And that’s why they you know, their actions and reactions are going to be weaker than ours. In Vietnam, this the Vietnamese NVA used to call the seals devils with green faces, because of the just the way they get you know, the the operators back then wouldn’t show up in the middle of the jungle, you know, out of nowhere, and their faces were painted because they’re, you know, they were using camouflage and they learn how to stalk and to be completely silent as they move through the jungle and they would literally just show up and wreak havoc on the enemy and then disappear. And that’s what I mean like that’s, that’s an energetic that’s, you know, obviously there’s practical skills, but it’s also a mindset that the seals had that hey, we’re gonna be devils green faces and we’re gonna scare that you know what out of the enemy and they won practically every altercation.

Host
So where should people go to connect with you if they want to learn about SEAL Fit, and you got the unbeatable mind book and course and, you know, where do you want people to find you?

Mark Divine
Well, I think you said that if someone’s interested in these principles, then there’s two books that I have out that are that kind of covered down in them one is probably the first one to read his unbeatable mind were introduced these principles and then second is called The Way of the seal both are great books for I hear for for learning these principles. And then if you want to find me on the web SEAL Fit All one word SCA l fit.com. has a ton of content a ton of you know, free resources, and we’ve got some great video training and and that’s where all our events, stuff like that.

Host
Well, then last little thing, man, if if somebody’s out there listening right now, and they’re realizing they’re going whoa, I am so far from this unbeatable mind like I am so not mentally tough, like, I’m losing every battle in my head before it even begins. What’s like a, you know, one practice, you would suggest you go you need to start doing this immediately.

Mark Divine
Yeah, it’s the first skill I alluded to earlier in box breathing. And you know, if this the only thing that someone gets out of this podcast years, and it’s time well spent, and so that is simply to begin a daily practice of breathing, where you breathe through your nose, your nostrils, with your mouth closed, and ideally, your eyes closed and just sit in a chair, straight spine and you’re going to inhale to a count of four or five, hold your breath for a count of five, exhale for a count of five, hold your breath for a count of five. So you’re breathing in a box or a square pattern. And to do this a minimum of five minutes, but ideally for 20 minutes a day. Best time is probably first thing in the morning when you wake up. This is not meditation, but although it has the it’s the precursor to meditation because it’s got the physiological benefits of of resetting your your nervous system, bleeding off stress, and clarifying your mind and so literally, you’re going to detox your mind and get your mind really focused. And then the secondary benefit is to concentrate ration practice, a lot of people fail with meditation, because they, the preparatory practice for meditation is concentration. And so we need to learn how to concentrate on this one thing. And that box breathing pattern is the one thing. And so this this practice in itself, I’ve got, you know, surgeons who use it for surgery during their surgery. And, of course, Navy SEALs practice this, you know, variations of this, and all sorts of people have found some great benefit from it. So I would start there.

Host
Mark Divine. I mean, first of all, thank you for your service, and we appreciate you man.

Mark Divine
Thanks for having me on as well.