Hello and welcome back to Chasing Excellence, a show about chasing what truly matters.
My name is Patrick Cummings.
As always, I'm here with Ben Bergeron.
We are also joined by a special guest, friend of the show, Chris Irwin is here.
Chris, you are a retired Navy SEAL.
You are the Navy SEAL Foundation's Communication Director.
And what we're going to talk about today.
You're the creator of something called Rare Sense, which is a project dedicated to the power of the mind and teaching others how to train the mind just like we do our body.
Thank you chris, for being here.
We appreciate it.
Yeah, good to see you guys again.
Yeah, the timing of this is great.
Chris, you were just down in Natick.
You and Ben, we had mentioned it a couple times on the podcast a week or two ago.
You guys put together a one-day seminar called The Mindful Athlete that I was fortunate enough to be at.
Really enjoyed it.
Thought you guys did a great job.
So I'm excited to...
Begin to bring some of those things into our world, our happy little world here at Chasing Excellence.
I'm excited to have you.
Yeah, cool.
The thing that just threw me, as Patrick said, down in Natick.
There's only like 150 people in the United States that can say down in Natick.
He lives in Maine.
That's a fair point.
I'm one of them who gets to say that.
Yeah, down in Natick.
Down in Natick.
All right.
So Chris, what we wanna talk to you about is specifically RareSense and the work you're doing there at RareSense.
So I'd love to get a high level sense of where it came from.
And then I wanna get into a big part, if not.
Maybe the majority of what RareSense really works on is this idea that you've got called the seven mind killers.
So I want to start there.
I want to start our conversation there.
And then we're going to get into some of the more specifics around those mind killers.
But can you just give us a sense of what rare sense is?
Give us a sense of rare sense.
And then move us into the seven mind killers.
Joke number one.
Right.
A rare sense of what rare sense is.
So it is the uncommon pursuit of mind fitness is kind of the tagline of Rare Sense.
But the overarching idea is that we can train our mental health the way we can train our physical health.
And so most people, certainly you guys and people that I would think would be listening to this are very familiar with the idea of the ownership you have around your physical health. moving that towards fitness in the sense that it's on a spectrum, it's not a binary thing, and you have power for the most part over just about every input that creates your fitness or lack thereof. primarily your diet and meaning your overall diet, right?
Not going on a diet, exercise and sleep.
And there's some other things that we could add in there, certainly.
But that's kind of the biggies, right?
If we're just kind of going broad brush here.
But conversely, for the most part people think of mental health as a binary thing, where you either have problems of some sort or you're fine.
And you're sort of almost like walking around, like well, I hope I don't get any of these problems somehow.
Right.
And the issue with that is that it puts the whole mental health construct paradigm into a.
It's a pathology.
So it's an illness thing.
It's basically like the way you can get ill physically.
Get sick is like all of mental health, right.
It's like, if you're not okay, you're just sick.
And because of that, we treat it that way.
So we give people drugs and we send them to therapy.
And it's just this complete dichotomy of, On the one hand, you've got physical health, which is very much a training paradigm.
It's up to you for the most part.
It's not to say you can't get sick or anything like that, but there's so many things you can do that impact your physical health and drive it towards fitness, as you guys are well aware of.
Where on the other side, mentally, it's a treating paradigm for the most part.
We're just telling people it's not within your control.
You just have to hope you don't get one of these brain diseases or whatever.
Rare sense is taking the tact of, no, that's not true at all.
That's not... the way it is for almost everybody out there.
It's not to say there's no mental illness, but what we're dealing with for the most part is people that are mentally out of shape.
And so therefore we need a training modality to teach them how to get in shape mentally.
We need to view it exactly the same way.
It's not binary.
It's on a spectrum.
And that's kind of the, that concept was the genesis of Rare Sense.
Super interesting.
Okay, so I mentioned the seven mind killers.
I'm going to give the seven real quick just to tee us up here.
Oblivion, storytelling, suppression, fear, stagnation, injury, and isolation.
And each one of those mind killers has something you call the countermeasure, which I love.
We're going to get into today, oblivion and its countermeasure.
But I'd love to ask you first where did the idea of the, where did the conception of the seven mind killers come from?
What kind of work was done on your part to begin to form that?
Oh, these are the ones that we're going to talk about.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's based on personal experience, essentially.
So I'm somebody who, like you said, I spent a long time in the military and getting out of the military I had a lot of mental health problems, right?
As we would sort of historically call it or traditionally call it.
I had a lot of survivor's guilt.
I started looking inward at various things that were going on in my body and thinking that they were the signs of some kind of terminal illness and spiraling down mentally.
And, as a result, developed a lot of physical things as well that went along with that sort of chronic illness type symptoms.
Basically for lack of a better term based on what I knew at the time, I was, I think, like a lot of people that come from professions like that.
I didn't want to share any of that.
I felt very ashamed of it.
Didn't know what to do about it exactly.
So I kept bottled it up, tried to suck it up, suffer in silence.
That tends to be the modality that guys go with a lot of guys, because that's what we know in terms of a tool.
And that didn't work.
And I went down the treatment kind of paradigm as well.
I went to tons of doctors.
I tried all sorts of supplements, sort of traditional medicine was like well, we don't know what's wrong with you.
And there's a lot more to this too.
I've kind of fell off a cliff at one point too, about five years after I'd left active duty.
And I went the alternative route.
Like I said, I did all sorts of holistic stuff, took a gazillion supplements and none of it really did much.
I mean, some of it helped a little bit, But by and large, it just didn't work.
So I got to this point where I was essentially suicidal thinking.
I just don't know the way out of this.
And instead I took a different tact of well, maybe this all sort of traces back to what's going on with me mentally.
Like maybe I've just sabotaged my own mental health so badly that that's really what's going on here.
Like our mind and our body.
Minds and bodies are not separate distinct entities.
They're intertwined, right?
They're sort of inextricably linked.
And so even the physical stuff that I was experiencing was like maybe this is really like a mental thing.
So I just changed my approach to all right, I think I got to do a lot of training here, but I have to figure out like, what I'm doing wrong to start.
So that's where the mind killer concept came from.
It was like okay, as I tried various things, figured out what worked, figured out what needed a lot of work.
How can I bucket this stuff into something that people would understand?
Again the same way that like, if you're training physically, it's like okay, not necessarily.
I mean CrossFit does, combines a lot of this stuff, which is great, but you can say I'm working on strength today.
I'm working on endurance today.
That kind of idea of what are the big buckets of things that you have to work on?
So the mind killer idea was sort of what is, what are these big buckets that we sabotage our own mental health with?
When you started down the journey of Rare Sense and you said about five years ago, things maybe got as bad as it got, were you kind of a blank canvas in terms of what the heck am I going to do here?
Or did you have some history of looking at mental health, mental fitness?
Certainly you spent a lot of time training over the course of your career.
I'm just curious like, did you have a head start on a lot of these ideas, or did you find yourself sort of at rock bottom, saying I don't know what step one is, but let me figure out what?
Yeah, I was pretty much rock bottom.
I had very little.
I mean it's kind of funny to think of it now, because some of it Ben and I were talking about this.
Some of it seems so obvious now when I talk about it.
I go, that's obvious, isn't it?
And you find out, no, it's not.
And it wasn't for me either.
I mean, the reality is...
I had never done any meditation, any breath, none of this stuff until I was in my mid-40s.
And no one had ever said, hey, you might want to try some of this.
Like, it might help you, you know?
I mean...
The only things I had done, honestly, was I'd gone to therapy a little bit.
Not too much.
I had had a therapist try to prescribe me meds for like mental health meds, and I didn't take them.
I kind of didn't believe in that, quite frankly.
So, yeah, it was pretty much blank slate.
Super interesting.
Okay, let's jump into.
Well, first thing first actually, and this, I think, maybe leads us into the single mind killer that I want to talk to you about today, which is oblivion.
And you write this on raresense.com.
Most people don't know anything about themselves.
Facing the mind killers is an opportunity to change that for the better.
So, with that in mind, with everything you just kind of talked about in mind, what do you mean by oblivion?
What is that?
And does it matter that it's mind killer number one on our list of seven mind killers?
Is there something special about oblivion that we need to sort of tackle first in order to get through the other?
Mind killers?
Yes.
So I think the answer is yes to all of those questions.
You do need to tackle it first.
By and large, they go in order in terms of the best way to approach them.
It's not to say.
As you get more familiar with this stuff, you might place emphasis in different places.
And as they get towards the end, you could probably mix them up a little bit, I would say.
But regardless, oblivion is step one.
And I would say that's true whether they use that term or not.
That is true for any kind of mental health mindfulness practice out there.
So before we even get to that, just sort of framing up a little bit of how I view mental health and mind fitness.
There's a couple of fundamental things to understand.
The first one is, and this is part of oblivion too, is not understanding these things.
Oblivion is a lack of awareness.
It is like if you have no idea what's going on, that's oblivion.
That's being oblivious.
But when we think about thoughts, which is really what we're talking about here, we use that term in a couple different ways.
We use it to describe actively thinking about something, focusing on something, right?
I'm thinking, I'm having thoughts about this thing.
I'm thinking I'm working through a problem, I'm working on something which is conscious thinking.
But the other way we use it is sort of this chatter that's going on in our head at any given moment, which is subconscious.
And that's really where the problem lies.
It's unfortunate that we use that term thoughts to describe both those things.
I really feel like they should have different terms.
What people don't understand about the chatter is that you don't generate it.
It just shows up in your head.
And most people... never make that leap.
They never come to that realization is that most of the quote, unquote thoughts you have, you didn't really author.
They just show up.
And the sequence that I take people through is going from most people say, I am my thoughts.
They are an identifier of their thoughts, meaning anything that percolates to the surface, the chatter they go.
Or sorry, they don't even do that.
That's me.
I am that.
And therefore, I have to own it.
I have to take it seriously.
Anything, right?
And it can be a good thought.
It can be a bad thought, a helpful one, unhelpful one.
It doesn't matter.
It's like, that's me.
Some people get one step better, I suppose, into, I am the thinker of my thoughts.
So it's, I'm thinking that stuff.
And I always tell the story of a friend of mine who was, I was talking through some of the stuff.
He was going through some difficult times, a divorce.
And he had seen this meme on Instagram from a yoga instructor that said, I'm not my thoughts.
I'm the thinker of my thoughts.
And he said, that's great.
That's kind of what you're talking about, right?
And I said, no, not really.
Like, that's part of the way there.
But where you want to get to is I'm the observer of my thoughts.
And he said, well, that makes me feel like I'm not in control of my thoughts.
And I was like, exactly, that's the point.
That's what you have to get to.
You're not in control of them.
And again, different from actively, consciously thinking about something, working through a problem.
That I get.
Yes, we are sort of that's when you're trying to take ownership of that stuff and do something with it.
Right.
But again, the chatter.
Yeah, not in control of that whatsoever.
And so the point is, what we're trying to do is disassociate from that, disidentify from that.
And this is the fundamental thing that anyone has to do from a mind fitness perspective is have the ability to objectively observe that stuff.
And the analogy I use is it's an information stream.
So, the same way that you can, you have your phone and you have a social media.
Multiple social media feeds on that that you don't take ownership of.
It's just like, oh, that's interesting.
And I'm scrolling through that.
Or you're listening to a podcast like this, or you're listening to music, or you're watching something on YouTube or whatever.
All of that is just information streams.
But you never feel like, well, that's you.
You can take it as seriously as you want.
The chatter is another information stream, just like those things.
And it really is just like them.
I mean, people sort of have trouble getting there of like, yeah, but like, no, it is the same thing.
It feels different because it's like in your head.
But it really isn't.
It is just an information stream.
And you know, during the course Ben and I were talking about, this is what I love is, from a terminology perspective, is we understand those things?
We call it programming, right?
We call it television programming, computer programming.
And the thoughts in your head, if you let them, If you don't realize that they're programming you too, right?
That's what they're doing over time.
And so...
That is why that is step one.
It has to be.
Do you find that?
So this is something really interesting in there that I'm curious your thoughts on.
Which is this idea of conscious and subconscious thoughts, or thoughts and chatter?
Do you find that when you talk to people about these things, when you work with them on it, that.
They haven't even identified that the chatter exists, let alone begin the process of disengaging from it.
Do you first have to introduce just the concept of it to them, so that they can maybe begin to plug themselves into it?
Yeah, I mean for the most part.
That's why you have to make that distinction between thoughts versus thoughts, right?
Like this is one type of thought.
This is another type of thought.
Because a lot of people have never clued in on that at all.
I don't think it's a big leap.
I think most people sort of... get that, they'll go, oh, okay.
Again, though, I think what a lot of people do is they still sort of go, yeah, but...
It's like, okay, I can see that, but it's not really the same thing.
It's like they'll get sort of halfway there and it's getting them all the way there to where it's like any of that stuff that's showing up in your head all day long, all day long is stuff that you can just disidentify it from.
So, and by the way, Ben, I was going to say, Ben, throw in some comments here.
Well, I was going to say it seems like there's a varying level of oblivion or a varying level of lack of awareness of One could be that there isn't this distinction between these two types of thoughts, right?
Another could be a lack of awareness that you don't control the subconscious chatter, that it is just there for your observation.
And I think another one might be that maybe some people are aware that there might be that chatter but they're not necessarily aware of the magnitude of it or that it's there all the time.
Chris, when we were chatting about this, you were saying how it took a long time for you to realize the negative chatter that you had in your head while you were training.
Yeah, right, yeah.
And it's like, you've been training your whole life in a very, very meaningful way.
You've accomplished incredible physical tasks and you're still a really fit dude.
But to have gone through decades and decades of training and essentially be oblivious.
Yes.
A really smart guy being oblivious to that negative thought pattern, that thought programming that was kind of permeating unconsciously.
So there's that kind of spectrum of unawareness that maybe you had in other areas but not in the one where I think it's the easiest to recognize it, just because I'm a coach.
Yeah, right.
It does this for a living.
So to me, that's where it screams at you.
Yeah.
That is, I mean, nobody is perfect at this either.
Like as we get into sort of countering this, you still fall prey to it, right?
Everybody does.
The trick and the challenge is to have the ability to pull yourself out of it, hopefully at any given moment, and that type of thing where you're talking about Ben, where I started to get into this and it was like I spend an hour in the gym every day or whatever, and one day it finally occurred to me like maybe I should become aware of what I'm thinking while I'm working out.
It was like, this is...
There's some negative stuff going on here that I was never aware of, right?
Yeah.
So maybe for a little, Chris and I presented on this this past weekend.
So one of the participants came up to me today.
We're now 48 hours removed from this.
And we were chatting about it and she kind of had that same realization in terms of how powerful just the awareness part of that is and how it is omnipresence.
It is always there. we were just kind of doubling down on that.
Like, this is the deal.
Like there's a reason that this is mind killer number one, is because it all starts with awareness.
And the example she was giving was After my class.
Today I read a passage from a book to my 930 class.
And she came up to after, because we've already had like three conversations about this.
And she goes.
She's like, this is exactly the type of book that my stepmom would read.
But the thing that her stepmom is just like, there's nothing for me to work on.
She has no awareness at all of where she is, in terms of even forget about the voice, in terms of like mental health.
She is incredibly mentally.
I won't say mentally ill, because that gives a stigma to it, but she is.
I like your term, Chris.
She is 200 pounds mentally overweight.
Yeah, right.
I really like that perspective instead of mentally.
Well mentally, because it's either binary right.
You're either mentally well or you're mentally sick, mental illness.
Yep.
And she is very mentally out of shape.
Yet she has no concept.
That is something that she actually needs to work on, because she is living a very, very challenging life because of it.
It permeates everything, including, as you said, her physical health is a mess because of it.
So you mentioned awareness, which is the countermeasure.
Oh, sorry.
No, no, no, it's fine.
I think that's where we're going anyway.
Natural segue.
So just to clarify that term.
The countermeasure is sort of the overarching strategy that we're trying to employ against the mind killer.
The same way we would be like, if we're working in strength, it's like okay, we're in the strength kind of channel, so to speak.
And then we have a lot of exercises that we can stack up in order to gain strength, build strength.
Same idea.
So it's Awareness is sort of like the strength term, so to speak.
And then I break it down by exercises that help you build that countermeasure, right?
The thing we did this past weekend, Ben.
I mean we start off with kind of various meditation practices, which is really the root of that.
Most awareness building is essentially some form of meditation.
To kind of dovetail on your point about people that don't even realize how unaware they are when we do those small, like beginner meditation type things.
The people who are like that are the people who, when you ask so what did you?
You know, were you able to focus on the thing?
And they're like, yeah, no problem.
Like the whole time.
And you're like, no, I guarantee that that didn't happen, right?
More from this conversation in just a few minutes.
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Okay, let's get back to this conversation with Chris.
You've got seven tactics and we can maybe spend as much time on any of them that you think is the most value, but I'm going to list them real quick.
So these are the seven tactics of awareness, which again is the countermeasure to oblivion.
Tactic one is meditation, which you just teased a little bit.
Tactic two is mind priming.
Tactic three is mind assessment.
Four is a mental mantra.
Five is thought voicing.
And six is to stop multitasking.
So if there's anything you feel like is worth mentioning more about meditation, cool.
If not, I'm happy to jump in.
And those are sort of, you know, that's from an article I wrote about this.
It's not an exhaustive list necessarily, whether you call them tactics or exercises or whatever, the whole idea.
I mean, I tend to refer to them actually more as exercises these days.
Because, again, keeping it in the context of the analogy to physical fitness makes a lot of sense.
But by and large, they are some form of meditation.
And so like, what we did with the folks at this seminar was walked them through meditation, four very basic meditative practices that build on one another.
And so the first thing we tend to do with people is just nothing, which I love, starting off with where We did it for five minutes, where it was like OK everybody, we're sitting in a circle.
Close your eyes, and I just want you to do nothing for five minutes.
And see what that feels like.
See what you notice.
And it's a chance to be as opposed to do, which I think is so valuable these days, especially because we we do all the time and we're constantly get a drumbeat of do more, get up earlier.
Right.
Like it's just do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
And. we have lost the ability to be bored, basically.
Being bored is an extremely valuable mental health tool.
And I tell people next time you're in a truck or car or whatever and you've got a 30-minute drive, Just don't listen to anything and see what that does for you and see if you can notice where your mind's going during that right.
So it's a really valuable tool because people are uncomfortable doing it.
It's like five minutes seems like it's 20 minutes.
And coming out of that, the sort of cue is how'd that feel and what did you notice?
And...
People say they've noticed something physically.
They notice the way they feel.
Some people might notice their thoughts.
They tend to not do that.
It tends to be sort of physical or something like that.
So we'll kind of walk them along that progression.
Then we'll do a notice shifting focus exercise where you sort of dive into what it feels like to focus on different things.
And we use the darkness behind your eyes or what you're hearing.
Again, these are kind of precursors to meditation.
A lot of times I feel like meditative practices are almost.
It sounds really basic, like it's simple, but it's not easy right.
And they almost launch, they get too advanced too quickly.
We sort of talk about it, but what's it actually feel like?
And the upshot of those two things is to get those two terms in people's heads.
Focusing, like what it's like to focus, and then what it's like to notice.
Right.
In contrast to that, because that then builds on the meditative practice which, in very simple terms, is just those two things.
People think it's calming your mind.
It's it's none of that has nothing to do with that.
It is picking a focal point for your conscious energy and then noticing when you get distracted from it, which for most people happens in about three seconds, if not faster, but they don't notice it.
And that's the challenge.
That's the skill to build.
Again, they'll be like.
You'll be like hey.
Put very simply, it's like we're going to focus on what we hear for the next five minutes.
Close your eyes.
Okay.
Just focus on this 100% of your attention on what you hear.
And some people, again, you'll be like, how'd you do?
Great.
Yeah.
It was focused the whole time.
You were not guaranteed.
You were not.
There were all sorts of, there was all sorts of chatter happening that you just were not, you were oblivious to.
If, if somebody was to, if you're working with somebody, and that was the case and they go great like yeah, nailed it.
Really?
I just focused on what I was listening to the whole time.
And I don't think another thought came in.
Like, where do you go with them with that response?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it's eating a little bit of kind of giving a little slice of humble pie there of again, like no, you didn't.
Let's try it again.
So you can shift the focus.
So you can try other focal points.
You could try, again, darkness behind your eyes.
You can try your breathing, which I don't like to start with because it's something you can control your breathing.
And that makes it a little bit more challenging, because people tend to then try to control it instead of just noticing it.
Or you can do the mind priming thing, which is sort of like a mini meditation, where you're literally just checking in on your thoughts.
So sometimes that's a better approach for people where...
We're making the focal point the thoughts themselves.
And so that can have sort of a little bit of a breakthrough effect where it's like okay, I want you to just pay attention to your thinking for a little bit here.
And try to notice, again, the chatter.
Don't try to think about something.
Try to just focus on your thinking.
The quote-unquote thinking, right?
Because once they sort of can do that, that can help break it out where...
Now they go, oh, okay, I see what's going on there.
Now, if I'm trying to pay attention to something else now, hopefully they can notice when the thoughts interrupt that.
A couple things.
We started this with talking about oblivion, and one of the things we want to get folks to, we want to get ourselves to, is this recognition that we are the observer of our thoughts.
And one of the things that and this happens, I think, anytime somebody tries to meditate, certainly anytime.
I've tried, but it was brought home over the weekend as you were doing these exercises then you'd talk with the group about what they experienced, what they felt, et cetera.
And almost to a T when somebody had something to say.
Basically what they were saying was I spent the whole time judging myself for feeling like I did the thing wrong.
Yeah.
And so.
So that's really interesting to me, this idea of like we want to be the observer of our thoughts.
But we can't be the observer if we are actively judging ourselves for the thoughts.
Because if we're actually judging ourselves for the thoughts, in your metaphor we're judging the radio station for playing the next song and the next song after that.
We can't possibly separate ourselves if we are also at the same time taking ownership of it.
And so how hard is it for folks?
How hard is it for you as a coach or somebody working with this to get people to move from that?
Just OK, cool.
I observe it.
I notice the thoughts.
But man, I got my hands around that thing.
And if that thought wasn't exactly what I hope it was going to be, I'm somehow failing or I'm somehow a bad person.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think, to start, it's a great.
You're right.
We had a number of people who were like oh, I kept thinking like, am I doing this right?
Am I failing at this?
And it was getting them to the realization of like, you see how much judgment there is there?
Like how much the chatter is laced with judgment, right?
So it's a great start.
That's a great step.
The fact that they even realize that's what's going on is a really good thing.
Then it is because they would even say.
I noticed that, or so I was thinking this.
And so it's then trying to reframe even that to, no, you weren't thinking that.
You were noticing that that thought was showing up.
And the verbiage there is important.
Like the terms we use are important.
So because that's then helping you disidentify it.
So it was like they were there still.
And again, you know, this is like people have never done this before.
So so it's like totally to be expected.
Right.
It'd be like.
It'd be like you've never worked out before and you're like, how come I can't deadlift 400 pounds?
I mean, I thought, you know, well, yeah, you've never done this before.
So you shouldn't be surprised at that.
It's making them realize again that that awareness is great.
But then taking it one step further and just being like, If someone came out of that and they said I noticed that this thought showed up with sort of a judgment aura to it, that would be sort of like the perfect response, right.
Because that's a complete observation and they had no ownership of it.
Generally, people don't do that, though.
Again, they're like, oh, I noticed I was judging this and I was thinking this, right?
It's such a good step on the journey, though, right?
Totally.
Absolutely.
Yes, we all want to be the detached observer.
But as you said, that's the deadlifting 400 pounds.
To me, if they're aware, and I was like, I had this experience.
I was aware that I was judging myself in the middle of it.
You know, that's...
That's a, you are not in oblivion.
Is it basically what it is?
You have progressed past the oblivious state because you have so much awareness.
We are not where we want to be.
We are not the detached observer, right?
Okay.
We also most of our people can't do 40 pull-ups and run five minute miles and have 8 body fat, but you are now in the mental gym and you are doing the work.
What we don't want them to do is not enter the gym, right?
That is the case where like, nope, I got it.
I was good.
Like, yep.
Okay, what's the next thing?
Right.
Okay, Chris, what's step two?
Cause I got this one.
I nailed it.
Yep.
So that's like I think that the that detached program I really like.
What you said is, I know like Ooh, that's a, that's a good one.
Like I didn't, man.
I was really thinking about how dot dot dot, like i know i noticed that my thoughts did.
This is really cool and maybe even that you know.
I think it's just like as the the constant nudging them of, like retweaking that, the thought experiment to retweak the narrative that they're telling themselves along the way.
I think we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit, but that's a really cool understanding.
Because maybe just go back full circle again, or not full circle, but back to the beginning.
It's if we don't have this level of awareness, if we continue to live in the state of oblivion, that chatter will end up programming you.
And that's what we don't want.
We don't want to live as unconscious beings programmed by our genetics, our surroundings, our environment, our experiences.
We want to take some level of control over this.
And there is a that's what basically we want to, we want to train it and um, that's a dangerous place to be is in the default.
Yeah.
Especially when you take into consideration that a lot of that programming is negative, right?
So if you consider some percentage of that chatter is judgment back towards ourselves.
If we let that, if the bulk of that is negative and we let that program us like, just imagine where you end up after 2030, 4050 years of that.
Yeah, right.
And not only judgment, but like, you know, as you said, human beings have a negativity bias, right?
It's like for survival.
It paid off big to remember which berries killed you rather than.
Is a blueberry taste better than a strawberry?
You know?
So that negativity bias is going to let the defaults pop up.
There's a lot of things that are gonna keep us from kind of reaching our peak.
One thing on that too, just on sort of labeling thoughts as well.
There's a lot of people talking about negative and positive thoughts.
I tend to prefer helpful and unhelpful or useful and useless because...
You can think of something like I'm so out of shape which is a negative thought as being helpful if that motivates you to get in the gym and change your diet and all of this kind of stuff.
So it's more... is this thought serving me in the moment, right?
Is this helping me or not helping me?
I think it's the best way to look at it.
And you can look at that as a judgment.
But again it's sort of an objective judgment of like is this?
You know, if you can achieve that level, that's like really where we want to be.
I will say too, that what's really important is, Ben.
You know, you did it when we were in that circle.
You're like, I noticed this and I was having this.
And I'm same way, right?
It's like you're not...
No one's like get a guru or like getting to this.
I'm on this higher plane of existence than all of you guys.
Right.
I was I was like, here's what I noticed.
I noticed that I was because I'm doing this course.
Thoughts were coming up about, OK, what's the next lesson I got to teach?
Like, am I doing this like same types of things?
Right. the important component was the awareness of it.
Not that, again, not in control, right?
Like that's the whole thing.
It's like, that's fine that that's coming, whatever it is.
The point is to be able to be aware of it.
If I didn't say this, I'll say it now, which is that this is going to be the first of a series of conversations that we're going to have with you, Chris.
That I'm really excited about.
We're going to go through all the seven mind killers.
I want to end this conversation.
I think it's related, or it might just be my excuse to bring up something that I was able to witness, that I enjoyed as a witness and not a participant, which is the workout at the end of the seminar.
Ben, could you give us a sense of what was going on?
Just give us a high level sense of what you as the coach were trying to accomplish.
And then please tell us about stealing Chris's bike seat.
My seat is missing.
Yes.
And then Chris, I'd love to talk to you about the experience of that, but within the context of this idea of oblivion and awareness.
But Ben, I'd love for you to set the scene for us.
So throughout the day, as Chris said, we essentially progressed this meditation practice from just be to let's focus darkness behind the eyes ears, to let's pay attention to the thoughts.
And we basically, let's do now with some actual stimulus with music.
We progressed up to doing it in a a dynamic environment where you're going to be challenged and the negative voice is going to pop up.
Like nobody gets to go through that workout without the negative voice becoming loud and probably dominant.
And we just kind of structured the workout to make it very accessible.
Everybody can do it.
And purposely so, so that everyone kind of gets to judge themselves not only against the feeling that they have.
But you create a little bit of race.
So now there's like, not only that, there's social comparison.
And there's a lot of different dynamics that people have to deal with in everyday situations.
And for people that are really fit, that are going to win, they might not have that as forward-facing as some of the people that are new to physical training.
So I – Chris is one of those people and Chris –
Kudos to him.
I did Chris's meditation practice.
Chris did my workout portion.
So during that portion I added an additional challenge for Chris and a bunch of the other people that were kind of excelling at that thing.
So I'll let Chris kind of say what the...
Yeah, we should probably.
The workout involved burpee box jumps and biking where it was.
You had a set number every two minutes of burpee box jumps to do and then you were trying to accumulate X amount of calories and do that as quickly as possible.
So I'm going... going back to my bike and round whatever.
And, and Ben had taken the seat, the bike seat out.
Now it was a concept to bike for folks who are like, yeah, concept to bike slides out.
Yes.
It's relatively easy to slide out.
I will say I don't use Concept2, but we don't have them in my gym.
So I barely ever have used these things.
And so Ben was putting it in as a trigger.
Like, how are you going to respond to this kind of thing?
I actually legitimately thought I had like accidentally pulled the seat out somehow, because even when I was setting the seat it was like wow, this is really sensitive.
Like it's really easy to pull up.
And I thought, oh, I got off and I pulled, like I grabbed it.
You know, I'm like gasping for air, i'm like i pulled this thing out.
So i'm like ben, the seat's gone right and he's he's, he's and is like what seat?
And i'm, and then at that point i'm like am i hallucinating?
Like am i that out of breath at this point?
Yeah, I was literally.
And then I finally clued in like, oh, OK, I understand what he's doing here.
Got it.
No problem.
Like, we'll get after it.
Right.
But yeah, I mean, even that, though.
I thought about it.
I was like, I mean, I probably should have figured that out like in the, in the moment, whatever.
Um, But it is interesting because I did think once it was clear like okay, Ben did that on purpose, right?
That this was kind of a trigger test.
I did spend some time then thinking, cluing in on like okay now, what am i thinking?
Right, like we're past that, so good is any of that?
Is any of that thought like oh, that was, here's some examples, right?
Oh, that was stupid.
Like you should have figured that out right away.
That that bent, that that was what was going on, is it?
Oh, this is hard, this is harder now, And all of that stuff kind of came up.
And so it was, despite me sort of not understanding what was going on, it still served a positive, like it was a training opportunity, right?
Because regardless, even if this is great like, even if it doesn't turn out exactly the way you want, even from a triggering standpoint, there's a follow-on thing that's going to happen there where you can take note of what you're thinking right.
What the chatter is.
And that was basically the exercise behind the exercise, right?
Was.
Let's force people into a triggered environment.
Whether it's something that they triggers, come in through the five sentence.
In that workout, in generally, it's what people feel, right?
It's they get into round seven and now they're completely anaerobic.
Their heart's trying to rip through their rib cage and they got battery acid in their veins and they're feeling this thing and they're being triggered.
Well, there's other things that trigger people.
And then the mind will if you don't take control of it, which is what we'll get to in these subsequent conversations.
But the first thing is you have to be aware of it.
You have to be aware of, oh, there goes my thoughts doing that thing.
Programming.
The programming just kind of changed.
You went from watching a rom-com to a horror movie.
It's like, you don't have control over it.
It just sort of happened.
And if you go, okay, I don't need to give this more meaning.
What Chris could have done is gone like, this is so unfair.
Why did he do this?
Like, oh my God, am I not going to finish now?
I was in first.
Now am I not going to finish first?
And like just layer on and people that don't have Chris's – wherewithal, Chris's practice, Chris's understanding of this, this is where they go.
I've done this with my games athletes and they've stopped.
Really?
Yep.
Wow.
Yep.
So it's like one of those things that, like you know in this small little circle who we've talked about this a lot and we've worked through this a lot we don't recognize how much something that triggers you and if you don't have that level of awareness or where this goes down, people go really.
What do you mean they would stop?
That's the same thing as an athlete arguing with a ref during a game.
Yeah, right.
And this is why we do it.
This is something that's outside of your control.
You don't have control that the seat is no longer on the bike.
How are you going to respond?
That's it.
The ref called a bad call on you.
It's done, it's gone.
How are you going to respond to that?
Maybe you're just like.
You don't visibly respond, but inside it's eating you up to the point where it's deterring your performance.
Well, that's something we got to work on.
And this is why I believe that this aspect of training to become an elite performer is as important as what's your Fran time?
What's your mile time?
How many pull-ups can you do and all the rest?
Because that's your potential.
But very few people have the ability to actually perform at, or even close to their potential when things don't line up with their expectations.
If it's lining up with their expectations sunshine rainbows, 70 degrees, winning by 30 points in the fourth quarter.
I know what it's going to look like.
What we know it's going to look like.
What happens when you know.
Example is in the 2015 CrossFit Games, when you got to get on a plane and the plane is delayed on the way back and you get back at 2 am.
You have to be on in the Pacific Ocean at 7 a.m. next morning.
And this is where the athletes were talking about boycotting.
This is like, literally, they're like, we're going to boycott the games.
That's insane.
That that's where their thought process went to as opposed to.
I'm going to do what I can with what I got for where I am.
I'm going to control all the rest.
So there's a few things out of that.
One is what was so interesting about it to me too, was it highlighted?
It's not always what you're thinking during the workout, but after it as well.
Because I tend to be the type of person where I'll go oh, I'll beat myself up of oh, I should have realized that that's what Ben was doing right away.
Like, you're smarter than that.
You should have realized.
And again, that's chatter that goes.
And so, like, that was a really good...
I mean, it helps to be in this environment where we're really into this stuff too at least for me, and hopefully other people as well because I was really noticing oh, I'm going there right now.
Like, we don't need to do that, right?
No one's judging you.
I love that so much.
I just want to pause on that.
I'm going there right now.
I don't need to do that.
Yep.
That is so, If you have that level of awareness of where your voice, Because it's going to do that.
Yes, it will.
Yeah.
Right?
It's going to do that.
But if you don't go with it... Yep.
Yep.
That's the magic.
It is.
It is.
And then the other piece is, like, I don't train...
But the example I use with like kids I coach kids soccer and I'll do this with especially some of the as the kids get older is like hey guys, we're going to get some calls that don't go our way in this game.
If the referee calls a foul on us and it wasn't a foul, like he calls a trip and it wasn't a trip, why was it a trip?
Why is it a foul?
And they'll go, you know, they'll kind of dance around it.
And the thing you're trying to get them to is because the referee said so.
Right.
That's all that matters at that point.
Like arguing about it doesn't change that.
Like the ref, the only reason it's a foul ultimately is because referee said so.
And so by extension, no point in arguing about it.
No point in worrying about it, dwelling on it, screaming at the referee.
None of that stuff is worthwhile.
You just have to realize it's because the guy said so or girl said so.
And that's the same thing like you're talking about with getting a no rep or something like that.
It's a no rep because the guy said so.
Right.
And the extension to that is, okay, who cares about training games athletes?
And Chris, when it was a 20-year Navy SEAL, that's probably not that relevant for most of us.
But what is, is when your wife or husband says something that triggers you.
Yes, sure.
Yeah.
And when your mind starts to go there and you go, there it goes, I'm not going there with you.
I'm just going to sit back and watch the movie happen.
And you can have that detached observer of the change of the programming.
That's where this becomes powerful in your everyday life.
I agree.
I think it's a good place to wrap up again.
This is the first of many.
I'm really looking forward to it.
RareSense.com.
You've got a bunch of things written up there.
You can get ahead of us if you're out there and you want more of this mind killer stuff.
Chris, you've got a bunch of essays, a bunch of articles and a bunch of exercises as well for folks out there.
So again, RareSense.com.
And we'll put that link in the show notes.
Chris, thank you so much.
We really appreciate it.
Thanks, fellas.
Yep.
We'll be back soon for a brand new episode of Chasing Excellence.
