Ep. 226 - You WILL NOT LAST In Special Forces Without These 9 Traits

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Hello, I am Kevin Smith and you have found the Terminator Training Show, your one-stop shop for no BS training, nutrition, and health information. For more, please go to Terminatortraining.com. Thank you for tuning in and enjoy the show. What's going on, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Terminator Training Show. I'm Kevin Smith. Today is going to be all about nine of the biggest lessons that I learned throughout my career in Special Forces. I spent about a decade serving in two different Special Forces groups, 10th Group and Third Group, as a Green Beret. I was at 18 Delta for most of my career and became an 18 Fox later on, which is an ill Intel sergeant. 18 Delta, by the way, for those not aware, is a medic and then uh Intel sergeant to finish out my career. And I was around some absolute complete studs throughout much of my career. I was also around a lot of average guys. By default, most guys are gonna be average. And I was also around some piss poor performers, or below average guys, or way below average guys. And a lot of people think that Green Berets, because they're the cream of the crop, everybody is just a super stud. And yes, relative to the average human being, everyone is a super stud for sure. It is no easy feat to get through special forces assessment selection, let alone the Q course, let alone have a long career as a Green Beret. However, not everyone is cut from the same cloth. And just like any profession, you have multiple different levels of performers. And these nine things that I'm gonna get into in this episode, and by the way, I made a post about this on Instagram the other day, but I figured I would get a little bit more in depth here. But these nine things are what I noticed among the absolute top performers as far as principles that they focused on and that they really shined in. So some of them are a little more mindset-based, other ones are more tactical, but I think that although some of the first ones I believe are kind of in order, they're not necessarily like focus on this one the most, this one the second most. They're all really important, and they make for a more complete individual. And I think that the these mindsets, these skill sets, these things that you want to focus on are just for anyone aspiring, whether you're not even in the military yet, or you're in the military and you want to go to selection, or maybe you're already in the queue course, you've already been through selection, maybe you're a new guy just showing up, or maybe you've been there for a while and you just want a little bit of a refresher to kind of spot check yourself and see where you're lacking and see where you need to put a little bit more focus in. I think these can be very beneficial. And also, furthermore, not just for green rays, it's although more biased towards SF special forces, these principles are quite applicable to any soft profession, really any profession that is full of high performers that really want to shine. And I think, in my opinion, that's kind of what makes life worth living. I don't know why you'd want to be a block checker for the rest of your life. Chances are, if you are watching this or listening to this and it's not your first time listening to me, you're probably not a block checker. You probably want to exceed standards and you probably have high standards for yourself. If you're newer here, then this is kind of the idea behind a lot of my content. I do a lot of fitness-specific content, and some of these will apply to fitness, but I also do a lot of personal development content, and these things are very, very applicable to just being more effective as a human being. So without further ado, let's hop into the first one. The top principle, and I think this is absolutely the underpinning of what makes an excellent SF guy, and that is fitness is the foundation, physical capabilities. Now, you don't have to be a super stud to be a green beret. Yes, you have to be relative to the average person, you have to be very, very fit and physically capable. However, a lot of people think that you have to have this like superstar athletic background or you have to have amazing genetics, you have to be able to run a 10-minute, two-mile and squat 500 pounds and do 25 pull-ups and so on. Not necessarily. Yes, there are super studs, for sure. And fitness being the foundation, as I say this, I'm not trying to say like you have to be an absolute super stud across the board, but you should always remember that it all comes back to your physical capabilities. You want to be really good at your job, your MOS, whether you're an A Team Bravo, you want to be extremely proficient in your weapon systems, your foreign weapon systems, your US weapon systems, etc. If you are an 18 Charlie, you need to be, you need to have your engineering down, you need to have your demo down, etc. You need to have your logistics down. Charlie's are always like the busiest, they're kind of the utility guys on the team. If you're at Echo, you better be able to make comps really anywhere. That is like the main thing for Echoes. Honestly, I have the utmost respect for Echoes because that stuff just stresses me out, and I can hold my own when it comes to basic communication stuff, but having a really good Echo on your team that's really good at his job is such an asset. If you're a medic, you better be able to save someone's life in a chaotic environment. You better be able to try triage people in a mass cow scenario. You better be able to sit on somebody. If, let's say you're in third group, you're in Africa, you gotta sit on someone for a while before you get higher medical care to come in because you're in a very austere environment. If you're an 18 Fox, you better be able to do your Intel work. 18 Zulu, 18 Alpha, etc. However, the underpinning of all of that is physical fitness. If you can do your job well, but you are not physically capable, then you're gonna be a liability no matter what, no matter how good you are at your job. If you're the best shot on the team, but you're always the dude that is when you do on foot infills under a ruck, you're always your team's always waiting on you, or other people have to carry your stuff, or everyone's always worried that you're gonna go down, or you're just gonna slow the team down. Or maybe you are super weak, physically weak, and you can't go and grab a teammate off the X that is maybe wounded and needs to get taken to cover to get medical care. Basic stuff like that, that is it should be like a no-brainer, of course. Yes, you should be able to do that kind of stuff, but you'd be shocked at how many guys, not just guys who are more experienced, that have kind of gotten that arrival feeling. I'll talk a little bit more about thinking that you've arrived later, but even new guys will show up, and this blows my mind. New guys will show up fresh out of the Q course after language school. By the way, you have six months of sitting in a classroom from I want to say like nine to three or nine to four, and you don't really have a whole lot of responsibilities other than learning your language. So you have plenty of time to train, you have plenty of time to eat well, and I'll get into some nutrition here in a second. But there's no excuse as a new guy showing up to group unfit. Honestly, you should be one of the top dogs on your team, or you should at least train such that you show up being as close as possible to being one of the top dogs in your team, physical fitness-wise. You don't have a whole lot else to bring to the table other than your MOS skills, your physical fitness, and your willingness to learn, and your willingness to be humble, and your willingness to do the extra grunt work for a little while before you prove yourself. So I don't care what anyone tells you. Typically, if this is if this point is argued, it's usually by someone who doesn't take their fitness seriously, they don't have the discipline to do it. And rarely will you hear anyone who is disciplined enough to keep their physical fitness in check throughout their entire career, by the way. Of course, it's gonna fluctuate a little depending on what you're doing for training, what you're doing for deployments, what you have access to, etc. But it should be at least maintained to a very, very high standard throughout your career. I'm not gonna get into specific standards because this is not really a specific fitness episode, but just note that letting your fitness slide such that you become a liability is a no-go. So that's that one. Let's hop into the second one, which is looking the part. And this one also ruffles a lot of feathers. Typically, just like the fitness one, the feathers that are ruffled are the guys that don't have the discipline to keep their fitness in check. This one typically ruffles the feathers of the guys that don't have the discipline to keep their nutrition in check. Yes, there's absolutely a training component of looking the part, and I'll kind of get into that, but let's define what looking the part means. It does not mean looking like John Rambo. It doesn't mean looking like you're always ready to get on a men's health cover. It's not that serious. Honestly, if you're that lean, arguably you're too lean to be effective. Being in a single-digit body fat range is maybe for a period of time doable if you don't have much going on as far as like serious things that you have to perform in, but it's really not healthy to maintain 7-8% body fat all year round. And I would not consider that necessarily looking the part, I would say that's overkill. However, being in a 10 to 15% body fat range, I think is very, very reasonable, and having a solid amount of muscular development and just looking like you respect yourself and that you have discipline and that you take your job seriously, you take the image of the regiment seriously, you take the fact that when you go and meet, let's say, a partner force or a team that you're working with, like maybe a regular army team that is playing your partner force on a training mission, when they have that first impression of you and you're fat and sloppy, they see this guy who's supposed to be an absolute stud, like the cream of the crop, America's finest Green Beret, and he's 27% body fat, and he's got multiple chins, and you can't see his belt, and he can't see his own penis without a mirror. That is a problem. That's a negative first impression. Like people think of Green Berets as these absolute super studs. And when you see someone that is clearly not disciplined in the kitchen, and that is outwardly displaying whether they're saying it or not, they're showing the fact by being overweight and not taking themselves seriously, the fact that they don't respect themselves enough to keep it in check in the kitchen, that is just a kind of a sign that they don't take their job seriously, and they don't take the fact that they're a walking billboard for their organization seriously. Because that's what you are. Think about it. If you are on main post, let's say you're a third group, and you're walking around at, let's say, the PX, and an 80-second guy who's maybe always looked up to Green Berets and wanted to be one, sees you and you're fat, sloppy, out of shape, overweight, and you just look really unkempt, and you look like you're a low disciplined individual. Do you really think that person, let's say he's an absolute stud, he could be a massive asset to the unit. Do you really think that dude's gonna be like, damn, what a professional group of individuals. They really have high standards if they allow this super fat and sloppy guy to be in their ranks. No, that's not what they're gonna think. They're gonna think the exact opposite. Like, what the hell? I thought this guy was a green beret. I thought Green Berets were supposed to be absolute studs. So, this one, again, you're gonna hear some rebuttals, and usually it's from people who don't look the part, they don't have the discipline to keep themselves together in the kitchen, and that's the main thing. Like I said earlier, it's not all about training. Training is definitely an important aspect, being generally strong, muscular, but you don't have to be crazy, crazy jacked. Green berets come in all shapes and sizes, and I would consider looking the part to be a wide, wide range of different looks and different physiques. However, one of the opportunities that you have every single day to either be disciplined or not be disciplined is with your nutrition because you're gonna eat every day. And every single time you come up to a meal, you have an opportunity to either choose what is right and wrong, aka the discipline choice by choosing what's right, or choosing based on what you feel like. Oh, I'm a little stressed, so I'm just gonna eat this shitty food. Or, oh, all my buddies are going to this place, so I'm just gonna go there and skip my meal prep, my healthy meal prep that's sitting in the fridge. Or, oh, I'm tired, I've earned it, I've had a long day, I am just gonna order a pizza. Those are all feelings-based decisions. And yeah, no one's gonna make all decisions based on right and wrong. But the most disciplined individuals on earth make decisions based on right and wrong more often, way more often, than decisions based on how they're feeling in the moment. And they also make decisions based on future repercussions. If you make the right decision nutritionally in the future, and you do that over and over and over again, every time you're faced with a meal, or almost every time you're faced with a meal, good things are gonna happen down the road. You're gonna be healthier, you're gonna recover faster, you're going to look the part more, you're going to perform better, you're going to have more vigor and clarity, you're going to be less inflamed. All these things contribute to being a more capable individual. When you make the wrong decision, the opposite happens. It's kinda pretty cut and dry. So, again, you're going to hear this rebutted by people that don't look the part, that don't have the discipline to do this, but you're never going to hear it rebutted by people who do. And I think it's not really all that much to ask to take your job seriously. Try to give your regiment a good look. Honestly, Greenberg is, unfortunately, somewhat recently have been known as the unit that allows fat guys in their ranks. And I have never stood for it, and I can't stand it. And I think it's a problem. Not everyone thinks it's a problem, but it absolutely is not a good look. So look the part, take it seriously, have some discipline with your training, and more so with your nutrition, and you're gonna be good to go. So, what's up, guys? A real quick break in the action before we get back to the show. There's this really, really trite quote: fail to prepare, prepare to fail. And guess what? Quotes don't become trite accidentally, they become trite because they are actually true. Almost everyone experiences it, and so it becomes a quote. And this quote is applicable to nutrition more so than almost any other aspect of life. Those who prepare their meals ahead of time will see more success, regardless of what their goals. Honestly, any successful nutrition intervention I've ever been a part of, whether it's coaching, my own, or people I know, have had some sort of planning or preparation involved. And although you can absolutely do your own meal prep, well, let's be honest, most people either do it for short periods of time and then they fall off for several months, and it's on and off like this roller coaster, and therefore they fail half the time. That's not a very good percentage, or most people just don't have the time or the bandwidth or the gumption to do their own meal prep every week. And that is where a meal prep delivery service comes in. And I have tried dozens of them, and absolutely nothing touches Mega Fit. It is hands down the best I've ever tried as far as macros are concerned, and as far as taste is concerned. Me, I prefer to get some of the meals custom made. You can actually go in and choose the meat, the produce, the starch, and the macros that you want. They also have pre-made meals that are also delicious, and the macros are fantastic for performance, body composition, and just overall vigor and well-being. I usually eat five, six, seven of these per week, and they make my life very, very simple and low stress. I typically like to cook them on the stovetop with a little bit of bone broth, let them simmer for a little while, but they also work great in the microwave. And I've got a discount code for you if you want to try. You can either go to the description and click the link for MegaFit, you'll get 10% off, or you can go to their website, megafit.com, type in the code TTM at checkout for that 10% off. Alright, guys, back to the show. Next one is going to be nobody is coming to save you. And this one applies to kind of having a victim mindset, like a low agency mindset. You believe that life happens to you and you're just a passenger along for the ride, rather than you making things happen and you being in the driver's seat of life, even if the conditions are poor, even if you are given a task or a mission or an assignment where you don't have the resources for it, or it's on a very unreasonable timeline, or you think it's maybe not fair, or something happens and maybe it's not your fault, but you also go and blame other people and you take no responsibility for it. Even things that are not your fault, guess what? They are still your responsibility. And if you're a high agency individual, which most Green Berets are, but guys do slip through the cracks, or guys are high agency getting through selection, getting through the Q course, but they show up and they feel like they've arrived. They feel like now that they're there, they've already proven themselves, and they don't have to have this go-getter, figure it the fuck out, fit faux mindset. No matter what, no matter what conditions I'm in, no matter what resources I've been given, no matter how much of a disadvantage I am at, I'm still gonna go figure this out. And here's the deal nobody really cares. Like I said, nobody's coming to save you. So if you're given an assignment and you don't get it done to high standard, by the way, you're gonna be expected to do these things to high standards and you don't get it done. It's not like people are just gonna be like, oh, okay, no, you had this special situation, you're a special individual, it wasn't your fault, it wasn't fair, whatever, we're gonna give you an out. That's just not how it works in this organization. And if you have that type of mindset, which a lot of people these days in 2026 have these victim mindsets, they think that they're these perfect individuals and they can't do any wrong. And if something, if if they can't do something, if they lack a skill set, if they lack a capability, if they lack certain knowledge, it's not their fault. Someone else was supposed to do it for them or give it to them. And that is just not how it works. So if you find yourself having low agency, if you say things like, oh, it is what it is, or I wasn't taught that, or I wasn't given this advantage, or my my parents raised me this way, and I just can't help it, or that's not my fault, that's not my responsibility. If you say these things all the time, then you are a low agency individual. And a lot of people are feeling seen right now because a lot of people are low agency individuals and they don't understand it. They don't think they're a victim, but they are victims. If they get offended very easily, I'll talk about a little bit more about having thick skin later. So just remember nobody's coming to save you. It's on you. You're gonna have some crazy, crazy expectations of you, and you're gonna have very high standards that you're held to, and everybody else's too. And guess what? Guys who succeed are the guys who get things done regardless. They figure it out, they pull out all the stops, they take the hand they're dealt, and they play it to the best of their ability, or maybe they fold that hand and they get a new hand, they play that to the best of their ability. That is just how it works. So don't sleep on that one. Next one is communication skills are non-negotiable. And in this day and age, 2026, most people spend a lot of time on pseudo-communication, aka texting, and Instagram DMs and comments and stupid Snapchat bullshit. Not a lot of Greenberries doing this, but the younger generation coming up just doesn't have a lot of communication skills. And a lot of people, going back to the agency thing, a lot of people don't think that they can even develop them. They think they either are born with communication skills or not. And that is not how it works. We'll get into leadership here in a second, which is a similar concept. But as a Green Beret, especially, but honestly, this applies to any real profession if you want to be super successful and set yourself apart, being a good communicator is a very, very beneficial trait to possess. So, what does this look like? It could be anything from showing up as a brand new guy and you're going and interviewing with your sergeant major. If you're super meek and feeble and you don't speak about yourself confidently, and you don't have a good commanding presence and a confident presence, your sergeant major is going to be like, what the hell is this guy's deal? And it's not going to give him a very good first impression of you. This is part of looking the part, honestly, being able to present yourself and especially to someone who's higher ranking than you and probably you're a little bit nervous, intimidated, if you don't practice your communication skills and you have no idea what you're doing, or you just think you're born a certain way and you can't change your ability to communicate, you're gonna struggle in this situation unless you were born with really good communication skills, or you've developed them throughout your life, which you can either do this intentionally, which I'll get into here in a second, or you kind of just do it by default. Some people are just naturally better at this kind of stuff, but that's one situation. Another one is briefing higher. So oftentimes the teams with the best briefs are gonna get the best missions, not necessarily the best teams, although that is sometimes the case, and oftentimes the best teams are also really good briefers. That's not always how it works, and the higher, so you're higher. So your command, whether you're briefing a colonel or even a general, whatever have you, they're going to be more confident in the team that presents their skill sets the best. Even if their skill sets, their actual on the X skill sets or whatever you're doing for mission skill sets are not as good as another team. If they present it really well and they're confident and they're able to speak clearly, speak confidently, look like they know what they're talking about, look like they know what they're doing as far as what they're talking about, what they're about to go do on their mission, chances are that team is going to get the better missions or the better training missions or the better trips, whatever have you. Additionally, you have things like interpersonal skills. So a lot of what Greenberries do is winning hearts and minds. You go to the local populace or you go to a different country, you work with a partner force. And if you're able to communicate really well and you're able to get people to like you, that is the big thing, being charismatic enough to get people to like you. And charismatic doesn't necessarily mean you're super witty and you're super charming and you're really articulate and well-spoken. Honestly, being charismatic is getting someone to like you. And the main thing that makes people like you is that you show interest in them. You let them do most of the talking. You ask them follow-up questions, you remember their name, you look them in the eye, you have a firm handshake, you are respectful and you're interested in that person. To be really, people think being really interesting means that you have to have all these cool stories and these cool things about you and you have to talk all the time. In reality, being interesting is a product of being interested in the person that you're talking to. And this stuff is super important for getting what you want. And when you get what you want as a Green Beret, whether that's a partner forced to agree to go on a mission with you, or it's a member of the local underground to give you some supplies or resources or information, or you're maybe a level three, like doing Jason Bourne stuff and going and talking to a source to get more information, you are doing your mission, and that has national security implications. You're literally keeping your nation safe by getting what you want. And this is a huge, huge skill that separates Green Berets apart from a lot of other, pretty much every other soft. And a lot of people just don't take it very seriously, or like I said, they just don't think they can develop it. And fact is, you can develop it. Communication is just a series of skills, and you can read about these skills, you can listen to podcasts about them, you can watch really, really good communicators, whether they're comedians, comedians are great to watch, whether they're a president or a politician giving a speech, or a pastor, pastors are also really usually good at speeches, and that can kind of carry over into briefing, but also you have to practice it. And to practice interpersonal skills, my favorite way is to go out into public and talk to strangers. And you'll notice that a lot of strangers are interested in talking to you. Some strangers are not. Sometimes you're going to get turned down, which is a great learning point that, like, when you get turned down and rejected, it's not the end of the world. But also, you get to talk to strangers and you get to work on your own skills, and you also get to learn from them. You get to learn what they do that makes them a good communicator, or you get to learn what they do that makes them a bad communicator, and you can apply certain things to your own skills. And also, it just gets you over the nervousness of going to talk to a random person that you've never met before. This is something I used to do when I realized that I sucked at communicating with like interpersonally. I what didn't have great communication skills with other people, and I learned that you could actually fix that. And one of the things I used to do was just go and talk to strangers in public, and I still do it to this day. I'm a lot better and more comfortable with it, but still, it's a really, really good exercise. It's free, it doesn't cost you anything other than some time and some manning the fuck up. By the way, when you practice things and you get better at them, it should be really uncomfortable. So these things should be really uncomfortable. Other things, speaking of uncomfortable, is if you know you don't brief well or you know you don't public speak well, whatever have you, not that you're gonna do like public speeches, but briefing and public speaking is kind of the same thing. You're briefing someone who's way higher ranking than you, and there's a lot writing on these briefs, so guys are nervous. And if you're not very good at that, guess what? You can practice it by a in general practicing things like going to a Toastmasters club where you actually get assigned things to talk about in front of a group of people, and they rate you and they give you feedback on it, and you get better and better over time, or you can do things like improv, you just get better at speaking off the cuff. Really, really, really beneficial and really uncomfortable for most people. And then, furthermore, once you are coming up to these things, you actually rehearse them. And rehearsing is not just like going over it in your head one time, it's actually going over it ideally with an audience that can give you feedback and say, hey, fix this, fix this. You said this too many times, you use these filler words, you do these awkward things with your hands, whatever have you. And you get better and better at it. And the more your team refines and rehearses their brief, the better it's gonna sound. And the more likely you are to instill confidence in the person you're briefing to give you what you want. So, communication skills, don't sleep on them and know that they can be learned. If your communication skills suck, you got some work to do, and nobody is a master communicator, you could always do better, and there are always resources out there. Lots of books, lots of podcasts, lots of different creators on social media that you can learn from. But I want to say it again, make sure you get out there and actually do the work, the uncomfortable work that makes you really, really not feel great about it, and that makes you a little bit nervous and anxious and self-conscious. That is where the real growth happens. Really, whatever you're practicing, but definitely with communication. Next one is tenacity is perishable. So, tenacity is basically the ability to lean into really, really hard times. A lot of people call this like mental fortitude. Mental fortitude is a lot more overarching. There's a lot of different aspects of it, but being a tenacious person means that when you're faced with difficult situations that a lot of people either shy away from and avoid, or maybe if they do start it, they quit once it gets hard. Tenacious people lean into them and they continue to figure it out and get it done. And embrace the discomfort and embrace the pain and embrace the difficulty. And yes, of course, you have to be tenacious. You have to have tenacity in order to make it through selection. There is no way around that. You have to have tenacity to make it through the cue course, you have to have tenacity to make it through as a new guy as you start getting like guys are gonna make fun of you, guys are gonna give you shit, you're gonna get treated a little bit like you're the new guy, which you should. Every team's a little different. Some teams are, in my opinion, a little bit over the top to new guys and treat them disrespectfully. I don't like that. That's I think less of a problem now, but I know it used to definitely be a huge thing, and it probably still is on certain teams. On the teams I was on, we treated new guys with respect, but also we treated them like new guys. They had to prove themselves. But either way, tenacity is perishable. So there will be periods of time in your career where you're not doing a lot of whole super hard shit all the time. You're not doing a bunch of things that are gonna build that tenacity muscle, build that mental fortitude. And I say build that muscle, and it sounds a little bit trite, but it's a real thing. The more often you lean into hard things, things you don't want to do, but you know you need to do, things that are gonna better you, even though they're gonna be a struggle and they're gonna require a lot of effort, and they're maybe gonna require a lot of overcoming resistance at the beginning that you just don't want to do it, but you know you have to, so you just get it done type thing. If you don't do that on a regular basis, you act your brain actually there's a part in your brain that actually weakens. And if you do those things on a regular basis, it strengthens. It's called the AMCC, the anterior mid-singulate cortex. This is something I learned from Andrew Huberman, and he talks about it quite often. But when you are going about your day and you always choose the slightly harder things, for example, when there's an escalator and a staircase, you take the stairs. When you see something that's out of place in your house, you go put it in place. Even if you have something else to do, even if you don't feel like doing it, let's say it's a couple dishes in the sink or whatever, you don't feel like doing the dishes, you just go do them anyway. If there's a laundry line around your bed, you go fold the laundry, even if you don't exactly want to do it. If you're going to train and you don't feel like training, you want to push it off till later, you go train. Going back to the eating thing, the discipline thing in the kitchen. If everybody's going to get pizza and you know pizza is not on your plan and you have a meal ready, that's chicken and rice or steak and rice, whatever have you, and you know that is going to be a harder decision, it's going to be the less fun decision, it's going to take a little bit of discipline, but you know it's the right thing. That's when you choose that, you build that tenacity. These little difficult things, as well as some bigger things like taking a five-minute cold plunge or doing a really, really hard workout once in a while, or waking up instead of pressing snooze in the morning. I mean, that in my opinion is a pretty little thing, but all those little things stacked on top of each other are going to build your tenacity muscle. And when you do the opposite, when you choose the easier route, you degrade your tenacity and you become a little softer and a little less, you degrade your fortitude over time. And there will be very, very difficult times that you're going to have to face. Way more difficult than what you're going to face in selection or the Q course when you're in group. There will be some really, really hard times, really stressful times, serious adversity. It's different for everyone, but it will happen. And if you are on a regular basis building that tenacity muscle, you're going to be way better suited to handle the really, really hard stuff. If you're always choosing the easy route when things are easy and you don't really have things that you just are being given to you on a day-to-day basis from your job, let's say you're at a school that's like pretty chill, that doesn't have a lot of difficult tasks, and you're kind of hanging out and you let that slide, then when you get exposed to the really, really hard thing, it's going to be a lot more of a difficult task for you. It's going to be a lot more of an emotional event for you. So remember that tenacity is a perishable thing. And if you are not constantly trying to build it, you are literally going to go backwards. You're going to be less tenacious and less tenacious. Your fortitude is going to degrade, and you're going to be known as someone who crumbles when shit hits the fan and real hard times come about. So don't sleep on that. Next one, the confidence fairy doesn't exist. So you'll see things online. It just drives me nuts, but you'll see stuff online like to be confident, you just gotta believe in yourself. Or to be confident, you have to go to the mirror and just scream positive affirmations to yourself about how good you are, how great you are. You gotta listen to this pump-up music, this I am the greatest by what it who is it? R. Kelly. No, that is not where confidence comes from. Confidence comes from evidence. So there's two different types of confidence that are really, really important for a Green Beret or for anyone in software, for anyone who wants to perform at a high level. One is confidence in yourself, the other is confidence in your skills. So skill sets. Let's talk skill sets first. Being confident in your ability to do something at a high level, which by the way, you're gonna have to do a lot of different things at a high level. It's not just your MOS, it's not just shooting, it's shooting, moving, communicating, medicating, but all the things that go into that. If you're on a free fall team, you're gonna have to be really good under a parachute. If you're on a dive team, you're gonna have to be really good underwater, you're gonna have to be really good with your dive equipment, you're gonna have to be really good with the boats, etc. If you're on a mobility team and you're always on different types of vehicles, you're gonna need to be able to A, use those vehicles as far as operate them, but also you're gonna need to be able to do maintenance on them, you're gonna need to be able to fix them, you're gonna need to be able to recover them when they're stuck or where they break down, whatever have you. So you're gonna have to have this big, wide variety of skill sets. Green berets are like the jack of all trades, master of none. And you don't just magically get confident at something without actually putting reps in. So what does that tell you? In order to be confident, you have to also be competent. And in order to be competent, to have the capability of doing something, you have to practice doing that thing. You have to get the reps in. Certain people are just naturally better at certain things, other people are not so good at those things, but you're still expected to be good at certain things. And if you're not very good at it, guess what? You probably need more reps than the guy next to you, and that's just the way it is. So let's say you show up to a team and you're not a very good shot. This happened to me. I didn't really have any history of shooting before I joined the army, and I was a horrible, horrible shot, especially with a pistol. So, what did I do? I got with the best shot on my team with a pistol, and I basically annoyed the hell out of him until I learned all I could from him and became a really good shot. I was one of the better shots by the end of my time on that team. I was one of the better shots with a pistol on that team because I practiced a hell of a lot. I even went on my own on weekends and practiced, and I actually got better. I was pretty good with a rifle naturally, and then I got over that time I focused so much on pistol, which I'm not saying this is a good idea, you're not gonna use your pistol that much, if at all, ever, in a real life scenario. But pistol shooting is more fun in my opinion. But I got so good at a pistol, and I almost got a little bit worse at a rifle, and I later corrected myself, but that's just one example. But identifying what you lack in, what your skill sets are lacking, your knowledge gaps are, and closing those knowledge gaps, building those skill sets by putting in the reps is the best way to get competent at something. And if you're really good at something, you're gonna be really confident in it because you know that you've put in enough reps, you've created the evidence that you are, in fact, good enough at that thing to be confident in it. Self-confidence is more of a result of keeping yourself accountable. So every time you make a commitment to yourself, actually showing up and following through on the commitment. So simple, simple things. I talk about this all the time, but one really good example is waking up in the morning. If you press snooze every single day, if you press snooze multiple times every single day, you're basically lying to yourself to start the day every day. If you can't trust yourself to wake up on time, how the hell are you supposed to trust yourself to do serious things that are a lot more difficult than getting out of bed? If you are always prepping your meals for the week, and maybe you eat 50% of them, and the other 50% you just kind of go out on a whim and you eat whatever feels good or sounds good. Another thing, you're breaking commitments to yourself. If you say you're gonna work out at this time tomorrow and that time comes and you don't feel like it, and you don't do it, again, you're chipping away at your confidence. You can't trust yourself. If you can't trust yourself to stick to these things, if you don't lead yourself properly, it's almost impossible to be confident. You can't just fabricate confidence out of thin air. Maybe if you're super narcissistic, you can, but no one really wants that type of person around anyway. There are definitely some narcissists in SF, and everyone's gonna have to has to have a level of narcissism to be that profession, but there's definitely levels to narcissism. And those who are really, really confident, but they have nothing to show for it, like there's no reason for them to be confident, it's pretty obvious. Like you can see through that really quickly. That's like false bravado, which does not fly in it may fly some places, but it definitely does not fly in SF, especially with skill sets, but also self-confidence. People can see right through that stuff. So to be confident in a skill set, you have to be competent in it, and to be competent in it, if you suck at it now, you gotta put the reps in and practice it. Deliberate practice, the practice that is really painful, going back to the conversations with people, the discomfort of that, that's how your practice should be. You should be pushing yourself to the very edge of what you can do. That is how you get actual, that's how you get better. Like Stephen Curry, when he wants to go get better at basketball, he doesn't go just shoot threes, stationary, shoot threes. Yeah, he does some of that maybe to warm up, but his drills are difficult. Like he probably misses a lot of shots in practice because he is challenging himself. That is deliberate real practice, and that is the practice that is necessary to really, really build legit skill sets and therefore build legit confidence. And then confidence yourself is holding yourself accountable. That is the main thing, honestly. If you just held yourself accountable to everything and develop that extreme trust in yourself, it's almost impossible not to be confident. It's super simple, it's not easy, but it's super simple. So, confidence, real thing, take it very seriously. Guys, a little break in the action to tell you about Pride Foods, Rice and Grimes, and Stacks. If you have been listening to the show for a while, you guys know my stance on carbs and the fact that most people with extreme performance goals or body composition goals eat nowhere near the amount of carbs they should be eating. And one of the easiest, most simple, most delicious ways I have found to get more carbs in is rice and grinds, as well as Stax, which are the two main products that Pride Foods creates. Rice and grinds is a fantastic oatmeal alternative. It's a cream of rice, but it tastes exponentially better and digests way easier than the cream of rice you're gonna see at any grocery store. The Stax pancakes are fantastic as well. They are yam-based, and the only macro in these products is carbohydrates. So I eat these things for breakfast, I eat them around training, oftentimes in the evening after dinner when I've already had all of my other macros and all I have left is carbs. I can't have any more protein or fat. I'll throw a bowl of rice and grinds on top of some frozen berries, mix it up, it thaws out the berries, and the berries cool it off so you can eat it instantly, and it is fantastic. So if you need to up your carb game, check out the link in the description. You can get 10% off. Try any flavor you like. My top flavors are chocolate brownie and brown sugar cinnamon, but all the flavors are honestly pretty damn delicious. Or you can go to pridefoods.org and type in the code TTM for 10% off. Alright, guys, back to the show. Next one is leadership is on you. This one irritates me so much when people will ask me questions like, oh, I heard that the 18X program doesn't teach people how to be good leaders. And just that mindset itself is completely incorrect. Going back to the agency thing, it is not on somebody else or some other program or organization or system to teach you how to be a good leader. It is on you to become a good leader if you want to become a good leader. A lot of people think people are just born really good leaders. That's another thing that just irritates the fuck out of me. Yes, there are certain people that are born with more propensity to be a good leader at some point down the road. That being said, to think that you're, if you weren't born that way, that you can never be a good leader is asinine. Again, just like communication, leadership is a series of skills. And A, skills can be built just like any skill can be built, but B, it's on you to build those skills. So if you feel like you lack in the leadership department, even if you're showing up as a new guy, yeah, you're not going to be like the number one stud leader on the team right away, but having leadership qualities is still a really, really good thing to possess. Because even new guys, the great thing about Green Berets is like whoever has the whoever's the strongest performer, whoever has the best ideas, whoever is the front runner in whatever you may be doing, is gonna be the guy that people follow. That is just kind of how it works. Even if you're a brand new guy, but you're really good at one thing and you're better than the other guys on the team at that thing, or you have this background in something that is a really, really valuable skill for the team, even though you're not super experienced as far as overall Green Beret life. Maybe you're doing some sort of mission or some sort of training event that involves that thing, and you know more about it than anyone else, and you're better at it than anyone else. Guess what? Guys are gonna look to you, even if you're the new guy, to lead them. And so these skills are definitely important if you want to have a long career and eventually become a senior, eventually become a team sergeant, but they're also important if you're just showing up. And it's on you to go and learn them and put them into practice and actually be a leader in real life. Just like communication, you can learn all there is to know about it. You can read John Wooden on leadership, you can read every Jocko book in existence, but you actually have to practice these things. You have to put them into practice. And you can practice being a leader in your day to day life, not just with your team, but also with your friends, with your family, whatever have you. And the more you do it, the more reps you get, the better you get at it, the more confident you get at it, just going back to the last one and just remembering those two things. One, two, If you're not born a natural leader, that does not mean you're never going to be a leader. And two, it is on you. It is not on someone else. Have some agency and realize that you are in charge of making yourself a great leader if you're not a great leader. Thick skin is not optional. So this can mean a couple different things. One, just know that Green Berets and Allsoff, honestly, are a bunch of ball busters. So especially when you show up as a new guy, you're probably going to get made fun of a lot. When you mess things up, you're going to be told instantly that you messed them up, and you're probably going to either be made fun of if it's something that's lower stakes, you're just going to be made fun of for a while until you prove that you're not messing that thing up anymore. Or if it's a higher stakes thing, you're going to be expected to fix yourself immediately and not mess that up in the future. And you don't really have a super long leash. So especially like I said, high-stakes stuff. So being okay with getting that either criticism or your balls busted is just non-negotiable. You have to be able to do that. And people these days, especially the younger generation, is very easily offended as a whole. They find words offensive, they find ideas offensive, they find social media posts offensive, they find politicians offensive. And one, being offended has never gotten anyone anywhere. It's never solved a problem for anyone. Also, no one cares, especially in this profession. If you tell someone you're offended in this profession, like that's a pretty quick way to at the very, very best get made fun of for like the rest of your time with that organization, with that team. Or two, get the boot. Like, we don't want you on our team. This guy gets offended. Like, how weak and pathetic is that? So you're not allowed to get offended. You're also not allowed to take criticism personally and not seek, actively seek criticism. A lot of organizations are all about blowing smoke up at each other's ass. Like, oh, you're amazing. You did so well. You didn't mess anything up. You're just this gifted, wonderful human being. That is not how SF works. Anytime you guys do a rehearsal or a full mission profile or a real life mission, you're gonna do an AAR, an after-action report. 99% of that AAR is going to be things that everyone messed up. They're gonna go, usually, the good teams go around to each person and tell each person what they messed up and what they need to do to fix themselves next time. And then they go and they fix themselves next time, ideally. There's always gonna be something that someone messes up, everyone's gonna mess up. Even the team sergeant messes up, even the 18 alpha messes up a lot. But even if you've been around for a really long time, guess what? You're still gonna mess up and you're still gonna get criticized. But when you're a new guy, you're gonna mess up a lot. And you got to be ready and willing to take that criticism and not take it personally. Take it as a constructive thing to remember and go to work on fixing and be better the next time. That is how it works. So if you have a really thin skin, when people bust your balls, which they will, especially as a new guy, you're not gonna have a very good time. And if you can't take that, you're probably gonna get sent to a new team and you're gonna get bounced around, especially if it can be can continues to become a theme. Like this guy just can't take criticism or he can't take his balls being busted. He takes everything seriously, he takes everything personally, he gets super offended. There's just no room for that in SF. So the good thing about this is whether you get offended or not about anything, regardless, is a decision. It is literally a decision. And you can decide right this second to never get offended by anything again in the future, ever. And it's in your best interest to do just that because you're going to a job where you're probably going to be around a lot of politically incorrect things. You're going to be around a lot of things that a lot of people would find very, very, very offensive, like exceptionally offensive. And if you can't handle that, then you can't handle this job. That is just what it comes down to. So, last but not least, everything is a competition. Everything is a competition. Soft, in general, is a group of very, very highly competitive individuals. And you need to be at least have some sort of competitive bone in your body. Now, not everyone's super duper competitive. There are very, very ultra competitive individuals, and in my experience, those guys are usually the best because they want to be the best at everything, they want to win everything, so they put the work in that is required to win everything. And I think in order to be a standout, excellent, exceptional Green Beret, you should be always striving to be the best at everything, even if you're not. And by the way, nobody is the best at everything, but that doesn't mean they can't strive to be. But everything from stress shoots to team PT to even like shooting drills at the end of the day. Usually you guys do like teams do like beer shoots where you do like a pistol competition or a rifle pistol competition or a little mini stress shoot. They'll do like company stress shoots. We'll do stuff when I was on a free fall team. We would have competitions like who can land closest to whatever, a little dangerous sometimes, yeah, maybe, but also really helps you on your skill, and it's a competitive thing. It makes people really want to perform because guys just don't want to lose. Guys who hate losing typically are honestly like the most competitive people hate losing more than they love winning. And when you hate to lose, you oftentimes will do a lot of different things to make sure that you don't lose. And oftentimes that results in winning. So PT, stress shoots, free fall stuff, underwater breath hold stuff. Yeah, some of this stuff's not very safe, but it does happen. But even menial stuff like beard growth competitions and hair growth competitions. We have like when I was my last trip in Afghanistan, we had a hair ranking. We had like a hair off. And I actually won it because I had long blonde locks and it looked pretty badass. But that's of course like a joking thing. Like you shouldn't really want to strive, like if you don't win that, you should be ashamed of yourself. But just be prepared for everything to be a competition and for it to be very apparent. Like everybody knows who wins, who loses. And if you lose, especially if you're just the type of person that loses in a lot of different things, that is a problem. You don't want to be the guy that's losing in a lot of things. And if you are competitive, or if you develop a competitive sense, even if you're not super competitive now, maybe you don't have a competitive sports history or whatever, but you can develop a competitive bone. And if you are not competitive, chances are you're probably gonna lose out to the guys that are competitive, and you're gonna be that guy that never wins anything. And not to say that like if you never win anything, if you're not the best at anything on the team, like you're a shit bag, you could be really good at a lot of different things, you never win them. You're not gonna like get booted off a team if you're that guy. But it is it adds a really, really cool dynamic to it, and competition, in my opinion, just breeds excellence. Because if everybody on the team is trying to win at everything, that just means that they are leaving no stones unturned and they are trying to better themselves across the board. And that makes for a really, really, really badass team that is not to be fucked with. So that is it, guys. That is the ninth one. Hopefully, you guys got something good out of that. Hopefully, you are able to identify some of maybe things that you need to work on, things you need to consider thinking about as you approach your journey, whether you're aspiring, you haven't left yet to go to selection, you haven't left yet for the army, maybe you're an 18 X-ray, maybe you're a 15-year-old kid that wants to be a Green Beret someday, or maybe you're a new guy, maybe you've been in group for a while. Either way, I think there's something in there that can help you identify some of your shortcomings, identify where you need to start putting some more thought into and more effort into, and maybe change your mindset. For me, the main one is the tenacity thing. Even today, if I don't hold myself accountable to do hard things on a regular basis, I get really, really feeble and I get less tenacious. And when hard things come up, which they still do, it's just different than what they used to be now that I'm running my own business versus I used to be in the military in a Green Beret, I am not as able to overcome them and handle them. I'm not as likely to lean into them and embrace them and put the work in. So I really, really have to check myself and remind myself that tenacity is perishable. But all these things are super important really for any soft profession you're going for, and like I said, really for any job that is a high-performing job with a lot of competitiveness, and you want to work yourself as high as you can in that profession, or maybe you're doing running your own business and you have all these competitors around you. Guess what? If you apply these nine things, you are gonna be a top dog in the business world. So thank you guys very much for tuning in. I'll be back soon with another episode. Until then, Terminator Out. Thank you for listening. If you like this show and want to start crushing your goals, please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And for more fitness content, follow me on Instagram at Terminator underscore training or check out my website, Terminator Training.com. All right, guys, Terminator Out.