Best-selling author, CEO of SEALFIT, and retired Navy SEAL commander Mark Divine explains the “20x Factor” and idea of direct perception, talks about shaping your enemies’ minds, and breaks down the 4 step process to achieving an unbeatable mind.

Mark Devine has a degree in economics from Colgate

University and an MBA in finance from NYU, his first career was

as a CPA, but four years after joining mark left and became

pursued his vision to become an elite Navy SEAL officer. And

what's cool. Not only was he in the Navy SEALs, but he graduated

as the honor man, the number one ranked trainee of his seal class

served nine years active duty, and 11 years as a reserve seal.

He is the New York Times best selling author of the way of the

seal and eight weeks to SEAL Fit, also an accomplished

martial artist and just an awesome guy, Mark, welcome to

the show, man. You know, this concept of unbeatable mind. I

think it's so relevant. One of the things that you talk about

is the 20x factor. Can you tell us what that's all about?

Yeah, sure. You know, most people have heard of

hell week Hell Week is that one week during the nine months of

seal, you know, in dock training, or basic training

called buds, and then SQ t. So there's one week that's kind of

famous, and that's the week called Hell Week where we train

from new Sunday afternoon until Friday, the following Friday

around the clock without any sleep, actually, they give us

four hours just to mess with us on Thursday. But so it's kind of

legendary, you know, and, and it really is, it's multi purpose.

But I would say the dominant purpose is to teach those that

make it through it, that they're capable of practically anything

that they put their mind to. The reason I use the 20x term is

because as I was preparing myself, for my own Hell Week,

you know, I kind of I had some unique rituals, my teammates

were all sitting in messing with their gear, and you know, that

we had this big tent set up, set up and buzz and they're kind of

like anxiously awaiting what we call breakout, which was the

start, and I had kind of wandered off over the berm, you

know, and just sat and looked at the ocean and just, you know,

began my breathing and kind of meditation practice what I now

call, you know, winning in my mind before the battle. And as I

was sitting there, one of the instructors came up to me and he

kind of smiled. He, like, he looked at me, and I don't know

what was going through his head, but he must have been thinking,

Okay, this guy is a little bit different. And he's doing

something different. And I get it, and it came at me and he

goes, Mark, you got nothing to worry about, because you're

capable 20 times more than you think you are, have fun, you

know, basically have fun with this one, because he knew for

some reason that I was going to make it through. And when the

training started, you know, again, the first like, 50, some

odd hours are the hardest, because that's the like, the new

reality of this, your life circumstances setting in your

body is all of a sudden saying, I am exhausted, I haven't slept,

I'm freezing cold, I'm shaved, I'm bleeding, you know, I've

just ache all over the place. But your mind says, Okay, that's

all fine and good. But you're not quitting, you got three and

a half more days. And so that was what was going through my

mind. In the meantime, my my teammates were quitting left and

right, we, you know, we started my class with 185 students, all

highly qualified super studs, by the time we get to Hell Week,

we're probably down to like 120 or something like that. And then

by the end of 50 hours a hell week, we're down to like, 60. So

they're just dropping like flies. And I was just telling

myself can't quit, just keep going one foot in front, the

other, you know, words to that effect, my body started to get

stronger. So you know, after days without sleep, you know,

around the clock physical training, most people

conventional wisdom would be that you'd be breaking down and

you know, you'd be almost catatonic and my body started to

build muscle mass and started to get stronger, and I started to

get more alert, and I was still probably, you know, if you were

to give me some sort of test, I was probably I would probably

have, you know, failed any higher cognitive functions or

skills, you know, but I was able to stay focused on the tasks

that they were giving to me and to stay focused on my team and

to, you know, drive through and I was getting stronger and

feeling stronger. And so that was really profound to me

because I realized you know, afterwards that that that

instructor was right, like I truly was capable 20 times more

than I thought and how we proved it to me. And so that's become

kind of a central tenet of my my teaching today is that you know,

you are capable 20 times more and then 20 times again, but you

got to prove it to yourself in order to believe it at a really

got a heart level. You know, I mean, it's not a cognitive

thing. You can't just think yourself that you're capable

that much more because that's, that's not enough. You know,

you've got to get it know it deeply.

Give us an example for some of the people that are not

that familiar with hell week, what are some of the other

things that you're doing?

You know, the evolutions they call every event

in evolution is that evolution is range from anywhere from, you

know, a couple hours to like six or eight hours long. And they

had us doing you know, seal like stuff but not the not super

complicated like we weren't jumping out of helicopters with,

you know, live ammunition and bursting down doors because this

wasn't the purpose of the training, training was to

attract those people who weren't mentally tougher or emotionally

resilient and couldn't be good teammates, and prove those of us

who were mentally tough, emotionally resilient, and good

teammates that were capable of frickin anything. So the types

of things we're doing like one evolution was to take our 350

pound logs, and you know, to take them on like a 10 mile

journey, right, carrying them over our heads and on our

shoulders without putting them down. And so that was, you know,

interesting challenge to say the least in the soft sand. Another

was to paddle our little rubber boats that called IBS. I'm not

even sure what that acronym was, but we called we called it at

bat ship. little rubber boats. And there are seven of us. And

we had to paddle these itty bitty ships around Coronado

Island in San Diego at night. And that was I think, on like

Wednesday night or something of Hell Week, and everybody was

hallucinating, including myself. Now it's like two in the

morning. And we're just stroke stroke stroke. And the guy in

front of me, literally, his paddle slipped out of his hand

and started floating past me and I grabbed it and his arms kept

moving. You know, he kept stroking. So I took the battle,

I just smacked him over the head with it. And as I hate dummy

years battle, he's like, holy cow, I didn't even know I lost

that thing a little bit, you know, longer a little bit

further along, I saw this massive wave well up in front of

me. And I'm like water, water. That's what we used to say, you

know, when we go through surf passage, so in a huge wave came

up. And so I ducked down and everyone looks at me, like, what

are you doing? I said, Doc water, and then I look up and

there's nothing there. I'm like, so your mind, you know, our

mind, the body first goes, and then the mind goes. And that's

that's kind of the whole point here is that the mind starts to

play tricks on you. And it's your cognitive mind, which is,

you know, the reality is is fraying. And the structures that

you used to hang on to his real are starting to shift and to

fray. And so you can't rely on that anymore. And so that was a

great lesson for me too, as I can't, I can't rely on the way

my mind the way I used to perceive my mind working.

Because it's not, it's not working that way for me under

stress. So I'm working right under stress.

So if you go okay, that your body is capable, 20 times

more, how do you access that?

I mean, that's the Holy Grail. So in the seals,

it's just through these intense experiences that you like crack

open your body mind system, and reorganize it in ways that I

don't even think anyone really understands, I don't even think

the seals understand it, they just know it works. That's why

they'll never give up pelvic they've had so many, you know,

kind of peacetime attempts to get rid of the whole week

program because they think it's kind of inhumane. And you know,

then thinking maybe too hard. And you know, there have been

people have died in the training and stuff, but very rare,

actually. And they're from natural causes, like, you know,

someone dies of a heart attack, or they have an accident and

they drowned. But no one's died from exhaustion that I'm aware

of in Hell Week. So anyways, what I'm saying is the seals

just that the training is just brilliant. And it's evolved

over, you know, 60 years to really prepare seals for the

most rigorous challenges missions and environments in the

world. And to believe that anything's possible to believe

that they can accomplish any mission. And so you know, that

you look at the success rate of the seals and the kind of bears

that out that that's a pretty effective training method. So I

don't want to mess with it. But I don't think they really

understand beyond kind of like the combat effectiveness and

some of the work that David Grossman has done with his

understanding about how to condition a warrior for the

rigors of combat. I think that's all that's all like philosophy

and research and it's really interesting, but I don't think

they understand what's happening at a emotional, even quasi

spiritual level or metaphysical level and also with regard to

the brain and the mind, and the nervous system and how all those

things are are reorganizing you know, through neuroplasticity

and, and also epigenetics so that seals are kind of like

turning on and off different genes. And I would say, you

know, if there was a warrior gene and then the seals have

learned how to turn that on, in a big way to where you get, you

get activities like you know, what I'm willing to light might

lay my life down for my teammate. You don't see that

very often in modern world that is a very much of a warrior gene

that's been turned on where you put yourself your teammates so

far above yourself and that's one of the reasons that the

training is so effective because nothing gets done alone as a

seal. That's why we called the SEAL teams and when you have an

individual miss a tick, mark them out Lunch, who knows that

he's capable of 20 times more. And then you put him with a team

of 14 others in a platoon, or maybe you know, 35 others in a

troop or 40 others in the troop, and every one of those

individuals knows that they're capable of 20 times more. And

they're all watching each other's back and care about each

other, and know that each other is absolutely essential to

getting the mission done, then you get an effect. That's not

like 20 times, but like 20 times, 20 times 20 times 20

times, you know, I mean, just multiply it by the number of

people's it's an it's an enormous geometric effect.

So take me to preparing yourself, right? Because I

think, you know, like most of us are probably never going to be

in this situation. But how do you sort of mentally prepare

yourself? What do you do when it's real? Like, right before

it's real?

That's great question, because you're right,

not everyone is going to go through SEAL training, nor would

you want to, frankly, because it sucks. So I've kind of spent the

balance of my, you know, the last 15 years trying to figure

out how do you train, not that that same experience, even

though you know, through my SEAL Fit program, we have recreated

the whole week experience, and it has an incredible effect, and

civilians can go through it, but but through my unbeatable mind

training I looked at I said, Okay, so what's what's

happening, and I tried to understand what is happening at

a mind, body and spirit and nervous system level. And can I

kind of parse out those different elements and train

them. And so I began doing that with seal candidates back in

2007 2008. Because I started training seal candidates, I

wanted to help them succeed the way I did, and SEAL training and

to have a better career and be more focused and make better

decisions and battle and to avoid PTSD and all those things.

And, and so I began to draw them more are kind of like I would

say, equal parts from my Navy SEAL days, with my yoga and

martial arts training. So I realized that the Eastern

practices had a lot of tools. And they were a developmental

path for accessing greater power, almost 20x power, and

developing internal potential, and integrating and being able

to use your mind in a unique way or a better way. And this, this

is lacking in the West, there really isn't any developmental

models that that I'm aware of, that didn't come from either the

martial arts or yoga. There were some understanding of it

Phillips philosophically, through integral theory, and

transpersonal, psychology and stuff like that. But there

weren't any practices or paths, if you know what I mean, in the

traditional sense. And so I looked at my own millet martial

arts training and my own now I was deep into yoga and into

teach, I've been to multiple teacher trainings, and was even

developing our own yoga to teach to seals, which I you know,

handled, to really simplify and chunk it out into drills and,

and discard any woowoo. You know what I mean, that took the fool

out of the Kung Fu and took the woowoo out of the yoga to teach

it. And so I came up with these skills, I call them well, they

lined sort of with what the seals called the Big Four. But

there's, there's more than four. But the biggest and most

powerful ones are, first is to develop control over your

breath, and to use your breath as a center post of your

training, right? Because the breath is what will lead you to

being in physiological control of your body. And so the studies

have now verified the power of breath control for stress

management, stress release, and for triggering the

parasympathetic nervous system to bleed off stress. So it's

really, really healthy for you and healthview nervous system,

but beyond that, the breath is a way to stay focused, because

after all, the brain is a organ of the body. And when your body

is calmer, your brain is calmer, I mean, it's experienced

subjectively as literally a lower brain, you know, cycle

rate and you kind of an alpha beta, when you're really calm.

And, and it's healthier, right, and you're detoxing when you

breathe deeply in so quickly, and you know, you know, you

don't have the choppy patterns associated with an anxious

emotional states. So the breath controls that first skill that I

started teaching the seal candidates, and that alone and I

call the practice box breathing, that alone had a profound impact

on their ability to focus and remain clear in the heat of

battle and that type of thing. And then I said, Okay, so once I

am physically, physiologically and physically in control, and

I'm clear headed and able to focus, then it's about creating

the conditions in my mind, so that I can stay focused on the

right thing at the right time, stay focused on on my teammates

and stay focused on a positive outcome. Whereas you know, the

common individual will seize upon you know, some something

that's going wrong and that could be like I'm suffering

because this sucks, or, you know, I'm I'm in pain. Normally,

my back hurts, or I can't do this because it's too hard, I

can't lift this 300 pound log up anymore. There's always

something, you know, whether it's physical or mental or

something really practical, some challenge or crisis in your

life, there's always something great because that's the human

condition every day of your life, there's going to be

something that doesn't go well. Or right, there's going to be

something that's negative, there's going to be some

discomfort. And most people will seize upon that, and focus on

that. And then, of course, that what you focus on tends to grow

or to, you know, it attracts energy to it. And so I learned

and I taught the seals that, you know, we accept and be non

attached to what happens to us. And we take control in a

positive sense of what's happening in our mind, and both

our rational mind as well as our emotional mind. And so we

maintain a really positive, energetic attitude and mindset,

I call this positivity, the train mind, as soon as that

resistance is experienced, will begin to dialogue in a way that

generates power instead of weakness. And so when that log

starts to rub the shoulder or starts to get hard, you know,

instead of saying, holy cow, I don't think I can do this or

man, this thing's heavy, or how long do we have to do this

another three hours, you basically shift that to some

sort of powerful statement that you also associate with an

energetic and emotional state, you know, so one of the classic

ones that I have is this is, this is an easy day, I got this

piece of cake isn't easy day, I got this piece of cake, I'm

feeling good. And I'm looking in order to be in Hollywood. And so

then your internal dialogue, this takes over, and starts to

drown out any of that other that other dialogue and, and then you

begin to, you know, this ties into the third skill. The third

skill is imaging. So that includes visualization, image

projection, in terms of the future, what you know, desired

outcomes, you know, because if you can see the wind in your

mind, then you can achieve the win if you believe it and act

forcefully on it, right. And that's, that clip comes straight

from Sunsoo, the victorious warrior wins in his mind first,

and then enters the battle. And so the combination of the second

skill, which is maintaining and develop, developing and

maintaining a positive direction, and a positive

routine, and a positive emotional pattern associated

with your thoughts. So this is requires like training the brain

training the mind, to act this way, all the time, especially

when the challenges appear. This then connects to your ability to

see yourself succeeding in those challenge, see yourself

dominating in those challenging environments, being able to

maintain a clear picture of the wind, in spite of the dark night

of the soul moments that might come over you or the team and

you know, you can connect back to that image of the wind and

go, Oh, yeah, that's it. That's why I'm here. Right. And so, so

this, this goes, I mean, there's so many subtle skills that are

involved, how we use our eyes is important. So if I'm, you know,

if I need to lift the log up, and put it on my other shoulder,

then I then I shift my mind and my gaze into a very practical

This is my one task right here, right now I look at the log I,

you know, I coordinate the movements with my team, you

know, we breathe together and hoisted up on the command and

lowered over the and that's, that's the only thing I'm doing

and thinking of in that moment, K, but then let's say right,

when that's done, and we're like, get a little relief, it's

on the other shoulder now, and we're going to take another 100

paces or so then I softened my gaze, and my gaze, you know, my

eyes literally go from, you know, pupils dilated, I'm

focused on a task. And I'm outwardly focused to where my

eyes go really soft, and almost like they go wide. And I like

I'm using my peripheral vision. And in that state, your mind

will soften. And it's almost like, you know, just letting go

and turning inward. And in that inward, even though my eyes are

open, I have access to my imagery. And I can go back and

check in with it, or the image is there for me. Does that make

sense? So again, this is the tools are how do we use our mind

effectively, our, our minds are so much more powerful when we

learn how to use them, right? And so we've been trained here

in the West to really dominantly we focused on our cognition, our

rational mind our thinking, right? And then if you're

creative, they say, oh, yeah, you're creative. So you're using

that right brain and you have creative powers. Reality is we

all have the capacity to think better and to avoid our

cognitive bias. So that's a skill that we have to train for.

But we all and we also have the capacity to release that to

literally put that back area of our mind that activate your mind

to rest like to turn the dial down significantly so that you

can open up to what I call direct perception perceive

thinking things just the way they are right now without

having to judge or analyze or anything. And a massive amount

of information flows into that. The fourth skill, by the way, is

task orientation. But if you show up doing everything that I

just explained, because you've trained to do it, right, it's

not a cognitive thing. It's an actually, you know, this is a

very visceral process, then, you know, what you're going to get

on the other side is energetic synchronization.

You know, when I think Navy Seal, I think tough as

nails, I think physical but everything you're describing

here, this is all mental.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the mental I mean, you're

essentially the human being has a body in the mind and spirit,

if you all you focus on it as a body, you're going to be a one

dimensional being, the body follows the mind. You know, we

learned that in SEAL training as a tenant of what I teach a SEAL

Fit, the body follows the mind. And so you could be physically

fit and still fail at a sporting event, if your mind is not

conditioned properly, you could be the most talented athlete,

you know, we've seen this over and over again and still fail,

you might win one one or two times, but you're gonna fail if

your mind isn't conditioned, right? So really the mind is is

is the preeminent everything flows from the mind. And then

behind the mind is the Spirit knows beyond the scope of this

conversation, but I could almost make that same statement that

once you connect with the Spirit, with your Spirit, then

everything flows from that. And the mind becomes even more

refined, and finely tuned with universal principles. And, and

that's when like, your ultimate power comes out. So you're truly

at your most complete fullest self, when body mind and spirit

are all aligned. And working together, you know, I mean,

SEALs who are aligned like that, and everyone's operating that

way, you know, they literally are shaping their enemy's minds,

they, you know, seal shape their enemies mind with their violence

of action and offensive mindset. You know, because everyone is

thinking, we got this, we are not we are running toward the

sound of gunfire, we're going to dominate this battle, we're

going to take it to the enemy, whatever everyone's thinking

that way. And like I said, at a very subtle level that that

breeds fear and the enemy and the way we act, and the way we

think and the way we show up on the battlefield breeds fear and

the enemy, and they may not even know it, but it happens, right.

And that's why they you know, their actions and reactions are

going to be weaker than ours. In Vietnam, this the Vietnamese NVA

used to call the seals devils with green faces, because of the

just the way they get you know, the the operators back then

wouldn't show up in the middle of the jungle, you know, out of

nowhere, and their faces were painted because they're, you

know, they were using camouflage and they learn how to stalk and

to be completely silent as they move through the jungle and they

would literally just show up and wreak havoc on the enemy and

then disappear. And that's what I mean like that's, that's an

energetic that's, you know, obviously there's practical

skills, but it's also a mindset that the seals had that hey,

we're gonna be devils green faces and we're gonna scare that

you know what out of the enemy and they won practically every altercation.

So where should people go to connect with you if they want

to learn about SEAL Fit, and you got the unbeatable mind book and

course and, you know, where do you want people to find you?

Well, I think you said that if someone's

interested in these principles, then there's two books that I

have out that are that kind of covered down in them one is

probably the first one to read his unbeatable mind were

introduced these principles and then second is called The Way of

the seal both are great books for I hear for for learning

these principles. And then if you want to find me on the web

SEAL Fit All one word SCA l fit.com. has a ton of content a

ton of you know, free resources, and we've got some great video

training and and that's where all our events, stuff like that.

Well, then last little thing, man, if if somebody's out

there listening right now, and they're realizing they're going

whoa, I am so far from this unbeatable mind like I am so not

mentally tough, like, I'm losing every battle in my head before

it even begins. What's like a, you know, one practice, you

would suggest you go you need to start doing this immediately.

Yeah, it's the first skill I alluded to earlier

in box breathing. And you know, if this the only thing that

someone gets out of this podcast years, and it's time well spent,

and so that is simply to begin a daily practice of breathing,

where you breathe through your nose, your nostrils, with your

mouth closed, and ideally, your eyes closed and just sit in a

chair, straight spine and you're going to inhale to a count of

four or five, hold your breath for a count of five, exhale for

a count of five, hold your breath for a count of five. So

you're breathing in a box or a square pattern. And to do this a

minimum of five minutes, but ideally for 20 minutes a day.

Best time is probably first thing in the morning when you

wake up. This is not meditation, but although it has the it's the

precursor to meditation because it's got the physiological

benefits of of resetting your your nervous system, bleeding

off stress, and clarifying your mind and so literally, you're

going to detox your mind and get your mind really focused. And

then the secondary benefit is to concentrate ration practice, a

lot of people fail with meditation, because they, the

preparatory practice for meditation is concentration. And

so we need to learn how to concentrate on this one thing.

And that box breathing pattern is the one thing. And so this

this practice in itself, I've got, you know, surgeons who use

it for surgery during their surgery. And, of course, Navy

SEALs practice this, you know, variations of this, and all

sorts of people have found some great benefit from it. So I

would start there.

Mark Devine. I mean, first of all, thank you for your

service, and we appreciate you man.

Thanks for having me on as well.