Some of us spend hours in the gym working on our strengthening our bodies, and if we don’t we know we need to be. But what if we told you the mind is like a muscle can be strengthened with practice and ‘exercise’ just like the body?
In this epidote we talk about Retired Navy SEAL Commander Mark Divine’s book, “Unbeatable Mind”. After retiring from the Navy Commander Divine started teaching mental toughness techniques to Special Operations candidates with a 90% success rate. He also teaches civilians the same techniques that enable them to become better spouses, parents, workers and entrepreneurs, etc.
Tune in to this episode to see learning mental toughness Through a Therapist’s Eyes!
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Listen to Episode #36 – Forging Mental Toughness; Unbeatable Mind Book Review
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Transcript
Craig Graves: [00:00:00] Three, two one.
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:03] All right. With another episode of, Through a Therapist’s Eyes the podcast,
you are?
Craig Graves: [00:00:09] Craig Graves
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:10] Alright, I am Chris Gazdik and we invite you to see the world through the lense of a real mental health and substance abuse therapist. Our goal is to create emotional growth through the medium of this podcast.
Being aware that is not delivery therapy service in any way, feedback and discussion. Is welcomed. And the site throughatherapisteyes.com using the podcast blog tab, caig graves. This is the human emotional experience. Let’s figure this thing out together, right?
Craig Graves: [00:00:39] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:39] All right. We picked up another couple of countries this week.
That was pretty cool. I forgot to tell you off the mics.
Craig Graves: [00:00:46] No, I didn’t see it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:47] Yeah, man, two to two countries. I don’t want to mention it because it’s a small sample size from each country, so I don’t wanna. Take their privacy in that regard, but,
Craig Graves: [00:00:55] cool. That’s fun to see that kind of stuff, man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:57] It is. It’s exciting.
Craig Graves: [00:00:58] We’ve got some neat stuff going on, so we might be doing a little video podcasts. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:03] Can we talk about YouTube? I don’t want to see it on YouTube. We’re going to look into that. I tell you, you didn’t, I’m going to, I’m going to break code man and do the, where are we going? Next thing here at the beginning, and maybe highlighted again at the end, but I really wanted to do that Craig too, to give our audience a, a little bit of a heads up to go ahead and read a book, super excited about this guest.
As of today, we have confirmation that we will be recording in a couple of weeks, with, a wonderful woman named Stephanie fast. So I feel as though, because I’ve got a commitment that I can say that name, and I want to give the audience an opportunity to really take their time and dive into this topic, because we’re going to be talking about a trauma experience and really how to recover from trauma now.
Honestly, man, I, in my therapy office, I have come across trauma in lots of forms. I have never, I say, I think it’s fair to say. I’ve never heard a story of trauma. Like this woman has lived through it. Is it, is it just beyond any kind of trauma experience I’ve experienced in therapy? it is. It’s just amazing that this woman is alive.
She has a, she has a life I’ve purpose working with orphans and her story of trauma. And we’re going to focus on how to recover from trauma. Is absolutely one of the most amazing stories. I think we, we may ever have on the show. I don’t want to blow it up too much, but to have an opportunity to be prepared because we’re not gonna focus so much.
If I, you know, what we’ll go where she wants to go, but I really want to focus on her recovery from trauma. And I think that we had a conversation on the phone and she might understand that so that you could read her story. No, what she went through and you’ll be better prepared for that particular show.
And the story is in her book called she is mine. Craig, it’s a hard read. It’s a very emotional read,
Craig Graves: [00:02:54] yeah. I missed the, presentation that you went to, but some of the conversation we had over dinner tonight. I was like, wow, that’s going to be a cool show.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:02] It’s absolutely unbelievable. Woman lived through as a child in this post Korean war era.
As a, as a child doing and talking for years old, man, and what she lives through. Unbelievable.
Craig Graves: [00:03:17] Absolutely unbelievable. Looking forward to that one,
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:20] some sponsors, a Metrolina psychotherapy, associates metpsych.com (700) 461-8253 since 2010. Serving adolescence, youth, adults, elderly folks looking for mental health and substance abuse treatment, pretty cool place over there and netsmart technologies.
So what are we doing today, Craig?
Craig Graves: [00:03:40] We are going to talk about mental toughness and I’m just going to say, or give our listeners a heads up that this will be the coolest show that we’ve done so far, because, because it’s my show.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:50] Oh,
Craig Graves: [00:03:54] actually I’m a little nervous about this, this one. So, Chris normally does the content and, for the shows, but I’ve read this book that kinda got me into the, got me interested in the mind and those kinds of things.
And, we’re gonna go through some of that book tonight and we’ll see how it goes.
Chris Gazdik: [00:04:12] Well, I’ve heard you, I’ve heard you talk about it several times and the little that we talked about off of Mics, I mean, it’s perfectly in line with what we do in the therapy world. you know, you rattled some of those things off of my, my, my brain was just clipping like, Oh yeah, we do that.
Oh yeah. That makes sense. Oh, we’ll do that. And that,
Craig Graves: [00:04:25] yeah, a lot of the things that I know about the mind and meditation are things I learned as a result of coming down this path. And I found out by doing the podcast with you, that you use a lot of these tools in your practice already. Right. And so it’s very interesting to me that, that you, that you do that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:04:43] So let me set you up a little bit. did a little bit of looking, of course it gets the whole psychology today. We’ve got a couple of articles that support this kind of thing. there there’s a lot of questions on. You know, what is the mind? And honestly, the field of psychology specifically has spent a lot of time on this psychiatry and psychology and people do get confused about those terms, by the way.
So psychology is like a psychologist and they do therapy and they do psych testing and they kind of do what I do. I, as an LCSW. A licensed clinical social worker do individual therapy, psychiatry prescribes they’re the, the medication prescribers. They used to do therapy, but they’re pretty much just prescribed medication.
Nevertheless, psychology in psychiatry, particularly psychology has been. Very fascinated for a long time now in really understanding what is the mind. So if he talks about being, having an unbeatable mind, I’d like to think about what is the mind. So here’s here’s thoughts and what I’ve, what I’ve seen on this so far.
the fact of the matter is the mind. Is is like, seems to be connected to consciousness. Right. And so we’ve got to shoot to two articles, one from psychology today and another, from a new documentary that came out, Stephen Hawkings and Albert Einstein, you know, those names.
Craig Graves: [00:06:02] Yeah, indeed.
Chris Gazdik: [00:06:03] Oh my gosh. So they have done some amazing work on understanding brain and brain functioning and all of this type of thing.
So, interesting pieces looking through them, article in psychology today, understanding what is the mind, how does it relate to consciousness? Does the mind have a connection with the body or not? You can enter religious practices or faith traditions here, you know, do you need a body to have a mind? What is the mind?
Is it consciousness and thought cognition? the, the cautiousness is being aware of oneself. We know little babies with peek-a-boo they play peek-a-boo because they don’t really have consciousness maybe of themselves. If they don’t see you, they think you’re not there. So there’s developmental psychology.
That’s all a part of this. This is fascinating, fascinating stuff. The mind and the way the brain works from Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein’s work, they have really cool graphics. And a little science note. There, there is a fact that when you talk about the neurons in your brain, there’s many neurons in your brain.
As there are stars in the universe. I think that’s a science fact.
Craig Graves: [00:07:16] As many neurons in the brain as there are stars in the universe,
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:19] yes, that’s a lot of dang neurons, man. That’s the type of system that our brain is. That’s working. Trillions upon trillions of neurons and each neuron sends out chemicals to fire other neurons. And you have this synaptic connection that flows through your brain that, that, that they talk about with consciousness and the mind it’s not the mind is supposedly evidently different than the brain, right?
So it’s just fascinating stuff. And we talk about. You know how to manage mental health? Well, so this fella here has written a book about the unbeatable mind, but keep in mind, what is the mind we talk about in the psychology today? Interestingly, they also grabbed my attention with it to understand something you need to be able to build it.
Okay. Enter the geeky science world of artificial intelligence. We’re actually trying to build brains. Will the human being be able to build brains.
Craig Graves: [00:08:21] That’s, that’s an interesting thing.
Chris Gazdik: [00:08:23] Right. And will it have consciousness and will they have a mind as a part of that machine?
Craig Graves: [00:08:30] Yeah. You can really go deep on those kinds of things.
Right. Because if you know the whole evolution in CR versus creation and that kind of thing, and I don’t want to get into a religious discussion here, but you know, I, in my mind, I think. If we can develop that kind of intelligence, why couldn’t we have been developed by an intelligence, but I guess that goes down another rabbit hole somewhere.
Chris Gazdik: [00:08:52] So I set you up a little bit. We can talk about later, run with it after my, my fun fact.
Craig Graves: [00:08:57] Okay. Let’s hear the fun fact, man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:08:59] I’ll be brief. As of recording time today, yesterday, my beloved Pittsburgh penguins failed to win an overtime game game, one of the playoffs, but I love this time of year, man. It seems like annual event.
I get to enjoy Pittsburgh penguin playoff hockey baby.
Craig Graves: [00:09:15] So you’re a Penguins, Steeler and pirates fan Pittsburgh guy.
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:20] I do like sports as part of my fun, my self care. Where I have fallen a little bit. So I just love paying them playoff hockey though, man. I hope they get it done. Come on Boys.
Craig Graves: [00:09:30] I could care less about hockey so I hope they win too. Just cause I’m your buddy,
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:34] Mark. Devine
Craig Graves: [00:09:36] yeah. You said he a couple of times and in reference to the, to the author of this book and the book that I’m looking at right now is, and I’m going to, I’ll include a link to it is called unbeatable mind. And it is indeed by Mark divine and Mark divine.
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:50] So this is our first book review. Isn’t it?
Craig Graves: [00:09:53] Yeah, and it’s not going to be a complete book review. I’ll get to that in a second, but I’m gonna read off the back of here and maybe throw in some of my own stuff, but commander Mark divine, a retired Navy seal and founder of seal fit and the popular unbeatable mind Academy presents his insights on how to forge mental toughness, develop mental clarity and cultivate an authentic warrior spirit.
So, yeah, Martin divine is a, is an ex Navy seal. And I found this guy, I think I’ve told this story before, but I’ve been fascinated by, by the seal mindset for a long time, because you know, you have all these Olympic Olympic, type athletes, NCAA athletes that go to seal training and flunk out. And then you’ve got these guys who, you know, 150 pounds soaking wet who make it, the difference is, is the mind.
So I’ve always been fascinated by that. What makes somebody strong in their mind are mentally tough enough to get through that training? It’s assumed that you either had that or you didn’t, you know, you’re mentally tough or not. Yeah. Right. And I was on my way to a Christmas party several years ago and realized that I’d failed to get a Christmas gift for one of the people that was going to be there.
So I stopped in books, a million and tried to rush through there trying to find something that looked interesting. And I saw this book called the way of the seal and it was another book that Mark Devine had written. And so I grabbed a copy of it and, and hurried out the door, you know, but I kinda made a little mental note to go back and get a copy of that book for myself.
And so I did, and as it turns out, commander divine teaches mental toughness techniques. And so. We’re talking about the mind obviously, but also how to make the mind mentally tough. Okay. And so what, he started out doing the guy, the Navy, and he started doing mental training. And what he was doing was he was teaching spec ops candidates, mental toughness, you know, and he’s got like a 90% success rate.
So the guys who’ve gone through his programs and he has a, he has programs in California that he, where he teaches these kinds of things that kind of simulate. Some of the train. These guys are going to go through. He has a 90% success rate. And so to hear him tell the story, you know, he had his first camp, if you will, for these guys.
And it was like nine future spec ops dudes in there. And in one, one executive and he’s like, Hey, what are you doing here? And the guy’s like, well, I just wanted to, you know, I just wanted to see what I could do to test myself. And so his next event, you know, He had two or three executives. And so what he found is there was a market for this kind of thing in the civilian world.
And so he started teaching these things to, to, to civilians. And you can use the concepts that he’s talking about here in, in any, in anything to be a better employee, a better entrepreneur, a better father, a better husband, whatever. So the things we’re talking about today really aren’t limited to people who are going to be in the military.
Or doing something like that,
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:58] anybody in a therapy office,
Craig Graves: [00:12:59] anybody in a therapy office. Right. And like I said before, most of the things that I’ve learned from this book, or a lot of things I’ve learned from the book and from his teachings are things that you’re doing in your practice. Right? Yeah. So I thought that was very interesting.
So let me ask you from a, from a therapist point of view, do you think that people can develop mental toughness? You think you’re born with it or not, or you are. What is your opinion on that as is with your education and experience in the therapy world?
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:30] Absolutely. I think is something that you can be, you can learn up on the learn up on, I think that’s something that you can develop.
I think that there’s a, there’s a concept of Tabla Rosa in a psychology world, you know, where you’re born as a blank slate and you learn socially, Day. One second. And, your accumulation of all of your experiences. we now know, I think in past shows, I’ve looked at the tale of two tapes. There’s a real biological component.
So your brain and your mind and your body definitely have limitations, look at down syndrome or serious limitations of that nature and whatnot. So you have definitely a biochemical. Reality, but then you also have the other side of the tale of two tapes, the social and emotional realities. Yeah. So all of those things really combined together to create how we feel and those how we behave and what we do.
And so you do have limitations with your body, particularly at this age. I don’t think you and I are going to be passing no seal training.
Craig Graves: [00:14:29] No,
Chris Gazdik: [00:14:29] no, it ain’t gonna happen, but there’s a whole lot of things we can do with our emotions and our development. the idea of Tabla Rossa, and being able to kind of cultivate your environment and learn and grow is absolutely what we do.
It’s foundational to therapy.
Craig Graves: [00:14:46] Yeah. And I think you just said a minute ago that we are a product of the things we’ve learned or been taught. Is that kind of. Kind of what you said,
Chris Gazdik: [00:14:53] right? Tabla Rosa is at a birth you’re born with a blank slate and then everything you’ve experienced
Craig Graves: [00:14:58] yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:14:59] Contributes and teaches you what, you know.
Okay. It’s an incomplete theory. It’s an old one.
Craig Graves: [00:15:04] Interesting, because that’s, that’s kinda how he opens up the book. And later on down the road, he calls that a boo or your background of obviousness. And those are the things that you’ve been taught subconsciously or consciously by a parent or a grandparent or a friend or whatever.
Well, meaning of course they’re not. Telling you these things to bring you down, but everything you’ve been told or told, kind of builds that Boo this background of obviousness, if you will, okay, now I’m going to read, you said not to read, and I’m not going to go through a whole long thing and reading, but right here in the introduction, he says, the big idea of this book is that you are capable of far more than you think you are more accomplishment, more productivity, more success, but you’ve been kept in the dark about this potential, your entire life.
I call this potential your 20 X factor. in that you are capable of accelerating your daily achievement by 20 times or your current paradigm allows you to believe as possible. So that’s kind of what he’s going for. I think that’s kind of along the same lines of what you’re saying. There it is. It is not as though your family or your culture purposely kept you in the dark about this important fact, rather they were ignorant about it as well, and can’t be held to blame.
So I think that’s interesting. I think that’s true because. No. There’ve been times that I have done things that I felt were hard and natural completed those things it’s like that wasn’t that bad after. All right. You know, so, so that kind of reset. Sure. Background of obviousness, if you will.
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:33] But bottom line, if you don’t believe you can do something, you can’t do it period.
Right? I think I would make that statement.
Yeah,
but you don’t believe it. And when I say, believe it, there’s, there’s an emotional, buy-in there too. There’s a click over. I can say, Oh yeah, I can run a four minute mile. And I know that my body physically probably can do that if I trained and geared up for it.
But if I don’t really believe it, If I don’t really emotionally buy into that reality, then it’s not reality.
Craig Graves: [00:17:01] Yeah, that’s true. And I believe that even, you know, grinding through something, you may not believe that you can do something if you grind yourself through it and get to the end of it, you know, then I think your, your, your belief changes.
But also your belief about what you’re capable of in the future.
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:19] Certainly why struggles create growth.
Craig Graves: [00:17:21] Yeah. Yeah. Joe De Cena. Who’s the founder of Spartan race, calls it, resetting your frame of reference. Okay. So once you do X and Y doesn’t seem so bad. So he, he says that he gets up in the morning at four, 4:00 AM, 4:30 AM, whatever, you know, he does 300 burpees and it takes an ice cold shower.
And he’s like, how can my day get any worse? You know, if the guy, if I get cold coffee and Starbucks, and the guy cuts me off in traffic, who cares? Right. I’ve just been through hell. And so that’s what he calls it. Resetting is his frame of reference. So if you were going to coach somebody or. If somebody come in to your office and wanted to grow their mental capacity or mental toughness, what, what kind of things would you, would you tell them as a therapist I am going to go through some of the things he talks about in this book, but just off the top of your head.
Well, what would you, what would you say
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:14] tables are turned? He catches me cold. Oh dear. What do I do with that? You know, how do you grow your mental ability? I think, I think it’s, it’s really, to me. Where my brain goes with that is, is developing an and a willingness to explore internal self. You know, we so get focused on the external world and we so get focused on why people were doing things to us or why this is happening to me in my therapy office.
I really. you know, I develop rapport and we get to into a safe environment, which is a unique tool that we definitely don’t have in the world. And I really kind of challenge people to, to, to look at ourselves. It’s an internal job. So I, I’m kind of going to go with, with, with good, honest, genuine, emotionally safe.
Self-exploration
Craig Graves: [00:19:06] interesting. Interesting, because that’s a lot of what he talks about. In this book right here. And we’ll talk about how he goes through that whole process. So this is a long book. It’s a couple hundred pages long. How I envisioned us doing this was spending, you know, two or three shows.
It was on it and getting through the whole book. Chris don’t want to do folks. So what we’re going to do
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:27] it didn’t go,
Craig Graves: [00:19:27] man. What we’re going to do is I’m going to kind of hit it, hit it at a high level. I’m going to go over the unbeatable mind roadmap here. And then I’m gonna kind of hit sections one and two at a high level.
And just, just so you kind of see where, where the book’s going and, and then how maybe how to, how to get more mentally tough. And maybe it’s something that you’re interested in picking up a copy of and taking a read and, and digging and digging deeper into this thing, on your own.
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:53] So what does mr. Devine tell us.
Craig Graves: [00:19:56] Okay. So let’s, let’s just start here with the unbeatable mind roadmap, if you will. so the book is kind of broken up into five sections. I believe. Let me just verify that that’s the deal. Yeah. Five sections. Okay. So the first section is finding your positive focus. the first step is to learn how to focus your mind and to concentrate on an object idea or task of choice.
The undisciplined mind can unravel you wreaking havoc on your plans and aspirations, the Buddhist call this chaotic state, your monkey mind. And we’ve talked about the monkey mind before you got it. And that’s just where the mind bounces from thing to thing. Right? How many of us do, and I mean, the mind is hard to control, right?
Right. I find myself I’ve been practicing this stuff for four or five years now. And I find myself on that same track when my mind just jumps from thing to thing. So, the first thing that we’re going to do is find our positive focus. One thing I did want to point out, he says here, negativity, derails, your performance.
So it’s imperative that you’re able to control your focus and shift away from these influences. And negativity is kind of the default, right? Would you say that’s that’s most people, Chris?
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:09] I don’t know why that is, but you know, we really do. Have that strong tendency, maybe even very emotionally healthy people, I think fall into that trap.
It’s that? That is a natural steady state. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:21:23] Yeah. We’re going to, he’s got a theory on that here of lot of why people are negative, more prone to negative thinking. Really. And I’m going to try to find that in a minute and we’ll, we’ll, we’ll come back to it, but for now, let’s go on that. That’s really the focus of section one is finding your positive focus.
Section two is developing a warrior like discipline. So we’ve talked about mindfulness and some of these topics before on the show. And what do we always say? You have to do Chris with
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:56] mindfulness. Yeah. Being in the moment
Craig Graves: [00:21:58] where got to practice it. It’s going to be mindful all of a sudden, you know, it takes, it takes practice.
Chris Gazdik: [00:22:03] Non-natural
Craig Graves: [00:22:04] yeah. Section two really is, About finding the discipline to put these practices into play. And it’s interesting. One of the things I highlighted, he says the warrior doesn’t live in the past or the future, the warrior lives in the present. Really? You just said, right, but about being mindful.
Yeah. Yeah. Section three, cultivate excellence. This section builds on the first two and that with your positive focus and deepening state of South mastery, You’re now actively hunting for ways to uncover virtuosity and seemingly common tasks. Okay. Section four is earning your Trident and daily. Now, when these guys go through this, this Navy seal training and become seals, they get the Navy seal.
Tridant. Okay. and the thing I highlighted here, it’s basically, you’re just going to be doing these things daily, right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:22:53] Routines,
Craig Graves: [00:22:54] routines. Yeah. And that’s kind of going back to the discipline. Here he says, well, I highlighted, he says a seal learns that his actions determine whether he gets to keep his Trident and has to be earned a new each and every day.
Section five is about building your team and take an action. And so teams can be anything folks. It could be your family, it could be your coworkers, you know, it could be your buddies or any kind of team environment, but that’s basically what section five of, of the book, you know? So that, that kind of covers the unbeatable mind.
Roadmap. And so, I’m just going to kind of hit some highlights of section one and section two, talk about how to initially build that mental toughness. And then Chris, a few, have input. We’ll go through that. And then, like I said, folks, if you want to dive deeper, I’m going to put a link to this, to this book, into Mark’s programs in the show notes.
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:47] I think a comment that I’m thinking about Craig right off the get go there is, is, is, you know, What works works. Right. And, and I think that, you know, I was just at a training with an occupational therapist and it’s a totally different field, but we really connected our, our, our thoughts together in conversation.
And it’s kind of like, you know, we need to be working together when the, you know, The psychotherapy field doesn’t need to hone and own the models of how to grow. I mean, there’s, there’s religious growth models. There’s. You know, these guys, you’re, you’re kind of talking about a lot of the seal development reality and, what works works.
Science is science. And we know in the, in the emotional sciences that there, you know, far Eastern medicine, people figured some of this stuff out long ago. So if it’s been around for a while and it works, and that’s what a lot of these people are drawing from, I would think Craig, so if there isn’t any kind of mystery about it,
Craig Graves: [00:24:48] it definitely is.
And a lot of the stuff that, we’ll talk about. On the show today, a lot of the stuff that’s in the book and a lot of stuff he teaches in this book down the road. We’re not going to cover our kind of Eastern in nature, you know, and he doesn’t teach spiritual things. He’s not teaching Buddhism or Hinduism or anything like that.
And in fact, he, he, he include spirituality and his in his five mountain training program, but he says, you know, I’m not trying to push a particular religion with this particular. Subject matter, I’ll leave that up to you. But, a lot of the things like meditation, yoga, you know, things that where you’re, where you’re sitting in silence and watching your breath and you’re using your breath for breast control, you know, they sound like Eastern, Eastern religious practices, if you will.
Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:37] So let’s take a break for a sponsor and then a you’re going to take us through kind of the first two parts and just see what it sounds great.
Craig Graves: [00:25:44] Okay.
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:46] So our Netsmart technologies. So folks are a partner of the show. You can find them. With their software.
Helper.com and spit my words out. They are therapist helper with Netsmart technologies and they do awesome stuff with medical billing and they, they automize everything. It makes it so easy. You know, we’ve gone through this process. With electronics, remittance advice, where they just kind of plug all of these very complicated numbers that insurance companies give us for your medical benefits and the explanations of all these medical benefits.
Man, I got to tell you, Craig DW is loving it. I used to have to kind of prompt her to get stuff entered into the computer stuff. Now she prompts me. I mean, it’s so much quicker good doing an amazing job. So we are, we are loving some of this automation and that’s coming from a non technology guy.
Craig Graves: [00:26:36] Believe me folks.
That’s true.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:40] Helper.com . Check them out now back to the show part one and two
Craig Graves: [00:26:47] hit Craig let’s, let’s go through some of this stuff. So in section one, he talks about winning in your mind. you know, he talks about Navy seals winning in their mind before they go into battle, embracing the sacred silence.
So a lot of what he’s teaching and talking about in here to build mental toughness is just. Shutting out the noise, man. I think that, you know, today we’re bombarded with information, you know, TV, social media news, all that kind of stuff. But part of what he’s talking about here is just embracing silence, you know, in sitting in a meditative state and just building that like session one, building your positive focus is just focusing and concentrating on, on your breath and kind of watching your thoughts versus trying to suppress them. If you will.
Chris Gazdik: [00:27:37] I was hanging out here not too long ago. And you put these a little new age things on your TV, and it’s got the soft music in the background. It’s got this beautiful visual things that I’m looking at with boats and water and lakes. We do things with guided imagery in therapy, where my voice is like this, where it’s just guiding you into seeing these scenes and is tranquil.
And it’s really nice. And they. Have on your TV screen there, Craig showed me the messages such as you are powerful and you are rich and you are well, and you are an acceptable, strong person. I was sitting there like, dude, this is cool.
Yeah. It’s powerful.
Craig Graves: [00:28:21] Yeah. We’ll burn insense next time. It does a lot.
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:24] It does. It does a lot though.
I mean that silence, I can appreciate that.
Craig Graves: [00:28:28] Yeah. So what, what, what is it teach in here while you’re sitting in the silence and watching these thoughts is how to develop the witness. Okay. And so when we talked about people defaulting to the negative a minute ago, what he says about that is, is right here.
So he says, why is it so natural for us to be so negative? I’d love to get your comments on this one, too. It turns out that for survival’s sake, our rational thinking mind is wide with a bias for negativity. It must decide and act on life threatening influences daily, and it is conditioned to be pessimistic and scared as a result of the barrage of negative influence.
Chris Gazdik: [00:29:09] Okay. That’s interesting because I came across information recently. Go figure out a conference where our amygdala, which is the fight or flight center of our brain. People have heard that I think before has now making up numbers. But it’s kinda true. cause, cause I don’t remember numbers so great from regarding our frontal cortex and our amygdala.
The amygdala is the fight or flight system in our brain. Frontal cortex is our thinker abstract reasoning and whatnot. Craig, there are something like trillions of connections from the amygdala to the frontal cortex and only like hundreds from the frontal cortex to the amygdala.
Craig Graves: [00:29:53] Interesting.
Yeah. And so, yeah, that answers really, that answers that question for me.
Why are we negative? That’s it?
Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah, that’s very, that’s very interesting
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:05] tell you what folks talk about this stuff and you put two and two together in your brain. You learn stuff, just talking.
Craig Graves: [00:30:11] Yeah. And he does go into detail about how the mind works in chapter eight. We’re not going to get there tonight, but, but it does say that here.
So the idea here is to learn how to watch your thoughts. And then when you see that you’re thinking of negative thought, redirect those thoughts. Okay. Let me see here. Yeah. He says, once you see this, the negative thoughts, you discover one of the powerful gifts of the witness. You now have the choice to manage these thoughts immediately.
So if you follow these negative thought patterns by default, by going through these practices, you should be able to develop the skill to realize you’re having these negative thoughts. And then, and then to change them. the trick is to use awareness of negative thought as a stimulus to softly, redirect the mind to a realm of positive thought and performance.
Okay. So how do we do that? Okay. So here’s just a specific process that he teaches in order to redirect our mind from a negative thought to a positive thought. And you can really use this, little process in, in anything, you know, if you’re frustrated with your, with your kid, if you’re, Thinking negative, negative thoughts after seeing some kind of news show, even if you’re in a workout, Oh my God, I’m going to die.
I can’t do another one. You know, those are negative thoughts. Redirect those, the positive thoughts, then your outcomes are going to be a lot better. Okay. So it’s a four step process. This is the specific process I use and I’ve taught through my various training programs. Number one, witnessed the negativity.
So that’s the key right there. Right? So a lot of us go off on a. You know, and myself included, you can go it down a rabbit hole thinking negative thoughts and not even realize you’re doing it. Right. So the first thing is to witness the negativity. The second thing is to interdict or stop the negative thoughts with a power statement.
The third thing is to redirect your mind with self-talk and imagery, to something positive and productive for your current goal. And number four is to maintain your new mental state with a jingle or montra.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:03] Okay. Let me just give it back to you. Here’s my thoughts. I don’t like that. Number one, number two. we’re going to change that.
Yeah. And we’re going to number three, execute that change in the four maintain that change.
Craig Graves: [00:32:19] Yup. Yup. Yeah. That’s it witnessed the negativity interdict or stop the negative thoughts with a power statement. So once you realize you’re thinking these negative thoughts, you say something, you can come up with your own thing.
You’re like usually stop. You know, one of the things he says in here is feed the courage Wolf and we can talk about the courage Wolf and the, and the, and the other Wolf. What is the other Wolf? The current there’s the courage. Wolfen the,
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:44] I do not know. You mentioned earlier,
Craig Graves: [00:32:47] say power statement to stop the negative thoughts.
Redirect your mind with self-talking to imagery. I got this. I can do it. Or you picture yourself in the situation you want to be in versus the one where your mind is taking you. And then you maintain that new mental state with a jingle or a mantra,
Chris Gazdik: [00:33:04] Craig. I mean, that’s, that’s what we do with specific strategies.
And, you know, when I’m, when I’ve got somebody in my therapy office sitting here and they’ll be talking about a situation in their life with a relationship or with a, a goal that they have and they’ll just tank and we’ll, it will be, you know, I will be like, stop let’s let’s hold on. Right there. And let’s use the classic thing was cognitive behavioral therapy.
Let’s reframe that. We need to change that statement and reframe it a positive based mode, more realistic statement. And listen, we know through research, thank God for researchers. We know that that changes physiology, heartbeats, heart rates, blood pressure. You know, when you get positive, you feel positive.
But you are working against your amygdala when you’re in a hot emotional conversation. So
Craig Graves: [00:34:02] interesting. This is part of the therapy world
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:05] absolutely they’re there they’re kissing cousins.
Craig Graves: [00:34:08] That is amazing. It is amazing. At least it is, to me, maybe I’m a geek like that, but, but that’s okay. And I’ll, I’ll take it. Okay. Can you kind of goes into some detail about, you know, Witnessing the thoughts and why the power statement keeps you in a negative.
I’m not going to read through all that stuff, but, but that’s kind of where the, the, the, you know, the intervention comes in to, to, to, to kill the negativity. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:33] Intervention is a good word.
Craig Graves: [00:34:34] Yeah. And,
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:35] you know, just to comment, I mean, these guys, I mean, he’s lived it Navy seal. People are successful.
They are tough as nails. There’s no doubt about it, but they have, and they purposefully seek people that have the emotional skill sets as well as being able to do 150 push ups.
Craig Graves: [00:34:52] Yeah. Yeah. We’ll get, we’ll talk about emotions in just a second. And the process he talks about for emotions is very similar to this one, too.
So, Another thing, he goes into it. I’m not going to hit those some very hard. I’m just gonna ask your opinion on this maybe, but he talks about the three P’s and you’re one thing to find them what those are. And basically the three P’s are your passion, your principles, and, you’re one thing. And your purpose and your one thing.
So the one thing that you’re focused on Chris, how does having a purpose or things that you’re passionate about in your life? How does that affect a person’s mental health?
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:25] Well, listen, I’m just going to revert to. Episode 10 with Dan Miller. You know, maybe we could play off of this show with that because when you read that off to the mics, before, when we were talking about this, I was thinking Dan Miller passion.
You’re excited about stuff. And so a lot of times in therapy, what we’re doing is trying to identify, what do you really want? I, I start out every individual session with the idea of my goal is really, you know, I mean, I could do all the fancy psychobabble talk with what theories, but I use it. All I want to do is how is life like now?
How do you want life to be like, and that’s what we’re pushing for. That’s where your passion is. That’s what you really want and leave it. So speak it out loud. Maybe. And push towards making that happen. It’s passion
Craig Graves: [00:36:11] yeah. Purposes where I kind of wanted to camp out next. So I’ve recently been reading, man’s search for meaning by Viktor Frankl.
Have you read that one? No, sir. Do you know Franklin was?
No, sir. Really? Yeah.
Okay. So Victor Franklin,
Chris Gazdik: [00:36:25] I suck at that game.
Craig Graves: [00:36:26] Viktor Frankl was a, was a psychotherapist and he’s, he’s got his own kind of therapy called logo therapy. Maybe we can talk about man’s search for meaning on it, the show, but basically he.
He went to the concentration camp in world war II. He was an Auschwitz and several others, and he was a survivor. And what he learned or what he’s, what he’s, it says from his experience in the concentration campus is a man can survive. Or he can get through anyhow, if he has a why. Whereas most of the folks were, the folks were more likely to survive the concentration camps.
If they thought they had something to survive for. And his, his, his, why was his wife? Unbeknownst to him had already perished. But he said that the thought of being reunited with his wife and also producing this work that he was, he was in the process of this book that he was in the process of writing when he was imprisoned, is what helped him get through that experience in the concentration camp.
So I’m sure that purpose having a purpose in life is going to have a huge effect on somebody’s mental state correct.
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:34] Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, you, you, you nailed it there. I think with, you know, developing a, an emotional intensity towards a, a purpose and a place that you want to be, and if you keep your eye on the ball, Whatever pain you’re in, whether it be a depression episode or a financial bankruptcy.
I mean, there are people that get suicidal Craig, and I think that that’s probably a part of losing your, your point of focus in purpose. So there, there could be a powerful sustaining reality there I’ve never had the honor of working with anybody from the Holocaust era and whatnot. but I seen like the pianoist and.
And stories like that that are just amazing. Just amazing. And we, and again, we’re going to have a lady on the show, that rivals that
Craig Graves: [00:38:23] Frankel’s books. Fascinating, man, you should read that and we should, we should do a book review of that and he developed his own kind of therapy called logo therapy. And
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:33] are you sure about the name because I have heard of Amago therapy.
The name is Virta Mago therapy.
Craig Graves: [00:38:35] No it’s logo logo logo means meaning. So basically what Frankl. Did in his therapy was he helped people find meaning in life and that’s how he, that’s how he helped his, his clients. So, anyway, the wrap up section one of the book on mental toughness, he talks about finding your three P’s and your one thing.
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:56] That’s nice.
Craig Graves: [00:38:57] Yeah. Right. So chapter two goes into more about mental, mental toughness. He talks about making choices, and managing stress too. So what is your opinion on, on stress, Chris? Is it good? Bad, indifferent? I
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:10] don’t like it. You don’t like it
like stress.
Craig Graves: [00:39:14] You don’t like it. Some interesting observations about stress.
He says without stress, there’s no growth.
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:20] Did I say I like it. I love it.
Craig Graves: [00:39:22] Did you say that I’m going to play it back? I don’t think you said
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:25] it’s tough guys, but you know, I’ve seen some of this and I think I know where you’re going. So it’s a, it’s an awesome concept. Go ahead.
Craig Graves: [00:39:31] I’m going to go through some of this I’m apologize, man, but I’m going to read a little bit of it, but he says stress is so often cited as the cause of poor health breakdowns and lack of success.
The prevailing view in society is that stress acts on you insidiously. And you were at helpless victim. How often have you heard these thoughts? I’m so stressed out. I can’t take this anymore. This job’s killing me, fill in the blanks. he says it’s a myth that stresses your problem. Your real problem is believing that stress is the source of all your woes.
And I think there’s some science behind this too. I think that there’s, I’m pretty sure I watched the Ted talk long ago.
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:07] You don’t grow. If you don’t hurt,
Craig Graves: [00:40:08] you don’t grow. If you don’t hurt, that’s done
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:12] to move forward. Yeah. Things don’t change without it sometimes,
Craig Graves: [00:40:16] but he, but, but from what I’ve gathered, It’s also how we view it.
If we’ve used stress as a bad thing, then it, then it does indeed affect our health. It’s a mindset thing. But if we view it as just, there’s just something to deal with, then there’s not all those health ramifications that we think about being associated with stress. If that makes sense.
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:37] I wonder out loud how many times or how many people really can be comfortable when under stress.
I think that the listening audience needs to understand that it’s not about comfort. It’s not about, I don’t know. I have a hard time thinking that you can see stress as positive, easily. Now you can grow in stress and you can have a good mindset. So I don’t deny that, but I don’t want to be unrealistic about it either.
I think it’s embracing the process, which sometimes is uncomfortable. Does that make sense? Maybe?
Craig Graves: [00:41:11] I think so. Yeah. Yeah. He talks about how to manage stress and a process. Very similar to the one that we went through just a second ago, I’m going to run through it really quick. Cause I know we’re running out of time here.
but you know, something I was thinking of when you said, when you said that, I guess different people do manage stress differently because if you think about the stress these guys are under, when they’re doing these missions, like I watched the show about the, the bin Ladin assassination. So those guys were sleeping.
On the way over to read the compound. Yeah. So that guy, I would have been a mess, you know? Yeah. These guys are sleeping on the way over there. Got this stress. They’ve, they’re just handling stress differently than, than your average, Joe.
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:51] I have to think about that.
Craig Graves: [00:41:53] Yeah. Anyway, I’m gonna run through this real quick.
There’s it’s a four step process. Very similar to what we talked about, but it’s specific to dealing with stress. Step one is to witness the adverse stressor as it impacts you and begins to affect your psychology and physiology. Step two is to interdict response to stress just like we did before. Step three is to redirect your psychology and physiology to counter the impact of the stress and transmute it to a positive performance.
And step four is to use breathing and concentration techniques to maintain performance and eliminate the stress from your mind, body, and life. With this process, you take back control and move from stress to success. And he follows that up by saying stress is neither good, nor bad. It just is what it is when it gets a bad rap.
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:41] Craig. I don’t know how you want to taxi us in here for a landing, but I think I want to just kind of ask you broadly. I didn’t read the book. I think it’s cool. I may need to probably read, although I have a few things on my reading list coming up, What did this do, sort of in your emotion, churning in yourself, I’ve heard you talk about this book more than once, many times actually you’ve commented about it.
Taking pieces of it. You’ve obviously incorporated into life in some ways. So what did reading this book? How would you, give it a thumbs up? It’s obviously not going to be a thumbs down. Right? How would you give it a thumbs up by saying what, what, what, what you really incorporated in your thinking and how you experienced the material?
Craig Graves: [00:43:24] You know, it’s, I’ve been going through, this book kind of started me on a different path because it made me, it made me think about things differently.
Chris Gazdik: [00:43:31] Yeah. I thought this was the book that you just said, wait a minute, like, boom, I was different when I read this, this,
Craig Graves: [00:43:36] yeah, this is kind of, I have a book, you know, because I have incorporated a lot of the things that he talks about in here, you know, I’m I do the meditation practices and I, and I, and for the most part, I think I’m able to see my thoughts now and I can do the re I can redirect and those kinds of things.
you know, we’re, we haven’t talked about emotions yet. Maybe we’ll save that for some, some other time, because I think that could be its own show. I think when you mix emotions into, negative thoughts, it’s harder to break out of that thing. And you would have had these conversations offline before.
but you know, I I’ve incorporated some of the things, for a lot of the things that he talks about here into my workouts, if you will, and I’ll call them training sessions because. Of course, I train, you know, workouts to, to, to be healthy, you know, to keep, keep myself fit, to look good, whatever. But also to man, I go through these things where I’m using my breath and mind during workouts, you know, that that’s a stress in itself.
He talks a lot about self-talk, you know, I don’t use that. You can do this, you got this. And I look for ways to put myself. In uncomfortable situations so that I can develop these, these skills saying I’m a bad ass, or you can look
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:48] at it all ways. Say that again.
Craig Graves: [00:44:51] Like, you know, I’ll give you an example, like, you know, jujitsu jujitsu is a physical sport, you know, and there are times when you’re in a bad situation and you have to just go back to your breath.
You know, you got this. No, you got it. Just breathe in. You work your way out of it. Instead of getting into a situation where your thoughts run away or you panic or whatever, or whatever that is. And you can look for endurance events. I mean, anybody that tells you that, you know, run a Spartan beast is, is a, is a complete physical thing is, is that that’s not, it’s also a mental thing.
You know, you have to have in the tools he teaches here in this book. Tools that you can use to get through situations like that
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:36] sounds like you experienced it by transforming how you cope with tough situations and stress.
Craig Graves: [00:45:42] Yes. Yeah. It’s definitely helped me deal with stress and tough situations differently.
And I would say better.
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:50] And I got a good example of one. Maybe we, you can take us out or whatnot. but it was really interesting. I mean, you just took me back to a moment that I had at Cub Scouts. Years ago where I woke up earlier than anybody else in the camp. And I went out and I thought I was going to take a night walk.
And I went out to the edge of the camp. And I mean, I really began to get like, this is a bad idea. And I really began to go through this really weird emotional process. I’m not going to give you the long story. Maybe the short version is I really got very intimidated and flat out scared. Get scared of the dark.
Like, what am I? I’m a grown man, but it was awkward. It was weird. And there was things living out in the woods and I thought a better than to go a night, walk in the woods by myself anyway, because trip sprained ankle or whatever, nobody knew where I am for a little while. So, but I went through having to calm.
I had to calm myself down. And I did , these things sort of naturally, so some of these things really are natural, but it was also very purposeful. And I began to talk to myself to calm myself, self down, and I took a behavior action that I’m telling you, it was really emotionally weird. Craig, I made a fire and taking that action.
Like it just, it changed everything for me. Yeah. So, you know, that was just an interesting example that you took me back to that I just happened to find myself in.
Craig Graves: [00:47:10] Yeah. You know, Chris people think life, people want life to be easy and things to come easy and just not, it’s just not the way it is, you know?
And we grow when we’re going through bad times. I mean, how, how have you ever gotten better when things were good? You know, you learn lessons when things are bad, right? And by doing some of the things in this book, and then looking for some ways to put yourself in situations that are tough and hard. When the real hard times come along, then you’re going to be more prepared for those things and better able to deal with them.
And I believe that wholeheartedly, I really do
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:47] sticktuitiveness persistence, the ability to, to stay consistent with healthy choices. I that, you know, yeah, those are, those are, those are strong. And sometimes difficult to attain characteristics
Craig Graves: [00:48:02] are difficult to attain. You know, when we go through bad times, my son went through a bad situation last year, but he’s stuck.
He stuck with, we stuck with what he was going through and now he’s come on the other side of that, you know, and what I’ve tried to explain to him is the next time something bad happens in life, which it certainly will. You’ll be able to look back and say, well, I got through that thing. I can get through this thing.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:24] I’m not a big quoter, but I watched a very powerful movie Dunkirk followed up by a, I think the name of the movie was Winston Churchill and so good movies there to watch folks, but a quote that has stuck with me and, and, and fits right with Mark. Divine’s unbeatable mind, quote, unquote, if you’re going through hell then keep going.
Yeah, I mean, That was a bad time in Britain, man. I mean, the Nazis were coming down to cut their head off and had every means and every intent to do so.
Craig Graves: [00:49:00] Yeah. How mentally, how mentally tough was Churchill, man, you know,
dang. Yeah, for real, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:07] and everybody was against him. I didn’t realize, but that parliament over there, wherever you call their, their
parliament,
they were dead fast against it.
He was like the only dude standing fighting for.
Craig Graves: [00:49:19] Yeah, it was amazing. How about a bad ass? It was Sergio, right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:22] Yeah. Absolutely.
Craig Graves: [00:49:23] Somebody was mentally. It’s tough.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:25] Well, thank you. thank you, Craig, for, for bringing that up. You know, the unbeatable mind, Mark divine. I’ve heard you talk about it, guys. The experience of checking these things out.
Absolutely correspond from what I can tell in the therapy world, you don’t have to read a self help therapy book. check out the unbeatable mind, but Mark Davon, thanks for giving us a quick rundown on, can I ask,
Craig Graves: [00:49:45] I love talking about this kind of thing and I wish we had more time to talk about, well, talk about more of it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:51] I’m glad to do, and we will because we have a show, right? Take us out of here. Oh no. Before you take us out of here, man, I’ve got a, I’ve got another teaching thing, man. You know, you know, all these things about podcasts, our audience. I think a lot of people are learning. So I’m glad I remembered to throw this in.
You know, when you listen to a podcast show, you can hit that little.dot dot a little ellipse. Did I say that right? Ellipse, you hit that little ellipse and down comes some options and you got a little share button.
Craig Graves: [00:50:20] Yes, that’s a great way to share the show.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:23] Oh my gosh. Any show, man. I’m I’ve I’m gonna pop you some stuff.
So you just share in that means that that particular episode, and you can just text it to your husband, text it to your friends or your son. How about to your boss? You know? Yeah. You can absolutely pop a quick share, send a text message and say, Hey, check this out.
Craig Graves: [00:50:42] I’ve done that before, but that is a great.
That’s a great information to share with our audience, because if you’re liking our show, then you can quickly share with your friends, coworkers, spouses, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, whatever. And word of mouth really is the best way to grow any business podcasts included. So if you’re enjoying our content folks, we would love it.
If you would share with your, with your, with your circle, if you are listening, we would appreciate it. If you would subscribe and give us a five star review, if you haven’t done so already, you can find out more about the show on throughatherapistseyes.com. We have entries for each show. we also have a newsletter you can sign up for out there.
I’m sending out emails weekly with updates and letting you know the show’s published. And you can also find links to our Facebook and Instagram pages. Chris,
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:30] an email thing there sign up. Craig is a cool way to know kind of, if you don’t hear the happened to catch the last year, you can always catch an idea of what’s going on, whether you want to listen to it or not.
So sign up for the email list on the website. You send some nice stuff out there.
Craig Graves: [00:51:44] Yeah. I used to just study just to have a link to the show and a description, but I’m trying to include more about what we’re doing and share.
And schools are
trying to put some more stuff in there. So. Hopefully it’s a, hopefully it’s good.
And again, folks would love to hear some feedback. If you want to reach out to us on our website or social media, we’d love to hear from you
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:02] Keep growning with us, the human emotional experience. We’ll continue to figure this thing out together.
Craig Graves: [00:52:08] Sounds good.