It's another great day to get better. I'm Toby Brooks. Becoming Undone is the podcast for those who dare bravely, risk mightily, and grow relentlessly. Join me each week as I invite a new guest to examine how high achievers can transform from falling apart to falling into place. Whether in business, sports, the arts, or almost anywhere in between, the ability to assemble and grow a high-functioning team can be the difference between success and failure. In some elite teams like the US military special ops, such can literally be the difference between life and death. Growing up in a pre-internet age with Cold War rhetoric and a steady stream of staples of my youth like GI Joe, the lure and appeal of groups like the Army Rangers and the Navy SEALs made them stuff of legend. They were real-life superheroes surrounded by mystique and trained unlike any other. At the same time, if you were like me and my friends, you didn't know much about them like how to get in, how they trained, or what they did once they were admitted into those elite ranks. And you couldn't just google it at the time either. Early in life, Rich DeVinney wanted to fly. The appeal of being a pilot and serving his country was tremendous and he found himself growing up in Connecticut with a dream to take to the skies. At the same time, Rich was also influenced by James Bond films and the US Special Operations Forces, so the idea to pursue a career as a Navy SEAL took root, eventually leading him to Purdue University where he joined the Navy ROTC program.
After graduation, Rich was able to complete BUDS training and serve for over 20 years as a Navy SEAL officer. During his career, he held several leadership positions to include the officer in charge of training for a specialized SEAL command, where he focused on defining and refining the ways in which the cadre could successfully identify the candidates who would be best suited to serve in the Navy's most elite and storied unit. As a result, the attributes emerged, ultimately leading Rich to write and publish his highly informative and pragmatic book that can help leaders identify the aspects of specific team members that can help improve the way units train and operate. Listen in, in this episode as Rich explains his journey from young aspiring pilot to Navy SEAL, from Navy SEAL to military team and leadership expert, and eventually to author, speaker, and influencer in Episode 28, Precision Aggression. This week we've got a guest who has really transformed my team. Rich Deviney is an author, former Navy SEAL, and his book, The Attributes, 25 Drivers of Optimal Performance, is something we went through as what we call a short course.
So it was a six-session, two-month-long course, and within it, we did the assessments that Rich has on his site, and it's really been transformative for us. So, Rich, we can't thank you enough for joining us today. Welcome. Thank you, Toby. Thanks for having me. So this has been an exciting one for me. I've been looking forward to this interview for quite a while because anytime you read a self-help book or, you know, a personal development book, whatever category you would put the attributes in, I always walk away with actionable things, but they're never quite the same as a memoir. And so getting to know the author, and you definitely weave bits and pieces of your story into the book, and it's your story is how you came to discover the attributes.
So I'm really excited to dig in and learn a little bit more about you, Rich, as a person today. So I'll start off with a little bit of a softball here. What did you want to be when you grew up and why as a kid? Yeah, yeah, that's a great softball. And the answer is very simple. I wanted to be a jet pilot. Now, it started out to be Air Force. One of my favorite books growing up to read, I read about two favorite books.
One was Chuck Yeager's autobiography called Yeager, and just talk about his time as an Army Air Corps pilot in World War II. I was just like, oh my God, that's the one I want to do. And then the other one was The Right Stuff, the book The Right Stuff about the early space program. So I just, and I have a twin brother, all we want to do is fly. And ultimately, when we looked at the services, we said, well, Navy seems pretty cool because Navy, you get to land on ships. So what could be harder than landing on ships? That's pretty right. And this was, by the way, this is pre Top Gun. So Top Gun came out, it was like even more, I was like, oh my gosh, this has to, you know, so that's what I wanted to be. And it really wasn't until the first Gulf War, so 90s, early, or 1990. I was in high school and I, right after that happened, obviously a very short campaign, I got an article, I saw an article in Newsweek magazine that talked about a bunch of special operations forces inside of which one of them was the SEALs.
And I said, wow, who are these guys? And that's pretty cool. I started reading about them. And so I went to college, did Navy ROTC, and ultimately said to myself, you know, I know I can be a pilot, but I don't want to wonder if I could be a SEAL. And so I decided to go SEALs, and which of course is a risk because it's about an 85-90% attrition rate.
So I threw my hat in the ring and went and worked out well and spent 21 years in the Seals team. So that's how that evolved. Yeah. I think for a lot of listeners, certainly the Seals have been in media. We've seen things like Lone Survivor and obviously David Goggins and there's just been a real proliferation of this this mindset and I think for the civilians among us who hold people like SEALs and any kind of special forces in such high regard and there's kind of this mystique around it. The individuals who complete that training you're cut from a different cloth to survive that and to thrive and to become the best of the best require something that's just so aspirational.
So fundamentally, I'm human, but I want to be the best human. And so I applaud this book because it really proofs in the pudding. You have this history of building some of the world's best teams and you select and you don't select. I mean, you mentioned the attrition rate. Those are for the people who get accepted into the program. They've been vetted through layer after layer. And along that way, there are also countless others who didn't even get to that point. So I guess before we go there, tell us a little bit about your upbringing. You mentioned kind of who you want to be growing up, but who was Rich back then? Where'd you grow up and what poured into making you this aspirational, whether it was pilot or eventually Navy SEAL? Yeah, that's a great question, Toby. My short answer is I have no idea what made me. I don't know. That's a great thing to deconstruct. In my introspective points, I try to deconstruct, but I will attempt. I'll give you some background. I had a wonderful childhood. I grew up in Connecticut. My dad was an attorney. We were in a, I would say we were in a very wealthy town. We were basically middle class in a wealthy town. So that's to say it wasn't anything we, you know, we were fine. We didn't have the Ferrari. We didn't get the Porsche when we turned 16 like a lot of kids in my class did, but we were fine. And it was a very happy, healthy upbringing.
So I didn't have the quote trauma that some would think might be ubiquitous with people who find themselves in this profession. That's really a myth that probably needs to be busted is that the diversity and I say diversity and I might sound like a hypocrite because in many of these cases, women aren't allowed in spec ops although now they are which we haven't had any women SEALs yet, but they are, but for the longest time they weren't. But when I say diversity, I really mean diversity of character, perspective, upbringing, background, right? The guys who make it through are from, I mean, some have been athletes, some have been geeks, some have been from the farm, some have been city.
I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, it's just such a diversity of backgrounds. Some have had trauma in their lives, some have had perfectly fine lives, right? So that never is a predictor. In terms of what caused me to be driven, well, I would almost have to come back to, without sounding gimmicky here, but the set of attributes that I was endowed with at birth growing up, and I've just always been high on the drive attributes.
I've always had self-efficacy. I've always had open-mindedness. I've always had a little bit of cunning, or maybe a lot of cunning. I've always had a little bit of narcissism in terms of my ability to metabolize that, right? Set those audacious goals. I've always been someone who's set very audacious goals, right? And so I think those, and then the grit categories, I think those attributes speak to how you grow up too. So I think those combined just made me someone who said, you know, I looked at where I was and I said, hey, I want to do this.
And there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to. So let me just march down the path and see what happens. And I think that's another thing that I think is required is you have to have the ability to understand that the way there is almost never clear. Almost never. In fact, I would offer never, but I don't, speaking definitively like that, it might be a mistake. So I'll say almost.
But when I say almost, I mean 99.9999% of the time, the pathway, the way you're gonna get there is never the way you actually get there. And usually never clear. I think what you need to do when you set audacious goals, you say, okay, that's where I want to go. All right, what can I do right now? You know, what can I do right now that might contribute to that? And you do that, and then you do the next thing, and you do the next thing.
I think I just had an experience where I began to do that and practice it and lo and behold, it worked. Yeah, walk me through some of the details. So you grew up in Connecticut. It's a far cry from Connecticut to freezing in the ocean in San Diego. And there are steps in between. We're now in a post Top Gun 2 world where people see this. And I remember Top Gun. I was 11 years old and I was definitely enthralled with this mystique of being a naval aviator. There's interest in this.
We've mentioned the media. I mean, there are movies, there are authors or speakers like yourself. And for a 16, 17-year-old kid, like this is a possibility, but how do I get from where I'm at in Connecticut to becoming a Navy SEAL? What were the steps in between for you? I wanted to be a pilot. My brother and I both said, okay, well, let's focus on aviation as a study, as something to study. And so we both, as we kind of finished up high school, you say you were 11, you and I probably exactly the same age, right? So as we finished up high school in the early 90s, we said, okay, we'll, we picked aviation schools.
Let's just, we'll go to aviation schools, we'll learn how to fly, get our pilot's license, all that stuff. And we both actually, because we were twins, we wanted to go to separate ones. I went to Emory-Reynolds down in Florida, he went to FIT down in Florida, so we were a couple hours away. And when we went to those schools, we ultimately said, well, you know what, because of the Top Gun surge, after Top Gun, the Navy just got an influx of guys and gals who wanted to fly.
And so what happens in any military service is they have quotas, they have a certain amount of people they can, and when those things start to fill up fast, the competition for those spots gets really intense, right? And that's what was happening in the early 90s as we went to college. And so what we realized is, you know what? Going to college and going to officer candidate school and trying to be a pilot path is getting pretty tough. It's closing up.
So at a minimum, because we tried to go to the academy, but neither of us had good enough grades. At a minimum, let's get to a college that we can do Navy ROTC, because then we'll get a commission and we'll have a chance. So we both transferred to Purdue University to go Navy ROTC. And that's what we did now. Side story is my brother eventually, he actually ended up dropping out of Navy ROTC and joined the Marine Corps and flew Harriers. So he ended up flying jets, but I stuck with the program, got a scholarship.
And then of course the seal seed had already been planted in my brain. And so I was just reading about these guys, studying these guys. I loved growing up. I love, even though I also love, I love flying, but I also love James Bond. I loved all the James Bond movies. I love this idea of being a spy. I love the water.
I grew up in Connecticut, right on the Long Island Sound. And so I was just a water baby. I loved being in the water. So the seal thing was like, oh man, these are these kind of super spy guys. And by the way, back then, no one knew who SEALs were, right? No one knew. I mean, you had to really look it up, right? But as I did, I was like, these SEALs, they're like spies, but they're spies who come from the water.
They're like invisible. And that's what I, it started really intriguing me. And so that was the maturation evolution. And what I did is in Navy RTC, I just basically said, okay, what are the things I need to do to get there and I think one of the important aspects of setting a goal is once you set a goal, you just begin to understand and look for opportunities and say, okay, what do I have to do here? What do I have to do? And if you keep your eyes open, oftentimes things will just show up and it feels like it's very coincidental.
In fact, I love the whole law of attraction stuff. I really do. But I think there's science behind law of attraction. I think the science behind law of attraction is when you decide on something, we're getting about 11 million bits of information coming into our system every second through all of our five senses. Okay, so our brain is doing a massive amount of deselecting because our conscious mind, our frontal lobe can only process about 2,500 bits. Some will even say 40 or 50 bits per second, right? But regardless, that number is massively lower than what's actually coming in.
So our brains, our unconscious minds are deselecting a ton of stuff. In other words, deciding not to pay attention to it. As soon as we set a goal and we say, I'm gonna focus on this, what we're in fact doing is we're adjusting our neurology and telling our conscious mind, our frontal lobe to say, and we're saying, hey, out of the 11 million bits of things that are coming in every second, anything that has to do with this, I wanna notice. I want you to notice.
I want you to put in front of my... And so we begin to notice things. It feels like we're tracking stuff. This stuff has actually always been there, but now we're noticing things, right? This is the whole... this is the analogy of when you buy a new car, right? And then suddenly you see the car everywhere. Well, it's like, holy sh... everybody's buying... Why does everybody have this car? The car was always there. It's just now you're noticing it. Here, Rich is alluding to the concept of frequency bias, or as we've discussed in previous episodes, sometimes referred to as the Bader-Meinhof phenomenon.
As Rich described it, we frequently begin to notice things with increasing frequency after we've had something come up where it was initially brought to our attention. He mentions car shopping, and I've had this happen in the past two weeks in academic circles where it seems like everyone is talking about chat GPT. Are they? Or am I now just more aware? Performance psychologists refer to this ability to filter out task irrelevant cues and focus instead on task relevant cues as the arousal performance relationship. If arousal levels are too low, like say you're groggy when you enter the game, you don't sufficiently screen out the stuff that doesn't matter from the stuff that does. irrelevant information, as he is with the brake lights in front of him in the road, relevant information. On the flip side, if arousal levels are too high, we filter out things that are important as well as things that aren't, which can also lead to trouble. Consider someone so maniacal to enter the game and so driven to tackle an opponent that he completely misses the block headed his way and he gets destroyed. Optimal performance relies on a balance in that zone where we process the stuff that's important and filter out the stuff that isn't.
We will learn such capacity isn't so much genetically predetermined as a skill that stays the same as it is an attribute that can be honed and developed over time. So I think what happens is and what always has always happened to me is that things just start showing up. My dad knew one of his clients was a former World War II UDT guy, a phenomenal guy named Barry McCabe, now deceased, but wonderful guy. He said, hey, my dad said, hey, I know you're interested in being a SEAL. I have this client. He's a former UDT. Would you like to talk to him? Of course I'd like to talk to him. I talked to him.
He introduced me to a reserve SEAL who was in the 60s, who was a SEAL in the 60s, who actually had a pathway, had some ways that he could help me start to look to get the buds. I meet him. I start working with him, right? And so these things just start to stack on each other and you start to slowly march toward your goal. And again, you almost have to detach yourself from the pathway, right? Because the pathway is always gonna have to be changing and modulating.
But that's the evolution, I think. And I think what I recognized was that's also how life goes. It's also how combat goes. And when you're in a war, I mean, you have a mission objective, right? But getting from point A to point B, you understand, hey, the enemy has a vote, which means you're going to have to adjust. You're going to have to keep an open aperture as to what you may have to do. You're going to have to adapt. You're going to have to flex. Life is no different. Setting goals is no different. So I think the pathway is about figuring out what the top of the mountain is and then starting to walk the path. This is the mountain. I use the mountain climber example. The climber looks at the cliff and says, yes, I want to go, the top is where I want to go.
And it looks like, just as I study the face of this thing, it looks like I can see a path. So it looks like I can do this, I can see a path, right? But the only way you're going to figure it out is you start climbing, right? And as the climber starts climbing, inevitably the climber is going to come to where he thought he could go, or she, and they're going to be like, oh, I can't go that way, I got to find another way.
And now they have to move. And sometimes they have to go down and away from the top. They have to kind of go down that way to find the next best foothold, which means sometimes it doesn't feel like you're moving away from your goal, but all you're doing is putting yourself in a better position to get to it, right? But you have to accept that in your process. And I think that's something I was able to do.
That's such a transformative mindset. Part of this show is focusing on how a lot of times things that we might perceive as failure really set us up for success. You mentioned you didn't have the grades to get into the U.S. Naval Academy. The people who make it into those elite training programs coming out of high school, oftentimes, they are elite academic performers. But you didn't view that as failure. You used that as, like you said, sometimes you got to take a different path. So I'm curious, has that always been kind of your MO, that you're going to, you've got an objective in mind and you're going to navigate your way to it or did failure ever creep into the equation? I think it's the former versus the latter.
But let me tell you why and it's not because I don't think of myself as some inspirational kind of go get it. Here's a very simple kind of funny reason why. I hate being told what to do. This is, by the way, a classic quality of most Navy SEALs, in fact, all Navy SEALs. Even when someone says or even a process or a system says, this is the way you need to do it, something in my brain says, don't tell me what to do. I can find another way. And so yes, the Academy was a way and by the way, most of my best friends, my best friends as SEAL officers are all Academy guys.
They are phenomenal human beings. But even the academy guys will say, listen, just because you went to the academy, it doesn't mean you're going to be a Navy SEAL or doesn't it? They'll even say it doesn't mean you're a rock star. I mean, there's you know, every demographic is a is a representative society. You have your you have your top people and you have your bottom people. Right. So but ultimately, the academy was one pathway. And when I realized I couldn't go, I was like, OK, fine. Well, I'll find another pathway. There's a couple other pathways. That's just always the way I've looked at it. And honestly, if someone tells me explicitly, hey, this is the only way, my first thing is like, I bet you it's not.
I bet you it's not. Because again, that is the quality of maybe, in special operations, it's all about finding another way. It's all about finding the pathway that people don't predict. And I love that challenge. I just love it. And so I think a little bit of obstinance when it comes to rules, regulations, and restrictions.
This is where cunning comes in, by the way, the attribute cunning, right? Hey, there's a problem to solve. What are the, I always say the cunning mind looks at the, looks at the problem, approaches the problem, immediately asks three questions. Okay. The first question is, are there rules and boundaries? Okay. And restrictions. The next question is, if there are rules and boundaries and restrictions, are they real or are they perceived?
Okay. That's the second question. Third question is, if they're real, what happens if I break them? All right. And then you do that calculus and say, okay, now I'm going to start looking around, okay? Because if the consequences aren't dire in breaking them, we're going to break them or bend them, right? That's what the cunning mind does. So I think a little bit of cunning allows for, this is why cunning is a drive attribute, because cunning allows for a process by which you say, you know what?
Yes, that's a pathway, but I can find another one, right? And I'm going to solve this problem in a different, unique way. The thing that jumps out at me during my conversation with Rich comes in light of his book, which I first read about six months ago. I was so taken by the content and the message that I built out a faculty development course that seven or eight colleagues completed with me. It was good, good stuff, especially for those of us in competitive academic programs looking for an advantage when it comes to ways to select students or even faculty and staff members in highly competitive programs. But what sticks out the most to me as we chat is that Rich didn't just make this stuff up in the process of writing a book to build a platform and make a quick buck.
He knows it. He's lived it. He speaks it inside and out. It literally pours out of him. And he's able to apply it not only to himself and its applications throughout his military career, but also beyond in things like our applications in higher ed. It's an authenticity that I deeply appreciate, and it's inspiring to me as I continue my attempts to build something meaningful and helpful for others from my work. Yeah, I think high achievers view failure through a completely different lens.
Sure. They don't view it as a finality. It is just a step in the process. Yeah. We've all heard the story of the invention of the light bulb and the famous quote that it was an invention that took me a thousand steps. Whereas someone who wasn't driven to to solve this problem, they would view, you know, maybe step one for someone who really lacks resilience. But certainly by step one hundred, like this is just an unsolvable problem. But for a high achiever, I discover things every time I fall just a little short, and that allows me to course correct.
So 100 percent. That's fantastic. Where did you see yourself now at your age when you were in high school? What in your grandest vision, what did you see yourself doing? Was it always being a pilot or being involved in military of some sort? Certainly, you probably didn't envision yourself as an author and now a highly sought after speaker. No, I didn't. Yeah, I would say in high school at this point, you know, I was thinking of myself as a pilot.
I was like, hey, I'm going to be a military, I'm going to be a Navy pilot. That's what I'm doing, right? And that's, I am bent on that. There was no, there was nothing else that was in my sphere other than when I got a taste of the SEALs, I was like, okay, well, this sounds interesting as well, but it was going to be either a pilot or either a SEAL. There was no other option. I literally can't remember thinking about any other options.
There was just no other option. That probably added to the success equation as well, was that obstinance. Yeah. That singularity and purpose, I think, can be so important. I'm apt to say, strategic and purpose and relentless in pursuit. If I understand what my objective is, then I can reverse engineer that. And any setback along the way, it sucks. I wouldn't have chosen it. It's going to take longer. It's going to cost more. Whatever consequences of that failure happen to be, it's still part and parcel of that journey. And so you find yourself at Bud's and make it through.
newsworthy noteworthy for anyone. But after you complete that, was there a sense of finality? Like I've I've accomplished this. I mean a lot of times I've interviewed a lot of athletes and once they make it to you know that promised land trying to draw some parallels here like you made it to the bigs and you made it through.
Did you have a now what moment or was it just onto the next thing. No, yeah, certainly no now what moment. And the reason is because it becomes very clear when you go to SEAL training. And this might be the reason why some guys quit, is that this is only the beginning. All this is is the first gate. SEAL training, as difficult as it is, is simply the first gate, because then you have to go to a team, or then you get to go to a team, I guess, yeah.
Because then the real stuff starts. I mean, SEAL training, I mean, BUDS, you know, again, for your audience, Basic Underwater Demolition slash SEAL training, BUDS for short, is the course out in Coronado. You're learning very, very basic stuff. I mean, in fact, most of the time, you're not even learning the skills of being a Navy SEAL. You're just being, you're getting your ass kicked to see if you quit, right? So, but at the end, you know, you learn basic diving, you learn basic weapons, basic demolition, none of which are going to get you anywhere in the SEAL platoon. All right, because then you have to go to and nowadays they have SEAL qualification training, which is right after BUDS. So now SEAL students go through BUDS and they immediately go through SEAL qualification training where they get advanced training and all this stuff and then they go to their platoons.
But back then you went straight to your team and then you started that advanced training at your team. So you are very much a new guy. You are very much someone who is showing up to learn, to listen, to grow, and to contribute, even as an officer. So that humility is baked into you. BUDS bakes that humility into you. And the other thing it bakes into you is the humility to never, ever, ever feel like you've arrived, because as soon as you start to feel like that, the environment will slap you down. And again, it helps when the environment is so dangerous. In other words, I always say, it doesn't matter how good of a swimmer you are, right? The ocean will kill you if you turn your back on it. It doesn't matter how good you are at skydiving.
If you don't pay attention at 22,000 feet when you're jumping out of an airplane in pitch dark, you will die, right? Same thing in the mountains, same thing with the enemy, right? So the environment allows you to stay humble and you never, ever feel like you've arrived. I never felt that way. And through my whole career, I think even as I retired, I said, okay, now I'm complete. But arrived is, you know, that's a scary word for us. Well, I think your work is particularly fascinating. As much as the mystique of the seal has really been something that I romanticized in my mind for a long time.
Like just to know, for me, fundamentally, I went to a small school. I was the tallest guy in my whole athletic conference. So playing basketball, it was very much, you never really knew how you stacked up in the real world. But you were put to the test and you were put to the test against the best, by the best, and you passed the test. And certainly that's going transform who you are as a human being and your confidence. But then later on, you find yourself on the other side. Instead of trying to get in and trying to navigate a way to become a Navy SEAL yourself, you're part of the selection process. And this is where this genesis for the attributes really sprang up. And this is not just something you and your colleagues cultivated so that you could get better because let's face it, Navy SEALs are on the front lines. They are doing the hardest missions. They are responsible for protecting our country. We need the best of the best in those positions. So your ability to ferret out the difference between an elite performer and someone who's going to buckle under pressure matters more than it does in just about any other industry.
So talk me through how the attributes sprang up and how this process really started to formalize for you and those that you worked with. Yeah, it was really fun for me. So I was given the opportunity and was able to get into one of our very, very specialized SEAL units about just before midway of my career, around 05. And at this unit, what happens is they look at, they basically look at all the regular SEAL teams and they say, okay, we'll accept candidates who apply. You have to have been a SEAL for over five years. So for example, I had been a SEAL for nine years when I applied.
You have to have stellar reviews, stellar performance, all that stuff to even apply. And then when you go there, it's a separate nine month selection process. So they put you through nine months of what we call Buds 2, right? And there's a 50% attrition rate for that course. So that nine month course is a 50% attrition rate. So 50% of these top folks are not making it through, okay? I made it through. I'm at the unit. I'm there at the unit for a little while.
And after a few years of being there, they asked me to take over that process, take over that selection process. So I didn't take over BUDS, I took over this very specialized selection process. Now, one of the problems at the time when I took over that process was no one had ever effectively been able to articulate why that 50% weren't making it through. In other words, when guys couldn't do what we asked them to do or couldn't do what was being asked of them, the excuses would be, the reasons would be, wow, they couldn't shoot very well, they couldn't skydive very well. It's all very skills, very visible based.
And it didn't feel right because you'd go there, you already had a ton of experience, these folks, right, they were all top dudes, right? Didn't feel right for them, didn't feel right for us. Of course, the leadership starts saying, hey, you gotta do better than that. Give us better reasons. And so when I was put in charge of that process, they told me, hey, Rich, we want you to look at this. We want you to articulate what's going on.
And so this is when I had to really dive into performance. And that's really when I began to really gain a fascination and maybe even a session with performance and what performance is, where it comes from, how it's all derived. And what I recognized fairly quickly is that there's only a very small portion of performance that we see and that we can measure, okay? That's skills. We can see how well anybody does, shoots their gun or rides a bike or throw the ball.
But there's this huge portion of performance that is hard to see or harder to see. And these are attributes. These are the qualities that tell us, not the things that show us they can do the job, it's the quality that tell us they have what it takes to do the stuff, right? To basically be that. These are attributes. These are things like patience, situation awareness, adaptability.
Okay. And what I recognized was that, hey, we are in fact running this course. And even though the course is designed to, to, to teach and train guys in skills and, and test people in skills. The reasons why people can succeed, can succeed or don't succeed are actually attributes based. And if we start explaining it from this optic, we can start really explaining why guys can or should, or cannot be here, right? But in a much more professional way and a much more amicable way, because you can tell someone, hey, listen, you are awesome, right?
But we're just not seeing enough adaptability in this particular context. So that's where the attributes work started. And then of course, as I got out of the Navy in 17 and started working in the leadership space, I was still really fascinated with this performance stuff. And so that's when I said, okay, well, and I started talking to companies and organizations and realized that they had the same issue in explaining this stuff.
They couldn't articulate. They were calling it like soft skills or intangibles or whatever you want to call them. I said, well, it's attributes. That's when I decided to write the book because I felt like it was something that I could share with people, share with the world and people and organizations and say, hey, this is the way to articulate not only your business' performance, your own personal performance. If you want to know how you perform or why you perform the way you do, especially during stress, challenge, and uncertainty, when you're at your most raw, you have to understand your attributes. And that's really what was the impetus. So the book is a fantastic read, but the thing I really loved about it and why it lent itself so well to our short course was it's just part of a toolbox that you've provided. You have attributes assessments, and so that allowed my team to go in, take the assessment, and now we've got great discussion points on, oh, I didn't realize that I had this, or, oh, I never really thought about narcissism in a positive light.
And there's actually some good aspects to this that can help the team. And so at your website, you offer these tools. Were those instruments or those evolutions of instruments that you used as part of the program or did you have, since it's a nine month long program, you may have had different tools that allowed you to assess, evaluate, and develop those attributes. Yeah, my knowledge on this stuff was way less mature when I started, when I was doing it at the unit. Now, the advantage I had at the unit was that we, that our, our selection process, that nine months was very intense. So we already had environmental and experiential things in place that we could just say, oh, okay, I can see it quite viscerally.
I mean, I can see what I'm, as long as I've changed, now that I've changed my optic and I know what I'm looking for, that it just shows up, it highlights, right? So the assessment tools were generated and created as I was writing the book, because I felt like, hey, when I write this book, I want to actually give people an opportunity to, I mean, the first question they're gonna ask when they read the book is, oh, where do I stand, right?
So I wanted to give people an opportunity to do that. Now we're continuing to modify those and we're hoping to come up with a, we should have the, we have the leadership and team ability ones done, so those should be available here soon, because right now it's this grit, mental acuity, and drive, and then we're gonna upgrade the grit, mental acuity, and drive ones. But bottom line, it was done in conjunction with the book and writing the book so that someone could read the book and then go there and get a sense of where they stood.
And so, and so, and it's been, it's been a fun tool and it's been fun to have people use that. That's fantastic. So you retired from service in 2017 and made this pivot into being an author, being a speaker, a consultant. And it crosses my mind that you're definitely developing skills that would help in that regard, but it's not like, I'm not picturing you in Coronado sitting on the beach between exercises working on your grammar. Like your development as an author was something that came late in the game, relatively speaking.
So talk me through that pivot from your service career into what you're doing now and were there times within that where this notion of I've got a task left undone crept into the equation? 100%. Now, one advantage is that I've always loved writing. And even in college, my favorite courses, I was not good at the physics and the hard math. Basic math, I'm fine at. But when we started getting the calculus two and physics two, I had trouble. I love, my favorite courses are the ones where it's like, I'd learn history or something. And then the only grade would be like, you'd write a 10 page paper. I love that stuff. Right. So that helped. See why Embry-Riddle might not have been the best first. That's right.
And honestly, I was, my first major was avionics. I was like, oh boy, this is interesting, but this is not my cup of tea, right? So when I went to Purdue, it was political science and history, that's right. But I had to do the science courses because the ROTC program required that. So that was a struggle. But all that to say, coming out of the Navy, yes. One of the things I recognized that I was not comfortable doing at all was speaking in front of people.
Like giving, now I shouldn't say at all. I mean, I had given talks, I'd given speeches at change of commands and things like that, and I was fine. And I could read, I could write a speech and read it and all that stuff. But giving a presentation, standing up on a stage, doing that, and then teaching people and instructing. So I was not good, I was not comfortable with that. So I also, one of the things I kind of, I often have recognized about myself is I tend to deliberately step into what I find is a challenge.
And so because there's neurology as to why that feels good, but I knew that doing more of that was going to be necessary for my process. And so I started doing it. And it was hard and it was tough, but doing that helped me kind of develop the muscles to be able to do it more and more often. And that was the process. It was almost like I was dropped off the mountain I was on and I was climbing a new mountain. That's a great analogy. So you write the book. Did you have an agent?
Talk me through the process of this going to market. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of authors, it's a daunting thing to have this idea, this passion and not know what to do with it. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's funny because coming out of the Navy, I didn't have any plans to write a book. I thought about, hey, I think I could probably write a book. I have some things I want to talk about. I did not want to write a Navy SEAL book because there's enough of those out there. And so I knew if I wanted to write, if I was going to write a book, I wanted it to be a book that was instructional, informational, and really more about the reader than about the SEALs. But I really didn't have a plan. So again, I don't have a plan, I just like, hey, that's a goal out there, we'll see what happens.
I met a neuroscientist in 17, a guy named Andrew Huberman. He has a podcast called the Huberman Lab now, really popular at this point. But he and I are close friends and he and I met in 17 and we began working on together some stuff around how we maneuver in stress, challenge, uncertainty. We started really diving into it together, both experientially and neurologically because he was studying it. And we said, hey, let's look at writing a book together about this.
And so we started going down that path together. We got an agent in New York. And as we walked down that path, we both recognized, like actually, it's probably better if we both write solo books first before we do a joint book. Because the joint book was kind of there. It needed a little bit more work. And so ultimately, my agent and I started talking. She's like, I hadn't thought about it. She's like, hey, what do you want to write about? I kind of gave her a few pages on high performing teams, a bunch of notes, and she said, well, there's like 10 books here.
If you could focus on one of these things, what could it be? Could you write a book about it? And honestly, there's this one bullet point that said attributes over skills. I said, you know what, I could probably write a book on attributes over skills. And so that's what I started. I started putting together the outline, and that was really the impetus. So she helped quite a bit in pushing me that way. And then we went to some editors and publishers and saw, you know, see if they were interested. And then, you know, started writing the book and it came out in 2021.
So I love the process of it, by the way. I love the process of writing. It was fun, difficult at times, but I never found it. It was never like, oh my God, I was never like miserable. I always liked, even at times it was difficult, I still liked the process of creation and thinking and thinking through that stuff. So overall a really positive experience. And I'm starting to write the second book now and that's fun.
I mean, it really is. We're putting together those ideas. I think one lesson I've learned from doing this, this will now be, I believe episode 30. And we've talked to a lot of high performers and they make these pivots in life. But those previous experiences, even though on paper they look like they're completely disparate. What does being a Navy SEAL have to do with being an author? But it really does like it was skills that you cultivated during those formative years in your life even before Going into the military you can leverage those to success And that's what I love about this notion of the attributes is in my space We talk a lot about the difference between IQ and EQ emotional intelligence can be built.
But we remember our best bosses and the leaders that resonate with us most, not because they were the smartest person in the room, not because they had this innate ability that we didn't. It was because they were able to cultivate those so-called soft skills. Quick second interrupt here, but I don't know if you heard it or not, but I just stepped in it. And unfortunately, for the second time of the day, to start off the interview, I had misspelled Rich's last name in the pre-show documents. For a guy like me who likes to think of himself as detail-oriented, such a mistake is an egregious error on my part, and I was embarrassed. Okay, okay, in the moment, I did my best to apologize profusely and hope that Rich didn't hold that mistake against me, which being the gracious guy he is, he didn't. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be my last mistake on the day.
Rich's work is centered around the difference between skill and the attributes. Skills are typically measurable. Attributes are a little bit harder to define. And unfortunately, many of our tools for trying to identify high potentials have been focused on skills rather than attributes. Now, I didn't mean any harm in my question, and it was well-intended for sure. But Rich heard the question, and he knows the difference. He corrected me. You can't see me blushing during a podcast, but I'm telling you, I was mortified when I realized what I'd said.
I'll just correct one thing you said previously. I am using almost zero of the skills that I developed in the 21 years as an ABCL. I'm using almost all of the attributes, right? So this is the power of attributes. Attributes are, in fact, transferable. Oftentimes skills are not transferable, but if you go to these elemental things, these attributes, the attributes that I both came into the teams with and then developed to all of the teams, all are what I lean upon in these new endeavors. I'm having to learn new skills, right?
But the attributes are foundational element. They buttress all skill development anyway. And that's really the power of it. And that's what most folks transitioning, whether they're going from one career to another or the military, especially to civilian world, a lot of times have trouble saying oh shoot What what about what I did in the military has anything to do with civilian world and what they need to understand is it's not About the skills you're coming to the game with attributes that can translate to the civilian world and oftentimes even more Powerfully than someone who's coming from college or whatever like, you know, whatever other domain, you know I'm not knocking college with any other domain, you know, right but it's because of these attributes. Yeah.
I teach a behavioral medicine class in a master's of athletic training program. And we discuss that length. I don't know if you're familiar with this, but Simone Biles went to the Olympics. She was the greatest US female gymnast of all time. And she gets to the Olympics and she has a mental block. She has this, called the twisties in gymnastics, but there was this massive divide and some people applauded it. Hey, she's doing the brave thing. She's protecting her mental health. And for a gymnast, if you're not in the right headspace, you can die. And then there's kind of these old schoolers that came from a different era and we're Gen Xers. You did it. It didn't matter if you wanted to or not.
Like if you got on the plane, you competed. Mental health wasn't necessarily a valid excuse to not compete. Yeah. So there's this massive divide. And on one side, you've got people applauding the mental health side. And on the other side, you've got kind of the resilience. And we shared off camera before that I'm reading a David Goggins book.
I know what David Goggins would say about someone who got there and then didn't perform. But I'm curious, what in that instance, in that moment, this is a high-profile case. What is the thought process for someone who has this mental block? Well, okay, that's a great question. I think there's so many different ways to answer that. Because I would actually reframe the polarities. I think because there's the mental health and then there's resilience.
I think those are the polarities. But mental health and resilience are actually combined. They're the same thing, right? I mean, resilience, and you know, the way I describe resilience in the book is the ability to bounce back, right? It actually, it often gets conflated with perseverance. People think resilience is in fact powering through. That's not resilience. Resilience is I get knocked down, how fast and efficiently can I bounce back to baseline?
Or I get lifted up, how fast can I get back to baseline? That's resilience. So resilience is necessary in all aspects of performance, if you want to endure, right? What we're talking about with Simone Biles, I actually wrote an article about this. I actually used her as an example, but then I think I pulled her out because it got too long. But I wrote an article about this idea that it's okay to quit, but just never give up, okay?
And what Simone did was she quit, but she didn't give up. In other words, in the article that I wrote, I talk about a mission. I was on a mission at this new unit, right? I'd been at the unit for about a year, gone through the training, about maybe a year and a half, gone through the training. I finally get command of my troop, right? And we're out in Afghanistan and it's our very first mission.
And I was like, cool, this is cool. It seemed like pretty good, it's pretty simple. And as we went down the process of planning and getting out there, I just noticed there were little things that we had to overcome. This, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. And long story short, as we're walking in, we hear some whistling, which indicated we had read some intelligence reports about some guys, some folks getting ambushed, and beforehand they heard whistling.
Again, sometimes these intelligence reports are not as accurate or whatever, but all this to say, at that moment, I decided we're gonna stop. We're not gonna continue the mission. Literally quit the mission, okay? What the decision was, and I talked to my troops, the decision was, hey, we're gonna quit what we're doing because what we're doing right now is not going to work or it's gonna get us into more trouble, right?
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna quit what we're doing right now, we go back, we're gonna reset, we're gonna regroup, and we're gonna try again in a better position, a better time so that we can actually succeed. We're not giving up on this, right? We actually, a few nights later, we went out, different, the person we were after at a different place, so we actually got him, right? But what Simone did is she recognized, hey, right now I need to quit what I'm doing.
That is the smart thing to do, because if I want to succeed, this is the rock climber, right, if the rock climber is climbing up the rock, right, and the goal is the top, and decides, you know what, this pathway is just, it's not a good pathway, but you know what, I can't quit, right? The rock climber is going to fall to his or her death. That is a stupid, stupid philosophy. So all of the naysayers, and I'd have to talk to David. I know David a little bit. We deployed together, and I've talked to him since then once, and I'd have to talk to him because I think he'd agree with me. There's quitting because I think I can't do this, or I'm tired, or I don't want to. There's that type of quitting. No, we don't want to do that.
We want to power through. We want to overcome the laziness or the apathy, right? But then there's quitting because what you're doing is the wrong thing to be doing. And if you continue down this path, you will get hurt or die, right? Quit, that's when you quit, right? You stop what you're doing, and then you turn back and you try something else. So quitting is, it's immediate, contextual, and it's like in the now, right?
I'm gonna quit today's workout because I think I just pulled something. I'm not gonna give up on being healthy, right? So that's how I'd look at that and I think that's how everybody needs to look at it. If you are interested in setting and achieving audacious goals, get ready to do a lot of quitting along the way, okay? Just never give up and I think that's what Simone did and she was a wonderful example of that and mental health is important and these gymnasts, these people, I laugh, these people have no clue what it's like to, I don't even, I was not a gymnast, but I've done dangerous stuff.
And to flip oneself over and over again and land on your feet and not your head, where you could become a perilous, of course you should have done what you're doing. I mean, 100%. I've never heard it explained better, Rich. That was a fantastic perspective. Well, we're running short on time. I want to be respectful of your time. So what advice would you give a young man who's maybe in pursuit of your childhood dreams?
Well, start learning about the profession and ask yourself, I think there's questions to ask you, why do you want to be a SEAL? Why might you want to be a pilot? The why is important because if it's just because, you know, they're cool and you'll be famous and you'll be part of a famous unit, because it's a lot. I mean, since the SEALs got famous, right? There's a lot of folks who want to join just because it's the most famous unit.
So that's not, and you won't make it through training if that's the reason. But ask yourself why, and then begin just, obviously you need to be in shape. You know, it has nothing to do with athleticism. Okay, people think, oh, you have to be an athlete. No, athleticism is different than being in shape, okay? I was never a really good athlete, which means I was okay at sports, okay? Was I in shape?
Sure, and was I tough? Yes. Right. That's what I have to do. So work out so you're in shape and just be tough. And then start asking yourself questions right now. Hey, what are some pathways that might allow me to get to this objective? If I want to be an officer, what are the pathways that might allow me to get there?
If I want to enlist, what are the pathways that might allow me to get there? And just answer those questions for yourself and start marching down those pathways. And if you're really committed, if you hit a snag, back up and say, okay, that might not work. Is there another way I can approach that one or do I need to take a different path, right? It's all adaptability and flexibility and you'll get there. Yeah, quick, but don't give up.
Yeah. This one's kind of an oddball and you may or may not have an answer for it. I love music and the emotions that it can frequently represent. What song would you pick as the soundtrack of your life and why? That's great. I love the question. I love all different types of music, everything from Mozart to Megadeth.
My favorite is heavy metal though, and my favorite is Metallica. Early Metallica. I love all Metallica, just so you know. But the early Metallica I love the most, and the reason is because when I first heard it when I was in high school, I think it was Master of Puppets and Justice for All. I love the precision with which they would play their instruments and you could hear every single chug, right? And every single pick you could hear. And what I recognized as I kind of thought about my life, that's why I love being an ABCL, too, because what we did was precision aggression and precision violence, if you want. And that music represents that for me. So I love anything fast and precise, whether it's heavy metal, whether it's country music, whether it's rapping, Eminem as a rapper.
The speed with which that guy says his words is remarkable to me. I just I really enjoy that. And then you look at you listen to some classical music or banjo. Right. I'm just I love speed and precision. And I guess specifically precision aggression, which is my metalhead-ness coming out. But that's, anything like that, I love. Such a great answer. We did grow up in the same era, and every weight room I ever walked into, you would at least hear a couple of Metallica cuts while you were in that area.
And this is related, what for you remains undone? You mentioned your book project. I will go ahead and plant the seed, Precision Aggression has a pretty good ring to it for your next book, but I don't know what it is. What for Rich remains undone? Well, so right now I'm working on the next book. The next book is called Masters of Uncertainty. I'm laying out the steps that it become, that one needs to take to become a master of uncertainty, which is really what the Navy SEALs are.
We're individuals and teams that can operate in deeply complex environments, and anybody can do it. We just have to understand the steps. So that's the project. I'll tell you what's never done is parenting. And what's never done is being a great husband and a great person. And so for me, I spent 21 years in the military, so I served that way. My pursuit from now until I depart this earth will be to be a great husband, a great father, a great brother, a great son, and also just a great person.
Can I contribute to society in a way that's meaningful? And that's never done. That's always undone, right? But it's the pursuit that means the most. And so I think that's how I'd answer that. That's fantastic. Rich, how can listeners connect with you? You mentioned the website, but those that might be interested in potentially booking you as a speaker at an event for a very plenary, so listen, what's the best way for folks to connect with the work that you're doing?
Yeah, wonderful. The website is the best way. So it's theattributes.com and there you can find everything we have. You can go to a forum and contact us if you'd like to have us come work with your organization and help you figure out attributes if you want me to come speak or things like that. But the books there, the assessment tools are there. We got some blog posts there. We got a trust assessment there.
So theattributes.com is great. All my social media handles are there as well. So you can go to my, you can get my social media handles from theattributes.com as well. So that's the one-stop shop that I'd recommend people go to. That's great. My dean was gracious enough. She bought 25 copies of the attributes and we're working through kind of in cohorts of anywhere from 5 to 10 at a time for these courses. And it is. I heard from a colleague just this week and we finished with that cohort late November. It just changed my whole perspective and it's given him the vocabulary to work on aspects that he feels like will help him be a more valuable member of the team and just having more self-efficacy for himself. So I can't recommend the book enough and how it's deployed and the instruments that you make available free of charge. Just fantastic. Rich, it's really been a pleasure.
I could see 10 episodes coming from one thing you said. That's a whole episode right there. So this has been great for me. I appreciate your time and certainly will follow where you go with the next book with great interest. Well, thanks for having me, Toby. It's been a pleasure. Rich absolutely is contributing to society in a way that's meaningful. And if his first book, The Attributes, is any indication, then his work to come will be equally impactful for growth-minded people and high-performance teams alike across any and all industries. I'm thankful for the time he took out of his busy schedule to speak with me, and I can't recommend his work and his platform highly enough. It's no exaggeration to say that it has fundamentally changed my life and the way I strive to help those around me grow and improve.
Becoming Undone is a Nitro-Hype Creative Production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. If you or someone you know has a story of resilience and victory to share for Becoming Undone, please contact me at undonepodcast.com, where you can also sign up for a mailing list to be notified of new episode drops And exclusive team undone benefits becoming undone can be heard on Apple podcasts Spotify Google podcasts stitcher iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts till next time everybody keep getting better you