Edition #14

Hi All!

Here is your weekly serving of practical guidance and inspiration to ensure you live your life with purpose. Feel free to forward this along to friends and family. Enjoy!

I wanted to give a quick shout to the 7 amazing individuals who have joined us since last week. Thanks for being here and welcome to the Never Idle team!

Read Time: 5 Minutes

Master Your Mindset

The 1-Second Decision

The first wave crashes over them.

The water is blistering cold 🧊.

Then another wave. And another.

Shock starts to set in.

It’s hour 2 of 130hrs of Hell Week at Navy SEAL training. Surf torture.

The mind is in fight or flight for those underneath the waves.

They start to forget why they are there. “F*ck! It’s only 2hrs in. I can’t be cold this damn long! I gotta get the hell out of here!”

But luckily for him, he was up on the beach with a parka on and a hot coffee in hand as he watched the waves wash over his brothers.

Just when the mind was about to wander, he took over and decided in that second, “I’m warm motherf*cker, I’m warm.”

Who is he? David Goggins. Former US Navy SEAL, ultramarathon runner, author, and a true master of his mindset.

He developed the 1-second rule or 1-second decision to control his mind in moments of extreme pain and suffering, moments like in the story above.

You see, he wasn’t up on the beach in a parka, sipping hot coffee. Not physically at least.

He was under those waves, just like the rest of his brothers in training. The difference between him and them?

His mind was calm. He was thinking rationally. Because in that 1 second, he mentally brought himself up on the beach with the instructors. Physically he was in the water, but mentally he was warm as could be.

There are a lot of seconds in 130hrs. You can win every single second except one and you lose. It takes one second of weakness for it to all be over.

Now look, we might not be in Navy SEAL training. But we all feel pain — we all have times when we have to suffer.

• Maybe it’s your last course before summer break

• Maybe it’s that workout you know you should get done

• Maybe it’s that certification you’re studying for

Whatever your pain is, you have a lot of seconds to decide to quit.

A lot of seconds to run, to save yourself from the suffering.

When that mental pain rushes over you, you stop thinking logically.

That’s where the 1-second decision needs to kick in.

You might not like where you are physically, but mentally you are right where you f*cking need to be. You are thinking logically because you calm your brain and it allows you to remember your why — Why you need to suffer now to see the process through.

The next time you have that painful moment, the moment when you think it might be a good idea to quit so you can get back to being comfortable, remember Goggins. Remember your why.

Don’t let your thoughts, your mind control you. “No sir, I run this motherf*cker!”

There are a lot of ‘1 seconds’. You have to pass every single one on your journey.

You don’t quit because you know the purpose behind the pain. You gain control in that moment and you put things back into proper perspective.

That’s how you win when the going gets tough.

That’s how you see things through to the end.

That’s how you master your f*cking mindset.

Hone Your Habits

Bad Habits Series: Find Substitutes

This is the 1st issue in a series I am going to do on bad habits. They might be released in consecutive weeks or they may be spread out. Still working that out. But when you see “Bad Habits Series:” in the title, you’ll know it’s part of this series.

Alright so let’s get one thing straight right off the top.

You have control of your habits. Your habits don’t control you, you control them.

You are not the victim of your bad routine, you are the architect of it.

Understood? Good.

Life can be broken down into 2 areas: luck and habits.

Luck you have no control over, so focus on your habits.

Now, bad habits creep up inside all of us. We get into a bad routine and before we know it, the compounding effect of our bad habits has us extremely unhappy with where our lives are.

This spot isn’t all bad. It means you understand your habits need to change for your results to change.

The easiest way to change a bad habit? Replace it. Substitute it with a better action.

This starts with understanding the cue or trigger of your habit. What is initiating you to perform that bad habit?

Example:

• Bad habit: You drink alcohol every weekend

• The trigger: Your friends asking you to go out

• The substitute: Drink a non-alcoholic beverage

You still get to go out. You are still socially sipping on “a drink.” But you aren’t drinking alcohol.

This is how substituting works.

Identify your bad habit → Find your bad habits trigger → Find a suitable substitute that satisfies the need to perform that action

Look - substituting doesn’t work if you aren’t mentally prepared to make the change.

If you’re thought is “Well now I have to be sober while my friends drink, that’s no fun.”

Then you aren’t mentally prepared to break the bad habit in the first place.

Remember what I said at the onset, you have control of your habits. You have to want the change you seek. That’s when substituting can become a powerful force to break bad habits.

• Want to lose weight: substitute your soda with a seltzer with lemon. Same fizz, no sugar or calories

• Want to get better sleep: substitute winding down on your phone with winding down with a book. Same mental stimuli, no blue light.

• Want to quit binge-watching TV: substitute your Netflix show with 30mins of educational YouTube videos. Same dopamine reward, but you are learning in the process.

Challenging yourself to find suitable replacements that properly fill the void left behind by your bad habit can become fun. Especially as you start to see the compounding results they provide.

We will talk about other strategies for killing off those bad habits once and for all in this Bad Habits Series but for now, go get started with substitutes.

Words of Wisdom

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Thanks for reading! And always remember…

Slow and steady. Never Idle.

Until next week,

Austin Sargent