EFR 782: The Asset Mindset - A Special Forces Perspective for Achieving Success with Daniel Fielding

00:34 - Speaker 1 Thank you. Thank you, man, and I think I shared this with you on our kind of pre interview call a while ago. You'll probably appreciate this even more. It actually it's got military roots. Not only was it just this phrase from my dad, but he picked it up from his time in service as well. So before he went active duty with 101st Airborne, he was National Guard in our Guard Unit back in Roanoke, virginia, the 116th Infantry Regiment, and their unit insignia

01:49 - Speaker 2 That's a work in progress, constantly, like I'll make a resolution at any time of the year, like if I read something or I learned something. One of my newest things that I'm trying and I've been doing for months now, is the carnivore diet. You know I didn't start that on New Year's, I started it in September. You know I did my research and I've been working out and, you know, trying to stay fit. I get a five year old daughter. I'm going to be 49 this year.

02:13 So I got to. You know, take care of myself so I can be here as long as possible and just doing some science. I'm like, all right, I'll try this carnivore thing. I see some stuff in there and it was going to be almost like a fast or just do it for a couple of months, but now it's, you know, 2024 and I'm still doing it. So as far as resolutions, like you're asking to go back to that, I don't do that just January. I feel if you're doing it only one month out of a 12 month year, you're failing yourself and you need to be constantly working and growing and move ever forward.

02:48 - Speaker 1 You know your work. You kind of break it down into a few different categories, descriptors that I've found and that self-awareness, self-manifestation and personal development. Can you kind of help us, can you please describe so we can better understand the differences between those three?

03:08 - Speaker 2 Oh geez. So yeah, that's a great question, and I'll probably start off with self-awareness. If you're not aware of yourself and who and what you are, and your quirks, your strengths, your weaknesses, if you're just going through, like we talk in the military, you're droning like if you're tired and you've been on a mission for a while, or you're going through the woods, you're just kind of like a zombie droning. You don't want to do that in life. You want to have self-awareness and you have to do that to grow. Well, I guess you don't have to. You're just gonna have a more difficult time and it's gonna be more painful to learn the hard way, which then comes into personal development.

03:44 Once you have that self-awareness, you're like okay, these are my strengths and weaknesses. Well, I want to develop myself in this direction. This is where I want to go, this is what I want to be, this is my passion. That's where self-awareness will really help you get passionate and figure it out that, okay, this is my dream in life. This is what my definition of success is, because we all have different definitions of success. Some people might be to stay at home, be financially free. Others may be to spend more time with family and kids, or to create a business and be a CEO or who knows what, and it's all individuals. So that's where I think the personal development and self-awareness that all comes together. And I talk about mindset a lot and I'm trying to now share with people more what my book is about. It's not just mindset. Mindset is one aspect, it's actually the asset. Mindset is a lifestyle.

04:47 - Speaker 1 So then, how can we take this self-awareness and turn it into I'm assuming here our natural next progressions in the work, to self-manifestation and ultimately personal development? Does it all start with awareness and then we have to build from there, or can we tackle these three in kind of different approaches?

05:06 - Speaker 2 I think you can tackle them differently, but at the same time, I think the best and most direct route like directions, you can go from point A to point B and many different routes. I do think self-awareness is one of the fastest ways to grow and learn and achieve things that you want to achieve in life. If you like music and you're oh man, it's really cool to like music. But if you actually sit back and look and be like man I really enjoy the drums then you learn to play the drums and then maybe become a part of a band.

05:40 So the more that you can be self-aware and take that time to yourself and I think you've also spoken about this in the past as far as, like you gotta go inward, you gotta look at what you're really made of Geez, am I angry about this? Am I struggling with this? Is this a loss? Like you go inward first and then you can grow outward faster. I mean, you're always gonna grow. It's part of the human condition. Sometimes you're dying in a sense when you're going in the wrong direction, but you can absolutely go backwards and then go forward. That's part of life. It's not a straight line.

06:19 - Speaker 1 Can you maybe take us back to a point in your military career that the concept of self-awareness became the most apparent to you? Was there maybe a moment in your training and special forces, or maybe just in you know, day-to-day military life where, wow, I have just really stepped into this level of awareness that I didn't have before coming into this type of career, because I feel like I can definitely kind of go back down the rabbit hole a lot of times where that came up for me, but there's just, there's a level of awareness I think, in like this tactical kind of environment versus a civilian one that I know I feel is a little bit different. Would you agree, and you know, could you maybe take us back to a point in time there?

07:05 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I agree with that completely, and I was blessed where I had some self-awareness ahead of time with my martial arts training. I talk about a Dragon Warrior code in my book and the first line is I am what I am because I choose to be. So that gave me some self-awareness. And the funny thing about life, too, is you're like, oh, I have self-awareness, I reflect and I do this and I do that and I meditate. But then in the military there was this time when this is what I think you're looking for is I'm training with my ODA, operational Detachment, alpha or A-Team, you know, in special forces, and I'm going through special forces, advanced urban combat, for the first time. I'm a cherry, you know, new guy, and I'm adrenaline all amped up. I want to show these guys like, hey, I'm meant to be here and I was focused on getting the job done. Well, I'm 6'4", I have long legs, I have adrenaline and I'm walking through a house.

07:58 I didn't realize it, but we call it jackrabbit-ing or that's a term that was used, at least back then, and I was moving too fast, that I was by myself, I didn't have like a battle buddy, I was messing up the flow and they're like Dan, you need to slow down.

08:12 You know, like you're just going too fast, you're a jackrabbit just hopping from one to one and I was like, oh, wow, okay, yeah, that awareness like I was, so in a sense, target fixated too, and I think people can do that sometimes in life. You get target fixated and you're only focusing on one thing and you're just looking in that direction and you haven't taken the time to realize, oh hey, look off to the side, here there's a shortcut, or hey, there's a guy waving me down to be like, hey, there's a pothole up ahead or the road's closed, or so you want to listen to people around you too, and that will help give you even more self awareness, which I also talk about in the book. You know, your teams and the people you surround yourself with can be a great asset as well.

08:55 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean your community, your team, your peers, just that inner circle, even if you have trust in them and respect for them, you're going to make yourself open and available to take that feedback and to get that kind of external form of self awareness that I'm here to describe. What is the difference really? Or how can we, how can we get that external input of self awareness beyond the level of self awareness that we create intrinsically? How can we really make ourselves available, open and properly receptive to receive that, so that we can enhance our overall level of self awareness?

09:37 - Speaker 2 Well, first thing you need to do is have thick skin because, having self awareness, you know you're going to get some criticism.

09:45 - Speaker 1 It ain't gonna criticize yourself.

09:47 - Speaker 2 When you ask people for their opinions. They're going to criticize you sometimes and the other saying is you know, a friend stabs you in the front, not in the back. So I'm going to go back to. You need to have thick skin. You can't be too sensitive. You know there's the term out there snowflake. You can't be a snowflake too much. You need to be able to take some of the heat and be forged by that heat. That you're taken from people. That constructive criticism is a good thing. That's what you're going to do and take to learn and grow and have that awareness.

10:19 Who knows you better than the people around you, than your family members, then your spouse, your girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever it is you have. You know those people or family members, your brother, your sister. You grew up together. You're going to know. I mean recently you were doing an interview again with your brother. Like you guys know each other. You know when he tells you something you're like, okay, yeah, he might know what he's talking about. And that's where you have to have that thick skin. You can't get upset and be like, oh, you're just being a jerk, because you know that person or that individual that's giving you that constructive criticism, cares about you genuinely. So those are the people that you really, when you're saying about external awareness or self awareness from the external environment, those are the people that you want to turn to because their awareness of you is going to be at another level and kind of on the outside, looking in, and they'll see things that you know you might not see right away.

11:14 - Speaker 1 You know, in the military, or at least in the army, we have these things called after action reviews, aars, and a lot of times I remember they were just a pain in the ass. I felt like it was just a waste of time. I say I know what I did, I know what I did well, I know what I screwed up. But man, until you sit down in that circle, you take a knee and you get that feedback from your peers, you get that feedback from leadership, you really have no idea what the full picture is. So in the military, then, we have these experiences, we have these devoted times to literally sit down and build out this feedback.

11:53 We don't always get that in the civilian world. We don't always have that in our day to day personal lives or maybe even our jobs. So maybe the person listening right now is going all right, how can I facilitate this? If I don't already have this time cut out in my day in my job? How could I maybe incorporate this? What would a build out? What would a civilian AAR kind of look like? How can we really know we're building something out constructively?

12:22 - Speaker 2 Well, that's a great question and I think there's a lot of things that people can do. You can do it after an event, right away. Right, three things down. That was good. Three improves, three sustains. I talk about that. We did that in the military and I think that's huge and key.

12:39 The other thing is it doesn't have to be exactly after the event. The closer, or whatever that task or event was, that you can do the AAR, the better, because the information is fresh. However, if something happens during the day and you're busy and your schedule is going, and you got to pick up kids or you have something else to do, you got to go grocery shopping, whatever it may be, life gets in the way. You can do it before you go to bed. That's most of the time when I do my daily AAR and kind of review my thoughts, what I accomplished, what I didn't accomplish, what's going to prioritize my day tomorrow, the next 24, so to speak. But you can also at the end of the week, like, if that's too much and you can't take it on daily, try at the end of the week, sunday, your day of rest. All right, I'm going to take 15 minutes and I'm going to go over all my days. What did I do, what did I accomplish, what did I miss? What would I like to do more of? It's just a review of where you're at in life.

13:38 Those AARs go back to what we were talking about earlier of self-awareness. An AAR is a tool to give you self-awareness or give you even awareness of your team that you're working with at work. If you're doing an AAR there, it'll give you awareness about your home. If you're remodeling and you're trying to get A, b and C done, or the plumber hasn't come yet, or this happened, there's the can of worms, as they say. Working on a house. You go to do an addition or remodel. Next thing you know you're going into the next level.

14:09 - Speaker 1 You're opening it up, you're opening it all up. Yeah, absolutely.

14:12 - Speaker 2 With those AARs, you can find the time. That's the biggest thing I would like to share with you. They don't take that long. Don't think it has to be this big, huge report or you got to write down a page of notes. You can do that. But it can be as simple as one, two, three. What do they do? Good? One, two, three. What do I need to improve on? It's that simple.

14:33 - Speaker 1 This brings up for me this concept that I've talked about on the show many times before, that is, knowing without doing is the same thing as not knowing After work. You definitely talk about this. The difference is really of discovery, but then change. It's one thing to discover what we haven't been aware of, one thing to discover this new level of self-awareness. It's a whole other world. To actually implement these things, to change, to put ourselves on the path towards change that we want, how do we go from knowing to doing, discovery to change.

15:09 - Speaker 2 That's going to be discipline. Discipline is the glue that's going to take your motivation and glue all that motivation and those good thoughts together, or your goals, to actually accomplish them. Discipline is the thing that you have to do every day. Discipline if you want to be in better shape. Let's say we talked about New Year's resolutions.

15:29 A lot of people right now are I want to be in better shape. If you don't have the discipline to show up and go to the gym, you're not going to get in better shape. Nobody's going to do it for you. That's where I talk all the time about. You are your greatest asset. You affect yourself more than anybody else, positively or negatively. If you're trying to get better shape, you need to go to the gym. You need to lift weights, you need to eat healthier.

15:54 Discipline is the thing that's going to take that self-awareness like oh, I realize I'm overweight and fat now. Now you've got to get discipline to make that change. It doesn't have to be just health, it could be a career, you know? Oh, man, I really am not happy at my job. I've always loved writing and I want to be a writer for music say, well, start writing songs.

16:16 Have the discipline every day to write a song or write a chorus or do whatever it is that you listeners are wanting to do in your dreams and where you're being pulled. When I say being pulled, that comes also from relaxation, meditation. Focus on yourself and then you'll know where you want to go with your life. You won't know if you're just caught up being busy in the day to day, running around you know. That's why they kind of have that saying you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off. You're not thinking, you're just reacting and you don't want to be that person. So discipline going back to that is what will help you take your self-awareness from just being an awareness to actually creating that change that you want.

17:05 - Speaker 1 It's kind of hard for me to disagree with discipline because you and I share such a common background of military service and, whether you loved it or hated it, no matter how you come out on the other side of serving, you are more disciplined. Even if you had it going in, there's a level of discipline I will argue will never leave you. I think a lot of people look to service members even first responders, police force, but definitely the military because they go. There's just a level of discipline that they have that unless I join the military, unless I do some of that just crazy, hard, wild shit I'm never going to have. At least that's what their belief is.

17:55 I kind of have David Goggins fresh in my mind because he a couple of weeks ago, came out with a new episode on Huberman Lab with Andrew Huberman great podcast. I can't knock either of them. I mean both of them have achieved amazing things. David has overcome wild, crazy abuse, poor physical health, gone through seals. I mean a guy is not a human being. But I had this conversation with a family member of just like.

18:25 That is so unattainable for the vast majority of public people. Most people are not going to be able to be like David Goggins and go, just flip a switch and just talk to that inner bitch, like he says, and just completely go from one side of the pendulum to another. Very few cases, I believe, are going to be able to do that, or at least be able to do it and adhere to it long term. Do you agree with that? Is there a way for somebody listening right now to just go? You know what I'm fed up with the way that my life has been going. I'm not happy, or not as happy as I know that I could be. I'm not performing as well as I know I could perform. I'm not in as good a shape as I want Insert. Whatever that battle you have, whatever that demon is, can they just flip a switch and can they just take on that mentality, take on that belief system and actually adhere to it long term?

19:23 - Speaker 2 Absolutely they can. It is possible. But I will say a lot of people don't want it bad enough or they're not uncomfortable enough. It's kind of like the 12 step program, for you know alcoholics, anonymous. They're like, oh, you have to hit rock bottom before you realize that, oh, I really do have a problem. I need to make a change Now. I also believe you don't have to hit rock bottom. It helps sometimes to really be like. This is painful, this hurts. I need to make drastic changes and make those big changes that, whatever it is that you're looking for, whether it's health, career, relationship, whatnot but you can do these things without having, I want to say, like, not experienced but experienced the pain.

20:14 You can learn from someone else. That's the great thing about being a human being Right now. You know, for generations we've learned through reading and now television, radios come out, now podcasts. We can learn from each other. Right now people are listening and learning Absolutely.

20:28 But you don't have to also go. You know, pedal to the metal. You can grow like an oak tree grows from a little acorn. It slowly grows and becomes this big, powerful thing. You don't have to hit a switch where it's an atom bomb explosion, blow up your life and now you're rebuilding in another way. It's up to you and that's you choosing your path. Both are possible and I do a little different style with the asset mindset.

20:54 I'm going to go back to the seed analogy. I try and plant seeds in people's heads so they can realize I can learn, I can grow, I can achieve on my own. By having this awareness, by having this mindset, by having this lifestyle, I can shape and create the world around me. I don't have to blow things up. I can go in the direction I want, how I want, as fast as I want. Those are all your choices. You are your greatest asset.

21:21 I preach that all the time. I will forever preach that. You do have other assets in life, but nobody can help you more than yourself and you can help yourself as much or as little as you want to that comfort level. Now I also don't want you to be too comfortable when you are making a change, because you have to really step outside your comfort zone to grow as well. Any listener out there, you do need to push yourself. You don't have to go crazy, but you should be pushing yourself If you're not scared about what you're doing and excited and all the things as Chase and I talked about earlier. You are not pushing yourself enough. It should be scary, it should be exciting, whatever it is you're doing and how you're living your life.

22:10 - Speaker 1 Hey freaking man to that man. Hey, freaking man. I think this is the perfect time to talk about one of my favorite sections in your book. Here and in chapter three, you talk about what to avoid and I don't think this gets enough attention that it should in the pursuit of moving forward in life, in the pursuit of carving out, building a better, more optimized life, physical, mental resilience. There are a lot of things that we need to include. There are a lot of things that we need more of, there are a lot of things that we need to put on to our plate in order to make that happen, but there are, for damn sure to use your words environments, people and excuses that we need to avoid. Talk to us, please, about these three things that we should avoid in order to develop a more resilient mindset, this asset mindset.

23:02 - Speaker 2 Well, number one, seeing how we've talked about self-awareness, first I'm going to go with excuses. Stop making excuses for yourself oh, I'm too tired, oh I don't have the time, I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough, guess what? All those things you can change. You got to get rid of the excuses. You need to have that. How do I mentality Figure it out? We are so blessed right now we can go on the computer. Heck, you can go on your phone and Google YouTube, whatever it is. You want to learn how to take an engine apart? If you want to change a window in a house, if you want to plant a garden and grow some exotic crops, there's going to be somebody out there telling you how to do it. Get rid of those. I can't or I don't know how. That's number one your own excuses.

23:45 People can be tough when it comes to avoiding people. I like to talk about anchors and balloons Good people, positive people, or a balloon. They're going to lift you up in life. Anchors are going to weigh you down. They may pull you down, they may hold you back. There's different types, bigger weights of anchors, of people, but you do need to avoid the people that say somebody's constantly trying to get you to go out and stay up late and do things that you really know you shouldn't be doing, like I probably shouldn't go to this party. I got work tomorrow. I shouldn't be out drinking and doing this or that.

24:23 Those people, they may be good people, you may like them, you may care about them, but sometimes you have to avoid them and also going into now environments. If you're going out to the bar or the club or you're going out and you're wasting money doing this and that, maybe going to a casino and going through all your salary and your paycheck is blown, you need to avoid those environments, things that are taken away from your dreams. It is so hard to do because sometimes they're family members, sometimes they're life friends that you've known for decades or whatnot. But just be real with them and they're going to respect you, they're going to understand and you know what? If they don't?

25:04 There's some resistance there? Realize that you're showing them. There is another way. They may not realize it at the time. I have somebody that was really close in my life for a while when I first joined the military and I eventually had to cut them out of my life and say goodbye. I think it was probably about five years. After that I got a phone call thanking me because they grew up and matured and changed.

25:33 And as painful as it was for me to like cut them out of my life and move on. It led them to a place where they could grow. So don't think, if you're cutting somebody out of your life that is close to you, or relationship that you're in boyfriend, girlfriend you know like that stuff sometimes actually is a catalyst and put someone else on that right path.

25:59 - Speaker 1 So don't overthink it and it's not fine. It doesn't have to be a so long, it might just be a see you later.

26:05 - Speaker 2 Yes, exactly, absolutely. That's a great point right there, chase. So that's something I think the listeners need to realize is, when you're avoiding people, uses, environments, you need to understand whether it's a positive and negative. If it's helping you and moving you in the direction you want, and if it's not, you can eliminate it permanently or you can say, like you said, see you later and readdress it later on. But if you're moving in a direction of? Here's an example think of a ladder. Okay, you can take one step up with this decision, or you take the opposite decision and you take a step down. Well, if you want to keep climbing up the ladder towards your goal, sometimes you have to avoid those other people, places and things, because that decision is like taking a step up on the ladder where staying with that person or going to that party and going to be hung over or late for work or God forbid missing work, completely getting fired or whatnot, what is that? That's a step down the ladder. So you always want to be climbing towards your goals.

27:13 - Speaker 1 You know, I can't stop thinking about excuses. Excuses nowadays. Call it woke culture, call it people getting soft, but also you can call it a lot of people finally listening to their bodies, listening to their hearts, listening to intuition. I think people sometimes have a bullshit excuse and it's a lie, a very simple, easy, little, convenient lie that we tell ourselves so that we don't have to do the hard thing, even though we know it is in pursuit of the life that we want. But yeah, there are other times when we absolutely need to go.

28:01 You know what? I have been kicking ass. I have been keeping these promises to myself, I have made progress and because of all of those new life choices and those compounding decisions, I'm just really burnt out. I'm feeling it. You know, I need to be more mindful of what I have coming up. I need to preserve my energy. Dan, I'm curious do you have a process, a protocol, a little litmus test of a bullshit meter or not? Of yes this is a valid reason to maybe sit this one out or no? This is an excuse that I'm lying to myself. I need to get back out there.

28:40 - Speaker 2 Yeah, I got one of those meters in my garage. You want me to bring it over and show it to you.

28:44 - Speaker 1 I'll three lows Home Depot.

28:46 - Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I wish there was a meter like that and it was so easy. But I'm going to. How do you know? How do you tell the difference? You don't fully know that easily. But I'm going to go back to what I just said with the ladder. You're thinking of your excuse. All right, now you need to step back, take a break, because you are burnt out, like you said. Well, that actually is going to take you a step up towards your goal, because now you're going to decompress, you're going to re-energize, you're going to re-group. If you need to take a day off, if you're lifting heavy every single day and you don't ever give your body any recovery time, you're not going to get the gains that you would if you took a day off. So sometimes taking the day off is actually that step up in the ladder.

29:31 - Speaker 1 It's actually the best thing you can do sometimes.

29:33 - Speaker 2 Yes, absolutely so. The step in the ladder or moving in the right direction down the road. That's what I think is the Lippenitz test. Is this decision a positive? Is this like going to add a plus one in my column, or is it going to be a negative one in my column? So I think those right. There is a great way to kind of do the test of okay, is this something that is a true? I need to step back or is this just an excuse, like I'm tired today and I'm feeling lazy and I really don't want to do whatever it is I need to do, so is that actually going to help you or hurt you? Whatever that decision is? So that's, I think, my best Lippenitz test. But if you do ever come up with a bullshit meter, you know I want to buy one, and if we can figure one out, let's patent it.

30:27 - Speaker 1 Yeah, well, let's work on it. Man, two heads together better than one. Yeah, as you were describing. I love that interpretation.

30:33 But I was kind of just mulling over really what that might look like in my own life. And I will take the example of you know, physical fitness like you're talking about. You know, maybe going heavy so many days in a row, you're not going to get that progress without that downtime. Muscles grow after, right, not during the workout. So I kind of have, I guess, a little my own little litmus test, my bullshit meter. You know, if I've gone more than two days in a row and I haven't done anything, and that in my anything, I mean that could have been a workout like a regularly scheduled workout, that could have been a long walk, that could have been yoga, you know some form of devoted movement. If it's been two days or more, I'm like I know, chase, like you got to go unless I'm sick, unless I'm on my deathbed or just some wild, crazy life event. So I kind of have these rules built in, these rules woven into the infrastructure of how I live my life. But also I was thinking it comes full circle to your point earlier of how important it is for us to have these built in after action review time. We're not really going to know how to best assess this situation, how to move forward, if we don't properly know how to review and evaluate our past.

31:43 I think one of the best another great way that we could have our own bullshit meter or not is if, after the fact, we have any resentment around it.

31:54 If we have resentment around the choice that we made, there's our answer. You know, only after can we review that and go all right, no like I really wish that I did do this thing or really wish that I didn't. But if you can look back in your personal AR and go no like based on all these other things leading up to that and then the day that I had after, you know, I'm very glad that I listened to my body. I'm very glad that I listened to my intuition. I'm glad that I listened to my support system of friend, whoever. So it kind of it's difficult to really grasp and go. I can only make the best decision on how to move forward if I know how I feel after the fact. So that's to your point here. It just we have to have all these contributing factors. We have to know how to drop into the moment. We know how to know how to have this high level of awareness, and that only comes really after compounding reviews of past experiences.

32:45 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and you can do some projecting. I love what you're saying like all right, I look back at this decision that I made yesterday or last week and I regret it. You can actually try and predict the future If you're trying to make a decision. All right, tomorrow I talked about going to a party on a work night, you know? Oh, it's great, I'd love to have fun now, but, all right, let me project into tomorrow when I'm at work. Am I going to be tired? Am I going to be hungover? Is that going to be a problem? So I think your regret is actually one of the things that we could maybe design and put into this bullshit meter, because if you think about the future.

33:22 You I mean, we've all got experiences in life and you're going to know, hey, yeah, if I screwed off all weekend and I didn't mow my lawn or do the tasks I needed to do, or I didn't go grocery shopping, now I'm back at work and my fridge is going to be empty. Now I'm stuck getting takeout and spending more money that I didn't really have if I went grocery shopping myself. All these different things. No matter what the situation is, you can, in a sense, project yourself in that future moment and the decision you're making right now. Is that going to make you feel good or have regrets?

33:59 - Speaker 1 continuation here of our Bullshit Meter.

34:02 I think there are a lot of excuses that get made for the people around us and we just kind of walk through how to cut out, avoid, reduce people, places and things the avoidance that we need.

34:16 But we also need to get very real and we take a lot of ownership of ourselves, and this is a direct quote from your work that I love and that's no one influences your life more than you do. Don't let your thoughts oppress your mind. Start freeing your mind and own your power. Take control and ownership of your life with positive thinking. Choose your thoughts wisely. Can you walk us through, please, how we can have more honesty with ourselves and recognize and respect the level of influence that we do have on our life, where we are here, how we got here, more importantly, where we want to go, and this aspect of positive thinking for a lot of people that are probably going like, yeah, that's easier said than done, you don't know me, you don't know my life. I've been through some shit Like how do we take ownership and how do we really go into this positive thinking and choose our thoughts wisely?

35:12 - Speaker 2 Well, I'll say this part of it right off the bat. You are sitting where you're sitting because of all the choices in your life. I am sitting where I'm sitting because of all the choices in my life. Now, people have affected those choices. Somebody might have helped you or mentored you or did whatever. There are other variables, but nobody influences where you're sitting right now doing this podcast with me, me sitting here doing this podcast with you writing my book. People helped me write my book. I hired editors. You know I had my wife proofread it for me when I had my very first draft of my manuscript. So, yeah, there's other things that are variables, but no one, no one influences you more than yourself. And you need to realize that. And that's the ownership I talk about. And when I say own your power, like when you realize that, like holy shit, like nobody can influence my life more than me, like I need to own this life, like I'm saying right now my life sucks, I'm stuck in this apartment, I want to own a house, or I'm stuck in this dead end job, I'm not going to be promoted anymore, or I'm not doing this or that, like own that shit, like that's you your decisions. You want a different job, you want to move, you want a different career, whatever it is, get out there and start influencing your life. You can do it. It's 100% possible.

36:39 Everybody I know that's successful. All the celebrities, billionaires, military people, whatnot They've all had obstacles. They've all had struggles. Struggle and strife is part of the human condition. We've all had issues, you know. We've all experienced loss. Right now, I have no parents. You know I am now an orphan in a sense, like my mom and dad are gone. I have a lot of friends. Their parents are still around, but that doesn't mean, oh, I'm a victim and now I can't do things, or oh, I'm going to be stuck in the sorrow. I love my parents, I miss them, but I'm not going to let some loss in my life darken and ruin my future, you know. So that's what the ownership and understanding own. Your power is that you influence your life 100%, more than anybody else People can say. I'll give you a quick analogy You're driving down the road, you can get in a car crash, a drunk driver hits you, you lose your legs.

37:36 You can sit there and be like, oh, I'm a victim, I lost my life, or you can own that shit and you can rehab. You can get prosthetic legs and you can be like some of the people that have run the Boston Marathon. You know, with prosthetics and no legs, that's you. That's that person that did that. That was their choice, they put in the work. I got friends that have lost limbs, that have gone back to active duty. You know like there's incredible things. Rami that's in my book that I talk about. He got shot in the neck C2, c3. He's director of stay and step spinal institute, helping other people learn to walk again. So that is the ownership that you need to take and understand. Yeah, life sucks. Suck it up, buttercup. You're a human being. You're always going to have struggle. That's part of the human condition. What are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with your life? What are you going to do to own your power and influence your goals and dreams to happen?

38:33 - Speaker 1 You have this other concept in your work called the how do I mentality, and you really kind of help us use it to understand it, to become this new normal when we're trying to achieve a goal. What do you mean by how do I, and how can we adopt this to help us in pursuit of our goals?

38:54 - Speaker 2 This is a very powerful tool. I've seen it help so many people. I've actually helped my freelance editor that I hired that helped me get my book out. She was having this barn problem and there was a storm coming or whatnot, and it ripped the barn door off and she's like I don't know how to fix the door, I can't fix this, I'm not a carpenter or whatnot and her man wasn't there and she was all alone, whatnot. And then she was like wait, stop, I just was reading Dan's book, I'm not going to do it, get rid of that. I can't. How do I do this? How do I? All? Right, well, I get some new screws. I'll go in the barn and see if there's a hinge. She was so proud of herself she texted me back Alice, if you listen to this, yeah, that's right, I'm giving you a shout out. She was like man, that, how do I?

39:45 Mentality really works so quick summary is as soon as you see yourself saying, oh, I can't or I don't know how to do that, no, how do I do it? How do I make whatever it is I'm trying to accomplish happen. You want to write a book? How do you write a book? Go study it. You want to learn how to paint? All right, how do I paint? It's out there. It's like we talked about earlier Everything's out there on the web.

40:09 Right now, we are so blessed as human beings. We've never had more information, more capable means to like achieve things, whatever it is your goal is. So if you have a goal right now and you're listening to this podcast and there's something that you've always been like, oh, I wish I could do this, stop making excuses. Figure out how do I, and if you use how do I in whatever goal or achievement that you want to do, that will bring you a step closer, and the more you do it, the more natural it becomes. It's like a snowball rolling down the mountain, becoming this giant avalanche. It's a snowball effect. Once you start doing it and you see the results of how do I solve this, you won't stop.

40:53 - Speaker 1 What value have you brought over most to your civilian life from your time in the military, your time in special forces? That is most important to you, but you think, more importantly, anyone could adopt regardless of their having served or not.

41:13 - Speaker 2 I think we're kind of keen on it right now is that how do I? Mentality? I talk about it in the book, whereas as an ODA or a team we get this mission. We're not like, oh, we can't do it. It's, how do we do it?

41:25 So that is something that I've brought over. I've also brought over our motto day oppressor liber, which is Latin to free the oppressed, or free from oppression, depending on how you want to translate it. And I'm like okay, in the civilian world, people tend to oppress themselves. We oppress ourselves with our own thoughts. So I've taken that to free from oppression. That's why, in a sense, I created the asset mindset. I am trying to free people from their own negative thinking, their own thoughts and their own mind.

41:56 If you can start realizing that, you can free yourself with your thoughts and thinking positively and I know we talked about that like, oh, a lot of people can be oh, it's easier said than done. Absolutely Most things in life are, but it doesn't mean it can't be done. The more you do it, the more natural it becomes stretching. If you stretch the first time, you try and stretch and touch your toes. If you haven't done that, it's painful, it hurts, you can't do it very well. But guess what? If every day you reach and you stretch towards your toes, and you very hard, how can I do this and make it happen? It will happen. So that's the positive thinking process. Yes, it's not going to be overnight. You're not going to read my book and be like, oh, the life is all easy, now I've got all the answers. No, but you will have a lifestyle that will help you get to the answers that you are seeking.

42:47 - Speaker 1 I think a lot of people suffer from a level of fear of what awaits them on the other side of all this change that you're talking about. I think there are obvious fears. There's the obvious, yeah, but you know what, if I change my life, if I do anything different, it's going to require more work. It's going to ruffle feathers of my current support system, my job, my community, my environment. But there's definitely another layer of unknowns that we will only know once we cross that threshold of change and we get out of the oppressed mindset. Can you maybe help us understand more of navigating the obvious and the unknown fears of what awaits us on the other side of this change?

43:36 - Speaker 2 Well, that's great. I talk about fear in my book regularly. As far as fear, I want you to understand that we all have it. I don't care. You can say you're the biggest, baddest green beret, navy seal, whatever it is You're still going to be scared a little bit. When bullets are flying or you jump out of a plane. Yeah, there's excitement and there's other things going on, but fear is an opportunity to be courageous. Fear is an opportunity to have courage, to display courage. I talk about that with my friend jumping out of the plane for the first time. Overcoming that fear is so powerful, so exciting. I mean anyone listening. Think of something in your life that you achieved or accomplished that you were scared to do in the beginning. How'd you feel afterwards? It was exhilarating. You were like, wow, it's life changing.

44:28 - Speaker 1 First time I jumped out of a plane I was like, Tim, you back up, let's go again, Come on.

44:31 - Speaker 2 Yeah, it's incredible. You're like whoa I just the feelings, the emotions and everything that happens and you were unaware of it. But I want people to take fear and not let that freeze them, so to speak. I want you to get excited about fear. If you have some fear about what you're doing, that means you're alive. That means you have an opportunity to be brave, to be courageous and to achieve something that a lot of people won't. So if you're in a moment in time in life right now where you're experiencing fear, realize a lot of people aren't going to face the fear. They're going to turn, duck and run.

45:08 If you face that fear now, you're getting to do something a little extra, a little more, and the more you do a little extra, you take ordinary and make it extraordinary. That is something I'm firmly believing and I want you and your listeners to understand. Fear is actually a good thing. You can overcome it. You need to use it smartly and wisely. Don't jump out of a plane without a parachute. If you're scared to jump out of a plane, make sure you have a parachute. Face that fear properly. But for real, fear is a great indicator in life that you're about to do something, accomplish something and things are going to change.

45:47 - Speaker 1 So face that with excitement, with passion, and let's go Well, dan before I get to my final question, I want to kind of I want to pose something that I think is also either very, very known for people in pursuit of a better life, or they really quickly realize it. And your book, your work asset mindset perspective for achieving success, a special forces perspective for achieving success, and I want to highlight that word success. I think people in pursuit of a better life, they have an idea of what success means to them, of what it looks like, of what it feels like. They've got this clear benchmark for that's that's where I want to go, that's my next level. Others possibly just recognize that they can be doing more, should be doing more, want to do more, but there's not that level of clarity around a clear marker for success. Do we need to have that clear marker for success in order to achieve a better life, in order to move forward, or can we just put one foot in front of the other and then kind of build it along the way?

47:11 - Speaker 2 Absolutely. There's more than one path to success. You can take one road, you can take another road. I mean, look at a GPS or you put in your phone directions to go somewhere. You can pick different routes. So there are different ways to get to that success and success is different for different people.

47:30 But what I want people to take away and people write books on mindset all the time but I think the asset mindset is different in that it is a lifestyle where you look at everything. It's not just oh, my thinking we talked about people places, excuses to avoid the how do I? Mentality, it's all-encompassing. So the success that you can have with living this lifestyle or having the asset mindset philosophy is boundless and it's your journey. You create it and use it the way you want.

48:06 And I talk about we've mentioned the military a lot and everybody in Special Forces that I met, I say, has the asset mindset. They realize they have to take ownership of themselves, they have to do PT. You know they have to do the right things, they need to work hard, they need to have self-awareness, they need to learn, they need to grow. But guess what? You don't have to be Special Forces to have the asset mindset. Yes, if you want to go Special Forces, be a Navy SEAL, you better think and have the asset mindset philosophy to be successful and make it. But you don't have to take that path to have that way of thinking. You don't have to join the military or be a firefighter or do something that's along that line of employment to have the asset mindset. A regular person can do it.

48:53 I've seen people in the corporate world. I've seen people in the music world. It's that hard work. It's that how do I? Mentality. It's the I'm going to do what I want to do and I'm not letting anybody tell me no or stop me. I'm going to own this business, I'm going to build this empire, I'm going to do whatever. That is the asset mindset at its core. Like I said, you don't have to be Special Forces to have it. Anybody can have it, Anybody could obtain it. You just need to want it and then put the work in.

49:24 - Speaker 1 Your work definitely helps us understand where we are and where we want to go and how to get there. But I want to ask you directly to move forward in life, to keep moving ever forward. How do we do?

49:36 - Speaker 2 that, what do you?

49:37 - Speaker 1 mean to you.

49:39 - Speaker 2 I'm going to go back to my dad on this one. He always said every day in life, do something I don't care what it is big or small that moves you closer to your goal. It doesn't have to be this big, huge, profound thing every day. It can be a small, little thing like all right. I read five pages in this book today.

49:59 I've been busy, life's been busy, I've been working, my wife, my kids, it's a birthday party I'm going to, or there's this track meet or whatever it is that you're dealing with in life and you're busy. Just find the time to do one thing, because time flies. If you do one thing every day, that's 365 things you've done in a year. The bigger you can make these things, the better. But cut yourself some slack and just if every day you can do one thing positive to move forward, thus ever forward in life, I love it. You will achieve things that you didn't think you could achieve.

50:39 I never thought I would write a book. I didn't go to school to be a writer. I joined the military after 9-11. I wasn't. Oh, I'm going to join the military and write a book. Hell, no, that was not any of my plans, but just focusing, listening, guidance in life, self-reflection, sharing. Enjoy your life. This is the one you get. I hate to be cliche, but you only live once, at least that I'm aware of. Take advantage of it. Live life to the best you can.

51:11 - Speaker 1 One thing daily? That's really it. Just niche it down, niche it down, niche it down.

51:17 - Speaker 2 At least one thing At least one thing, at least one thing, absolutely. You can do two or three, I try and do at least three a day yeah.

51:25 - Speaker 1 Absolutely, dan. Thank you so much. I can't wait to get this episode out. I'm going to have your information all linked down in the show notes for everybody. If you guys want to learn more, definitely check out his book the Asset Mindset A Special Forces Perspective for Achieving Success. You guys can see it right here. Daniel, appreciate your man. Thank you, brother. Thank you Chase, great to be here.