Navy SEALs are some of the world's most elite warriors.
Key to their success is their mental toughness.
Here're 7 lessons that I learned training with ex-SEALs that'll help you forge an unbeatable mind:
8 years ago, 20 of us lined up to take on the challenge.
Only 13 made it to the end.
We ran, swam and worked out for 52+ hours straight during the SealFit Kokoro camp.
We got yelled at and didn’t get enough food.
And we loved it.
What is Kokoro?
• Run by former Navy Seals
• 52hour crucible with no sleep
• Hours of ‘surf torture’ in the Pacific
• 1000s of pushups, burpees and squats
• Countless bruises, cuts and pulled muscles
• And a night ruck which had us all hallucinating
Here are the lessons:
🔹Clarify your Purpose:
When you’re faced with obstacles, you’ll need to know your Why.
Getting in and out of the freezing Pacific made several participants quit.
But when you know your purpose, you’ll overcome whatever life throws at you.
🔹Learn to set micro-goals:
Big tasks are scary and you’ll procrastinate.
Knowing we had to do 1 burpee followed by 1 broad jump for an entire mile was daunting.
But when you focus on just the next action and get that done. And again. You’ll master the big tasks with ease.
🔹Focus on your teammates:
There are times when you feel sorry for yourself.
When my feet were covered in blisters, I asked my teammates how I could help them.
Life gets easier when we’re looking out for one another. Focus on helping your team and they’ll do the same for you.
🔹Invite adversity into your life:
Seek out challenges, then when life gets tough, you’re prepared.
No one made me sign up for Kokoro, but I knew the event and the training for it would transform my outlook on life.
Learning to embrace tough moments in training will help you crush adversity in life.
We don’t know when we will be tested, but you can prepare yourself.
🔹Find something bigger than yourself:
When you’re young, you think the world evolves around you. It doesn’t.
Knowing my children were watching fuelled me to set an example for them.
Connect your goals and mission in life to something bigger than yourself to build a legacy.
🔹Being physically strong makes you mentally tougher:
Mental and physical toughness are linked.
Training outside in the freezing Scottish rain in February made me stronger and tougher.
Find an event you need to train for and commit to it no matter the conditions.
🔹Shatter the limits society or your own mind sets for you:
We often believe our own BS about deserving a break.
My arms were shot after 600 pushups. But then we ended up doing 1000 in less than 45minutes.
Don’t listen to mediocrity.
Become obsessed.
Surprise yourself and keep pushing.
You’ll love what you’ll uncover.
That's a wrap!
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Jocko Willink is known for discipline, grit, and extreme ownership.
But when it came to parenting, he got some things completely wrong and had to learn the hard way.
Here are 10 powerful lessons from his conversation with his daughter, Rana:
1. The Rock-Carrying Challenge: Teaching Grit and Determination
Jocko set up a challenge: swim across a river, grab the biggest rock you can carry, and bring it back. Most kids chose small stones easy to manage. But his daughter? She went for a massive boulder.
It was so heavy she couldn’t swim with it. Instead, she walked along the riverbed, fully submerged, only surfacing for air. When she finally emerged from the water, gasping, drenched, and victorious, it was clear, she had won by sheer willpower.
👉 Parenting Lesson: Kids don’t build grit when things are easy. Let them struggle, let them problem-solve, and let them win through perseverance.
• Present parents to 6 kids (2–14 years old), with nr 7 due
• Happy marriage
• Pursuing fitness goals
• CEO of a medium-sized company plus voluntary work
Here's the deep dive: 🧵👇
The only reason any of this works is because of the incredible people around me—first and foremost, my wife, who is the backbone of our family.
But also my amazing kids, our wider family, and my fantastic colleagues at work.
I am part of a bigger system. And I lean on it daily.
But even with support, time management is my biggest challenge.
Every day, we juggle the demands of work, family, and personal goals. Some days flow smoothly. Other days, I feel stretched, like there’s never enough time to give each the attention it deserves.
How do I navigate this without feeling overwhelmed?
Several times a week I get asked: “How do you guys do it?”
• 6 kids (1-13yrs)
• Happy marriage
• Both work out daily
• PhD & now CEO of a company
The answer is, there’s no secret. But here's my attempt to give a fuller picture in the hope that it helps other parents.
But first up, the reason I’ve struggled to write about this is that any attempt to ‘reveal’ how we do it, will be incomplete and how things work for us, will not work for you in the same way.
I’m not trying to be prescriptive, as I don’t know your situation. But if any of my/our experience can be of help, this piece has served a purpose.
So life with 6 kids (and no paid help) is most of the time some sort of chaos.