Have you ever heard people say that you just “have to learn to say no”?

Or maybe you've said yes to one too many things or one too many people at the expense of living what could have been your authentic, wealthy, healthy and happy self.

Believe it or not, my life as a SEAL, with its intense operations, constant training, and deployments to war zones, felt more balanced than my follow-on career in the conventional business world. At the time, I didn't realize this, which led me to leave the Teams.

When I first checked in as a Sniper Instructor, there was this debilitating thing floating around called the K.I.S.S. method, which means “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” It was debilitating because the art of sniping is a complex skill, and complex skills require complex training methods. It's what makes the impossible - possible.

I was on my computer, just firing through one of my Deep Work blocks of the day. I was filled with levels of joy, focus, and execution that I hadn't felt in a while.

As the jumper went into a steep turn to swoop in for a high-speed landing, the light bulb went off: the reason for these elevated levels of performance I was experiencing was my new 'Pull Through.’

“Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman

Welcome to The Average Frog Broadcast: Redefining modern masculinity by delivering a weekly source of actionable principles, strategies and tools for using your passion to harmoniously fulfill your financial, professional, and personal purposes. STOP adapting to our culture. START defining it.

That day, I learned that every fight should be considered a fight to the death, and direct contact should be avoided whenever possible. But there was a deeper lesson: Aggression and force only work when you’re dealing with someone or something weaker than yourself and here's the point.

Men - we don't fight those who are weaker than us, we help them. That's real strength.

Ex-cur-sion: A deviation from a regular pattern, path, or level of operation that leverages flow states to help you return to the effective and authentic mindsets, practices, intuitions and ways of being that allow you to operate at your highest and most joyous level as an individual and as part of a team.

Without maintaining a rhythm of "Excurting" a build up occurs making us sluggish, unresponsive and even unpleasant. This build up causes fatigue and a loss of perspective as our heads drop low to endure the weight of a life of grind and hustle.

It’s healthy, natural and even critical to our very survival to consider what must be stopped, started or modified in our lives if we are to evolve at a pace greater than the change around us.

As we approach 2021, I invite you to go beyond focusing on the habits you want to change and take it a step further and consider their causes. Get to the roots.

As you go into this next year, I invite you NOT to travel in submission—to politics, pandemics or whatever story you have about why you may or may not be living out a life for which you were born to live.

Hang tight on any new plans or goals for NEXT YEAR. I've got something brewing that could radically change the next 12 months of your life.

But for this test to work, you’ll want to measure yourself against what I consider the greatest deed of them all.

Which is to risk it all to discover and live out your God given purpose in a way that allows you to inspire others to do the same.

Now I consider this test a matter of LIFE or DEATH…

…because if you’ve been seduced into trying to live a life that is too far beyond your situation and self (mentally, physically and / or financially) you could end up spending the rest of your life experiencing constant feelings of both frustration and inadequacy.

Now these are the superhumans among us. They’re the ones that are taking ground, redefining the roles you’ve been taking for granted. They’re the ones raising the bar, setting the new standards and making your life very tough.

And since they are truly accomplishing superhuman things the old saying “If you can’t beat them, join them” is in full effect. But here’s the problem.

I was miserable. Despite the fact that I spent over a decade training and working with the most highly trained special operators in the world, I had allowed myself to conform to the overworked, under-fit and uninspired American corporate culture that I had honestly thought I was immune to. That was my first mistake.

Did you ever feel that you’re getting nowhere closer to your goal of living a good life of passion and purpose? Or that you’re drifting further away from that life? I’m not surprised. I know I found myself in that situation and statistically speaking, you probably are too, and here’s why.

One of the first things I teach the members of Tribe 215 is that real personal development is not about forcing ourselves to “do” things. It’s about transforming who we are into the person we need to be.

Another word for this is “Metamorphosis”, which means that we become a different sort of creature. Like when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, or a tadpole into a toad.

You see. When we’re in a long-term fight, like the one we all find ourselves in now, it’s important to not merely remain strong, but to keep getting stronger.

And this is the purpose of this email.

With my body failing from exhaustion and hypothermia the cold reality of failing the land navigation course for the second time and being dropped from SEAL training started to settle in.

I wasn’t about to quit, but I started to suspect that my body may have decided to throw in the towel.

I really started to ask myself, “How in the hell could I have let this happen”?

So, the question not only is how do we break free from the herd, but how do we make sure we don’t fall back into it?

To begin to answer this here, I thought I’d describe some of the “withdrawals” I felt as I pulled my mouth off the udders of others and stepped out on my own.