Former Navy SEAL Reveals How to Become A Badass Leader | Rich Diviney on Impact Theory
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In this episode of Impact Theory, former Navy SEAL commander Rich Diviney joins host Tom Bilyeu to discuss his new book, *The Attributes*, which explores 25 hidden drivers of optimal performance. Diviney challenges the traditional focus on "peak" performance by introducing the concept of "optimal" performance, arguing that true grit is not always about hyper-performing or being in a flow state but often involves taking one step at a time to survive difficult situations. He explains that his desire to become a SEAL was driven partly by narcissism—the innate human need to feel special and noticed—but reframes this trait as a powerful attribute rather than a flaw. Diviney emphasizes that everyone has their own version of "badassery," whether it is becoming an elite operator, a skilled surgeon, or a dedicated teacher, and the core goal should be testing oneself against extreme challenges to unlock latent potential. A significant portion of the conversation focuses on deconstructing grit into four elemental attributes: courage, perseverance, adaptability, and resilience. Diviney argues that while skills can be taught like shooting a gun, attributes must be developed through self-directed exposure to discomfort and deliberate reframing of one's mindset. He illustrates how SEAL training weeds out those who lack these traits but also highlights the unique context of 2020, where no candidates could ring their bell to quit due to global circumstances, forcing everyone to explore their grit in unprecedented ways. The discussion extends to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), noting that while compartmentalization is essential for SEALs to function during missions, an over-reliance on it can prevent emotional processing and recovery. True healing involves allowing oneself to feel the trauma again, mourning the experience, and integrating those emotions rather than suppressing them indefinitely. Diviney outlines five buckets of attributes in his book: grit (courage, perseverance, adaptability, resilience), mental acuity (situational awareness, compartmentalization, task switching, learnability), drive (self-efficacy, discipline, open-mindedness, cunning, narcissism), leadership behaviors (empathy, selflessness, authenticity, decisiveness, accountability), and team ability (integrity, conscientiousness, humility, humor). He introduces the concept of "bi-directional" attributes like patience/impatience or fear/insouciance, noting that successful people exist at both ends of these spectrums depending on their context. To develop any attribute, individuals must engage in a cycle of exposure to fear, reframing negative narratives into empowering questions (e.g., changing "why am I bad?" to "how can I grow?"), and recovery through rest and reflection. Diviney suggests that while core values are crucial for deep change, surrounding oneself with people who possess higher levels of these attributes—essentially finding one's own "lane" or niche—is a powerful way to accelerate growth without necessarily needing to overhaul one's entire value system immediately. The dialogue concludes with Diviney identifying three universal keys to success: open-mindedness, courage, and humility. Open-mindedness fosters curiosity, allowing individuals to discover their unique lanes of excellence where they can thrive; courage is defined as the ability to step into fear rather than fight or flight from it, which triggers a dopamine reward loop that reinforces brave behavior; and humility keeps people grounded in learning, preventing arrogance and encouraging continuous improvement. Diviney shares an anecdote about taking his own child to a desert island with Navy SEALs to demonstrate how adopting new value systems through group belonging can naturally align behaviors with desired outcomes. The episode ends by promoting the book's free assessment tool available at attributes.com, which allows users to gauge their current standing on these 25 attributes and access workbooks for guided development, reinforcing the message that anyone can improve their performance by understanding and cultivating these specific drivers.
Read the full video transcript
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episode
hey everybody welcome to another episode
of impact theory i am here
with rich davini who is an extraordinary
former navy seal commander and author of
an incredible new book called the
attributes the 25
hidden secrets drivers 25
hidden drivers of optimal performance i
knew i'd get there in the end rich
yes yes drivers that's but secrets is
good too but
dude the the whole concept behind the
book is
really incredible i'm obsessed with i
would have before reading your book of
course said people
peak performance i love the shift you
make to optimal performance we'll
certainly get into that but
one of the attributes that you talk
about in the book um that i found really
interesting that
compelled you um as part of the the
cocktail of your own brain to want to be
a navy seal
which was narcissism in your own words
by the way i'm not
calling you that yeah and you talk about
how some of these attributes
may have a negative connotation but can
actually be pretty powerful
talk to me about what it means to want
to be a badass
yeah so so it's funny because in in
researching these attributes i had to do
in conjunction with you know actual
research i had to do some
self-reflection because i really had to
ask myself
what uh what drove me especially on the
driver
attributes and and um and ultimately
when i thought about the reasons why i
became a navy seal and i and i
and you ask my friends the same question
and of course we're patriots and of
course
we love our country and we want to we
want to go to good work but but you know
it was
it was largely because you know you're
young and you want to be part of a group
that
is elite and you want to try something
that very few people
get to try and very few people make it
through um and
it's just that challenge it's you know
can you throw yourself into the
challenge so i think
i think we and when it come when it came
to kind of thinking about narcissism
it was this idea that we all as human
beings want to at some point
feel special feel noticed be loved be
recognized and this starts when we're
infants i mean when we're infants
getting paid attention to
by our parents we're getting bursts of
dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin
those are very powerful chemicals
and that's why it feels good and that
translates to when we're adults and we
get paid attention to so
uh so this is a natural feeling to want
to stand out
um and it could be pretty different
though than wanting to be
a badass fantasizing about being james
bond getting yourself
wet and sandy on a beach staying getting
three hours of sleep over five days i
mean what you ended up putting yourself
through to become a navy seal
is insane uh and i'm one of the things i
find
so interesting about seals and if i were
to make a
short list of the types of people that i
would like to corner at a dinner party
uh i'll put seals up there because
man to be prepared to kill
to face gunfire or even just
insanely dangerous situations in the
ocean
it takes a certain kind of person and so
when you openly talk about in the book
i wanted to be a badass i wanted to test
myself
that resonated with me a lot um
is that something because i feel like
there's a cultural swing away from
openly saying something like i want to
be a badass yeah
yeah well um i think you're right there
there might be a cultural swing i i but
i just don't think it's i think as human
beings
uh whether you're whether you're a guy
or a girl
i we all want to kind of um
do something that's really cool and
special and i think
um and i think whatever the pathway to
that is
you know awesome you know it could be
athlete it could be a badass surgeon it
could be a badass teacher it could be
uh you know um you know obviously a
badass spec operator but um
but in my case it was you know this idea
when i had learned about the seals that
these guys
seemed to do everything in every
environment
and especially kind of from the water
and you know i grew up in connecticut
right on the water
and i was a water rat since i was a kid
i mean i you know we would go to the
beach and i'd spend the entire day in
the water you couldn't get me out
my brothers as well and so uh so this
idea that you know the water in the
ocean
which is a very hostile environment you
know you know uh
bone crushing uh pressures you know
chilling temperatures
you know uh obviously you can't breathe
under there but the fact that they made
these
this environment their home i mean the
mantra of the seals
uh is and it was and still is that you
know always you know when in doubt head
to the water because
because the enemy will never be brave
enough or stupid enough to follow you
there right so and the fact that this
you you the audacity of making this this
hostile environment your
your safe haven really kind of appealed
to me on on kind of i guess a
elemental level so so you know my bad
ass you know my badass desires were
happen to be spec ops but i would
i would say that you know everybody kind
of has their version of badass and
and gosh i i really respect anybody who
who pursues that path whatever
whatever badassery they they're pursuing
you know
that is incredibly kind to people like
me whose badassery
is a lot safer than yours but i really
i'm super interested in the nitty gritty
of
testing oneself so because i grew up
soft
and my journey really truly
unfortunately
my journey to become an entrepreneur was
learning to toughen up and that was the
big you talk about attributes
that was a big thing for me i did not
have grit and i had to develop
grit and it ended up unlocking things
for me that i never could have imagined
and so when i now think about okay my
meaning and purpose in life is to help
other people
unlock doors in their own lives how do
you end up doing that
and some of the real answers are i don't
know maybe they make people
uncomfortable or whatever but one of
them is you have to toughen the up
and um when i think about
the way that buds um the the
sort of proving ground for those who
want to become navy seals
weeds out people that lack certain
attributes
i become very interested in people that
want to push through to that
so there's a great book called the power
of myth by joseph campbell and he talks
about how
one of the biggest problems in modern
society is there is no coming-of-age
ritual
and it used to be like if you've read
long walk to freedom by nelson mandela
he talks about
his coming-of-age ritual where they
stripped him naked with like four or
five other guys at 14 or something
put him buck naked in front of the
entire tribe and then
one of the high-ranking men in the tribe
comes up with a sharp ass rock
pull his foreskin they just cut it off
and no anesthetic nothing you have to do
like this warrior cry
and it sounds barbaric and i get it man
and i'm glad i didn't go through it and
i would never put my kids through it but
i also worry
that not putting people through things
like that that make them dig deep
and become aware of latent attributes or
realize yo here is an attribute like in
my case i
am weak i am soft and i need to do
something about that
um what do you think about that like you
have kids do you think at all about
testing them pushing them
yes so first of all i would have rather
done steel training three times then
done that ritual you just described i
think
that's so good on you know probably why
nelson mandela is such a
was such a badass himself um you know
it's it's a really good question i think
this it comes down to the subjectivity
of challenge i mean
it's really ultimately challenged how
are you challenging yourself and i think
you know seal training is certainly an
extreme version of that but um you know
when i think about my kids who are you
know
you know teenagers now um i think
i've always thought in terms of allowing
them to
find their own challenges now sometimes
that happens
a little bit more naturally you know
some kids are more predisposed
to go and seek challenges and kind of
you know kind of break through them than
others
and i see that different sometimes in my
own kids um and so i think
uh it was one of the reasons why i
wanted to break kind of grit down until
it into its elemental factors you know
and in the book you know as you know
i've broken grit down into four
attributes uh because everybody kind of
always talked about grit as an attribute
and i just it didn't make sense to me
that it was an attribute on its own and
of course angela duckworth wrote a great
book
called grit and she says kind of the
same thing it's not it's not just one
thing and so
so when you look at the four attributes
and i break it down to courage
perseverance adaptability and resilience
um it's really kind of the the reason
why i wanted to do that was
try to help people look at those four
elements and those four attributes and
understand that they can practice each
one of those
uh separately if they want to together
if you want the whole you know if you
want the whole thing
but even practicing them separately
helps with grit and the good news is and
i would imagine this is the case for you
if you really thought about it
most people aren't low on all four of
those you know you can actually probably
pick one or two
that you're actually pretty good on and
you may have to say well i need to work
on or develop
a couple you know maybe two of them
right that that really helps that task
it helps someone say you know what i'm
not
i'm not as bad off as i might be but you
know human beings are gritty i mean we
are
you know just just the idea of us going
from cave dwellers to space explorers
proves that we are um and and a lot of
times
we're thrown into challenges we don't
expect and we find that grit
um but i would offer if you are in a
position where you have not explored
your grit and you want to or you're in a
position
you know where you have kids that you're
you're concerned that they may not be
um i would i would i would i would come
at it from those for attributes you know
how can you
practice courage how can you practice
adaptability how can practice
perseverance how can you practice
um resilience here's the great news for
all of us tom is that
we just came out of a year where all of
us practice that you know
because i talk about this you know seal
training is
incredibly tough the way so you go
through seal training and when the way
you quit seal training is you ring the
bell you have to ring the bell three
times if you want to quit
um and of course you know a lot of guys
too you know it's usually about an
85 to 90 attrition rate so for example
my class back 20 plus years ago we
started with about 160
odd candidates and we graduated 38
that's
that's kind of normal numbers um the
difference between
2020 and seal training is that none of
us volunteered to be in 2020
we were all thrown into it and none of
us had a
bell that we could ring to get out of
2020. so so
we all actually explored our grit uh
through 2020 and i think i would
challenge anybody
to look back at their uh at their their
past their upbringing their experiences
their
what i call their antagonists okay we
all have antagonists in our lives and
their antagonist doesn't doesn't have to
be a person it can be an
event a situation of an illness a um
anything anything that hits us but
honoring our antagonists
is a form of grit if we look back and
say hey how did i actually get through
that
and understand what those things were
that allowed me
to march through that challenging
experience and and and those challenging
experiences
you know and and then grow from it
because i i would i would say
most of us have a story that we can look
back and say you know what
that was a it was a horrible time i
would never want to do it again
but i'm glad it happened because i
learned this i met this person something
happened right
that's an example of resilience that's
an example of anti-fragility that's
example of grit that's example of
someone
executing grit to go through a tough
situation so so
really fast so don't don't you worry
that the vast majority of people
in 2020 for instance they didn't have a
belda ring to get out but they didn't do
anything to make it a training exercise
well okay so yes but but sometimes grit
and
here's the thing about grit sometimes
grit is not uh
excelling sometimes grit is not hyper
performing sometimes grit is simply
just taking step by step and you know we
talk about
you know people always said you seals
you're the toughest people on the planet
but
yeah and i agree you know obviously
right uh
not not on the planet we're certainly
tough but i mean look at the look at the
people
struggling through cancer you know look
at the people struggling through
poverty i mean there are people out
there who are
very gritty who have um
you know in in some cases way more
toughness or mental toughness than
any special operator um and it's because
their environment has
has thrown that and thrown that at them
right so
um so so this is where we get a kind of
peak and optimal performance you know
everybody kind of thinks about
performance says hey i want to do my
best i want to i want to kind of peak i
want to kind of be in that flow state
and that's great
but sometimes performance is not
anywhere
near peak and this is kind of how uh you
know i started thinking about this
when i was in hell week in my own steel
training and sitting in the surf zone
freezing
right there was nothing peak about my
performance i was performing optimally
and optimal forms is different optimal
performances how can i do the very best
i can
in the moment sometimes that best looks
like peak
it's flow states it's excelling it's
growing it's training
right sometimes that that best is
simply i'm just head down and i'm taking
step by step i'm living minute to
minutes
just to get through this there's nothing
you're doing that how do you
how do you because i love what you're
saying in that that gives a lot of hope
to somebody who right now is just sort
of stumbling forward
but now how do you turn that stumble
forward into i'm going to be
better next time i'm going to have a
deeper well of resilience or whatever
attribute you know going forward that's
going to serve them
yeah well the first thing the the the
number one thing is that afterwards one
must recover
all right so so recovery is a huge part
of this process any type of challenge
stress
uh whether it's whether it's in the gym
and we're lifting weights or whether
it's thrown at you because you have a
disease
like hovid or it's a bad financial year
um there has to be a recovery period our
bodies have to be able to
recover and kind of kind of rest
from that period and then there has to
be a reflection there has to be a
looking back and saying
hey okay what did i learn and so so one
of the concepts i talk about all the
time is this idea of of
asking questions okay we are as human
beings question answering machines
you know our brains are wired that way
so our brains are constantly asking
questions about our environment
usually unconsciously right um you know
that's bouncing off our hippocampus
we're kind of we're kind of
uh comparing things we've seen before
that's usually a process we don't even
think about
when we um consciously take take charge
of that process
and lodge a question into our forebrain
our brain immediately begins coming up
with answers okay so i do this
i do this drill when i teach classes
some classes and i talk about this
concept i
i say hey write down this question how
can i double my income in the next six
months right and i give them 30 seconds
i say in 30 seconds write down every
single thing that pops into your head
okay and they write down for 30 seconds
usually they come up with a list of
maybe six or seven things
um and i say listen how many answers did
you come up with and really that's the
point of the drill and they usually come
up with that you know
a list and i say you know the reason why
you came up with those answers is
because you lodged a question to your
brain now some of those answers were
ridiculous
you know um you know selling a kidney is
not a good idea winning the lottery is
probably not going to happen
but some of those answers start to be
practical and if you do this enough
your brain is going to start coming up
with answers now what most people do
without thinking about is they ask
themselves the wrong questions they say
why am i so bad at this why does this
stuff always happen to me
you know why are they out to get me okay
as soon as you ask that question as soon
as you lodge that
question into your forebrain your brain
starts to answer it right and those are
disempowering answers
the trick is the tool here is to reverse
the process
right change those questions into
something that's actually empowering
how how can i grow right how did i grow
from this
you know what did i do right what did i
learn from this you know how am i better
than i was before
you lodge those questions in your
forebrain your brain will begin to come
up with answers and the trick is to do
that
and keep on and and once you get that
initial list
just say okay what else what else and
that's how you start creating
a empowering mindset and that's how you
start recovering and becoming
and growing from uh from an experience
like that
okay that's really interesting to me in
the book you talk a lot about the
difference between skills and attributes
skills basically anything that i can
train you to do as a skill anything
sort of innate or born is going to fall
into the attribute category but what you
were just talking about is how we
really can still mold our attributes as
well
um i think it's a deadly simple formula
to begin to shape what i call your frame
of reference but
basically you're getting there by
molding some of these attributes
and it's frame of reference it's what
you just said it's
repeating a new story about that thing
it's focusing your energy on
not okay let's say i did 99 things wrong
but i did one thing right it's
instead of asking to do the list of the
99 things
you got wrong you hone in on the one
that you got right
do you have an official training program
that you work with companies to help
develop people's attributes
well so yes i've developed a program
where i help
companies and teams first figure out
their attributes so step number one is
figure out the attributes now
i would say if we're talking at an
individual level um
we all have all of the attributes uh the
difference in each one of us
is how much of each attribute we have
right so so you say if you say you're
on a level of one to ten where one is
low and ten is high
you say you're a level say four or five
on courage and i might be a level
seven on courage right there's and
there's no judgment there it's really
just how we show up
okay so so as an individual it's okay
what where do i stand on my attributes
when we start talking about businesses
and teams it becomes much more
contextual because the
the list of attributes required for a
seal team for example is going to be
different than the list of attributes
required for an hr team or a sales team
or a group of nurses right
so so step one is figure out what
attributes or
you need for that team and then step two
say okay what are our gaps you know
which attribute
do we place in high importance and which
ones which of those ones do we
do we need and which ones do we need to
develop right so uh
so that's that's step number one and
then if you want to develop so then
obviously that gives you a great
opportunity to hire specifically for
those attributes which is a great thing
to do
um and then you also can develop you
could put yourself into situations
create environments where you you kind
of train and develop those
um training and develop an attribute
can't be done the same way as a skill
it's going to take self-direction it's
going to take self-motivation
and it's going to take a deliberate step
into discomfort because you're going to
you're going to have to step
into a zone where you're you're you're
you're kind of
um wired not to go if someone wants to
develop their patients for example
because they're impatient
they're going to have to place
themselves deliberately into situations
that test
and develop their patients and have to
be a conscious effort so so developing
attributes takes work and it has to be
self-directed you know i can't like a
skill i could you know i could sit down
and teach you tom how to shoot right
shooting's a skill i could teach you how
to shoot and hit a bullseye within
probably a half day
okay that's a skill i can't sit down and
teach you courage or i can't sit down
and teach you adaptability
that's something you have to decide i
want to learn and then throw yourself
deliberately into those environments
because the process is like what you
outlined it's exposure and reframing
and that's why it can't be taught well
i'd say
exposure reframing and deliberate effort
right so in other words if i
if i want to develop my courage um i
need to
i need to deliberately expose myself to
things that
that make me afraid right because there
can't be courage without fear
um so things that deliberately make him
afraid reframe it so that i can actually
accept it better
um and then and then move into it you
know and then kind of do that over and
over so i think it's those three things
that's interesting how does that tie
into i know you've done
i i know you've looked deeply at ptsd i
don't know if you've done
work in that or worked with those people
but i'm very curious to know
if you're aware of like is there a way
to
back people out of ptsd through a
similar
exposure like
one of the things that i know to be true
about fears anxieties phobias
is that what you're you're not trying to
get to the point where you've
experienced it so much that you aren't
fearful anymore you're trying to get to
the point where you're brave in the face
of that fear response
and so i don't know if there's anything
like that i play a ptsd of ptsd's this
whole
own animal but that seems like something
has gone
completely haywire how do we use this
process
to back out of that yeah ptsd is more
difficult and certainly nuanced and so
i'll i'll speak to just a piece of it
that i can and i know there's there's
there's probably a lot more but i i know
that one of the techniques for ptsd
is to help someone reframe an experience
okay
you can do that through a very effective
visualization and we talk about very
effective visualization it means really
putting yourself
back into an environment and then trying
to
in that environment reframe it from a
different emotional perspective and then
you and then you begin to inoculate
yourself
to an extent to that old feeling and
start to absorb that new feeling
that is a very difficult process and i'm
certainly not i did i
you know when i was um when i was still
in the teams we were looking at that
to a degree but but um but really it was
left to the
the professionals to really help people
who were hurt
um right i was just gonna say do you
have a sense of what the attributes are
that make somebody
prone to ptsd
um so i i would say the attributes that
so i would say
um gosh boy that's a really good
question and i don't want to be
presumptuous here uh
so so if we look at the mental acuity
attributes for example
um the mental app so they go situation
awareness
um compartmentalization uh
task switching and learnability okay so
so just to break that down for the
audience situation awareness is
you know absorbing all the information
that you know that that's coming in
which
what do i pay attention to
compartmentalization is okay what am i
what is my goal here what do i need to
focus on and i'm going to kind of block
out everything else
task switching is my ability to move in
between or or jump
inside of context or to different things
and then learnability is how do i
process all that stuff
uh seals are hyper hyper good
compartmentalizers all right so and
that's why it's just part of the
selection process that just
takes care of that totally it's it's
it's because you can't get through seal
training without being able to
compartmentalize be able to say hey and
and not necessarily
you know block it out and like hey i'm
not going to think about this but say
hey
what do i need to focus on in the moment
that's that's specific to my outcome and
my objective
and then and then and then block out
everything else um we are you know
training
why you know first of all you can't get
through training unless you're really
good at that
and then and then just your subsequent
um training and of course combat
really hones that in um if you are
too good at that right um you are
at risk i think of ptsd because what
happens is you're not
you're you're basically so good at
saying hey i don't need to think about
this i don't think about this i'm just
going to focus on this and so sometimes
those things that are traumatic may not
um if they if they come into your sphere
you're really good at saying nope
that's not my focus right now and you
never get to release that so so i think
part of
um part of the the
kind of ptsd healing process is to be
able to let that stuff back in
um and then and then experience it and
and mourn it or emote on it the way you
need to because we all have to have that
release that's part of the recovery
you know if we if we're not if we're not
able to get over
the emotion of a situation we are not
really truly fully recovered
full recovery means i can look back at a
at an event and say hey listen i can
you know i'm good you know now obviously
the real real trauma will always have a
little bit of of emotion but i'm talking
about that you know debilitating emotion
you know can we look back and say
okay i look back at that honestly and i
of course i always have a little bit of
motion but i'm not
debilitated by that emotion and that's
real true recovery but if you are
really really good at
compartmentalization you may find
yourself
having issues with that all right so if
we've got in the book you outline
five sort of buckets of attributes and
then there's sub attributes you've
walked us through a couple sort of top
line and then what feed into those
already
um we've we've got those attributes
one i think it is worthwhile sort of
quickly just to recap what the five
buckets are for people so they can begin
to orient themselves and then i want to
know
get a sense of like how flexible are we
talking like if we're all
if it's all a scale of one to ten let's
say if we're a two can we go to a six
can we go to a ten
like how malleable are these yeah the
five buckets are
the attributes to make makeup grit and
those are
courage perseverance adaptability and
resilience
the attributes that make up mental
acuity which is really how our brain
processes the world
um and kind of kind of affects that
those are situational awareness
compartmentalization task switching and
learnability
um the attributes that make up drive
which is our
kind of ability to kind of um see
an outcome or a goal and and move
towards it to its
to its conclusion and and make it happen
those are self-efficacy
uh discipline open-mindedness cunning
and narcissism
um the leader the the attributes that
make up great leadership
um so and against what i talk about
leadership is really a behavior it's not
a position you know you have to
um you don't you don't get to
self-designate as a leader it's like
it's like saying i'm handsome or funny
you know i don't get to decide that
other people decide that right so and
it's all about these behaviors if i
behave
uh like a leader then people will then
say oh that person is a leader so so
those behaviors often come from
attributes the attributes outlined in
the book
because i think are the really in my
experience been the most essential ones
for really great leadership are empathy
selflessness authenticity uh
decisiveness and
accountability um and then finally the
attributes for team ability that's your
ability to kind of
uh be a great teammate be part of a team
because again you don't get to
self-designate as a great teammate
either
other people have to designate you a
great teammate um so what are those
behaviors those are integrity
conscientiousness uh humility and humor
and then i outline
uh three others in the book that i call
kind of the bi-directional which are
attributes that i found when i really
put them to the test of
um being low was probably not
necessarily that good and being
higher was probably good it didn't make
sense to me and so those those
attributes seemed like
no matter what the polarity uh they were
actually effective for optimal
performance those were
patients and inpatients in other words
they're very very successful people who
are
patient and they're very very successful
people who are impatient uh
fear of rejection or insouciance to what
people think i don't care what people
think so
there are very successful people who um
have a fear of
rejection so they push themselves
because they don't want to look bad
um and then there are very successful
people who are like i don't care what
anybody thinks i'm supposed to do my own
thing
and then finally competitiveness and
non-competitiveness so very successful
people who are competitive and they're
very successful people who are
non-competitive so so those are kind of
the
the bins those are the 25 really um
the in terms of developments um
i would hypothesize and i have to just
hypothesize because everybody's
different but i would hypothesize that
if you are no matter where you stand on
an attribute if you are
committed enough uh i believe you can
get
um as high as you want to be uh it just
takes like i said it takes some real
work and effort and it may not you may
not get to be
unconsciously competent right you may
have to
always think about it to really make it
work
it may not you may not get to be
automatic but i think you could get
pretty high on any one of them
as long as you as long as you put the
work in so speaking of the work
what do you think the role of core
values is in
having the determination the
stick-to-itiveness whatever the right
attribute or word is
for that to actually see it through to
dial up
an attribute because when i think about
somebody actually making change i think
about beliefs
i think about rules behaviors but i
think about core values
a lot and the biggest changes in my life
have come when i change my core values
and i once got asked i forget by who and
they were lamenting their kid like you
know do you ever think they're going to
be able to get it together they were
struggling profoundly and they were very
worried about their future
and you know they said do you really
think there's any way to help them and i
said the answer is yes but you're not
going to like what the answer is
and the answer is if you let me kidnap
them take them to a desert island and
surround them with people and the funny
thing is
in my head when i'm doing this desert
island trick i'm always putting people
with navy seals
so if you let me take five navy seals
and your child and put them on the
island with these guys they will want to
earn their respect
they will want to be a part of the group
and the only way to do that will be to
adopt their value system
and when they adopt their value system
then their behaviors are going to fall
in line and all of a sudden they're
going to
do all the things that they have to do
to toughen up to have self-respect you
know all of that
and i think that will work not
frequently i think it will work
every single time because the the
what that will do to your core values
just to fit in
do you think i'm crazy does that make
sense no it totally makes sense in fact
i would say that um
that one of the things i've always
wanted to do and it seems like it's been
like this since i was in high school is
i've always wanted to
try to surround myself with people who i
thought were better than me and
and in doing so it allowed me to really
up my game
um and you know i never thought about it
in terms of changing my core values
that's a really cool theory that i
probably have to think about a little
bit more but i do know just on an
elemental level um this idea that i did
want to fit
i did want to fit in i did want to
succeed and so it was kind of like i
just
you know there were people you could
model and and it's almost like you know
what we
you know we play a video game and you
know you start at level one and as you
get better you get to level
you know whatever 15 okay and then
suddenly you die
and you have to go back to level one and
level one seems easy okay and it's
because you've just gotten
used to you've gotten used to the pace
and the speed of level 15 and i think
that's what
putting yourself around people who are
better than you
um and i'd say better if you could you
could define that in any word i mean
people who humble you make you feel like
oh my gosh i got to step up my game
and i tell you tom i that happens to me
all the time it still
it still happens to me i mean every i
mean i i i'm constantly looking at
places and people
saying okay i'm just i'm throwing myself
into this thing i don't know a lot about
and i look around me i'm like man these
people know so much more than me they're
better than me even when i was still in
the teams it was happening all the time
and whenever i feel that way i get
excited because i know
i say you know what i'm going to learn
something i'm going to get better you
know i'm going to i'm going to step up
um and so i think it's a really
powerful tool and technique and and yeah
if it if it happens to
i'd have to really think about if it
changed my values or did you just kind
of
or did it maybe take my values and allow
me to amplify the ones i hadn't been
um hadn't been using uh you're probably
at a point where your value system is
already so
constructive that you probably don't
need a shift of
core values that example the the desert
island example is about somebody whose
core values are so
um disturbed they're so
ineffective that um it that's the
core change that they need but i don't
think anybody is beyond
sort of getting their head around a set
of values beliefs um identity statements
that will point them in the right
direction but i'm not surprised that you
sort of can feel maybe there's value in
there somewhere but that's not exactly
what's happening to you anymore
um that's really interesting to me i
when you were going through that and i
was like is he about to say that he gets
excited is it when
you you know meet people that know so
much more than you or are you daunted by
that
that to me is a pretty big litmus test
for
whether people are going to struggle in
life or not
um because if when you're
the sort of lowest on the totem pole you
realize this is a huge
world and you get excited about whoa i
can add to my potential i can grow
obviously that's going back to carol
dweck's book mindset she talks about
people that need a challenge with
excitement
they're going to do a lot better than
somebody who meets that challenge with
apprehension
are there other little markers like that
like you given
your time in the seals given that you
spend a lot of time helping the seals
develop training to identify who is
going to work and obviously the
book attributes are sort of born of your
analysis of
what makes some people succeed and some
not are there like
core attributes that
i'll lump into something like the
universal
attributes of success like is there a
small cocktail of things that we should
all go like hey
these five and get good at these yeah
yeah yeah
so again a great question i think you
know the
you know there are so many different
genres inside one
inside of which one can be successful i
think one of the one of the first things
to remember it's one of my it's one of
my favorite
einstein quotes is that it goes
something like um
you can um you know everybody's a genius
but if you ask a fish to climb a tree
he'll spend his entire life thinking
he's an idiot and this speaks to this
idea that we all have lanes that we
uh probably excel in you know we just
have to find those lanes
so in in lieu of that i would say one of
the
i think one of the most important
success attributes is open-mindedness
and
because open-mindedness also breeds
curiosity and if we are open-minded and
curious
we are generally in a great position to
find those lanes
inside of which we will excel you know
i'll be honest with you
there is nothing about my attribute list
that would allow me to
the you succe in the in the medical on a
medical team as a surgeon
okay it's just those aren't my lanes um
but the
but the curiosity and the discovery
process allowed me to find my lanes and
i think
if uh if people if people have
open-mindedness and curiosity first um
they're at a great position so that's
one
i think courage is a is a key one
because our ability to
step into fear right so so the
fascinating thing about courage is
is that is that it courage could not
exist without fear and fear
is really the combination of two things
it's a combination of uncertainty and
anxiety
um you can have either one of those
components
on their own and you're not gonna have
fear right so you can be anxious
um but not uncertain that's like i'm
nervous about the presentation i have to
give in front of the boss
you know next you know next wednesday or
whatever that's you know i'm anxious but
i'm
i have to give a presentation i know the
presentation i'm just yeah i'm just
anxious
right so and there's no fear there you
can have uncertainty without anxiety
that well that's every kid on christmas
eve right so
um but when you combine the two you
create fear now when when fear starts to
show up
um you know we we've all learned about
the fight flights you know the autonomic
response
the amygdala kind of kicks in and what
happens is
we're left with these two choices do we
do we fight which is move into the fear
or do we
uh flight do we retreat from the fear
freeze you know it turns out
is really just an oscillation you know
between the two so it's really those two
um if you choose to step into your fear
a a specific a specific switch in your
brain gets clicked right
um and when when that happens you get a
dopamine reward
right which means which means we get a
flood of hey this feels
good to step into this fear um now this
doesn't mean we've reached our goal it
doesn't mean we were complete with it
it means every time we take a step uh
we're getting this dopamine record so
so i think those people who have who are
higher on the card scale
tend to step into that fear excuse me
tend to step into that fear a little bit
more often than someone who's a little
less and they understand they feel that
they feel that excitement they feel that
that pleasure of doing that of taking
those steps
so i think courage and open-mindedness
um
and i if i were to pick if just keep it
threes because i think three is good if
i were to pick a third
i would say um i would say humility is
one as well because
humility uh allows us to kind of
understand
that um we're we're always learning
you know there's always something to
there's always something more we can
learn we're never
we're never the best it keeps us out of
that that kind of the blinding arrogance
uh zone and so i think i think um
that humility is what allowed me for
example to to be around
my peers and be like man these guys are
just awesome i need to step up my game
you know or even getting out of the navy
and i started working with a leadership
institute and i started you know
speaking in front of crowds and teaching
and i was i thought abysmal compared to
these the people i was working with i
mean these people are awesome i need to
step on my game so so that
humility allows for us to continue to to
progress right
those are the three i'd pick we could
you and i could probably dissect several
more
but i think those are really important
man
it's really incredible the way that
you've bucketed this out into attributes
to give people a road map for ways that
they can shape their own lives to do
you know whatever it is that they want
to do to work backwards and say okay the
thing i want to do what attributes does
it take
and then to you know give them that path
to go out and do it
uh is incredible as somebody who spends
almost all of my waking hours trying to
figure out ways to help myself and other
people
develop themselves so that they can
accomplish the things they want man
the book is a pretty incredible road map
where can people
get the book the insider scoop follow
you online like what's the
what's the way yeah absolutely so so the
attributes.com is uh you can learn all
about the book you can get the book
um you i'm on i have instagram so you
can find my instagram on there
um you know rich davidi instagram and
then the attributes on instagram
and linkedin the cool thing about the
website is that we also offer a free
assessment tool so you can go to the
website and you can take an assessment
that tells you uh you can take grit uh
mental acuity where we should have
drive drive should be up at you know now
as well
uh but uh grit mental activity driving
you can take an assessment and it tells
you it'll it'll give you some scores as
to where you fall on each of these
attributes now
the the caveat to that is it's going to
be a snapshot right what we did is we
we set up these questions we polled
about a thousand people
globally so we have about a thousand
people's worth of data so when you get
that result if you're like a
a six on adaptability that six is as
compared to
a thousand people so someone has to get
those scores and then really do some
self-reflection and say okay does that
what does that mean for me does that fit
put that in experience but you can at
least get a snapshot
of where you stand on the attributes and
then also
some some workbooks that you can get
that allow you if you want to develop
and activate some
some guided it guides you on how to
develop each attribute so
so they can get all that on the website
and and check it out but uh
uh but yeah i certainly appreciate the
the kind words and the support
no man for sure and i highly recommend
that people do that and thank you for
taking the time to write this stuff out
obviously
hard won knowledge so uh that you share
it and make it easy for others
um is really pretty extraordinary guys
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