 Why did I, for example, become a Navy SEAL in the first place? You know, this is kind of a running joke in the teams. And certainly through my friends. It's like, well, we're 22-year-old kids, or in some cases, 18-year-old kids. And yes, we're patriots. We ask we want to serve our country. But we also want to be bad-ass. What's up, everybody? And welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week. And we want to make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Is there anything in particular that somebody who is looking under their hood should be looking for in order to figure out whether they're the Jeep or the Ferrari or notable pieces that can help them orient to a better lifestyle that suits their needs? Yeah, so the process is highly subjective and introspective. And what I'll say about attributes is that attribute, we all have all of the attributes. The difference in each one of us are the levels to which we have each. So if we take adaptability as an attribute, I might be, if one's low and 10's high, I might be a level eight on adaptability. Which means when the world around me changes outside of my control, it's fairly easy for me to go with the flow and roll with it. Someone else might be a level three, which means when the same thing happens to them, it's difficult for them. Again, no judgment. Judging where we fall on these attributes is like judging our hair color. There's nothing we can do, it's useless. But if we were to line all the attributes up on a wall, like dimmer switches, all of our switches would be on different levels and we'd have to figure that out. So that's number one is kind of figure out where you stand. And then it's gonna be about understanding how that fits into the context of your current life and your current goal set. Because the attributes required to do one thing are different than the attributes required to another. So the attributes required to be a Navy SEAL, that list is gonna be different than the attributes required to be a standup comic or a teacher or a doctor, right? And some attributes, if you're low on, it doesn't really matter because in the context of your goal, it's actually fine, right? So the standup comic, for example, doesn't need a lot of empathy, okay? Doesn't need to be high on the empathy scale. In fact, too much empathy might actually hurt a standup comic because how are you supposed to find funny at a funeral if you're too empathetic, right? So if a standup comic is in the standup comic world and says, oh, I'm a little low on empathy, it's like, okay, that's fine, I don't need to work on that. But if on the other hand, someone says, yeah, I wanna be a surgeon, right? And so courage, in my mind, courage would have to be one of those ones you have a lot of because gosh, I can't even imagine doing that. Then someone's gonna need to work on that or whatever it is, adaptability or perseverance. Name the attribute, again, it's a subjective task. So I think every person needs to understand, A, where they stand and then B, say, what are my goals? And what are the niches within which I want to excel and succeed and then how does that line up with what I'm coming to the table with? And if there are gaps, then start working the gaps. That's great and most importantly is putting yourself in a position to be challenged so you can see where these attributes lie. You're not going to find them or discover them eating Cheetos, binging on Netflix. In fact, and it's not something you're gonna be able to look in a mirror and just guess, there was 138 folks in your hell week, if I remember correctly. And I'm sure every one of those guys going into it says, I got the attributes that it's going to take to get through this and how many passed? We started 168, something like that and we graduated 38. Yeah, so, and that's normal numbers. I mean, you're talking about 11%, 10 to 11% of success rates. So 89 to 90% attrition because yeah, because these attributes are the most visible and visceral experientially during times of challenge, uncertainty and stress. You can't sit across, this is where businesses and teams get it wrong because they assume sometimes that they can hire or they hire based on skills because skills are highly visible, they're measurable. You can score them, you can put stats around them, you can put them on resumes, you can see. But skills don't tell us how people behave in uncertainty and challenge and stress attributes do. And so you can't sit across, because they're hidden, you can't sit across the table from someone in an interview and assess how adaptable they are or how resilient they are, you just can't do it. It's experience that actually helps that vet out. And so it's important for us to understand that these experiences, and so here's the good news, every single one of us as human beings has been through challenge and uncertainty and stress. We all have, right? So we all have vignettes that we can look back on and start thinking about how we performed. And if we're honest with ourselves, we can say, you know what? I'm not very adaptable, adapting's hard for me or I'm not very patient or I'm not very resilient. That type of self introspection and self-awareness allows someone to then say, okay, do I need to work on that? If someone wants to develop an attribute, they can do it. It just takes a lot of, it's different than learning a skill. You have to, it takes self-motivation, self-direction. It takes a willingness for that person to step into discomfort and uncertainty and challenge so they may develop it. But that's the difference. And a quick back of the envelope test for the audience to determine whether or not to say skill or an attribute is to ask the question or questions, can I teach it or can it be taught? Okay, if the answer's yes, it's probably a skill. If the answer's no, it's probably an attribute. The example would be AJ and Johnny, you say to me, Rich, I wanna learn how to shoot a gun, a pistol and hit a bullseye every time. Well, I could take both of you out to the range and teach you how to do that within a couple hours. That's a skill. But if you say, Rich, we wanna be more patient. Okay, I can't teach you patience, right? Both of you would have to go find, you'd have to be self-motivate, self-direct and then go find experiences and situations that test and tease and develop your patience. Whatever those are. So I don't know, you go to the grocery store and pick the longest line to stand in every time. I don't know what that is or drive to Liberty and Taft traffic. But you have to find them. I've worked with AJ long enough to know and vice versa that neither of us are stacked in the patience. That's it. And that's okay. We drop great content each and every week and we wanna make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that, you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. There's two viewpoints to this, right? There's this view that, okay, I understand the dimmer switches and I don't need to change them. It's innate, it's who I am and maybe I could find the better road for me to be on or those in our audience who are obsessed with performance and say, I wanna dial these switches to a 10. I don't wanna be dim in any of these areas. So how can we create in our own lives opportunities for us to develop these attributes and identify the areas that might not be worth developing because there's so many attributes in the book, right? And of course, there are members of our audience who wanna be at a 10 on every one of them and some of that time and energy spend is just not really helpful for them. So how do you differentiate and determine, these are attributes that I wanna continue to develop and work on. And you know what? I'm happy with where this is set. It's getting me results in my life and I can move on. Well, okay, so a couple of things that impact, first of all, the audience has to understand that it's impossible to be at a 10 on all of them, right? It's just impossible, right? We can't, okay? The second thing is being a 10 on any of them is probably a bad thing. Too much of anything is probably a bad thing. I don't know. I mean, I'd have to really look and do some real thoughts on if there's any of these attributes that like having too much of is not a bad thing, right? Because even courage, I mean, too much courage, that means you're probably tipping into the zone where you are rushing in like a bulldog. I mean, you're not actually assessing risk properly. So there's a balance there on all of these things. You wanna have, I mean, the levels, seven and eights are probably the good thing. And even things like narcissism, you wanna kind of be in the mid-range. Even, you know, so first of all, yeah, you don't wanna look for perfect 10s on any of this stuff. In terms of each individual and what they want to accomplish and what they want to kind of excel in, they have to do the work. They have to actually ask themselves the questions. Okay, first of all, where do I stand on these things? Okay, and that takes, I can't tell them that, right? This is why, you know, and so there's an assessment tool on the website. And we put that on there and I wanted to design and I wanted to put it on there for free so people could actually do it whenever they wanted. But it'll give you a kind of a score on where you stand on the grid attributes, the mental acuity attributes and the drive attributes. And the idea behind the assessment is that when you take it, that you have to really kind of introspect quite a bit. You have to think about it as you answer the questions and really answer them honestly. And then even when you get your score, the score is gonna be kind of a score in comparison to the data pool that we got the data, right, so if you're a level eight on adaptability, you're a level eight as compared to this thousand group of people that we, so even those answers need to be kind of thought through and say, okay, how does this apply? Does this make sense to me? This is a little bit different than some of the other tests out there, right? The strengths finders and the personality tests and stuff, which I love, I think those are great. But a lot of those are designed for you to kind of input a bunch of questions, answers, and then they're going to tell you kind of who you are, right? My assessment tool and the attributes assessment tool is completely different because it's really designed for you to think about and figure out who you are, versus be told. I can't tell you, I just can't tell you. And so, for your audience members who are kind of highly motivated and really wanna do the best they can, first it takes the introspect and say, okay, where do I stand? Then, okay, given the contexts of my goals, what are the ones that I need a preponderance of? And then based on those two lists, I say, okay, where am I really doing well? Okay, I'm on a level eight on like seven out of 10 of these things. These three, though, I'm a little bit low. Okay, I'm gonna actively work to develop these three, these three, right? And then develop them to the extent where they're kind of good. I mean, you're not gonna get, I don't think, I don't think, and again, I'm not a psychologist and I have to do this, there's not a lot of research on this. I'm not sure you can get to a level of unconscious competence in an attribute that you're lower on. I think you're only gonna be able to get to a conscious competence where you're okay at it, but you have to think about it every time. And in fact, it might also be somewhat contextual. So for example, if you are impatient, and then you have kids, okay, and you learn it, and the kids inevitably teach you patience, right? Hopefully, because they're like, okay, I know how I can be patient. I've developed my patience with my kids. That doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna be patient with other people's kids, okay? I mean, so it can be somewhat contextual. Developing an attribute could be somewhat contextual. It needs, takes work and takes effort. And so just people have to understand that. There's always gonna be conscious thought involved in work that needs to be put in, and it's a highly introspective process. I love that. And you mentioned, to go back a little bit, you mentioned narcissism as an attribute. And for as long as we've been doing this company, and we've been in some very clinical settings and have interviewed psychologists and have been in this world, and narcissism takes on different roles and different, and depending on the company that you're speaking to, where in a clinical setting, for the most part, psychologists have always pushed narcissism into a place where you don't wanna be narcissistic, you wanna stay away from it. It's not a good attribute to have, and it's bad, bad, bad. And of course, I've been in other settings, I think it's an entrepreneurship and certainly business where people talk about the idea of adopting healthy narcissism, or borrowing from places that probably don't have the best social results, but personally, they can get you into doing things that maybe you wouldn't been able to do if you didn't borrow this from the dark side. And narcissism seems to be one of those, and you might need a bit of arrogance to be able to step in the arena knowing that you're about to get your ass kicked. And narcissism is the same way, it's like, well, you have to have some sort of love for yourself, and maybe even the delusion that goes with narcissism, to put yourself in a place to be able to see victory or at least to be able to learn. Yeah, yeah, no, it's so true. And so I really, this is one of the most interesting and fun sections for me to write about, because I had to really do some introspection myself, but let me separate a couple of terms here, because I'm really into semantics. If you get to know me, which I'm sure we'll keep in touch, I'm just, I'm really big in semantics, okay? So arrogance is different than narcissism, and arrogance is really, and I usually relate arrogance to confidence, okay? Confidence is I know I can do this, arrogance is I'm better than you. Confidence is internally focused, arrogance is externally expressed, right? And that's different, that's a different category. Narcissism is the desire to stand out, to be noticed, to be recognized, to be adored, okay? It's a desire more than it is anything else. And then, so what I did is I said to myself, okay, I'm gonna get the DSM-5, which is the kind of the psychology Bible, and as all this, I'm gonna buy one of those things. I got it, and I started, I had to turn to the page on narcissistic personality disorder, and I started reading, okay? And in that, in that, in the DSM-5, it'll lay out about nine different criteria, like nine sentences, they're a kind of criteria. And it basically says, hey, if you, if the patient has five or more of these, then they have the disorder, the narcissistic personality disorder. So I started reading them, and I said to myself, okay, well, as I read them, I was like, well, I certainly don't have five or more of these things. However, as I was reading each one, I wasn't necessarily saying, no, that's not me. You know, I was saying, wait a second. I can see myself, I've sometimes thought that way, or I've sometimes thought that way. So then I'd say, okay, why did I, for example, become a Navy SEAL in the first place? And that's kind of a running joke in the teams. And certainly through my friends, it's like, well, we're 22-year-old kids, or in some cases, 18-year-old kids, and yes, we're patriots, we ask, we want to serve our country, but we also want to be badasses, right? We want to do something that very few people can do, or even can, even a comp, I mean, just, it's the desire to stand out, right? And so narcissism on a healthy level, when metabolized in a healthy way, is really impetus of audacious goal-set. I mean, what makes someone want to be the famous rock star, or the top-notch surgeon, or the lawyer, or the military person, or the author, whatever that is? It's that seed of narcissism, it's that seed of desire to stand out. And then I actually said, okay, let's back this up even more, and talk about the neuroscience, okay? When we are infants, and getting paid attention to by our parents or others, we are getting hit, burst, with three powerful chemicals, dopamine, which is, this feels good, keep doing it, serotonin, which is a neurotransmitter that says, hey, this is good, people like me, it's like a safety-connection-bond thing, and then the hormone oxytocin, which is the love chemical, the love hormone, okay? This exchange when you have physical touch with other human beings, acts of kindness, we're getting all three of those, and we're getting paid attention to. That doesn't change when we're adults, okay? When we're getting paid attention to and adored, we're actually getting the same chemical response. I would offer that every single human being, at some point in our lives, wants to feel special, feel adored, stand out, be unique, okay? Whatever that definition takes on, whatever that meaning is. So I think narcissism, healthfully metabolized, can actually be a driver towards goals and audacious goal-setting. I think that's why we have to look at it. One caveat, though, which I have to say, okay? Because it can, narcissism, when tipped to the wrong level, okay, too much, is dangerous, okay? And it's also dangerous, dangerous for a couple of reasons. Obviously we know it's dangerous because it makes people, you know, bad, right? But it's also dangerous because it's like a vampire staring in the mirror. We can't see it in ourselves, all right? So the inoculation to that is to surround ourselves with people who actually tell us the truth and love us and care about us enough to keep us reined in. And don't put us at the center of attention all the time, right? You know, the true narcissist you'll see, you can tell true narcissists because they surround themselves with sycophants, right? They are always the center of attention, okay? If you have a group, if you have a friend group, a family group that keeps you humble, I call them your grounding wires, right? That's an inoculation that allows people to achieve audacious goals. Think about the most famous people on the planet either currently or in history, throughout history, who are also stable, okay? It's usually because when they talk about their family, it's because they have a family environment that keeps them that way, you know? And they always go back to that home base to keep them stable, to keep them grounded. That's the inoculation against too much narcissism.