L.O.G. 205 Life On The X with Steve Drum

Right. All right. Well, I'm excited for today, Greg. We have a returning guest coming on, Steve Drum. Thank you so much for coming back on the show today to talk about what you have going on.

Hey, it's always my pleasure. I'm not just saying that; you know that to be true. Every time we come on here, we have great conversations, and I'm grateful we do. So, I thank you for coming on the show and for being here. The reason why we have you on the show is to talk about the book you have that just came out, and it's called Life on the X. We'll jump into that. I read it, Greg read it. It's an awesome, awesome book, and I think it's an awesome book because this is not just, "Hey, I did some time in the SEAL Teams, come read my book," and insert whatever military service. I was just picking on you because you happen to be a SEAL, but everyone does this stuff, and everyone loves the stories, which I get it. But this is a very practical, useful guide. I mean, it's this great structure of, "Here's a story that you could have done an entire chapter on, but you did it in three paragraphs, and you said, 'Here's the elements that got me through this personal situation. Here's how you use that every day in life.'" The whole book is like that, and I'm like, this is so cool. So, I really love the book, and thanks again for coming on the show, man. I'm excited to talk about it.

Hey, thanks for the kind words.

Yeah. So, Greg, I know before I jump in...

My copy? Not a signed copy, I might add. And when I reached out and said, "Drummy, where's my signed copy?" He goes, "You don't know me well enough to call me Drummy." Everybody didn't know, for as long as we've known each other, that little smartass on the other side of the line has still got that chip on his shoulder for some reason.

Well, I will say this: I've got the audiobook coming out, so I'm happy to sign that for you, Greg.

I appreciate it. That's going to be narrated by Ke$ha (K-E-$-H-A)? I think it's spinning, Brian, just briefly. This interview falls on World Behavioral Analysis Day. And being curious for the first time, and probably last time, this interview—we work in behavioral analysis, pattern recognition, behavioral analysis—and Steve, you work in behavior modification, literally showing people what 'right' looks like, but more important, maybe what 'right' feels like because this is a journey. This is about gaining confidence and being ready for challenges, and it's not easy. You lay out some very easy strategies, but it's not easy. It'll take a lot of commitment. So, I'm very excited, and this is a special day for the broadcast. I think everybody will get a lot out of it.

Hey, thanks so much.

So, I wanted to actually start and kind of have you start with a story out of the second chapter that's in here. It's one of the stories in the book, and it involves your deployment, on a deployment to Iraq. Your mission set sort of had changed, and you're still going to be, but you're going from sort of the typical SEAL mission at the time, a little bit more direct action, working with Intel, going after sort of HVTs (High-Value Targets), different type of operations like that, to sort of working with the Special Operations Forces of Iraq. So, setting up some training, the advising, assist, and company, probably role, there. So, it's a bit of a mission set change, but I'd love for you, if you can, to share the story of what you have in the book, and then we can kind of jump into it from there, because there's a lot we can talk about with it.

Yeah, for sure. So, this particular story you referred to would have been back in either 2007 or 2008, most likely 2008, the winter of 2008, I think it was. That was my last Iraq deployment. And as you described, primarily, I think many people who aren't familiar with the way military Special Operations work, one of my primary tasks and our core tenets are advise and assist. It's us basically going in there because we essentially want to work ourselves out of a job, which means we have to build capacity and capability in host-nation partner forces in order for us to take an increasingly more backseat role. Eventually, we can disengage entirely.

That said, that's not always what's going to be satisfying to young SEAL operators, because you go through an intense selection process. You train, train, train, train as a unit. You get to a very polished state of readiness. And again, you mentioned the word 'readiness,' which is key, because throughout your workup process, you're constantly building higher, higher levels of readiness. So, when we're actually overseas and we're going to that maturity in the conflict, meaning we are pulling back more, now we're taking less of a role while we're kicking doors in, and now there's less of us going out on operations. Now, a lot of times our focus is on, "All right, not only are we training these guys how to do it tactically, now we've actually got to invest in their professional development." Meaning, we've got to help them run selection assessment. We need to help them train and grow their own partner Special Operations forces entirely from the ground up.

Meanwhile, while we're doing this in Western Iraq, one of our other troops was doing the high-profile mission, operating in the eastern part of the country with a lot of the assets, a lot of the intel assets lavished on it—really, the 'sexy mission,' the mission everybody wants to do. So, we're doing that mission. We're doing the other mission, the training, assist, the advisory mission, and you guys are getting disgruntled. We always have this thing called the 'blog board.' You go into where the guys are all sleeping, there's a big whiteboard, always cartoons where they can express their dissatisfaction, whether it be with the mission, with each other, with leadership.

Eventually, we had a briefing, and some of the guys were grumbling, and one of the team leaders, he steps aside. He says, "You know what? I'd rather be here doing this job with you guys, this shitty job with you guys, than over there doing that sexy job with those guys, because this—" essentially, "this was the family. This was the family, and these are the guys that I want to go to war with, or these are the guys that I want to do the less sexy job with." And I said that was a pivotal moment in that deployment. Not to say that things really got exciting or everything was great and glossy after that, but just to say, "Hey, we had a level of acceptance, I think. Hey, the nation wants us to do a mission, no matter what that is. We've got to be committed, we've got to be professional in conducting that mission."

And that's such a powerful story, and I know that's probably why you include it in your book. But it was powerful to me, too, for a number of reasons. That kind of gets into some of the elements and some of the concepts that you talk about in your book that not only you were taught and learned through life, going through BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) and the SEAL Teams, and just what the military trains you, both explicitly and implicitly. A lot of it's built in. You also then worked developing some programs for the Navy, and a lot of what you lay out here, too, and what you talk about in the book is from that Warrior Toughness Program, which was huge. Because the Navy sort of said, "We've got these issues. This is what we're seeing. We're having some resilience problems, so let's fix it." And they brought in some folks, some experts, some psychologists. And then you personally, too, were involved in developing a program of record for the Navy, which, for our listeners who don't understand that, that's huge. In terms of this isn't something literally anyone could go online right now and build a course and write a book and say, "Hey, this is my stuff," right? And great, and people might like it and actually might make a lot of money. There's people making a lot of money on stuff that's whatever. But there's a lot of rigor, there's a lot of measurement, assessment, there's a lot of testing and evaluation. And to get to some sort of product where the military will sit there, stamp off for approval, and go, "Yes, this is what we're going forward with," I mean, that stuff's planned out to the minutest detail: timelines, everything you can say, what you can't say, how you're supposed to do it. So, it was really fascinating and really cool.

Then, what I see in the book is you kind of doing is you're taking these stories and then seeing, "Here's these elements that I learned. This is what you can extract from that. This is what I took from that, and this is what you can use it going forward." So, I really like that part of the book. And this is just me more rambling. I'll get to a question here in a second, but I found the book useful. That's the whole point. You can write really great information, but if I can't read it and then take it and implement it into my own life, then that book goes right back on the shelf and it collects dust. Whereas this is a little bit different. So, I want you to start maybe with your intent of the book and then kind of maybe work in the meaning of what you mean by Life on the X. What does that mean? And why did you write this book?

Yeah, no, thank you. So, the last thing that I worked on in the Navy was the Warrior Toughness Program. Really, I had spent my whole career, primarily, almost my whole career in the Virginia Beach area and East Coast SEAL Teams. The last job that I thought I was going to take was going to be to move up to the Navy's boot camp in North Chicago to run what we called at the time the motivator program. I think they may have since dissolved that, but the motivator program, basically our job was to onboard young men and women into the Navy that had the difficult selection processes. They had contracts to try out for diverse SEAL, a rescue swimmer, combatant craft crewman, the special boat drivers. We got them ready in the typical ways.

But while I was doing that, I retired in 2019, so I'm thinking the end of 2016, early 2017. The short of it is, I got approached and said, "Hey, you, a clinical psychologist, and a Navy chaplain are going to build a program based on toughness." And we were like, "What does that even mean?" So, we created this program, and literally, it was a lot more similar viewpoints between the chaplain, the psychologists, and the SEAL than we even thought. Initially, my contribution, the reason I was selected, was primarily, "All right, we're going to do this around my mind, body, soul," right? And so, the body part, the SEAL, the training, the physical stuff. The soul would be kind of the chaplain's domain, and psychologists would be the mental skills element of that. But when we got together, we all realized we had a very similar approach that was very counterintuitive. My contribution ended up being the framework. If I look at how we want to best prosecute a special operation, a combat direct action mission: all right, we need to be committed to certain things, committed to a mindset and skills. We need to know what the intent of our commanders are. We need to prepare using all the right skills, to include mental skills. We need to execute with flexibility, adaptability, agility, and most of all, we have to continually learn because we have to have continuous process improvement.

So, when I looked to get out of the Navy, I was like, "What am I going to do? I don't want to sit in an office somewhere. The normal jobs just don't seem appealing to me." But I realized that I think my biggest contribution to the military was my training of other people, whether it be Warrior Toughness Program, whether it be as a SEAL instructing other SEALs or training other foreign partner Special Operations forces. I realized there are so many things that apply to anybody that faces challenge, that faces pressure, that faces stress in a professional setting. And I said, "I can take it, I can translate these things to the business world."

That's part of the reason, too, where I love that you're taking this, and you talk about Life on the X. The X doesn't have to be that chaotic combat situation. I mean, the X is, yeah, that is for you. And that's a lot of how we talk about, when you even get into it in the book, "Left of Bang." Bang doesn't have to be some catastrophic event. Bang is you forgot to set your alarm and you woke up late, and you have an important meeting to get to. You're at bang. You're on the X.

Go ahead.

No, I was going to say, when you asked me to describe what the X is, that's the perfect question. I don't know how much you use that, Brian, in the Marine Corps, or Greg, for your experience, your military and law enforcement experience. I think it's a lot more common parlance today. But for those that don't realize, the X is a military doctrine term, and it really defines where you're going to land or arrive at an objective. Think of it as X marks the spot. You fast-rope onto a rooftop, or you drive up to the front door of a building you're assaulting, that's the X, as opposed to an offset or a Y, other distances that you would arrive at. But we use it all the time in the SEAL Teams to also describe the kill zone. So, we're patrolling down the street, urban setting, walking between two buildings, and the enemy ambushes us, that kill zone right there, we define as the X. So, it's the most often the most critical, the most dangerous part of an operation, but it's where we gear our training to. We look at the most difficult, the most dangerous, and what we're going to face, and we gear and we benchmark our training to that. Now, the simple truth is, we all have these moments, Brian, as you described, your alarm clock, it's sitting in front of an important client or a customer. It's you're brand new, you've been thrust into a leadership position, you feel ill-equipped. The stress and pressure. It's like, how can we move backwards and build a level of readiness to seize those key opportunities and to really perform at our highest level and bring our A-game?

Yeah. If people are taking notes, our listeners and our viewers, I'd draw you right to the book. You talked about two things, and mine will be a two-part question. The first would be around page 47, you're talking about sacrificing and compromise. People don't understand that just because you're a Navy SEAL, you were also married with kids, and you were taking a lot of time out of your free time, the rare free time they had, traveling all over Virginia and Maryland for youth hockey with your son. I share that experience with my son all over the place. And you actually gave up a dream SEAL job because you didn't want to miss out on those family opportunities. So, I'd like you to speak about that, and I don't want to miss the momentum that Brian created about "on the X" because just a few pages later, maybe 10 pages later, you talk about objectives driving preparation, and that's the X, right? So, when it comes to performing on the X, the objectives drive the preparation, and that becomes the impetus, that becomes the focus on your training. So, let's first talk about that because I share the experience of being estranged from family members on deployments, but then coming back and having to grab the go-bag and going around for hockey. I love that we share the passion for hockey. How hard of a decision was it to give up a dream job to spend more time with your family?

Difficult at first, but as we went through it, it became clear to me that I made the right decision. Greg's talking about when I finished my last operational spot, which is known in the SEAL Teams as a troop chief. You're the senior enlisted leader for, at the time, two 18-man SEAL platoons. Really, I did a good enough job, I did a good job, I think, but with anything, you only get typically one crack at it. You sit there and you look at all the ways you could have more effectively led your force, all the ways that you could have just been better at this, better at that, made a better impact in terms of developing young officers, whatever this whole list of things, and you're like, "Man, if I only had it to do over again, I could really crush it next time." But you're never given that opportunity.

I'm sitting here after the troop chief deployment was over, I get pushed over to a staff job at the headquarters, and my job was to work weapons and explosives and visual augmentation systems, night vision, thermals, etcetera. While I'm there, probably about a good six months, I get a call that says, "Hey, we've just relieved one of the troop chiefs back at the command that I was just at. Would you like to pick it back up as an opportunity for you if you want to do it again?" And I'm like, "All right." Initially, my, as you know, the Pavlovian response is to immediately say yes. Anytime anybody offers you something like that, an operational gig, your immediate response is to say yes. But I'm like, "All right. I know I've put my relationship at home under a lot of strain. Let me walk that back, and let me just think about it." And I actually talked to a couple of people, military, non-military folks, and said, "What's the right decision, do you think here?" And overwhelmingly, it seemed to be, "Do this, spend the time with your family. What are you really accomplishing? They will find somebody else to do this. This would be a selfish decision." So, I had to make that decision to do it, and ultimately, as it says in the book, I wouldn't trade it. I know I made the right decision, and it was just, it was a great time in my life. So, I'm glad I made it.

That's great. And I would say, I would say there's somebody else that's going to do this that not only is with your SEAL job, had you taken the job, you would have displaced somebody, but I would say your home life, too, because sooner or later, you start going to work too much and not showing up at home, somebody else is going to be at home doing your job, too. The family doesn't wait forever, and that breaks up a lot of families where people don't see that. They don't check the temperature and go, "Hey, wait a minute, I'm skating without a net now." "I'm out there so far, and I'm having fun, and I'm doing great things, but I have to consider that balance." If you don't do that balance, unhappy life. You made a great choice, I think.

No, you're absolutely right. And I'll tell you this quite candidly, I'm still working today to repair the damage and the cracks in my family structure and my relationship that I've personally created, but also that's been a factor, a result of the job that I did for 27 years.

Absolutely. And it's not—it's ironic in a way, but not really that this is what happens to folks that are high performers with a ton of training and a lot of commitment and drive and all the best values. And then you end up, you're doing it sort of for someone else or for some other thing, for some purpose greater than you, and that's what sacrifice is. That's the point behind it. But you don't realize along the way all of these other things that kind of fall through the cracks. And the ironic part of that is that you actually, because of all of your experiences in training and skill, you have all of the tools available to deal with all of that. It's just taking it from one domain, sort of, to the next, and that's very difficult. I mean, it's difficult.

Look at a great example, two of the greatest athletes in the world: Michael Phelps, one of the best swimmers ever, and then Simone Biles, the gymnast. They literally had to rename stuff after her and change the grading program because she was so good. They both had mental health issues where Simone Biles had to take a step back and not compete. Michael Phelps is now actively doing all this stuff with a couple different apps and a couple different services because he had sort of this breakdown in his life. And what I'm getting at is, you have two of the most highly trained people who've had the best coaching, the best mental, physical, emotional well-being coaching through their career, being single-point focused on one thing for so long that you lose things in other areas, and they're having difficulty. And my whole thing is, look, again, you have all of those tools and resources.

So, the point I'm trying to get at here is with what you did with the book, you're saying, "Here are these concepts that I've learned, here's the values, here's these principles, here's these different thinking points or knowledge points or habits of thought that I use, and now let's take that out of this closed system of the military, and what's specifically designed for where so successful, and let's use it everywhere." And I love things like that because it allows you to be more consistent in everything you do. And you brought up consistency a lot in the book, so I kind of want you to talk about the importance of that and define what you mean by consistency because when I was younger, I was a sniper in the Marine Corps, and one of the shooting terms I heard was "consistency is accuracy," meaning you have to do it the same way every time. You have to choose the same aim point in the same setup and the same everything in your body position so that you know what is affecting you, right? If I come up and I have one aim point here, and then I shoot one way, and I'm trying to, but I move my body and then I choose a different aim point. My round goes somewhere else. I don't know which one of those things that I changed affected me, right? So, it's a very simple way of looking at it, but reading your book, that's playing in the back of my head. I was like, "Man, that's just a life lesson." So, talk to us a little bit about consistency and what that means to you in what you talk about in the book.

Well, again, to be a little bit vulnerable, honestly, a lot of things that I read about in the book are the areas that I've struggled with the most. And through that, I've discovered a lot of my own "aha" moments. Just to dissect this a little bit, one of the things that I think that we do well in the SEAL Teams, because unlike the Army and Marine Corps, we don't really come from that infantry-style doctrine. Everything that we learn has to come by stealing from other people. Not to say that we didn't have tactics in Vietnam and other things like that. I mean, we learn, obviously, along the way. But we steal things from other people, and those things may not even be military-related. I always tell leaders, "Look outside your industry, look outside your organization to see who's doing something really, really well and see if you can copy it, adapt it, and use it for your own."

Having said that, one of the things that I talked about that was a shortcoming of my own was I could—not to say that I was flawless in my execution under combat and stress and the military's in the work sense—but I could be focused. I could marshal skills and resources to being at my best, but I had no consistency. The reason was, I was not being taught these things. For those of us in military Special Operations, we learned to adapt, we learned to intuitively develop the mental skills to maintain that poise and that agility under pressure, but it's not something that's taught. And when it's not taught deliberately, we don't know how to apply it to other areas in my life, and therefore, I could not keep my cool. I would have anger issues. I would lash out. And these are still things that I struggle with today, but I still know what's required is that consistency piece. So, I think when I was developing the Warrior Toughness Program, it was absolutely critical that we could make—if we have a definition for toughness—that has to apply in combat, and it also has to comply in the other areas of a military life, slash, family life. And so, I'm really sensitive, I'm really mindful of that part of it.

Yeah, and that's, that's, that's powerful. And I want to appreciate you sharing that because it's the same thing. I bet we've all had—everyone I know, everyone on this call—has had the same or similar types of those issues where you do get so focused on what you're doing, and then in other areas you just completely lash out. Something's got to give when you're going that hard all the time and you're not being consistent in those habits of thought and habits of action. And that's a big thing, too, especially with a family. I have to learn. It's like, I can—one thing, whatever happens in here is fine—but I can't take if I'm having that bad day or I'm so focused on someone. I go into the house, I can't do that. That's not for the girls. They can't know. Not that I'm compartmentalizing, not doing it, I have to be a different person. I have to refocus where I'm at. Because you can't, you can't sort of take the problems you have and throw them on the people around you and be being consistent in even those own things. Because you just talked about it, especially if you're going through Special Operations or any type of selection process or whatever unit, you have to—you said it, you nailed it—you have to intuitively develop the skills to get you through that situation, to be successful. So, that's great because it's the best way to learn sometimes, right? Just figure it, figure it out.

However, if I don't have some sort of framework or even a lexicon, words to use to describe what that is, some explicit way of talking about it, I won't be able to use it in other areas. I'll only be able to do it when the shit has hit the fan and we're overwhelmed, and now all of a sudden everyone's operating at peak performance. It's like, "Okay, well, let's capitalize on that. Let's take what those lessons learned." And I think that's, that's kind of what you're attempting to get at with the book here. These are the elements that you need. Now, you just brought up when you talk to—because you do work with private companies and CEOs, and you give talks to them and you do mentor coaching, that kind of stuff—and it's like, "Look, you know your industry, you know your job, right? You wouldn't be the CEO if you didn't, right? So, why don't you look over here at other areas that you're unfamiliar with? Look for those common themes and similarities that you can see, and then that's what you can capitalize, and that's what you can steal from, like you just said, and use in whatever that is." Does that kind of make sense or what you're getting at?

No, that's 100% accurate. You captured that perfectly. It's other areas. Again, not to go down the rabbit hole with the CEOs, but I think when I talk to CEOs, it's a lonely position. It's like, and the nice thing about the military is that CEO, that commander, has the senior enlisted leader that they can lean on, right? Marine Corps Sergeant Major, Army Sergeant Major, Navy, it's a Command Master Chief. And those are the senior, that's your kind of sounding board. I lost my train of thought there. Sorry, Brian.

Talking to CEOs about having that sounding board, like you said, going outside the domain, going outside somewhere else, so you can have that sort of consistency of these are the elements that I need to look at. What, what find, like, our thing is we deal with a lot of, and so do you, people who are already subject matter experts, right? So, they already have, they have a lot of knowledge and experience. So, like you, going through a selection process where you have to figure it out intuitively, I need a framework to use, sort of, to transfer that over. Does that sort of, you know what I mean? That's what I'm getting from the book, from everything in here. It's like, this is the framework.

Yes, thank you, thank you. That was the reminder I needed. Again, when I was coming up—and I'm sure it was like that for you, Brian and Greg, in law enforcement—it's intuitive, nobody teaches you these things. Then you get into, "Okay, now we have in the military, we have this resilience training." Well, that's all focused on, if you're green, you're in green, you're in good shape, you're perfect. And then, things, you start to accrue a level of stress, you get into that yellow, maybe it's an orange, I can't remember, but then you get into that Red Zone, and you are non-functional. You're extremely distressed, and we need to get you back to green. Okay, that's great, but that doesn't help me if we're green, we go into a combat situation. I don't care if you can recover. I need you to perform right now.

What we've done now is what's different now, and even in military Special Operations, they have heavily invested into mental skills, into mindfulness training, into the resilience piece as well. In Warrior Toughness, you can be resilient but not tough, but you can't be tough and not resilient. So, I would say that it's more of a broader, more encompassing term, because I need you to perform in the first place, and then I need you to bring it back. I need you to have that resiliency component to where we can now go out again and do it, and you're not accruing that stress casualty over and over. So, that's the big thing. We are now being deliberate in how we teach certain mental skills and Warrior Toughness, but also in military Special Operations, it's significant.

Yeah, and that's a great segue. On page 77 in your book, you talk about stress inoculation. The biggest single point of argument for us with experts is that they have a poor definition of stress inoculation. So, they throw it like holy water on every vampire they see, and the idea is simply that stress inoculation means being better prepared to perform in a future stressful event. That's the definition, very simply. And it's only effective if that person has made an adaptation based on the stressful event, and the training can only go so far in realism because you get to a point where then it breaks off, and it's no longer important. So, without teaching deliberate coping methods and without understanding what hyper-realism is, we'll never get there. And your book does a great job about saying, "Hey, I worked here. I understand what stress inoculation is, and these are the things it can do and what it can't do." And I personally applaud you for that, because there's a lot of folks out there that stress inoculation is exactly like, what do you talk about when you bounce back and you're able to come back in? You don't even know what you're talking about. So, talk to me a little bit about how you've stumbled your way through all of this that learned it the hard way: stress inoculation.

Yeah, and I will say, that's a great point. I'm glad you brought that up, because that is one of the things that was kind of deliberate, even though if that wasn't, that's not necessarily what you're getting at, right? We're not using the psychology term of stress inoculation. But exactly, it's here where I cannot overstate the importance of a very finely tuned training program to include very smart and well-trained instructors. Because when you're exposing people to challenges in a training environment, you want to have that element of stress in a training environment in order for them to perform under stress in an actual combat situation. So, you have to have a very, very finely tuned throttle inputs because you want to constantly expose people. You want to push them to the edge of the cliff, but you don't want to push them over. You don't want to go down, "We're just going to keep yelling and we're going to keep exposing them to more and more stress," and then you're about 15 train stops past what is effective because all training value was lost. So, you've got to push them up to and touching, but not over.

If you go back, if you remember my initial story about my first time under fire in combat, that was my "tie" right there. That was my "aha" moment. After I got in this engagement on a rooftop with grenades thrown at us, taking heavy fire, I distinctly remember sitting at the extract point, waiting for the vehicles to pick us up and take us back to base, and I'm like, "Okay." Because you're always wondering as a military guy or gal how you're going to be tested when the bullets are really flying. And it was right there, I was like, "This is effective. The combat training is effective for the actual thing," and because we're constantly exposed to it, but we're stair-stepping up. Gradually expose some more and more stress, but it's not blindly. It's like, "Here it is now. All right, we're not doing this. We're not doing this well." Okay, let's rewind a little bit, let's take it back. And we constantly want to keep turning the heat up, but only in a well-measured manner and strategy. Deliberate, absolutely.

Absolutely. And, to recall for the viewers and the listeners, Steve and I met during a training event. I mean, it's safe to say, whether it was a pre-combat mission training event or not, the idea is that you didn't know me, and I didn't know you. And just before I walk in to meet your team that day, so long ago, somebody comes up to me and goes, "Oh, be advised, if they don't like the stuff, they're going to grab you and throw you out that window, and you're never going to teach again." And it's like, "Yeah, I get it," because everybody tries to build up the audience that you're going into, "Yeah, better trained than anybody," and they know all of this, and "you're going to bore the shit out of them." And I remember coming out of that room and having the SEALs come out and go, "Okay, where can we learn more about this?" It was magic because you guys had a way, meaning the SEALs and specifically your teams, East Coast and West Coast were so different back then, but you had a way of figuring out the crap you didn't need and going after the stuff you did.

And so, I appreciate you as a subject matter expert because you've seen a lot of training in your time, and you know what passes the smell test and what doesn't. I also love that you, through mindfulness, because mindfulness was used as one of those terms, too, that you waved the crucifix at anything bad, resilience and mindfulness, and they're words that have been so used so many times they're worthless. But mindfulness, from the sense that you're turning situational awareness inside out and understanding that you can control you, that's magic. Because that's like, with all the work we're doing in law enforcement, a cop's got to remember that their influence is seen just by showing up, and then they're carrying all their baggage with them, and now they open their mouth all of a sudden, and they're not listening. They're going past the listening stage and go, "I'm here now, this is what's about to happen," which is very much like what you have to do when you go into one of the situations that's still in flux and still in motion. But training can change that, it can fix that, it can "inhumble" you—a made-up word there—to say, "Hey, maybe I need to listen here. Maybe I need to take a grasp of what's going on." And you write about that in your book. You write about having to be able to see the situation as it truly is in context, and then be able to influence. So, again, with me, it all circles back to training, and this book is about training. It's not just about you, it's not just about the SEALs or a combat experience, it's about how to train for an outcome.

And I also loved—and I'll shut up—I also love, Steve, that you took it across like Brian and I are teaching C-suite executives, and we call it leadership, but at the end of the day, it's accountability, it's a lot of things, right? It's mindfulness, it's all of those different things. But when I read your book, you don't sit there and just dwell on, "Wow, back in the SEALs, we had done it this way." You've adapted all of those lessons that you learned, all of those skinned knees and shin pains, and you turned it into a very simple thing where at the end of every chapter, you go and go, "Try this." And we love that. The structure of the book is such that very simple lesson: why it's important to you, and how you can test it on your own. So, my question is, how did you come up with that? Was that a function of all of that training that you've seen, and training good and bad, or was it a function of some good biographer that came up to you and go, "No, we'll set it up this way." How did you come up with the ultimate feel of the book?

Yeah, I was just having a conversation with somebody the other day talking about college and what you learn. I, like a lot of guys in my peer group, ended up finishing our bachelor's degree towards the twilight of our military career. I'm trying to think what exactly a lot of my takeaways were, and if I'm being honest, I don't know how many. I got good at writing papers, maybe that helped me with the book, right? But there's one thing I—and this is bad because I don't even remember exactly what the class is called—but it was basically how you learn and process information. I think it was a research class. If you look at the model in my book, and it's the model that I teach, it's the four concepts of Commit, Prepare, Execute, and Reflect. For those who are in law enforcement, military may be familiar with the OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act). So, basically, it is a loop, it is a circle, a reflective cycle is what they call it in the college class. That piece is essentially one of the big things that I took away.

I think in terms of, like you mentioned, "Hey, mindfulness is this thing, the holy water," right? So is resilience. It's not one thing. It is a system of things where there's not one thing that's going to make your life better. There's one thing that you can use to complement other skills, and that's essentially what it is. The framework of the book is based on that. I really created that framework with, "Okay, what do I need to do?" Not just because I—not just to coach, because I started coaching young prospective SEAL candidates on the things that they needed to do in terms of mindset to be successful. And I said, "I lashed that up with how we plan, prepare, and execute for combat operations in the SEAL Teams." And I really chunked it out that way, to be honest, all the things that you need because after, we have commander's intent, we have exactly the mindset we need, we have how we're going to train, how we're going to prepare, what we need to think about on the X, and then everything ends with the debrief. A debrief is used to prepare better next time.

And I love how you have it laid out, and I don't think it was by accident that the very first chapter of the book was about values. We work with a bunch of different companies, a bunch of different organizations on a bunch of different problems. And one of them is this issue of how do we select the right person for this specific situation? I'll keep it that general, Greg, I guess. But what is it, what attributes, what do we need? Because there's different trait theories, there's, you can measure and assess certain things, you can have psychological profiles done, you can take different surveys, all of this stuff. And how do you know who's going to make the best decision? Because their experiences are there, and what are those experiences? Is it their age? Is this? And one of the things I always go back to, and when I tell folks, is, when it comes down to it, you can take everyone through a bunch of people, room, and you put enough pressure on them, how they're going to make a decision is ultimately, if I could whittle it down to the one biggest contributing factor at the end of the day, cutting out all of these other different types of things, it's their values. It's what are your personal values? Are you the type of person who's going to do, sort of, the right thing even when no one's watching? And that even in itself is not a good way to describe it because you give some great examples in the book of what we mean by that. Like, there's doing the right thing, and then there's, "Look, man, who hasn't run down a road during a land nav course to make up some time that you lost because you're not—you're just, you, could you get caught? No. Okay, good. Then you're fine." That's very different than, "You're placed in a difficult wartime situation, and you can't walk past something that you just saw." That's that moral fiber, that's in there, kind of has a lot to do with your values. And you talk about that right up front. How much does that play into literally the rest of the book and your experience and what you think and what you do today? Is it chapter one for that specific reason, or was it because that flowed well in the framework of what it is?

No, it fundamentally has to start there. So, if you think, again, I'll go back to the brass tacks or the bolts of the foundation. We're, "Okay, I need to get somebody to really get inside their own head who wants to be successful making it through BUD/S, Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, the six-month assessment selection process," right? Super high attrition rate. How do we start? Well, based on what we all say, we look at the statistics of who fails out. Who fails out is, "Okay, you have people that fail out because they fail to meet the incredibly high standards." Okay, got it. "They can't pass the test, maybe it's academic." You have people that get injured and either get rolled or dropped entirely. But primarily, especially in the first phase of training, primarily it's those individuals that deselect themselves, that decide that the cost of getting into an organization to do great things as a SEAL is not worth the price that I have to pay. Often, they make that decision in an emotionally charged state. So, what we need to do is get them to first say, "Okay, we need to develop the mindset, look ahead and say"—and that's why the X is so important, and as you said, "Left of Bang"—"Okay, here I am right now. I'm excited, I'm enthusiastic, but I'm about to walk through a really, really dark tunnel. One night there'll be a little voice inside my head that says, 'You're cold, you're wet, you're tired, and you don't need this. You're not good enough.'" Okay, what's my response in that moment? Do I react and give into emotions, or do I respond in the right way? Respond with the right choices, the right actions, the right behaviors. It has to start with our values. It has to start with our values, basically the things that we believe in, the things that we draw strength from. And then we have to figure out how we distill that down into principled actions because values without actions or principles are meaningless.

Exactly. And it's exactly like, yeah, training but not training for the specific mission set is useless. So, not all training is great training. You've got to figure out and direct your decision-making to the stuff that matters. And you talk a lot about character, and what I love about it is, you wrote around page 140, "My notes are all over the place because I was reading your book and going back and correlating it to other things," and you said, "The humility, courage, and will to make real change takes character." Brian and I are both huge on that, and we loved it when we read it. So, first of all, everybody on this call is a character, and we all have a character, but how we maintain and manifest our character is the badge, our tower of power, our legacy that'll live on long after we do. And how do you want to be remembered there?

So, when I took a look at that, and near the end of the book, you're talking about identifying the areas where there's gaps or shortcomings in your life, and you want to give them serious attention. That's introspection. It's hard. We don't want to do that. Humans to improve need to do that, but sometimes you need to go out on Amazon and buy this book to find out how to do that. And what I like is you laid it out very simply. Brian and I have read a bunch of books, and a lot of people want to come on a show to hawk their book. We even joked last time, Steve, we were talking that sometimes you just buy the book because you know the guy, and that's what you do. It's kind of a secret handshake, right? But the idea is that what I felt, I felt better after this book because I felt that any cop, and certainly any soldier—and I can only speak soldier, I can't speak Marine or Navy—but I've worked with enough SEALs and Marines to understand your language. But you don't need, if you don't do an AAR (After Action Review), and if you don't start every on-duty roll call with a mission set and a goal and where you're going to go, then what happens is you're running around in neutral, and you're just flooring your engine, and you're operating in the red all the time. And then when you do get ready for something, it's either going to be a neutral slam, and you're going to lay a patch, or you're going to blow your engine. And what you're able to do is you were able to put those words in a book that's easy to read and say, "Here's how you prioritize your values. Here's how you can turn that courage into a commitment. Here's how you can take your character and attain a goal." And so, again, I applaud you for that. How hard was that part? How hard was turning the flashlight on Steve and taking a look at it and saying, "Okay, this is the filter that I'll use to write all these great words"?

I think, if you're looking at in terms of me, and I reveal in the book that the areas that I fell short, I tell one particular story where my mother-in-law has to pull me aside and be like, "Look, you've got to maybe really think about how you're engaging your family," right? I would lose my temper and yell at my kids, and I kind of out of proportion through what was recalled, even when they were kind of or what was merited in the situation. And I really was like, "I've got to include that type of stuff," because I think what's really important is a lot of times we forget, we forget that all of us have this imposter syndrome sometimes. We have who we aspire to be, and that should always be our goal. We should always be driving and committing and recommitting to that. But with that comes the acknowledgment that we are going to fall short, that we are going to stray from the path sometimes. But it's on us, first, as I say, to hold ourselves accountable. But then we've got to have a level of forgiveness. We know that the mistakes that we make, that is not define who we are. We are that person, we are who we aspire to be. We have to think that way. It's the only way to keep driving forward.

Yeah, no, it's spot on. And that's, that's how, I look at it as, that's what I get when I'm reading this, and just knowing you for, not that we know each other personally that well, but have known for a little bit is that, you get a sense of, and part of the time is, is you're trying to figure out your own life with this, right? So, you're writing about this going, "Shit, I know how to do this over here." That's what. I don't know too many guys that have a problem operating in chaotic combat environments. That's everyone's like, "Yeah, that's fine. We'll go do that all day long." The hard shit is back here at home. That's not, that's the hard part because I sometimes I don't know how to approach this stuff. And again, my answer is always, you have the knowledge, you have the skills, you have the attitude to do this, you just need a framework, or you need to point this in a different direction. And so that, because I looked at this as, "All right, well, you're not deploying anymore. You're not ramming cars, booting doors." So, what's your X? What is your X for you, for Steve? And I'm like, "It's in there in the book," right? You're writing about this personal stuff going, "All right, this is now what the X is for me." And I think that's for a lot of folks, you know what I mean? That, that's the hard part to deal with where you're just like, "What? I'm looking at the insurgent, the little one and my wife going like, 'What? What do you mean we planned to dive? So, just dive and plan. What's the problem?'" And they're like, "What are you? What? I, I didn't feel like doing that." I was like, "I don't understand what that means. What do you mean you didn't feel like? No, of course I didn't feel like doing it either, but I did it." And my wife's like, she's 10, and I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's right. All right, hon." It's so funny because it's taking that, because you're again, you can see in the book, process-oriented person, and just creating that new process, or using the same process that you've already done, that you know how to do, and put it in a new area. And that's how to be successful. Sorry, Greg, I mean...

No, no, no. It's so. Shelley, my external brain, Shelley, corrects me all the time in the kitchen. So, she'll say, "No, you have to add that spice now because if you add it too late, it's going to taste like crap." And I'm like, "Okay, why does that timing matter?" And she goes, "Timing is everything. If you don't time this right, if you don't put it in at this temperature and at this length, it's not going to come out right." So, Shelley teaches me about processes through other means, through all my automotive examples come from Shelley, "Detroit Steel," right? All of my cooking examples. And what I find out is she's teaching me through storytelling. Your storytelling in the book is very effective because it's not all stories, it's stories, then it's "so what," and then it's, "Okay, how do I improve on it?"

But what Brian and I've seen—and Steve, I know you've seen this, too—we've read a lot of books that people just, because, look, thank God you were a combat vet, everybody that's listening to this. But that doesn't mean that you're going to be an inspiring writer and help lead somebody to an epiphany. So, what you'll do is you'll see the person on there, and it'll say, "The Fight for Fallujah." And then, I'm no Bing West, but you read the first couple paragraphs, you go, "This is pretty good." But then the next book is, "Battles for Fallujah," and you start reading the first paragraph, and a guy goes, "I was there. I saw it all." And it's like, "Yeah, you get it, but where are we going with this?" Because there's so many books, and I get buyer's remorse, right? Because I like old-fashioned. I pick up a book, I read it cover to cover, told you I was going to get it, told you I was going to get one for my son, told you I'd read it in time. And then I get done with it, and I go, "Okay, this was compelling. There's some really good stuff in here," and I like when I dog-ear and highlight my pages and all that other stuff. But there's not a lot that's out there. So, your training, there's not a lot of good, although there's a lot of books. Your stuff is good for a CEO, your stuff is good for a family person. I just want to make sure that when we're selling your book, which I really want to do, we're not just talking about the Navy SEAL. We're talking about a smart guy that got knocked down a lot in his life and had a lot of great mentors and learned a tremendous amount of it, and still uses them every day. But you're, you know, you're a broken little snowflake like all of us, right? You use the word 'vulnerable.' That's a really hard word for somebody to consider when they're looking at a Navy SEAL that killed more people than cancer. And that's the part of their brain that you've got to change with that book. And I think you do a great job of saying, "Okay, this is who I was, and these are the challenges I overcome," and I use that as a model to show you if you have this as a foundation, you can get here. And Brian, that's exactly what you were talking about. You're talking about building the process, and sometimes when your process is wrong, finding another path, a new way of bridging that gap. And Steve, I think you've done that cleverly in this book.

Thank you. I hope that it was clear in the book that they're not just military lessons. I always made—I always, I'm not a natural writer. It's not something I'm like, "Oh, I'm just going to go—" I didn't get done this book and say, "I can't wait for the next one." No, it's like, yeah. But that's, so I'm always honest and say, "Hey, the best part of this book was interviewing super high-level people: athletes, CEOs, other military folks." So, yeah, a lot of the lessons, because the athletes, professional athletes, Olympians, they very much have that kind of X-moment that I just love. Just in the concept of stealing, I love to see how they're kind of using, because they are taught at an early age, things such as self-talk, such as mental rehearsal, mental skills like that. So, it's like, "Hey, you can use it here. It's no different than if you've got to go pitch to the C-suite." It really isn't.

That's it. That's it. That's it. And the best ideas stick around. Simple processes are more likely to be sticky than some big laminated sheet with all the different things. Brian keeps a journal. I don't know if you know this, Steve, we call it a coloring book, but Brian keeps a journal, and he was on the hippo this morning, which was really cool. But that's where, that's how he expresses himself, and I hang them on the fridge here at work when he sends them to me. So, I'm thankful for that, too.

Yeah, and I have my journal. Greg has his OnlyFans site where I don't know what's going on there.

No, I know. And, Steve, we appreciate you coming on to talk about this. This is actually, I read this and was telling my wife about it because I'm going to get her a copy because I'm like, "Shit, this is perfect," because you put it into very simple terms, and I'm not trying to oversimplify it, like Greg said, "All right, here's the story, here's the 'so what,' here's what you can take away from that, use your daily life." And I'm like, "Shit, that's really good." So, it's that perfect guide, and I think it'll help her kind of understand how I see things sometimes, as much as, I teach literally about human behavior. But it's different when it's your family and it's your wife. You know that dynamic, don't I know it. So, I like giving her other people's opinions that are in line with mine, so it's easier for her to go, "Oh, I like this Steve guy. This is great."

My—here's one of my least favorite quotes from my wife that I think I probably hear way too often is, "Why don't you take some of the lessons that you wrote about in your book?"

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Nothing. She knows that that it really pushes the buttons, but she's right. You're like, "Yep, I love it."

Why do you think it's fun to be on the road sometime?

Yeah, when you're on the road, you walk into a room, and people clap, and they're still excited to see you. And then you come home, and it's like, "Yeah, you wrote a book. Now pick up those dirty shoes, you bastard!" Right? Exactly. That's good. We have to have that, you have to. That's part of the balance of life. If you don't have that, then you're out there again, up on the high wire without a net. And you're going to fall, and when you fall, it hurts, and it hurts for a long time. But you built a great support system around you. You've done a great job for our nation and for the Navy and for the SEAL community. And I'll tell you, if somebody is looking for the right book to gift somebody that isn't sure about a way to go, your analogy, walking down that hallway and being able to go back out—I've never thought, "I'm not good enough to succeed," but I thought a lot of times when I was in that dark place, I go, "Look, man, in 15 minutes, I can be in a hotel room with a bucket of chicken and a bunch of cocaine and hookers everywhere. I do not need this." So, we've all had that, right? And, that's a tragic, that's neat, right? But the idea is to shine light on that and look at it and go, "If I stick this out, it'll be over in a couple of days, and look at what's at the other end." You do that really well in the book by comparing it to the SEAL selection process and a lot of the hardships that you go through. People, you've got to remember that the scar tissue makes you stronger. If there's a form of resilience, that's it. And Steve, I think you do a great job of bringing that out in the book.

No, and thank you. For those listeners who may be their first time listening to The Human Behavior Podcast, now you know why a SEAL immediately, Greg, ingratiated himself with that level of humor. You want to, you want to win SEALs over, make them laugh. It'll work every time, right? That's so true.

So, yeah, no, that's, that's the best one that I love with it. I've had some good ones from training some of the SEAL Teams out of the West Coast years ago. And same thing, I was like, "I was like, 'Hey, here's the thing. I'm going to go up here, I'm going to stand here, I'm going to talk for an hour and 15 minutes straight before we take a break. If you didn't learn one new thing, or if you don't think I'm completely full of shit, you get up and leave, and you don't have to come back here.'" But we were in Atlanta, Georgia, or south of Atlanta, some Columbus, Georgia, and we're training of course. And one of the new guys that was like fifth guy in a stack was trying to mimic Brian and I that came up training, and he goes, "Hey, if you don't want to be here, you can leave now." And about a third of the people left the room. You've got to be careful, credibility, and show them they're going to teach something. So, that's a great thing. But honestly, Steve, we love having you on the show. I certainly hope that you would come back and talk to us about some lessons learned, an after-action review about writing the book. Let's give it some time, and maybe you can come back and tell us what you've learned for the next book.

Yep. I'm happy, happy to help you guys write your masterpiece. I know it's coming soon. It needs to, if it's not in the works right now, it needs to be on your list.

We've got a little bit of an episode of "Scared Straight."

Yeah, it's a cautionary tale: what not to be. It's when you grow up. It's getting there. But no, we appreciate you coming on, man. So, I'm going to have all the links, obviously, to get the book. You get it on Amazon, but I'll have the links in the episode details. So, click on that, check it out. It's Life on the X: A Navy SEAL's Guide to Meeting Any Challenge with Courage, Confidence, and Readiness. It's an awesome book, huge takeaways. I love it. It was a whole new way of looking at stuff. So, I do appreciate you coming on, man, and I want to have you back on.

Hey, thanks. Always a pleasure, and I will come on anytime. Hopefully, in the next six to eight months, we can do something in person, right?

Yeah, absolutely. We'll link up three of us in person in some way, shape, or form. We'd love to do that. So, thanks everyone for tuning in, and don't forget that training changes behavior.