The journey of personal development, of becoming a more excellent and extraordinary individual, can sometimes seem a little abstract. That’s why it’s helpful to imagine it as Mark Divine does, as a set of five metaphorical mountains to scale.
Mark is a retired Navy SEAL Commander, a professor of leadership, a yogi, the creator of fitness and mindset programs like SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind, and an author. He combines his two decades of military service with his study of martial arts and zen meditation to create the holistic warrior monk development philosophy that informs his work, including his latest book, Uncommon: Simple Principles for an Extraordinary Life.
Today on the show, Mark acts as a guide to the topography of the five mountains of personal development and the daily practices that will help you summit them. We talk about why mastering the physical mountain comes first and climbing the intuitional mountain comes fourth, the Navy SEAL breathing practice that will help you develop your metacognition, how the Japanese concept of ikigai can help you find your purpose in life, and much more.
Resources Related to the Podcast
- Mark’s previous appearance on the Art of Manliness podcast: Episode #60 — The Way of the SEAL
- Box breathing
- Unbeatable Mind by Mark Divine
- Staring Down the Wolf by Mark Divine
- AoM Article: 4 Key Insights From the Bhagavad Gita
- AoM Podcast #616: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling
- Sunday Firesides: You Don’t Have the Time, Not to Take the Time
- F3 Nation
- Ikigai
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Read the Transcript
Brett McKay: Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. The journey of personal development, of becoming a more excellent and extraordinary individual can sometimes seem a little abstract. That’s why it’s helpful to imagine as Mark Divine does, as a set of five metaphorical mountains to scale. Mark is a retired Navy SEAL commander, a professor of leadership, a yogi, the creator of fitness and mindset programs like SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind, and an author. He combines his two decades of military service with his study of martial arts and Zen meditation to create the holistic warrior-monk development philosophy that informs his work, including his latest book, Uncommon, Simple Principles for an Extraordinary Life. Today on the show, Mark acts as a guide to the topography of the five mounds of personal development and the daily practices that will help you summit them. We talk about why mastering the physical mountain comes first and climbing the intuitional mountain comes fourth, the Navy SEAL breathing practice that will help you develop your metacognition, how the Japanese concept of ikigai can help you find your purpose in life and much more. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/five mounds. All right, Mark Divine, welcome back to the show.
Mark Divine: Right. Super stoked to be on the Art of Manliness.
Brett McKay: Well, yeah, the last time we had you on was over 10 years ago, right? It’s been a while.
Mark Divine: Lots happened in 10 years, huh?
Brett McKay: A lot has happened in 10 years and I want to catch up with what you’ve been doing. So you got a new book out called Uncommon. What’s your aim with this book? Like what are you trying to do with this book and how does it pick up where you left off with some of the other things you’ve written about, like the way of the SEAL and things like that?
Mark Divine: Yeah. So really it’s kind of a sequel to Unbeatable Mind. Unbeatable Mind is kind of the whole training philosophy, more like a personal memoir, but it introduced the whole integrated vertical accelerated development that I’ve been now teaching since 2006, starting with SEALFIT and then Unbeatable Mind, the program. And in there, in that program, I kind of lay out how, first of all, we have the potential to become self evolutionary, meaning we can take control of our growth and we can accelerate it, if we do certain things. And that the idea of kind of that self mastery, that personal mastery is actually really important and motivating. And I found it through, obviously, martial arts and being a Navy SEAL and through Zen and meditation, but there’s many different paths to that. But, in Unbeatable Mind, I laid out the whole philosophy and I introduced this idea of the five mountains, which are the five developmental areas that we really need to take control of and then begin to access greater capacity.
But we do it in a way that is integrated, meaning it’s like the typical Westerner is taught that the body is something you drag to the gym and it’s just about health or looking good in a bathing suit or bodybuilding. And the mind, well, that’s really just what it is and it’s really a function of the brain and we have education and we have certificates and podcasts, but that’s the extent of mind training. And the emotions, forget about it. Most guys don’t even go there, but emotional development is something that happens when you break down. Intuition isn’t even talked about and spiritual life is really about your beliefs. And so, all these are kind of like separate aspects of your life. They’re not brought together into an integrated whole. So the experience of the typical Westerner is common and it’s one of kind of separation. You’re separated from yourself, you’re separated from others. These different aspects of yourself, which I call the five mountains, physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and spiritual are also separate. And inevitably that leads to suboptimal performance, it leads to burnout, it leads to that quiet life of desperation that Thoreau talks about, because you’re not tapping into your full potential and living a life of purpose.
Brett McKay: Okay, so this is all about holistic personal development. Because I think you’re right. I think a lot of times when particularly guys in the West approach self-improvement, they just think, well, I’m going to get fit. And they might do really well there, they’re working out every day, increasing their PRs, but other areas of their life are suffering as a consequence of that.
Mark Divine: Right. That’s right. It’s one dimensional. And they say, well, I’m going to be fit. And then of course there’s tons and tons of folks out there, especially like my Navy SEAL peers are saying, be hard, right? Just be hard, go harder, suck it up, buttercup. And there’s times to be hard, but there’s times to be soft, right? You have to have that balance of the yin and the yang, the hard and the soft. And yet the soft isn’t taught and most guys are like, eh, that’s going to make me weak. Like when I used to train Navy SEAL candidates, which we still do, but on… I had a training center in Encinitas for 10 years and we trained them every day. We used to talk about, if the tsunami comes, which is every day in BUDS, SEAL training, would you rather be the mighty oak or the reed? And they’re like, well, some would say the mighty oak. And I said, no, the mighty oak is going to get washed away by the tsunami, but the reed is just going to lay down and then bounce right back up. It’s resilient. So the point we would teach them is that neither one is right or wrong. You want to develop both.
You want to be the mighty oak when you need to be and the reed when you need to be. And in order to do that, you need to develop both aspects, the hard and the soft, the yin and the yang. And the soft is found in the inner domain. So the physical mountain, you can develop the oak, develop your body to be strong and resilient, but you also have to develop that flexibility and the durability through exercises like yoga and core development and that type of stuff that you know you need to do, but most people don’t do it. But then the real soft side is found through the mental, emotional, intuitive, and spiritual development, where you’re really tapping into the inner power and insight and the sense of knowingness of when to kind of lay down your sword and lay down and let the tsunami wash over you so you can jump back into the fight.
Brett McKay: So you mentioned there you have spent your career post-serving in the SEALs training would-be Navy SEALs to get ready for BUDS, but you’ve also shifted to other types of personal development coaching. I’m curious in your experience with working with individuals who say they want to make a change in their life, they want to improve themselves, but don’t. What have you found? What keeps people from making those changes they say they want in their lives?
Mark Divine: There’s a lot of obstacles. Fear right, is one. So there’s this desire, but then there’s this fear of failure. There’s fear of change. There’s a fear of the unknown. And you can even take it deeper that there’s these underlying condition patterns that are fear-based or negative-based that keep coming up and tend to torpedo your efforts. So there’s so many people, and you’ve seen this I’m sure with your programs, that people will start and they’ll be all gung-ho, but then they meet an obstacle. And there’s always obstacles out there, right? But they haven’t learned that the obstacle is the way, as Ryan Holiday would say. And so when that obstacle comes and they feel some shame come up or some guilt that they screwed up or they feel some judgment from others, they immediately activate this kind of shame-based fear-conditioned thinking. And they say, well, I’m not worthy for this, or I’m not good enough, or this isn’t for me, right? This program isn’t right for me. And then they quit. And then the energy of like, oh, but I want to improve comes back up. And so they look for the next shiny thing.
They go to another program, and then they repeat this pattern over and over. And so people bounce around from program to program, and then they torpedo themselves because of this underlying unaddressed shadow self side, which is also the work of the emotional mountain in the book. That’s one of the major obstacles. The other one is people lack patience in our society that we’ve been taught that everything is supposed to be easy and quick. And as you know, and most of your listeners know that when it comes to development, patience is the virtue. And especially when it comes to the development of the inner domain, it’s not like tracking your deadlifts. You know what I mean? You can’t really point toward the development until after it’s happened. And maybe you have some evidence from someone like your wife or your significant other coming to you and say, man, something’s really different. And you’re like, oh, really? I guess you’re right.
It’s very subtle until it’s not. And so people start meditating or they start a breath practice or whatever it is, and they get into it, and maybe they get healthier because we’ve got a physical health component, fitness, etcetera. But the inner domain stuff, it’s just hard to see. And so then they develop this sense of uncertainty. Like they doubt the program really works. And so when they start doubting, then they stop adhering to the discipline daily practice. And then they have evidence, they begin to see evidence that it doesn’t work because the real juice in any developmental program is doing daily work. This even relates to physical development. It would be useless to go to the gym once a week and do all your weight training in two hours once a week. I mean, it would have some benefits, but you’re likely to get injured. You’re not going to make that much progress. Same thing with the work of mental, emotional, intuitive, and spiritual development. It’s a daily practice. And you can build it in different parts of your day, morning ritual, evening ritual, and then kind of throughout your day. Even the way you train physically can become an integrated practice.
And so people will think, well, I’m going to do all that work on the weekend, and it doesn’t work that way. So they lose faith, so to speak, that it works because they’re not doing the work. Those are some of the key obstacles.
Brett McKay: Yeah. So fear, the lack of patience. But you also talk about other things. It’s just, people have reasons like, well, I can’t make the change I want because I just don’t have the time or I don’t have the money. But you talk about, look, self-improvement or these things you want to do to improve yourself, it’s nothing fancy. You can do this in just 30 minutes a day. It doesn’t take that long. And I know when people say, I just don’t have the time to work out or I don’t have the time to do this sort of personal work, whether it’s managing my stress, I’m just like, man, you don’t have the time to not take the time.
Mark Divine: I agree with that.
Brett McKay: Right. Because eventually it’s going to bite you. And eventually you going to have to stop and you’re going to have to take care of the situation, whether you have a health scare and you have to spend time at the hospital or just time at the doctor office, or you have some sort of marital problem because you didn’t take the time to get your anger under control. You’re going to be spending a lot of time. So eventually you’re going to have to pay the fiddler. Might as well pay it on your terms.
Mark Divine: I agree.
Brett McKay: Instead of fate’s terms.
Mark Divine: Those two obstacles are nonsensical, time and money. First of all, the most profound practices are free. I have never… I’ve seen someone charge for breath training, but breath practice is free and you can learn it from a free video. And the breath, doing breath practice like our box breathing training every day is a profound practice that crosses all five mountains and will integrate you just if that’s all you did. That would be enough if you did it every day with awareness for 20 to 30 minutes. You don’t need a gym. I’m a big proponent of austere training, working outside, working with a team, working with cool tools that fit in the trunk of your car like sandbags and weight vests. And so physical training is free except for the cost of maybe a couple of tools and a pair of shorts and water bottle. You don’t need a fancy gym membership.
You don’t need a yoga studio membership, any of that stuff because all the… You just need a few tools, the simple the better, and then you just need to do them every day. And meditation is free. Then back to the time, like you said, you’ve got 30 minutes when you wake up in the morning because you’re feeling this 30 minutes was something. And generally speaking, it’s not going to be conducive to your growth, right? You wake up and you immediately start engaging, obsessive thinking, you’re checking your email or you’re reading the news. None of that’s really going to lead you where you want to go. So all you got to do is just take that 30 minutes, which you’re doing something else unproductive and just shift and ritualize a very productive morning routine, morning ritual. And that alone could be a game changer.
Brett McKay: Well, let’s talk about these metaphorical mountains that you’ve developed for personal development. And the first mountain is physicality, which is all about our physical health. Why did you start there?
Mark Divine: Well, my experience, and I’m a lifetime martial artist and also obviously a Navy SEAL and also a yogi, the physical body. First of all, the body and the mind are not separate. So when you’re training the body, you’re training your mind. And so you’re already beginning to work on the mental mountain. And we know that like all of those of us who are involved in competitive sports and endurance athletics, like there’s a definite aspect of it that is training your mind for concentration, for attention, for awareness, situational awareness, for even opening up the heart mind, especially with team sports, especially in the SEALs, that really had a profound effect on me to open up my heart and to really learn different ways to love human beings. The idea of laying your life down for your teammates is just an act of like supreme love. So physical development is training your mind. Let’s start there. Now, secondly, if you’re physically unhealthy or diseased or drugged up, then your brain, which is part of your body, is physically unhealthy and is going to be suboptimal.
So if we want to do mental development work and emotional development and intuitive, if we want to evolve and grow, we’ve got to start with the body and get the body really healthy. Because if the body is healthy, the brain’s going to be healthy, the brain’s healthy, the mind’s going to be healthy, and you’re going to have the capacity to do the work on the other mountains. At a very simplest level, you’ll be less distracted and distractible. You’ll be able to sit comfortably in meditation or mindfulness or box breathing without agitation, without the discomfort. You’re going to have more clarity because of the electrochemical balance in your body, your homeostatic balance, and all the stress will have been bled off through the physical training. And also, at a very practical level, some of those obstacles we talked about, another obstacle is that your body is not healthy and, or you’re injured. And that becomes a real big distraction for you, which captures your mind. So, you’re not thinking about meditation and yoga if you’re injured or if you’re sick. And so, I think this is really important because, again, our culture is working against us in most of these areas.
It’s working against us in health. The typical standard American diet is an unhealthy diet, so you don’t want to prescribe to that. Most of the food that’s sold barcoded and packaged is unhealthy for us. So we want to get back to really simple principle-based fueling our body, eating when we’re hungry, learning to fast, an intermittent fast, eating really close to the earth foods, whole foods, and high-quality foods. And also, learn to move your body every day, both through different forms of exercise and somatic practices. And get out in nature, like I said. Be outside every day because we’re not separate from nature. We need to be in nature, and there’s profound motivation and mood and both emotional and physical benefits for being outside. We want to have a community of practice, training with a team of people who are dedicated to our success and not trying to beat us all the time. So those are some of the things that we do to get healthy. It’s simple. Again, you don’t have to overcomplicate it. Even when it comes to physical training, everything you need is really free. You can get some tremendous workouts, programs. Even ChatGPT will gin them up for you.
The point is just to get out and do it and to be consistent with your practice. Figure it out and make it as important. The physical training and this exercise, the nutrition, make that all like a practice for optimizing the bodies and the brain so that you can really go deeper and deeper to plumb the depths of the mental, emotional, intuitive, and spiritual mountains so that you can tap into this raw potential that you have. In SEALFIT, we call it 20X. You’re capable of 20 times more than you think you are. But, that capability is found on the inside. It’s found in your field of potential and you’re hiding it from yourself through your distractions, your addictions, and through this outer focus, and even through an unhealthy body.
Brett McKay: I want to dig deeper on this idea of exercising, having a physical practice outside in nature and with other people because you’re really big on this. What does that look like? What do you do? And what are some things that our listeners could do to incorporate this?
Mark Divine: Fun stuff. Exercise should feel like play. It should be really joyful. So, one way that it’s really joyful is variety. I never do the same workout. Rarely do the same workout twice and if I do, it’s because it’s a really effective one and it’s fun and I’m just like, okay, this is a staple. Many people work, train harder. They think they need to train longer and you don’t. I train 20 minutes a day. I do 20 minutes of physical, of high intensity with weight training, and also 20 minutes of yoga. And so 40 minutes is pretty much all that I need. And the maintenance, it’s like a flywheel. All you do is just spin it every day. And once your body gets up to that ideal fitness, you don’t need to put in countless hours unless you’re training for something specific like the SEALs or to do some big event type thing. Then that’s specific training. I’m talking about optimized performance, generalized training. I train outside every day unless it’s pouring rain, but even if it’s light rain, it just feels really good. And I train with a team.
Right now, my team is my wife, but I’ve always trained with a team, starting with the SEAL teams and then in my SEALFIT program. And just there’s something about it because you learn to take your eyes off yourself and put it on your teammate and make sure that everything is safe and you’re not trying to beat them. A little healthy competition is good, but it should be coopetition. It’s not your ego. So training outdoors has a benefit emotionally. Like I said, it affects your mood. There’s something about being connected in nature that makes you feel connected to yourself. And it helps you develop more situational awareness and a feeling of connection, which then allows you to be more connected to yourself and to others. So there’s a deep emotional kind of spillover effect there. And then training with a team or even a significant other has incredible emotional mountain benefits. Like Sandy and I… My wife and I have been training together for several years now. And I kind of, I wish we had done it way sooner. And what an incredible experience it’s been for our relationship. And I say a couple of the trains together flourishes together. So by training together, again, you’re moving away from this just being a physical exercise by taking it outside.
Now it is a mental and emotional and even a spiritual kind of developmental practice and simplicity. As I said, lots of variety, but simplicity. The tools that I use, I still use a barbell here and there, but mostly it’s sandbag, kettlebell, weight vest, a lot of body weight. I still have a rowing machine, so that’s good, only because I don’t love running anymore much. I’ve done a lot of running in my life, so it doesn’t serve me anymore. But I do a lot of rucking and rowing and we put it all together, every day I was like, okay, what does the body need? Oh, okay, so we’re gonna do a four rounds, we’ll do 500 meter row, 10 bench wrists, 20 kettlebell swings, 30 situps, and we’ll do that. We’ll do four rounds of that or five rounds of that? It takes 20 minutes and it’s a phenomenal workout. Stuff like that. Go to a park, take your weight vest into the wilderness, take your sandbag. There’s some of the principles. Be be simple, get outside, make it fun, play, do it with other people, but do it every day.
Brett McKay: Yeah. Now, if listeners who are wanting to find something like that. Have you heard of F3 Nation?
Mark Divine: I have. Yes.
Brett McKay: Yeah. So we’ve had the guys who started it on the podcast a while back ago, but for those who aren’t familiar, it’s all around the world. There’s these boot camps, they’re free to go, they’re geared towards men. They’re in the morning, usually before work. Like 5:36, and they have these free body weight bootcamps…
Mark Divine: Awesome.
Brett McKay: Outside with other guys. So if you’re looking for that… I like the idea of fitness where it’s holistic, where you’re trying to also not only nurture the body, but also the soul by being outside and with other people. Check out F3nation.com, you can find a location near you, ’cause I’m sure there is one.
Mark Divine: That’s killer. Yeah.
Brett McKay: We’re gonna take a quick break for you word for more sponsors. And now back to the show, let’s talk about that second mountain, and that’s the mental mountain. And this is all about developing what you call metacognition. For those who aren’t familiar with this idea, what is metacognition?
Mark Divine: Sure. Well, that’s like the first step in the mental mountain. Metacognition is the capacity to think about your thinking, which requires you to develop the capacity to be able to watch your thinking, to be able to look at it. So the basic level of metacognition is like journaling where you’re like, “Okay, what was my thought process there? And was it effective? What were the results? What could I have done different? It’s like a personal debrief, but you’re thinking about your thinking, and a lot of people do that and they do it well. But mental mountain training for us is to develop the capacity to do that in real time. And I call that simultaneous mind, where you’re cultivating your witnessing capacity, your contextual awareness, where you can begin to experience your thoughts, emotions, and things that are happening to you as if from a distance, like you’ve partitioned the hard drive of your mind and you set up as the watcher, I call it the sentinel in my book, The Way of the SEAL.
And you’re looking across to the left hemisphere of your mind, which is the content awareness. And you’re actually able to see your thoughts coming and going and… But there’s a space between them, which gives you your power back. Because instead of just being merged with your thinking in an reactionary mode, you now have this space to be able to observe that thought and to orient yourself to it like the OODA loop and say, do I wanna like jump on board the bandwagon, or do I wanna just let that one go? And then you choose wisely. And so this is the beginning of development of discernment and wisdom. And so the path to get there is through training your mind really to narrow its focus. So that’s attention control and concentration training. And we use the box breathing practice for that.
So box breathing has this first fundamental layer is arousal control, bleeding off stress triggering the parasympathetic nervous system, all that kind of benefits that come from that deep diaphragmatic breathing. But because you’re breathing in that box pattern and you’re counting the reps, counting the… Five seconds in five seconds hold, five seconds out, five seconds hold, or you’re holding your attention there and you’re able to hold your attention on that pattern for longer and longer periods of time. And that develops concentration. So you have arousal control, attention control and concentration.
So what this does is it gathers up the energy of a mind that has been conditioned to be very distracted. That kind of bouncing ball thinking pattern, that monkey mind that they talk about in the eastern traditions. And so you’re able to begin to focus your energy more.
And then when you begin to work on this witnessing awareness, it’ll happen automatically. But we try to spur it on to facilitate it’s happening quicker through our practices and build mind. And so that what we have you do is kind of set up that watcher metaphorically in your mind, like we simulate it. And the more you do that, the more that simulation kind of dissolves and it becomes a real experience of witnessing. And first it’s intermittent, like you have to practice it and then you kind of slide back into, merge with your thoughts, and then over time you then crack open a small space that stays there, it’s permanent. And then the practice basically widens that space, that space between you as the observer, the witness, and the thoughts that are happening. This is a profound practice. It’s not… It has great benefits obviously for relationships because, you have the ability to kinda like intercept yourself when you go right into reactionary mode.
When you get triggered, it has great benefit for dealing with any kind of crisis because you become the calm center in the storm and you’re able to navigate your team through it because you’re non reactionary. And it’s got great benefits in terms of overall peace of mind and contentment because you become much less attached to the outcomes. Because you see those stories, those dramas of life as things that play out. And you see that, you begin to see that they play out over and over and over the same ones and you’re like, oh my God, look at that. I used to be just swept up in all that and now I can see it for what it is. And you can start to de-energize the negative patterns and replace it with things that are positive and productive. And you become… Life gets really simple and you become very aware of what to say no to and what to say yes to. And you stop getting tangled in things that you shouldn’t be getting entangled in. So that’s what the mental mountain is about. It’s not just packing more content into your head. It’s actually moving away from needing that content, toward developing wisdom.
Brett McKay: Okay. So for this, the daily practices that box breathing, correct, that’s gonna help you start being able to harness your attention.
Mark Divine: Right. Box breathing is the way in breath… Breath is the bridge between the body and the mind and the spirit. So like I said, at a fundamental level box, breathing is a physiological practice. You are slowing down your breathing, you’re retraining yourself to breathe six breaths per minute, which is five seconds in, five seconds out. Call that the tactical breath. And it brings great, great physiological, psychological emotional benefits and health benefits. But because you’re breathing that pattern, you’re also training that attention control and concentration. So now the box breathing is bridging between the physiological, psychological training the mind. Then we layer on the box breathing. The way we teach it is like a stacked practice. So now you’re deliberately training the attention control and the concentration while you’re doing the breathing practice. And then you add in the mindful awareness witnessing.
So there’s like four things now. Arousal control, attention control, concentration and witnessing. And that’s developing that metacognitive capability to be separate from the thoughts and emotions. At the end of our box breathing practice, then we do a visualization practice. And so now we’re training our mind’s natural capacity to imagine or fantasize. And we’re getting rid of the fantasies and we’re using our imagination to create a future reality in our mind. That is based upon an emergent concept of who we are and why we’re on this plane, why we’re on this planet, our calling. That’s that spiritual mountain, I talk about. That sense of like, what is our purpose? Why are we here? What are we gonna do about it? Then you create a vision of that and after your practice every morning, you evoke that vision and you add energy to it. And so what you’re doing there in a future state is you’re creating a memory of your desired future. It’s very powerful. So instead of like worrying about the future or catastrophizing, you actually remember who you really are and why you’re on this planet and what you’re supposed to do about it. And that becomes like a steady companion. It’s always there for you to remind you, especially in the stressful times.
Brett McKay: Okay. So you wake up, you could do the box breathing for five minutes after the box breathing…
Mark Divine: 20 minutes, I recommend.
Brett McKay: 20 minutes. Yeah. Up to… I think you said start off with five minutes, work your way up to 20 minutes eventually.
Mark Divine: Right. Minimum of five minutes. You can get a lot of the arousal control benefits. So a lot of people, Brett, they need to do this kind of in sequence as opposed to like all in one practice because they’re just not ready for it. They’re physically and mentally, they just need to focus on their health, all the things we talked about in the physical mountain. And then just box breathe for five minutes for the arousal control and just start bleeding off all that excess stress. Everyone’s in hyper arousal in the west. We’re overcommitted, we’re stressed, we’re rushing from here and there. The time commitments are crazy. And all of that is mind generated fantasy that’s causing an enormous amount of stress. So the box breathing basically re-energizes the parasympathetic pathway because it gets atrophied. You’re always stuck in this sympathetic nervous system response and you overcompensate with tons of coffee or alcohol or working out like a madman. So we wanna downregulate and that takes some time.
Brett McKay: Then as you extend those box breathing sessions that will allow you to exercise that focus and attention and concentration.
Mark Divine: Right. Exactly. And so when you’re ready, you extend the box breathing session to 10, 20 minutes, then you turn it into attention control concentration training. You work on that for a while until your mind gets really… It’s like sharpening that saw. That’s your one sword cut, that [0:28:20.6] ____ Just sharpen that saw into your mind is really sharp, really focused, less distractible. You can hold your attention on the box pattern without distraction for over 60, 70% of the time. Then you’re ready to move on to the mindful awareness, which is like setting up shop as the witness and beginning to cultivate the process of separating from your thoughts. It may have already started happening ’cause it, this… Like I said earlier, will naturally open up as part of this practice. That’s what happened to me with my zen practice. Zen practice was really a concentration practice.
I started at 21 four years before I went in the seals. And as my mind became more and more sharp and and able to concentrate, then quite naturally that witnessing capacity began to open up. I can’t explain exactly why, but I think that it’s just decreasing the clutter, like the concept of no mind or taming the ego or taming the monkey mind. It makes sense now because as you concentrate your energy into that one’s thought stream, just focusing on the box pattern, all those other thoughts that are distracting you, that you thought were so important, that you thought were you, they begin to settle down. And you realize that, “Wow, you’re still here, you’re completely aware, but there’s no thoughts in my field of awareness except for this pattern of breath. And then when you drop that off, you’re like, “Wow, I’m still here. And I’m not even doing that.” But then all of a sudden you’re like, wait, I’m thinking there’s a thought. But then you’re like, “Wait, that thought is happening. It’s not who I am. I’m this field of awareness. I, I am the ground of being, which this thought is arising.” It’s a profound shift in your whole mental makeup, which like I said is like a turning point in life.
Brett McKay: And then after that you can do a visualization practice.
Mark Divine: Right.
Brett McKay: And people might be hearing this and be like, visualization sounds pretty hokey, but you use this as a, you were a collegiate swimmer.
Mark Divine: Right.
Brett McKay: And you use this as a seal too.
Mark Divine: Visualization is a crucial skill. The body mind doesn’t really differentiate between things you visualize and the things you participate in or see. And so it’s the only place where you can have perfect practice is in your mind’s eye and it’ll have a profound benefit. So it’s good to visualize important physical activities, sporting events, but we can also, if you’re not involved in that, or even if you are, but it’s important to note that visualization can also be used for this idea of becoming who you’re really meant to be. So many of us are living those lives of quiet desperation or we’re trapped in these bodies where we’re like, God, I wish… I think I could be a lot healthier, better looking, lose this weight, be stronger. Yes, you can. But you gotta be able to see it first in your mind’s eye. And it has to be the right things too, Brett. You can’t be fantastical about it. You’re not gonna just visualize being superman or superwoman and have it happen. It’s gotta be right for you.
Brett McKay: I can see you doing a visualization practice for whenever you’re in a situation where your kids are just being crazy and they’re just annoying you. And instead of doing your typical grumpy, annoyed, tense dad routine, you visualize yourself being like, okay, how do I wanna be in that situation?
Mark Divine: Yes.
Brett McKay: Or this could be at work too, when you’re in a high intense negotiation where you’re dealing with a difficult employee, visualize yourself like, how do I wanna…
Mark Divine: That’s right.
Brett McKay: Act in that situation?
Mark Divine: Right. And you do that like the morning ritual, we call that winning in your mind before you step foot in the battleground of your day. So you dirt dive the day. Dirt dive is a term we use in the seals to like, we would mentally visualize and do all of our missions in our mind. And the dirt dive came from the diving missions. We would literally visualize it and walk the dive. You’re spending four hours underwater. You’re not coming up and peaking and taking bearings, you’re underwater. And so you gotta know in your mind, you run the whole thing in your mind. Well, same thing. You can dirt dive your day like you’re talking about. You see yourself being present and positive with your kids not getting triggered and reactionary, not sitting in your phone, checking your email.
You visualize yourself being there for them. Same thing with your important meetings and whatnot. And invariably those interactions go much smoother because your body, mind is already set the expectation that it’s gonna be a positive and productive situation. And the more you do that, then the more those become the new normal. But you can also, Brett, visualize like I’m saying this future me, we call it the future self, sometimes future me, which is like, it’s sometime in the future, it doesn’t really matter, but it’s like the ideal version of yourself. Most people never tap into this, but it’s the ideal version of yourself, your perfect health, perfectly fit, radiating youthful vitality and completely 100% aligned with your purpose and calling why you kind of came through this, to this planet to grow and to learn and to evolve. And your loved ones are healthy and thriving around you. And whatever way you engage with the world, whatever your mission is, is radically successful and you evoke this image and you add energy to it. So it’s very similar to like instead of dirt diving your day, you’re dirt diving your life.
Brett McKay: Oh, so that’s the second mountain. The mental part of yourself. The third mountain is the emotional mountain. And what’s interesting, I think some of the practice we’ve already talked about, the physicality and doing the box breathing and getting your mental game on track. That can go a long way in helping you climb this emotional mountain because as we’ve been talking about, our emotions are connected to our mind, ’cause sometimes, the emotions we experience are because of the thoughts we have, we learn that from cognitive behavioral therapy. And then also our bodies can cause our emotions to get out of whack. So just by exercising regularly, doing box breathing, doing this sort of things, it can go a long way to help regulate our emotions. But what other practices do you recommend people doing? So they get a handle on their emotions. So their emotions are, it’s not about stifling emotions, ’cause emotions is what drives us. But how we can guide our emotions to take us to where we wanna go.
Mark Divine: Yes. That’s great. So emotions and intuition are just different aspects of the mind, but I felt it’s helpful to kind of like parse them out because there are different practices and there’s different language around, especially the emotional mountain that you can benefit from, like the field of therapy and psychology. So in the mental mountain, physical mental mountain, we learn emotional control. And I think a lot of people think… A lot of guys especially think, oh yeah, I’ve developed that emotional control. I’m in control. And it’s helpful to be in control so you don’t torpedo certain situations or look weak in the middle of a crisis and those things. And so that’s great. It’s a valuable skill, but it’s part of it. It’s kinda like the oak part. Remember I talked about the oak and the reed?
You wanna be strong in the face of a crisis, but you don’t wanna be unaware of emotional patterns that are actually harming the team or harming you. And a lot of times when we’d stop at the physical and mental and we develop that emotion control, then we think we’re squared away when in fact you’re the one that’s actually the limiting factor. Because of some sort of pattern, and it could be really overt or it could be subtle, and it’s a recurring pattern based upon some sort of childhood trauma or some traumatic event in your life. And it’s unresolved. And at the time it happened, usually as in early childhood, these things happen. You didn’t have the skillful means to be able to process that situation, the energy in a way that was led to forgiveness and to letting the energy flow.
And so the energy gets trapped and the mind will associate certain feelings to that as well as thoughts that get triggered when that emotional pattern gets triggered. So these thoughts and emotions are really closely aligned because they’re born from the same energy. So for me, the emotional mountain work is really about developing the capacity to go back in your history, we call it recapitulation. And to go back and to reengage those situations that cause the pattern to begin with, to release that energy and to recontextualize it and to let go that you’re holding onto, to forgive yourself and to forgive others. It takes a lot of courage. This is why, again, a lot of… I kind of harp on men, you need to be doing this emotional work because otherwise you’re limiting yourself. You get stuck, you can have great strides in your physical and mental, but then you get stuck because these patterns just keep coming back.
It’s like you’re dragging a whole bag of hand grenades behind you and they just are spilling out. And so this is what my book, Staring Down the Wolf was. It’s like you gotta stare down the fear wolf and release all these negative patterns that you have. And it takes courage. But once you begin to experience the joy and the release of letting go of some of that stuff, then it becomes very motivating. You’re like, oh, this is just part of my development. This is the next step of my development. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person or I’m a weak person, or I’m mushy for doing this emotional work. It’s just this is actually critical so that I can show up as a whole person and I’m not the one that’s the limiting factor on the team. Oftentimes the leader is the one who lacks the trust and respect because they’re trying to show up as the one who has the answers and is perfect or is in charge. And everyone knows that they’re not perfect and they’re not always in charge. They don’t have all the answers but when they see the leader doesn’t admit that to himself, then it shuts down the conversation.
Brett McKay: So yeah, in the book you provide how to go through this recapitulation practice so you can sort of get out of that loop you’re in. Journaling can be another tool in this and I imagine if things are really bad like therapy…
Mark Divine: Therapy, yeah.
Brett McKay: You might need to see a professional counselor to help you work through this stuff.
Mark Divine: And look at a therapist as a coach, right? You have a fitness coach, oftentimes you’ll get a nutrition coach. You might even have a cognitive coach like an executive coach who can help you think about your thinking and makes better decisions. Why not have an emotional coach? And some of them are very good.
Brett McKay: Okay, the fourth mountain is the intuitional mountain. I’m sure a lot of our listeners, typically our listeners are mostly guys, they go, intuition, what the heck is that? How do you define intuition and what role did intuition play in your career as a SEAL?
Mark Divine: Extremely important role. Intuition for me is knowing something without knowing how or why you know it. There’s several forms of it. First we have that gut intuition. We now know that your gut, your biome and the enteric nervous system is part of your brain system. It has neurological processing, it’s got neurons and so you are actually communicating with your biome with the millions of bugs down there. And for some reason they have access to information that your brain doesn’t and they’re trying to communicate that to you. The reason intuition mountain is fourth and not third or second is it’s generally not accessible to you if your body’s out of shape and it’s not healthy because your mind is captured at the outer level of the dis-ease, the imbalance. And it’s generally not going to be accessible to you if your mind is racing around and completely distracted and you’re constantly absorbed in distractions, TV, YouTube, email, text, this, that and the other thing, too busy, right? So you’re not going to be able to tap into an issue.
So you’ve got to train your mind to be less distractible and to do the things we talked about in the mental mountain. And it’s not going to be accessible to you if you have all these emotional patterns that are like, klaxons screaming at you every day. So you got to do the emotional work to let go and bleed off and to release that emotional energy which is so loud, I guess, or the feeling sensations overwhelm any kind of the subtle feelings that you need to be able to feel into or experience from the intuitive mountain, from your gut and from your heart. So by doing the work of the first three mountains, your intuitive side actually kind of naturally opens up. But then there’s things that we can do to facilitate it, to speed up that process. One is to trust your gut, so to speak, to trust your heart, to be able to listen carefully and quietly to the messages and then act on them, to believe it, to not override it with your fear mind or your rational mind. Most people override it and then they don’t trust it. In silence, back to our time in nature. Everything we’ve talked about has a spillover effect.
Like the training we talked about in the first mountain, all will affect all five mountains as I mentioned. We have to just parse them out so that we are clear about what’s happening and then we can accelerate the journey by adding some training. But time in nature and stillness really is probably the best thing for developing that intuitive insight. So you had the gut, the gut’s instinctual intelligence really is about avoiding danger or moving toward opportunity. It’s very kind of basic level survival and it’s experienced more as like a tug or a feeling in your belly or any time there’s a danger, it’s felt like a contraction or like I had an experience in the SEALs where I was walking up to a firing range to do some shooting and I felt the word stop. I felt it in my gut and it almost felt like a hand on my shoulder and I just stopped in my tracks. And the instant I stopped, a teammate of mine had an accidental discharge behind me and the bullet like whizzed by me. I felt the wind of the bullet by my right ear. If I had taken the next step, it would have gone in the back of my head. So that was the gut’s intuition saying stop or else we’re all going to die. Right? It’s intense. The second source of intuition is your heart.
So the heart also has neurological processing capacity, it’s got neurons, it’s got an incredible range of experience. Like the heart’s energy can be experienced from across the room, whereas the mind, the brain’s energy is trapped behind the cranium and so it doesn’t… You can’t really feel the force of it outside. It doesn’t project well except through the eyes. So the heart, when you learn to open up and sit and rest with your heart and to really feel into the heart, that’s the source of real empathy, like what other human beings are feeling, even thinking. And then also what you’re emitting. You get very sensitive to the fact that if you’re all agitated and you’re closed down, then guess what? You’re setting the conditions with those around you for them to be agitated and also to feel your closed down-ness and so you’re going to shut the conversation down. So you listen to that and you feel into that and you maintain an open heart and begin to really also sense what other people are feeling and how they’re doing and so then you can attune to that.
You begin to take their perspective and ask better questions and maybe not push as hard or just really kind of be a better leader, a better person. So that’s that heart intuition, which is empathy, compassion, wisdom. Then the third intuition is really, does come from the brain and it comes through the process of relaxing the mind to be opening up to what the yoga tradition calls direct perception, perceiving information or knowingness that is beyond knowledge. So it’s not content. It comes from this witnessing awareness that we talked about earlier where you suddenly just know something and you don’t really have any reason to know it or understanding how you know it, but you know it. And that’s profound. Like for me, that’s why I think sitting in silence and these practices are the most important thing that we shouldn’t waste time not doing it because all of my good ideas come from that direct perception these days. That’s where all the insights come from. So that intuition I call insight, seeing within, it’s so very important again, it’s so hidden from most people because they just don’t trust it.
They think it’s woo woo. But again you’re dealing with such a limited range of perceptual capacity. By training, through training the mind, the emotions and your intuition, you can open that aperture. So you begin to see an experience far more. We already know the brain takes in like vastly more information than it can process or will, is willing to process. Anything that is unusual or can’t be categorized, literally just get blocked or the gap just gets filled in. Most people wouldn’t believe it, but a lot of things that they see are just like painted in by the brain. It’s not really there. The Apache scouts knew this in their… In the way they would scout and track like they would literally, they call the hiding in plain sight. They knew where to stand because they knew that the Western mind, the way it was trained would look at that, take that information in. And if they were standing next to the tree, they would just see the tree. Or if they’re standing looking like a rock, they would just see a rock, but they’re actually looking at a human being. But the mind just says, No, it’s not a human being, it’s a rock. And so it paints a rock there. So that’s incredible.
So through this training and development process, you can open up your aperture. So you’re taking in and perceiving more information. And when you do that, it’s suddenly you’re like, Oh, I get it now. This is real. This is real. I’ve had… I had teammates and myself who had profound experiences in the military and the SEALs, all of it in the realm of intuition, like intuiting where IEDs were going to be planted or going off and being right about it. Most of the time, intuiting whether you’re going to be safe or not, I have a master chief friend who was at Mosul for reef, which they were trying to rescue the [0:44:57.3] ____ And he was with a special forces team and they were pinned down. And this guy just had this intuitive hit that it was his time. He needed to get up and basically take care of this himself. So here’s a SEAL just like gets up in the midst of this firefight and starts navigating and just taking out the enemy left and right. And literally fights his way into the compound, like destroys the enemy. And he describes the experience as this incredible intuitive moment where time slowed down and he could just see, literally see the bullets leaving the muzzles of the rifles. He can navigate around them. He could see which targets were the ones, right ones to take out and everything happened in this super slow motion.
And that was all because he had developed this incredible intuitive capacity to be able to perceive in this manner because the mind is really, it creates the construct of time and space and body experience space, mind experience time. So as you develop these skills and open up the aperture of your mind, then you have a different relationship to time and space. So that’s really what the intuitive mountain is all about is like getting yourself to where your whole experience of life is much more ephemeral. You really start to move beyond just like hard physical materialism to like, you start to experience the metaphysical and the psychic realms. And you have these experiences that are just profound and you see that it’s always been that way. You just kind of hid it from yourself.
Brett McKay: Okay. To climb that intuition mountain, continue your meditative practices. The other important thing I got from there, make time for silence. You don’t have to constantly be consuming new information. Just let yourself work with the stuff you already got. And then when you have one of those intuitive moments, act on it.
Mark Divine: Act on it. Trust it.
Brett McKay: Trust it. Let’s start with the final mountain which is the spiritual mountain. And I liked how you talked about this Japanese idea, I’m going to butcher how you say, Ikigai.
Mark Divine: Yeah. Ikigai.
Brett McKay: Yeah. Tell us about Ikigai and how that can help us climb the spiritual mountain of our lives.
Mark Divine: It’s a profound idea. I’ve been teaching for years that you can uncover your purpose. I talked about it as a calling earlier, but it’s inside. It’s like part of that heart intuition. It’s the primal urge that brought you into this place. It’s not about a job or a career. It’s about this archetypal energy. So for me, it was warrior, now teacher, warrior, leader, and teacher, kind of the dominant archetypal energies, which are my purpose. My purpose is here to fulfill that energy and to learn and grow. So everyone has that. So we want to do these practices to be able to sit in silence, be able to allow that to be revealed to us. That still quiet voice that you’re like, Oh, yeah. That’s it. But then of course, it’s not enough. Like our world needs us. Our team, our family needs us. So I’m not advocating that people become all like foo-foo spiritual and then suddenly become really aloof away from the world or apart from the world or go to an ashram or a Zen monastery. I mean, there are a select few who maybe that’s right for, but no. For most of us, like we need to be engaged in the world.
So this is all about showing up as a whole person, whole mind, not split mind. And to be able to show up in a way that is like in complete alignment, like that future vision self I described, it’s in complete alignment with your calling and your hair is on fire because you’re doing what you’re passionate about. You’re in alignment with your principles. But then the question is, Okay, so if I know all that, what am I going to do about it? What’s my mission? That’s where Ikigai comes in because the model says, Okay, given all that stuff I just talked about, you know why you’re on this planet, you know what you’re passionate about, you know what your principles are. Now what does the world need and how do your skills align with what the world needs? Great. That’s another layer to think about and reflect on in journal. And then what can you get paid for, right? Because we, a lot of people struggle with this when they’re trying to work through transformation. They’re like, Yeah, but I’m really passionate about gardening and being outside and everything, but there’s no career there or I’m walking away from banking. I don’t know how I could do that.
And so Ikigai kind of helps us with a model to really align our calling with meaningful work in the world in service. The whole idea of like, for me, spirituality, the spiritual mind is not about religion or dogma. Again, it’s about getting the mind to do a phase shift away from just thinking with the ego, merge with your thoughts to suddenly being, Oh, I see that. I’m actually a spirit having a human existence. So the spiritual mountain for us is to kind of deeply embody that idea of I’m spirit, having this human existence and making sure that the reason you came into this planet, you’re fulfilling, you’re embodying it, you’re fulfilling it. You’re not accruing any more negative karma. You’re getting the lessons that you need. And in order to get the lessons that you need, you need to be doing what you’re meant to do or else you’re going to miss the boat. That was the whole purpose of the Bhagavad Gita and the story of Arjuna and Krishna. Arjuna was a warrior, but he didn’t want to go fight his brothers and his cousins who were the opposing force who were claiming the kingdom. And he was having a moment like, I don’t want to fight. And most people in our society will say, Well, he’s evolved. He’s practicing Ahimsa or peace. But Krishna, who was his charioteer, who represented God had a little slap down with him and said, listen, Arjuna, you have to fight because that’s your dharma.
That’s why you came into this world. And if you don’t do it, then you’re going to accrue negative karma and you’re going to bring great suffering to yourself and you’ll have to come back and repeat this whole thing. So that fifth mountain, spiritual mountain, is all about living a life on purpose, in service, in a way that only you are meant to do on this planet.
Brett McKay: And so the practice for this is just taking time to actually think about those things.
Mark Divine: Yes.
Brett McKay: I think that’s hard for a lot of guys. They’re just so busy with life, work, family. They don’t make time for that.
Mark Divine: Well, sit with them is probably best and then think about it. If you’re just thinking, then you’re using the wrong side of your brain, the wrong faculty. It’s okay to do some thinking and you may start there, with like, what is my archetype? And there’s like the Enneagram and Jungian archetypes. You can start looking at those. You can look at the arc of your life and be like, Oh, yeah. Like in my early 20s, I was getting my MBA, CPA, working as a in public accounting, finance. But while I was sitting on that meditation bench, on the Zen bench after a year or so of training, I started to get these feelings, these sensations, these intuitive hits that I was meant to be a warrior. And so that created this disconnect. Now with that information, I could start contemplating like, Oh, that’s interesting.
If I’m meant to be a warrior, why am I in finance? That’s not a warrior-ly path. And so you start to ask better questions, but it wouldn’t have happened if I had just started thinking because I’d be wrapped up in coulda shoulda wouldas and judgment and what people are going to think if I do something different and I don’t know what to do. It’s different. So I think sitting in silence and allowing the, developing the capacity to be still, still of your thoughts, still of your emotions, to be able to feel those intuitive messages of your gut and your heart, especially in this case. But you can’t be quiet if you don’t have the physical, mental, emotional, and intuitive skills to be able to like sit in quiet and be able to listen to the messages that tell you, Oh, this is my calling. And what will be revealed to you is this sense of how you’re supposed to show up in the world.
So everything we’ve talked about really like the… It’s hard to say… Like there are practices, like we have a practice in the spiritual mountain around like visualizing yourself at the end of your life, writing your own epithet from the perspective of a best friend looking back at your life as if you’re at the end and saying, well, how did I live? How did I do? And it can be very revealing. Stuff like that. Also visualizing your future self, which I talked about first, that starts out kind of as a imagination, but eventually you start getting information again from your subconscious or from your intuitive realm that starts to fill in some holes and gaps and it just begins to shift. So those are great practices.
And then that metacognition and contemplation about like where you think you need and want to be and what you’re supposed to be doing based upon your growing clarity of your purpose and principles and passions versus kind of what you’re doing right now and how you’ve lived in the past. And that can lead to some great insights.
Brett McKay: Well, Mark, this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
Mark Divine: The website readuncommon.com we’ll still have, we’ve got some cool bonuses. We’ve got some discounts on gear and supplements as well as a real cool journal. And also I’m going to do a group training for folks who order from that site. So it’s readuncommon.com. People can find me at my website, markdivine.com or email me at info at markdivine.com the social media I’m at @realmarkdivine. Last name’s spelled D-I-V-I-N-E. Thanks so much Brett for doing this. This is really enjoyable. Thank you.
Brett McKay: Thanks Mark. It’s been a pleasure. My guest here is Mark Divine. He’s the author of the book Uncommon. It’s available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at his website, markdivine.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/fivemountains, where you can find links to resources as we delve deeper into this topic.
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AoM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at @artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives and while you’re there, sign up for our newsletter. We’ve got a daily option and a weekly option. They’re both free. The best way to stay on top of what’s going on at AoM and if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot. If you’ve done that already. Thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think will get read something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, it’s Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to AoM podcasts, but put what you’ve heard into action.
