 In reality, the world never stops. It feels like it does, but in fact it doesn't. And those people who thought it did and decided to lounge and do nothing and kind of fall into those states, the world kept on going. It just kept on going in different ways. That's what evolution is. What's up everybody and welcome to the show today. 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. Rick Savinny, welcome to the show. It is a pleasure for us to have you on the show. We're gonna be discussing a lot of things today. You have a mission, you have a book out. But we're gonna need to get our audience caught up to speed. And I certainly have some Navy SEAL questions and I wanna get into the Oodaloop as well perhaps. But why don't we go ahead and get this thing started. Rich, what lured you into being a Navy SEAL? Wow, what lured me? Well, so I grew up wanting to be a Navy pilot. In fact, my twin brother and I both wanted to be, well, we wanted to be pilots and we wanted to fly jets. And we said, okay, Air Force or Navy and both of us, we grew up in Connecticut on the coast and we both love the ocean. So we figured if you did a Navy, then you could fly jets and be near the ocean and land on ships and you know, what's tougher than that? That's really how we were bent for most of our, I mean, that was like from the time we were six or seven years old. And then it was after the first Gulf War in 1990. And I remember reading an article about the Spec Ops forces to include the SEALs and learned about these guys and said, man, these guys are, they seem to do everything. They're water, they're winter warfare, they're desert, they're jungle. And you know, back then no one knew, very few people knew what Navy SEALs were to include myself. So I just started reading books and I said, man, this seems like, it seems pretty, pretty badass. And so, and so yeah, we ended up at Purdue University. I was in an ROTC program and ultimately said to myself, well, I knew I could be a pilot, but I wanted to see if I could be a SEAL and applied, got selected fortunately. And then actually made it through the training and spent the next 20 years in a very kinetic world because who knew what was gonna happen, you know, after 9-11 and heroin ended up. So incredibly grateful to have done it. My twin brother ended up becoming a pilot. He flew the Harrier and the Marine Corps. So that's the jet that goes up and down vertically. So I lived vicariously through him and he lived vicariously through me. And here we are, retired at end of 2016. I retired from the military and have been speaking and reading and writing. You know, I find there is two types of guys when looking at the military or a military career. One is what is the safest, easiest path? And the other guy is like, what is the toughest, most rugged, craziest path I can possibly take? And Rich, well, we know where you stand. Right. Well, military provides a lot of opportunity. And yeah, for some, and again, there's no judgment there. For some it's like, hey, it's an opportunity to do something, get an education, you know, serve in a different way. For others, guys much more like myself, I guess it's like, hey, there's an opportunity to have some action and adventure and try to do something very few people can do. And now, again, part of the job, part of what you sign up for is to go to war. And again, when we signed up, there was nothing going on. So when war actually is in front of your face, you see, okay, who's really in it, you know? Absolutely. But, and I don't say that to glorify it. I mean, quite honestly, war is horrible and we should do everything we can to avoid it if we can, but it does become very real once you're there, so. Now, obviously, being in Navy SEAL involves an immense amount of uncertainty, both in your training and then in the theater of combat. And many of us were confronted with the same amount of uncertainty in the past year plus going through a pandemic. What about your training really stood out to you as you dealt with the pandemic, just like everyone else, especially around the uncertainty that we all faced? Wow, I mean, I think the answer to that is everything about my training. I mean, I often have remarked that SEALs, spec operators certainly, but you know, I was part of the SEAL team. SEALs are, in fact, the job is to be masters of uncertainty. That's what we are. We are, we train to be able to be dropped into environments of deep complexity and uncertainty. It's actually known as the VUCA environment, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environments, right? So you train to be able to drop into these environments and perform. So yeah, I think everything about what happened in 2020, I and people who, like me, were prepared for. And now, just to caveat, that doesn't make it any easier, necessarily. It just makes you understand the whole process more and actually maybe even deal with the unease more effectively. I mean, it's funny. I think about SEAL training, you know, BUDS, basic underwater demolition slash SEAL training, which is in Coronado, California. It's six months long. Known as the toughest training in the world and you do things like hell week where you go through a whole week of sleep for only like two hours. And I remember, you know, they make you do things like spend hundreds of hours running with, you know, heavy boats on your head and spend hundreds of hours exercising with 300 pound telephone poles and running around those things on your shoulder and freezing in the surf zone. And I remember reflecting back on my career, especially as I was writing this book and saying to myself, you know, I've done hundreds of combat missions overseas and I've done thousands of training evolutions and never on one of them did I carry a boat on my head or a telephone pole on my shoulder, right? So what they were doing to us in training wasn't in fact training us, they were teasing, they weren't training us in the skills to be SEALs, they were teasing out these innate qualities, these attributes that actually allow us to understand how we show up and how we perform in uncertainty, challenge and stress. And I think that's the key. And that's kind of what I think even subconsciously drove me to kind of think about that and then eventually kind of put it to paper and pen and articulated in a way that people can understand. Well, not only that, they're putting you in a position to fail and fail repeatedly and many can't handle that, which is why the attrition is so high. Well, and, you know, because failure is, you know, once we fail, the question is what do you do then, right? And we kind of, I was having coffee with a good friend of mine. In fact, if you've read the book, the guy I was having coffee was Hank, you know, Hank from the book from the Perseverance and Resilience chapter and he was having coffee with him just yesterday. And he, we were talking about this and we're talking about how, you know, the community was designed and had designed itself in a way that in many ways you try to be in really very good shape because you have to be. But you have to once in a while, if not somewhat often, do something physically that breaks the body so that you may develop your mind, you know, because that's when your mind kicks in. When the body no longer has anything else to give, that's when the mind takes over. And I think that type of training, those types of things, even that type of experience, whether it be the pandemic or what people went through suffering, the body is broken and now the mind takes over. And if you train your mind, if you understand how you can effectively utilize your mind in those situations, you are, I think that's true confidence, to be honest with you. 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. That's an incredible point. And one of the things that fascinated me about going into the pandemic was that amount of uncertainty and how everyone viewed it. And I said very early on, there's two ways that you can look at this. And for all of us as adults, the absurdity and the redundancy of life gets the best of us. And there's moments where all of us say to ourselves, I just wish the world would just stop for a moment. If I had a week where the world stopped, I could get so much done and I could catch up. And that idea, well, how wonderful would that be? Well, guess what? The world actually stopped. So what are you going to do about it? And there was folks who were like, well, here's an opportunity to lounge, to eat Cheetos, catch up on Netflix, and I'll wait this out in three weeks, I'll be back at work. And then there was other one that people like AJ and myself were like, here's an opportunity to do all the transitioning that we were wanting to do in this company while everything is on hold and go inward and focus on some of the things that we want to change and do all this work. And well, guess what? Then those three weeks were up and people realized this is going to be an interesting situation. And I was going through this, I was telling AJ, and I might have mentioned this on the podcast, I personally don't know anyone who passed away from COVID, thank God. However, I do know many people who had gotten severely ill and it was awful. However, the amount of people that I lost due to isolation, depression, and substance abuse during COVID, I lost count. And so granted, this wasn't Ebola that was coming through the country and putting everyone in place, but it was difficult to say the least for everybody. And everyone handled it differently. Everyone looks back at it differently. And I'm interested to see psychologically what things linger on from everyone's experience during this as well. Yeah, well, you say something really profound, Johnny, and that is, and I want to kind of highlight this because it's a lesson that I think everybody should understand is that ultimately really in reality, the world never stops. It feels like it does, but in fact it doesn't. And those people who thought it did and decided to lounge and do nothing and kind of fall into those states, the world kept on going. It just kept on going in different ways. That's what evolution is. I mean, when the asteroid hit 65 million years ago, in essence, for many species, the world stopped, but in fact it didn't. Those species that evolved and chose to evolve lived on. And I think that's the growth that we all need to understand and aspire to is that is evolution. The world will change. Nothing, as far as we know, science has not yet discovered anything in the known universe that doesn't change over time. Everything does, right? Which means if we are unable to adapt and evolve, we will go extinct. And that's not what we want. Extinction is not what we want. We have to understand the world is always moving and we have to as well. And the book is about attributes. And for many of us during the pandemic, we realized some latent attributes that we had that had never been put into place. Grit, resilience, having to deal with things around discomfort, pain, suffering that many of us had not experienced in the modern world. Were there any latent attributes that you discovered through the pandemic? Obviously, you've been through all the training, but the pandemic is a different situation. What a great question. And my initial answer is no, because the pandemic wasn't that hard for me. I didn't find my, and my family either. I mean, my family, again, the families of military service people go through a lot of the same suffering that the service member does as well. So my wife was, I mean, she'd been through a war with me. I mean, and my kids had been, I mean, my kid, now I was home with my kids all the time. I could help my son with advanced algebra and my other son with his math and do stuff. And so in fact was a blessing for us. There was a lot of great things that came from that. You know, certainly there was boredom and impatience, but that's nothing compared to what was going on. But I think one of the reasons why I say no is because ultimately I think one of the ways we grow is when we understand, when we are effectively able to reflect on the challenges that we've experienced, you know, in the past, right? And if we can effectively reflect on these challenges, whatever they be, whatever they might be, trauma challenge, either inflicted on ourselves through me going and putting myself through budge steel training, or it just hits us, right? Someone goes through cancer. If we're effectively able to reflect on something, we learn the lessons from that challenge in a way that allows perspective to happen, which means when we're faced with another, you know, challenge or tragedy or whatever, however you want to call COVID, immediately almost the first thing you do is you put your circumstances in perspective, right? And you say to yourself, okay, wait a second, we have it pretty good around here. I mean, what am I grateful for right now? We are really, we're healthy, we're happy, we're okay financially. There's a lot of people suffering out there way more than we are. And it immediately makes you kind of say, okay, I'm good, there's nothing I can complain about, you know, and even if you feel like you're complaining, you're like, well, that's, I understand, that's just a, it's a first world problem in many ways. And so I think, and certainly when you go through a military career and you go through combat and you go through some of the things we went through as a family and as a community, when you lose friends who are dear to you and things like that, when things, bad things happen, you go through something like a pandemic and I'm not saying this to devalue anybody else's experience, I'm actually saying to emphasize that when you look at your own experience, you say, we have it pretty good, there are other people suffering. If I'm not gonna complain, I'm not gonna bitch and whine and moan, I'm gonna make something, I'm gonna make something happen, am I gonna help as much as I can if I can help others as I will? So I think perspective is part of that. And really knowing thyself, and I feel like the training you went through, the assessments you've done, even the self-discovery around these attributes and the process that went behind the book, which I'd love to unpack in a minute, many of us in the pandemic were forced into that self-assessment. The modern world distracts us from that and we follow comfort and our neurobiology doesn't seek out uncertainty or discomfort. We are wired to be comfortable and safe as much as possible. And now we're in a situation where we've had to self-assess in these areas and realize, okay, maybe some of these attributes that I had, I didn't realize they were latent or there are some other areas for growth for me to really become the person that I want to be. And as Johnny was saying earlier, that's how we tried our best to utilize that time in the pandemic and looked for others around us doing the same to help support us if we were falling back into the latter category of looking for comfort. So in building out this book and looking at these attributes, what was your goal in laying it out for us, the audience, to understand these attributes and then how to bring them forward in our lives? Yeah, ultimately I am really deeply fascinated with what I call elemental human behavior. What is it that causes us to behave when at like the atomic levels? And that usually means like when things are really bad, when we always say, when things are really bad and challenging, the real us shows up, okay? I'm interested in the real us. And maybe that's because I went through training that was like, it was like inherently shows the real us. And so in beginning to deconstruct the difference between attributes and skills and how these attributes are kind of elemental to our behavior, I said to myself, well, this is a way that I can help people understand their own kind of engines. I kind of say humans are like cars, right? We're all automobiles. Some of us are Jeeps, some of us are Ferraris, some of us are SUVs, right? And there's no judgment because the Jeep can do things the Ferrari can't do and the Ferrari can do things the Jeep can't do. But it makes a lot of sense and it helps out if we are able to once in a while lift the hoods of our own engines and figure out what we actually are. Because in fact, we might be a Jeep that's trying to run on a Ferrari track and we might be a Ferrari just that's running on a Jeep track. And again, there's no judgment there either. You can be a Jeep running on a Ferrari track but you better, it's gonna really help if you know you're a Jeep running on a Ferrari track is then you know exactly what you need to work on to continue to run on that track. Or you say to yourself, wait a second, that's why I'm not happy, that's why I'm not fulfilled. It's because I'm actually a Jeep trying to run on a Ferrari track. I'm a Ferrari trying to run on a Jeep track. So these attributes are one of the most, one of the elemental things about ourselves that we can start to figure out and say, okay, this is why and how I behave the way I do. And knowing that gives us some ammunition to both maximize our performance and whatever track we're on but also understand how to do better and tweak our engines in ways that actually help us because we all know there's thousands upon, tens of thousands upon maybe even millions of tips, tricks and hacks out there on how to perform better, how to do better with all these little things you can do. And they don't, not everyone works on every person, right? You know, some don't work on other people. Another, well understanding your own engine helps you understand, okay, what's actually gonna work on my engine because putting a nitrous oxide pack on a Jeep engine might not be the right idea. You know, you might blow the gaskets, right? So it helps you in fact pick the right tools by this self-awareness, self-understanding. So that's I think one of my, what was one of my goals with writing this book was to write a book that wasn't a seal book and it wasn't a book about seals or top performers or athletes or anything. The book, I wanted to write a book that's about the reader. And when the reader reads it and say, wait a second, this book's about me. And I'm learning something about me and that was what I wanted to do. And I think so far the feedback I'm getting is that that's what people are thinking, which is cool.