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EP639: Marty Strong - F*ck It! And Why It Matters
2 Plays0 seconds ago
“F*ck it. It’s kind of an internal cue for me to shut all those voices down, take a deep breath, and just start figuring out and planning and doing what I have to do to succeed.”
Mental toughness isn’t born; it’s forged. This episode dives into the world of Navy SEALs and beyond, exploring the grit, resilience, and mindset required to thrive in high-pressure environments. It’s a conversation about pushing boundaries, silencing self-doubt, and finding the strength to say “yes” when every part of you wants to quit. These lessons don’t just apply to combat—they’re a roadmap for navigating challenges in business and life.
Our guest shares extraordinary insights from his 20-year Navy SEAL career, leading combat missions and developing leadership under extreme conditions. He reflects on how SEAL training shaped his ability to manage fear, persevere through adversity, and lead effectively. Drawing parallels between military and business, he offers practical strategies for building mental toughness and conquering the inner critic.
Marty Strong is a retired Navy SEAL, business strategist, and bestselling author. With decades of leadership experience in both military and corporate worlds, Marty helps individuals and organizations unlock their potential through resilience and decisive action. His books explore the art of thriving under pressure and achieving peak performance.
Learn more and connect:
• “Be Nimble: How the Creative Navy SEAL Mindset Wins on the Battlefield and in Business” Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Be-Nimble-Creative-Battlefield-Business/dp/1789048400
• “Be Visionary: Strategic Leadership in the Age of Optimization”
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B09DRR9F5L/about
• “Be Different: How Navy SEALs and Entrepreneurs Bend, Break, or Ignore the Rules to Get Results!”
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Be-Different-Entrepreneurs-Ignore-Results/dp/1803411333
Expert action steps:
1. Redefine Your Edge
Challenge your perception of limits. When you think you’ve hit your maximum capacity—mentally or physically—push a little further. Growth happens when you step into the unknown and test your resilience beyond comfort.
2. Conquer Negative Chatter
Silence the self-doubt in your mind by adopting a clear internal cue, like saying “stop” or “let’s go.” This mental reset can help you take action and maintain focus when facing challenges in life or business.
3. Take Calculated Risks
Embrace opportunities that test your skills and stretch your capabilities. Even if you fail, the experience will build resilience and teach you valuable lessons, helping you grow and reach new heights.
Visit eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.
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Transcript
Embracing Risks for Growth
00:00:03
Speaker
If you don't take risks, if you don't risk your ego, if you don't kind of stick it out there a little bit, you are what you are and you're not going to be much more. And it doesn't mean you're going to go out there and you're going to conquer everything that you're you're risking, but you're going to learn from it. You're going to get stronger from it every single time. Sometimes you can pick those those those moments and those objectives. Other times it just happens to you. But you always have to have the mindset that you're ready. You're never there. You never have completely arrived. So you always have to be preparing and and be prepared for the moment.
Introduction to the Thought Leader Revolution Podcast
00:00:36
Speaker
Welcome to the Thought Leader Revolution with Nikki Ballou. Join the revolution. There's never been a better time in history to speak your truth, find your freedom, and make your fortune. Each week, we interview the world's top thought leaders and learn the secrets of how they built a six to seven figure practice. This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.
Marty's Military and Post-Military Career
00:01:15
Speaker
So, Marty, you you've got a very interesting background. Why don't you walk us through your background? So, I i spent 20 years in the Navy SEALs. Half as an enlisted SEAL and the other half as an officer.
00:01:32
Speaker
and then led 36 combat missions as an officer during that timeframe. And then I retired and went into managing money with the United Bank of Switzerland. And then after 9-11, I went to work for various government organizations and agencies on counterterrorism. And then I ended up in a corporate environment and eventually um Scored an equity position in a government contracting company. That was about six seven years ago since then I've helped acquire a health care company a second government contracting company Now the two government contracting companies are gone. They were tactical training anti-terrorism kind of terrorism type training Focused countries focused companies and I just had the legacy care medical company left that I'm working on Wow
00:02:25
Speaker
That's a heck of a background that you just delivered in a very powerful, succinct, matter-of-fact way. So let's let's break it down a little bit. So it's unusual um for someone to start off in the military as an enlisted man and then to become an officer. Why don't you um tell us that story? How did that end up happening? So it it kind of ebbs and flows. um There's a special rank in the military called warrant officer, and it's kind of this weird gray area between being a senior enlisted person, like a command sergeant major, a sergeant major, or a master chief in the Navy and an officer. And it ebbs and flows because usually during times of conflict, the United States gets caught with pants down because roy' we're always you know not fighting the next war. And I think we won the last war and that's it. So we shut down a lot of the recruiting. we so We trim back the forces.
00:03:25
Speaker
And then when something happens, like a Pearl Harbor or the Lusitania before before World War I, or you you can go back and find there's always something that surprises us. you know Like the British british invading invading for the war of 1812. Hey, guess what? The capital's on fire. And we don't have an army. We don't have an avian. And that's just, I don't know why it's that way, but that's the way the United States always starts out the wars. And when they do that, especially in modern times,
00:03:51
Speaker
they realize they don't have enough officers. They have to expand rapidly and it's easy to find, you know, the foot soldiers and sailors because everybody patriotically runs in, signs up, goes to boot camp, and then, okay, what are you going to do with all Indians and no no leaders? So what they've done in the past in all the 20th century wars and and in this century is they will go around and they will cherry pick and and advance senior enlisted people straight into the becoming officers.
00:04:21
Speaker
they'll do battlefield promotions of enlisted people that show leadership in battle and promote them right into becoming officers. They will expand that that rank I told you about called warrant officer and convert a bunch of enlisted people into the warrant officer ranks, which then the warrant officer can take on a lot of the administrative and staff officer duties so that the shortage of officers isn't as bad.
00:04:48
Speaker
I'll give you an example. So SEALs, ah in Vietnam, they didn't have warrant officers. And then towards the end of Vietnam, things were expanding and they didn't have enough officers, so they started allowing SEALs to be warrant officers. And also that because they didn't have enough officers, they had special programs and SEALs went to college, paid for by the Navy for four years, called an ESEP, and they came out and they became an officer, but they were still SEALs. So when i when I came in,
00:05:17
Speaker
It wasn't unusual, in ah and there's only two SEAL teams at the time, it wasn't unusual that about 25 to 30% of the officers in the team were all prior enlisted officers. well and And there was also warrant officers on top of that. Now, when the war starts to fade in your memory and the force structure start to get shrunk down by the by the powers that be, they they start trimming back the number of warrant officers. They actually remove warrant officers completely for SEALs.
00:05:46
Speaker
in the ah mid 80s. And then they brought them back again in the 90s because they didn't have enough officers again. So it's a long way to answer your question, but it's a it's an observation that senior enlisted people have leadership capabilities and or management capabilities. And when you're short on officers, you got to whip them in there and have them fill the gap. So that's what I did. how I did half my tour tour as a enlisted guy. I was just that was up for senior chief or E8.
00:06:17
Speaker
When I went to officer's candidate school, then finished out the last part of my 20 years as an officer.
Growth and Integration of SEAL Teams
00:06:24
Speaker
Wow. um How many men are in the SEALs right now? How big are the SEAL teams? Well, actual, what they would call an operator, somebody that would carry a gun in combat. The estimates are somewhere between 3,200 and 3,400.
00:06:44
Speaker
When I came in, there were only two SEAL teams and there were I think 120 per SEAL teams. There was 240 SEALs, but they also had three underwater demolition teams or frogman teams on each coast. So that's six teams. So all in, you're probably closer to 800. Then in 1983.
00:07:07
Speaker
Congress decided to shift all the SEALs along with the Air Force special ops into the new special operations command structure. And they renamed all the underwater demolition teams SEAL teams. And that's where all the extra numbers came out all of a sudden. So up until 1983, there was only SEAL team one, SEAL team two, um and the other teams were underwater demolition teams. And all those underwater demolition team guys, they all went through the same screening process and went through the same buds program and everything. And, you know, since 1983, there's been, there's only been SEAL teams. Wow. When did you join the teams? um I joined the Navy in 1975.
00:07:49
Speaker
And I went through bugs at the end of 76 into the like first or second month of 77. So it was, I went to jump army jump school at Fort Benning and reported sometime in the spring to SEAL team two on the East coast. So you retired just a few years before 9-11. Correct. I retired in 1995. Wow.
00:08:17
Speaker
So. When 9-11 happened,
00:08:23
Speaker
um I'm imagining that they reached out to folks like yourself to try and tap into your knowledge base. um Tell us a bit about that. They did. But not just not just the uniform services, all the intelligence agencies reached out to everybody. So I had 80% disability. so Nobody was going to grab me, him, he come back, grab a gun and slide down a rope or, or do anything like that. So sure the, um, there were a lot of people that were in reserves that were pulled back in rapidly to, um, backfill all the staff positions and everything to free up the active duty officers so they could deploy overseas. And, and that was done. They, um,
00:09:10
Speaker
They changed the the way senior leaders were responsible for troops. So it used to be that when you were a senior lieutenant, 03, that was the last time you actually led SEALs in combat. When you moved up to the next rank, you were basically a staff guy. The Navy didn't have, the SEALs weren't big enough. The Navy didn't have any other jobs for SEAL officers. So they would just get out for the most part, or they would go into intelligence. Some guys became fighter pilots, to come some guys became doctors, whatever, but for the most part they got out.
00:09:39
Speaker
But when 9-11 happened, they um they decided to bundle all these different groups together into ah squadrons. And that justified having Lieutenant commanders and even commanders and even Navy captains um deploy overseas in charge of large scale operations. So that that didn't happen until I guess around 2000.
00:10:03
Speaker
probably 2002, 2003. So before 2003, once you hit senior lieutenant, you're behind a desk. So um another reason why I ended up retiring when I did, you know all the fun was over. um So yeah, so then 9-11 happened and the the various groups that were asking for people with my experience and other types of experience reached out and we a lot of people ended up working with the US government one way or the other for the next couple of
Counterterrorism and Strategic Insights
00:10:36
Speaker
years, including me. I mean, I was in Baghdad for eight months. I was in Afghanistan for a short period of time, not in uniform. And I was also doing other things under contract to, I was the threat profile guy for the Athens Olympics in 2004, the counter-terrorism guy. So I profile what the bad guys would look like, how they were planning. um Although the emphasis at the time was
00:11:04
Speaker
talking about the the event itself, when I got there, I said, no, that's not that's not how bad guys plan. That's not how good good bad guys plan. They back plan from the event. So you've got things happening right now, 15, 16 months before the Olympics start. And that can open the rise a little bit.
00:11:23
Speaker
And so I started laying out some scenarios and some storyboarding. I said, this is your back plan from here. And this is what I think they would be doing right now. They would be in fundraising, preliminary resource and team selection. Then they're going to have a training phase. And they're going to have to take these guys and put them someplace where they can train with weapons or demolitions without being too obvious. Then they're going to have to have transportation. It's not going to be clear if they're not going to jump on an airplane. So here are all the different ways they can get across the Eastern Mediterranean, blah, blah, blah. And then when they get here,
00:11:53
Speaker
um They're going to need intelligence. So start looking at all the local goofball groups and activist groups and communist groups, which were there were a lot in Greece, and watch their bank accounts. Because if somebody wants the local guys, which are the best eyes on scene, to run around and start collecting data, taking pictures of venues, you know as things are being constructed, et cetera, um it's going to be the local guys.
00:12:18
Speaker
And a lot of that stuff came, came true we were way, way in advance when they thought they'd have to focus on it. And they actually were able to, they were able to put surveillance teams on the surveillance guys because they knew the money came in there and they said, okay, we're going to watch these, these 25 guys we've got, you know, in our, in our police list of suspects and see what they're paying attention to. So that's, you know, that's a ah different angle to, um, it's intelligence more than special operations. But when you put the two together,
00:12:50
Speaker
you know guys guys that did what I did can figure out what what bad guys are going to do and and write up pretty much to the time of the event and then also how they're going to react to different stimuli.
00:13:04
Speaker
Yeah, wow. you know It strikes me, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, that when a man goes through something as challenging as SEAL selection training and makes it through that ah and then becomes a member of the SEAL teams and lead SEAL teams in the combat.
Developing Mental Toughness in SEAL Training
00:13:31
Speaker
There is something about that whole process that brings out the very best in you and the best of who you are. You get to perform
00:13:41
Speaker
at the highest level that you can actually perform. What it teaches you more than anything else is how to get all the potential in you and fully realize it. Because let's face it, most people, myself included,
00:13:57
Speaker
never get to operate at their very best. In fact, our society right now is raising most most men in particular to be pussies, to not push themselves to be the the best that they can be. ah And I think that's part of what's wrong with our culture and our society right now. I'm just wondering your thoughts on that. you know there's ah It's a really interesting subject that comes up all the time. It's kind of like one of those in the military anyway, you know, is, is leadership nature or nurture is the 45 cal as one 45 caliber round as good as two well-placed nine millimeter rounds. There's these like philosophical debates that you think Aristotle was in the room because people will come up with all these different reasons for it. And one of the ones is are the guys coming into the military, you know,
00:14:51
Speaker
worse than the the ones that are that came in when I came in. And this has been going on, as much as i can I can determine, this has been going on since the beginning of time. Because the people that are evaluating them are already qualified, trained, and seasoned, and they and they they obviously have a perspective, right? But they forgot the perspective of when they walked in the door. yeah And I spent eight years as a, let excuse me, eight years after I went through SEAL training, I went back to be the lead enlisted guy in charge of the first phase of training where hell week and all the basic selection happens. And I was stunned at what I was observing because I have almost no memory of it. What they were going through and then just the duration of the pain and the agony and you wake up every morning it's going to be the same 10 hours of nonstop exercise and then you wake up the next morning it's going to be the same 10 hours of nonstop exercise.
00:15:44
Speaker
and watching people break down psychologically and see their eyes dull and then then the waves start coming out of people that quit. and And there's very few superheroes. You have people that have a spark in their eye or a little twinkle in their eye and it's not the biggest guy, it's not the fastest guy. I mean, I was only 125 pounds and 17 and eight months old or something like that. And I was intimidated, everybody that looked like middle linebackers were all gonna just kick ass, right?
00:16:13
Speaker
And that's not the way it turned out because what made the difference was between your ears, not between your legs. It was really about your mental state and your control of your mental state and how you created self-determinism by addressing what was happening in your head. I call it the voices in your head. They were telling you, you know, you're not good enough for this. You're not big enough, fast enough. You're not tough enough. You should just quit right now. And the pain stops and you can go do something else.
00:16:41
Speaker
And the group that a very small group that are able to have that, you know, take that voice and basically crush that conversation and just tell it to shut the hell up. Those are the guys that you want to be around. Those are the guys that you can take a look in their eyes at any stage and seal training. And you go, they're not going to quit. They're not going anywhere. But the vast majority, because the attrition is 75% all the way back to 1962. And they started the current course.
00:17:09
Speaker
The vast majority had that look in their eyes within the first 10 days. And the instructors, we we got so we could read their body language. We could see look the look in their eyes. Viktor Frankl talks about this in his book, Man's Search for Mooning About the Way Human Beings React to the Stress of a German Nazi Camp. And I mean, it's exactly, almost exactly the same kind of understanding that you come to as a business
00:17:38
Speaker
Excuse me. So I guess I'm saying is you come in as a, as a kid, you're not some macho John Wayne guy. You're not taught to be macho or John Wayne. You go through this crucible of external factors and and environmental input on your, on your, your body, your body breaks down. Your mind wants to follow your body and say, okay, if my, if I'm this tired and I'm just, I'm done. But you decide.
00:18:08
Speaker
I'm not done. And that person that gets through the first you know eight, nine weeks of the of the course, that's the raw material that you turn into a Navy SEAL.
00:18:21
Speaker
So it's a little bit different than people would think. The tough guys don't come in the door and make it all the way through to graduation as the same tough guys. The tough guys, here's another kind of side theory that was proven out.
00:18:35
Speaker
Some of the earliest people to quit were the guys who were the best athletes. Now, the focus in everybody's mind, whether you're going to go through the special forces, you know, Greenberry Q course, you're going to go through boot camp, you're going to go to SEAL training, you got to practice pushups, you got to practice sit ups, you got to do all this stuff to be physically fit. We get guys in there, both in my class and when I was an instructor watching it, there were absolute, incredibly gifted athletes, collegiate athletes. I mean,
00:19:05
Speaker
We had a guy was who was number three in the in the Hawaiian Ironman competition. yes The reason these guys were quitting, eventually we figured out, was because they'd never had any mental adversity. They were winning so much as they were growing up that they had never faced failure.
00:19:28
Speaker
Yes, and in this case the failure was to get one foot to move in front of the other Because hey, you want to do you can do 100 push-ups and I can do 50 I'm gonna have you do thousand push-ups and i'm gonna get you to the same mental state as the guy that crapped out at 300 Same thing with winter versus cold winter cold water versus summer warm water To get to the edge of hypothermia in the winter takes a shorter period of time we do We do the same thing in the summer. We just take a little bit longer time to get to the edge of hypothermia. It's still the edge of hypothermia. It's it's part of the the quality of the course in that that's one of those points where somebody thinks they're losing control of their body and they decide they want to get they want to get out of it. They want to quit. So all these are mental things I'm talking to you about. It's a mindset, it's a mindset but it wasn't a mindset coming in the door. It's a mindset that you you forged under fire, so to speak.
00:20:21
Speaker
And then when you get a group of people that have that, have come to that realization on their own, they're self-motivated. It's all self-initiated. You don't have to do any motive. You don't have to motivate seals. You know, you don't have to ever give a raw, raw speech ever for any reason. They're, they're sitting there like a bunch of Ferrari,
00:20:52
Speaker
These are these are like the best of the best because like you say, they're they they're there because they want to be there. You don't need to like convince them to be there. They're there because they want to be there and they want to perform at their best. But it also strikes me that that mental toughness allows them to actually go to the very edge of their capabilities because most people quit way before they get to the very edge of their capabilities.
Personal Experiences in Pushing Limits
00:21:19
Speaker
Right. You know,
00:21:20
Speaker
um
00:21:22
Speaker
I'm working out ah with my son. My son is a is a fitness trainer at a gym. And um this gym is owned by the man who I hired a year and a half ago to help me drop 60 pounds. And now at 57, I've decided I'm going to go do my yeah my IFBB pro card. At the age of 60, you're allowed to go for a pro card. so I'm gonna go for a pro card at 60. I mean, people younger than that can too. But I mean, for people my age range, I gotta hit certain metrics. He's training me. And you know, today we were doing chest and there was a ah few exercises we did where I felt completely done. Like my pecs were on fire. I was ready to drop. And he told me five more.
00:22:17
Speaker
I didn't think I could move it an inch, not one inch, you're my main. I'm like, you're you fucking crazy kid, this isn't gonna happen, right? But he looks at me and all seriousness is like, come on, old man, push. So I pushed, I got the first one out, I go, how the hell did that happen? Okay, second one out, I got it. And the third one, I got it halfway up and then he started to help me and we got all the way to five more. I don't know how it happened.
00:22:45
Speaker
But when I think about it afterwards, what strikes me is that, you know, I think I'm mentally strong, but I'm really not that mentally strong. I want to quit. When when when I get to the point of pain, I want to quit. And it it it took my boy telling me you can do five more to get me to do it. Then when I'm on my own and I'm doing exercises, I noticed I'm going way past the point where I would normally wanna quit. I'm going five, six, seven, eight, 10, sometimes 12 reps past the point where I normally in my mind said I wanna quit. And it's interesting to me because I just think to myself, how much more could I do in other areas of my life
00:23:32
Speaker
that I'm just mentally checking out on. And it strikes me, Marty, that the greatest gift the SEAL programs gave you and your fellow SEALs is it made you men go to the very edge of your capabilities. And that's got to have had spillover into every other area of your life. You as a businessman, you as a CEO, you as ah as a husband, et cetera, et cetera. And and that that that's really the point I wanted to make.
00:23:59
Speaker
Yeah. And I wouldn't be too tough on yourself with the night reaching for the edge all the time, physically, because we're intelligent beings and we, um, there's a natural tendency to economize when you get towards the edge of the, get close to the edge. And it's like a little buffer zone. It's like you want to leave a little bit in the tank. It's exact opposite of leaving nothing in the tank. It's your brain's telling you the smart thing to do here from a survival standpoint is to back it off a few notches and save a little bit. Right.
00:24:28
Speaker
And you need sometimes an ah an external catalyst to push you that hard beyond that. um Well, the hard part about what you just said about transferring it to a lot of other things, and you do, and and I've written about this, I've spoken about this actually recently, that it was six years later when I was actually colder than I'd ever been in Hell Week. I was 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle, top of the world in Norway on this mountainside.
00:24:56
Speaker
And I'd passed out from dehydration. The guys were putting IVs in me trying to get me rehydrated. And there were two other guys end having the same thing because we were supposed to be up there for two days and a whiteout came, which basically the snow coming down and the wind kicks up the snow that's on the ground. So everything's just one big you know snowball that you're trying to go through. And we're cross catcher skiing with all this weight on us and everything. And two days became five days because nobody could get to us. And I know.
00:25:27
Speaker
I remember having this, you know, kind of come to Jesus thought process. That was 10 times worse than anything I went through in Hell Week. It was six years later, but then I saw bigger waves, darker waves, trying to load land rubber boats in Greece in about four years after I was in, that were 10 times worse than California waves. So what I learned from that was it doesn't really teach you what the edge is, it teaches you that The edge is never where you think it is. You have to be prepared for the unknown. And when the moment comes again, which it always will, you're going to have to step up and do the same thing you did all the other times.
Preparedness for Unexpected Challenges
00:26:05
Speaker
and It may be a much bigger sacrifice or task or level of effort, but you're not inoculated to tough. You have to be tough when it's time to be tough. And sometimes it's ah it's a all capital letters tough. you know um you know it's It's like the fight rule. you know
00:26:22
Speaker
you don't have to be greatest fighter in the world, but there's always somebody in a bar that can probably kick your ass. And so if you walk around and you're not humble, you're you're just waiting for that moment. And then then it humbles you. And I've seen Vietnam vets with you know two silver stars get the hell beat out of them by a 19-year-old Marine, because the Marine just got the jump on them. And it's like, wow, you know those are superhero sealed combat guys with valor medals, wrong venue.
00:26:50
Speaker
wrong Wrong competitive space. yeah They weren't thinking that way, right? They were resting on their laurels and figuring nobody's going to want to kick my ass because i'm well they weren't in uniform. Nobody knew who they were. They didn't care. The world, the universe doesn't care. So sometimes you can plan the adversity. Like it sounds like what you're doing, you're planning some adversity. I did the but did the full MIRF thing with a 20-pound vest.
00:27:13
Speaker
For my 66th birthday this summer, I was trying to go for the 45-minute advanced athlete level on on CrossFit and I got to 48 minutes after training for eight eight weeks. The training was 10 times worse than the actual event. Training for eight weeks because I wasn't doing weighted vest pull-ups at all when I decided to do this. and you know My wife was like, why are you doing this? and why do you decide this This is nuts.
00:27:40
Speaker
And I thought, well, I just want to do something that was nuts. Cause I just, you know, I work out every day too. And I didn't want to just go in there and do the same old, same old, same old. And I wasn't sure if I was even going to be able to complete it the first time I did a practice one and I completed it and I said, okay, now I gotta see if I can get to that time. So now it doesn't seem like a big challenge. Now I'm thinking January 1st for new year's, I'm going to see if I can get to the 45 minute or past that because it's, it's not a mystery. It's not a boogeyman anymore anymore. But I'll tell you what.
00:28:10
Speaker
if If you don't, if you don't take risks, if you don't risk your ego, if you don't kind of stick it out there a little bit, you are what you are and you're not going to be much more. And it doesn't mean you're going to go out there and you're going to conquer everything that you're, you're, you're risking, but you're going to learn from it. You're going to get stronger from it every single time. Sometimes you can pick those, those, those moments and those objectives. Other times it just happens to you. And, but you always have to have the mindset that you're ready. You're never, you're never.
00:28:40
Speaker
You're never there, you never have completely arrived. So you always have to be preparing and and be prepared for the moment. Yeah, I appreciate what you're saying. it's It's true. And, you know, I don't want to be easy on myself. I've been too easy on myself all my life. If anything, I want to be way tougher on myself.
00:29:08
Speaker
It doesn't mean that I think you know there's something wrong with me, or I'm bad, or I'm wrong, or oh my God, you're such a loser. I don't think like that. I think like i think I'm a winner, but I think I need to be hard on myself. I think being hard on myself is the surest path to being the best me. And being easy on myself is the surest path to decay and decline. And I used to be a top fitness trainer. And when I got out of that field, I stopped paying as much attention to nutrition.
00:29:38
Speaker
Just stop. I ate what I wanted when I wanted. Did I always eat bad food? No, but I ate a lot more of it. And over a 12 year period, I gained almost 60 pounds. And that's what happens when I start to go easy on myself, when I start to just relax, do whatever you want. But when I am focused and I have an outcome in mind, I accomplish things that make me feel good about myself.
00:30:06
Speaker
And I think that's important. That's one of the things that men are lacking in 2024 is we're way too easy on ourselves. You know, it's, it's crazy enough that society as a whole has said, Oh, well, you know, we, you know, women need men like a fish needs a bicycle, which I think is a load of crap, you know, and things like that. And masculinity is toxic, which is another load of crap. I mean, all that's bad enough.
00:30:30
Speaker
But the worst of it all is when men don't push to be the best version of themselves. And for me, one of the reasons I've been excited to have this conversation with you, because our other conversations have been business conversations. They've been great. I wanted to to get a look inside the mind of ah of a man who's been a lazy seal. I want to understand how you think.
00:30:51
Speaker
and how you thought when you were going through the process of being a SEAL, and how you you thought when you were helping other men become SEALs. And I gotta tell you, it's some it's very different than what I thought it would be. What you have to say to me was very different than what's popularly out there about what people think a SEAL is like. That's true. yeah Cartoons are one-dimensional. Certain characters.
00:31:19
Speaker
and that's It's an easy thing to create. It's much, much more difficult. I was talking to somebody one time about the movies, about seals or any, any special ops guys. And I said, well, nobody would sit there and watch a movie that lasted, you know, three or four days because you'd have to sit there and watch a movie that's three or four days long of people going through that misery without sleep, you know, following other guys, picking them up, being miserable, sandy, cold before you really got it.
00:31:48
Speaker
before the before little light bulb switched on and said, holy crap, yeah this is really bad. this It's showing some guy with a log going like this for three three and a half seconds in a clip. And saying, these guys are tough. That's the one dimensional kind of look at it. But you know it all these things I was saying before about preparing yourself and being prepared and and and never resting on your laurels, never never deciding that you've arrived.
00:32:18
Speaker
That works for everything, works for every walk of life. It's been a great way of looking at the world in business for me. I've had ups and downs, I've had lefts and rights, I've had, in some companies where they they give me a challenge, that's it's already a failure. you know And it's like trying to bring this patient back to life. We've already declared it you know dead. and And my biggest fear was failure. Okay, they think I can fix this thing. What if I can't fix this thing?
00:32:47
Speaker
What if it's too hard to fix this thing? What if it's, you know, and then I go through the same kind of psychological challenge that everybody would go through. And then the little voices start kicking up in my head about saying, well, the reasons why I shouldn't be doing it right. You know, and then all the little exit clauses and the disclaimers, then I go, wait, usually what I say is fuck it. If any of that's true, then it doesn't matter, right?
Adopting the 'Fuck It' Mindset
00:33:09
Speaker
But if I just pretend it's not true and I just try to fix it, whatever happens, happens. And that,
00:33:17
Speaker
It's the same kind of mindset I have every time I get faced with some kind of a challenge in life that has nothing to do with combat or military ah context. I'll just say, fuck it. And it's kind of an internal cue for me to shuttle shuttle those voices down, take a deep breath and just start figuring out and planning and doing what I have to do to succeed. It works for me. That's that's a really great thing for us to land the plane on this conversation because ah
00:33:48
Speaker
Inside Sovereign Men, the men's organization that are run, we say fuck it when we want to take something on to. And when when a man is about to join our community and he's wondering whether he should or or he shouldn't, we tell him to fuck it. Are you ready to fuck it? Because to us, that means are you ready to say yes, to throw your hat over the wall and figure out a way to make it work to be the best version of you.
00:34:16
Speaker
So I really like that. I think I'm going to call this episode. Fuck it. It's a good name for the episode.
00:34:24
Speaker
ah Marty, you're a good man. i I enjoy our conversations. By the way, I got your books um and I'll be reading them soon. I'm excited to read them. I read your book pretty fast, man. i I started reading and I didn't put it down, started taking notes. Good. Good.
00:34:46
Speaker
That's excellent. That's excellent. I'm glad. um I think.
00:34:54
Speaker
I think it's important that people get to listen to conversations like this because. That's the best way to learn. To hear things that you.
00:35:06
Speaker
on your own would never get to figure out, never get to hear. I'm never gonna have an opportunity to try out to be a Navy SEAL. First of all, I'm a Canadian, I'm 57 years old, I'm way too old to try out for something like that. But I've always been fascinated by what it takes for a man to be able to challenge himself at that level. And what kind of man is able to challenge himself at that level and meet that challenge to become a seal because as you say, over 80% of the people who try out for the seals don't make it. And the men that make it really have a certain quality to them that other men can learn from. Learning how to be mentally tough, how to go past
00:36:03
Speaker
your brain's negative chatter that wants to stop you from being the best you that you can be. In my opinion that's an incredibly valuable skill and maybe the men that make it through SEAL training always had that skill but I say the SEAL teams honed that skill for you and brought it out of you in a wonderful and beautiful way and I think that's fantastic.
00:36:28
Speaker
And I thank you for sharing that with me because that insight to me is probably the most exciting thing I've learned today. And I've learned a lot today. I've been on five podcasts today, so.
00:36:40
Speaker
That's good. And I was still your negative chatter line. I like that. I always use the voices in your head, but the negative chatter sounds pretty good, too. Good stuff. Marty, thank you so much. And i'm I'm looking forward to having you back on once I read both your novels and finish your book.
00:36:56
Speaker
All right, man. Yeah, it's always been good talking. Yeah, absolutely, brother. God bless you. Take good care. John, you too. Bye-bye. This episode has been brought to you by eCircleAcademy.com, the proven system to add six to seven figures a year to your thought leader practice.