Unleash the Warrior Within
Develop the Focus, Discipline, Confidence, and Courage You Need to Achieve Unlimited Goals
Richard Machowicz. Mack for short. He’s an intense, inspiring and empowering former Navy SEAL. He’s an ultimate warrior. In this book, Mack teaches us how we can unleash the warrior within ourselves to, as the sub- title suggests, “Develop the Focus, Discipline, Confidence, and Courage You Need to Achieve Unlimited Goals.” Big Ideas we explore include World War 0, “Not Dead Can’t Quit,” the #1 question (hint: Do you have the guts?), and 110% vs. 80%.
Big Ideas
- World War 0It all starts within.
- Not Dead Can’t QuitWhat do you REALLY want?
- Do You Have the Guts?Choice + Courage + Commitment.
- Crushing the EnemyCalled fear.
- Be Aggressive= “To move toward” life.
- 110%?Not so much. Go for 80%.
- What Will You CreateWith this one precious life?
“The concepts that you will read about in this book are tools I developed to master myself. They have been tested in combat under the worst situations imaginable. Most have been written in blood. Along the way I’ve discovered that people who have created success never tell you you can or can’t do it. They only want to know how badly you want it. It’s the people who are afraid to take the chance or have inherited someone else’s success who tell you about everything you’ve got to lose. The people who are afraid of risking it all quit the first time the going gets rough. It’s not until you risk it all and go for the thing you really want that life becomes unlimited. All the shackles are released.
Other books on the market have given eyewitness accounts of SEAL Teams in combat, as well as autobiographical works on SEAL careers. Unleash the Warrior Within offers something no other book has: A plan for thinking like a SEAL—at least, one SEAL—so that you, too, can reach incredible goals, or to ‘live on a different, higher standard,’ and achieve more of what you want out of life. …
I guarantee that if you participate completely in the drills incorporated in the book and apply them daily, something inside you will change. By the time you finish the chapters that follow, you will have gone through a seven-step process to free that warrior within yourself.
The metaphor of combat and fighting may seem over the top but I promise you, the more you push yourself to accomplish anything that seems beyond your comfort level, the more you’re going to hear from yourself and others how it is impossible.”
~ Richard “Mack” Machowicz from Unleash the Warrior Within
Richard Machowicz. Mack for short.
He’s an intense, inspiring and empowering former Navy SEAL. (You may recognize him as the host + producer of Discovery Channel’s FutureWeapons.)
Mack was a certified instructor in the Naval Special Warfare Combat Fighting Instructor Course, a Naval Special Warfare Scout/Sniper, and has multiple black belts—having studied everything from muay thai boxing, Jeet Kune Do, kickboxing, aikido, jujitsu, savate, arnis, and karate.
In short, he’s an ultimate warrior. (His newest project? NDCQ. Short for the mantra he used to get thru SEAL Hell Week that best captures his philosophy: “Not Dead Can’t Quit.”)
In this book, he teaches us how we can unleash the warrior within ourselves to, as the sub-title suggests, “Develop the Focus, Discipline, Confidence, and Courage You Need to Achieve Unlimited Goals.”
It’s a great addition to our growing SEAL + mental training collection. (Get a copy here.)
As always, I’m excited to share a few of my favorite Ideas so let’s jump straight in!
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Download PDFThis book is part psychology, part strategy and tactics, part drive, but most importantly, it’s about having heart. Unleash the Warrior Within is a gateway to the noble virtues of wisdom, courage, determination, generosity, honor and wellbeing.
Get the BookWorld War 0
“In today’s world, why would anyone want to Unleash the Warrior Within? …
We want to end war, but to end war we must understand war. And the starting point for all war comes from within each of us.
True warriors understand this; this is why we need more warriors. Being a warrior is not about the act of fighting. It’s about the ability, courage, and commitment to end the war within oneself and not quit until the job is done. Whether it’s ending war within your home, your relationships, your neighborhood, your business, your country, or your world, warriors understand that they have to start from within themselves and build outward. They know that by mastering the war within themselves, they can make the greatest difference in their world.”
The first and most important war will ALWAYS be the war raging within ourselves.
Period.
THAT’s the ultimate battle we must become warriors to embrace.
As I’ve shared numerous times, seeing the world through this frame isn’t new.
Socrates called this battle within each of us the “greatest combat” and exhorted all of us to step up and get to work.
Even Gandhi—the embodiment of non-violence—used a manual on the art of war as his guide.
That book? The Bhagavad Gita.
It’s ALL about what Mack is talking about here—a reluctant warrior getting training from his spiritual mentor on how to win the battle raging within himself so he can win the outer battle against evil.
We need to “know that by mastering the war within ourselves, we can make the greatest difference in our world.”
So…
Spotlight on you: What’s one little battle you have raging within you right now?
Is now a good time to win that battle conclusively?
P.S. Remember: “Being a warrior is not about the act of fighting. It’s about being so prepared to face a challenge and believing so strongly in the cause you are fighting for that you refuse to quit.”
Not Dead Can’t Quit
“You know when hell is coming. You think about it. You watch that week get closer and closer, then the day gets closer and closer. The anxiety builds, the doubt builds, the fear builds. Hell Week lasts six days and five nights, but when you’re in it, it feels like the rest of your life.
Still, if you want to be a Navy SEAL, you have to go through it. I wanted more than anything to be part of the premier special operations unit in the United States military, perhaps the world. What I learned through the experience, and from the resulting ten-year SEAL career, is this: If you want something bad enough, you have the power to make it happen—no matter what other people have to say, no matter how tough the odds at first appear to be. I’m not telling you this to make you feel good. I’m not telling you this because it sounds nice. I’m telling you this because I know it’s true. I’ve lived it. And you can, too.”
Those are the first words of the Introduction—right before Mack walks us through all the people who doubted his ability to become a SEAL and how he made it through Hell Week.
Short story: He wanted to become a SEAL more than anything.
As he navigated Hell Week, he told himself, “The only way I’m not finishing is if I quit or die. And I’m not quitting.”
He shortened that into a mantra: “Not dead, can’t quit.”
“Not dead, can’t quit.”
(He shortened *that* into NDCQ.)
Imagine having THAT level of desire + commitment for a goal that’s important to you—where NOTHING (!) will stop you from achieving what you’ve set out to achieve.
You DARE. You DREAM. You DO.
Again, that *doesn’t* apply to just the external success markers like creating a business or whatever. Imagine bringing that level of commitment to EVERYTHING that matters to you: being a better parent, spouse, and human—where NOTHING is going to get in the way of you getting a little better today.
THAT is the spirit of the warrior.
Another note: We’re not talking about always being “on” either. It’s the wise warrior who knows when to shut it down and recover—oscillating between intensely ON and equally intensely OFF.
#NDCQ
P.S. Emerson echoes this wisdom about intense desires.
He tells us: “There’s nothing capricious in nature, and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feels it.”
Translation: Life doesn’t play games. If you have an authentic, strong desire to achieve something, you have the ability to make it happen.
Do You Have the Guts?
“Once you have decided that a particular target is absolutely critical to your life and happiness, you must make it your mission to achieve it. This mission must become the central focus of your time and energy. Once declared and pursued, this mission will unveil the several smaller targets that you need to knock down along the way in order to accomplish your mission. After you have declared what your mission is, there is only one thing you absolutely need to understand in order to jump-start your mission. When I went through BUD/S, we were told there was only one secret to making it through the training. It wasn’t anything we could put in a backpack, or study up on. It was guts. All you need is guts.”
That’s from the first chapter on “The Three Dynamics of Combat.”
The 3 Dynamics are: Target + Weapon + Movement.
Step 1. You need a TARGET. Then you pick the weapon (/skills/whatever) necessary to hit that target. Then you take action to make it happen.
Mack tells us it ALL (!) STARTS with a laser-clear target. Diffusion will not do.
He has a matrix process to identify the optimal target called “CARVER” that helps us figure out what’s most important. “Criticality. Accessibility, Recognizability, Vulnerability, Effect on the Overall Mission, and Return on Effort.”
In (super short): How important is it? How easily can you hit it? How easy is it to find the target? How much effort is required to knock it down? How will this effect the overall mission? What’s the return on that energy? Check out the book form more on that process.
For now: What target is absolutely critical to your life and happiness right now that you can efficiently knock over and that will have the biggest positive impact for energy invested?
Challenging. Meaningful. Doable.
Identify that. Make it your mission to achieve it. Make it the central focus of your time and energy. Then, as we lean in and commit, we’ll see smaller targets arise that need to get knocked down before we get the bigger target. Those are our dominoes/“proximal goals.”
THEN… It’s all about guts.
Here’s the “Gut Check:
- Are you willing to make a choice?
- Do you have the courage to start?
- Can you make the commitment to finish?
A lot of people make a choice. Few people have the courage to start. Rarely do people have the commitment to finish. The people who do are those who have the guts to get through the losses along the way in order to reach the victory in the end. … It’s not until you make a target a matter of life and death that you end up living.”
Make a choice.
Have the courage to start.
Make a commitment to FINISH.
“It’s not until you make a target a matter of life and death that you end up living.”
<— The Warrior’s way.
Crushing the Enemy Called fear
“The way to conquer fear is to move into and through it. Imagine it as a veiled, paper-thin mist and just walk through it. It’s like a fog: Sometimes a fog seems as dense as stone. You can’t see anything through it, it seems to engulf you. But if you keep walking, putting one foot in front of the other, all of a sudden it’s gone. Suddenly you can see everything. It helps some of my students to imagine fear as a paper-thin, veiled mist. And once you walk through this paper-thin mist, it’s clear on the other side. Your fear is behind you.”
That’s from the chapter called “Crush the Enemy Called Fear.”
The quote that precedes this chapter is one of my favorites. It’s from Frank Herbert’s Dune:
“Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Speaking of fog, I love Earl Nightingale’s wisdom from The Essence of Success (see Notes): “According to the Bureau of Standards, ‘A dense fog covering seven city blocks, to a depth of 100 feet, is composed of something less than one glass of water.’ That is, all the fog covering seven city blocks, at 100 feet deep could be, if it were gotten all together, held in a single drinking glass. It would not quite fill it. And this could be compared to our worries. If we can see into the future and if we could see our problems in their true light, they wouldn’t tend to blind us to the world, to living itself, but instead could be relegated to their true size and place. And if all the things most people worry about were reduced to their true size, you could probably put them all into a water glass, too.”
Next time you feel fear, you may want to walk right through the mist.
Say, “Bring it on!” and activate your “GO” system rather than your “Stop!” system a la Adam Grant’s wisdom from Originals (see Notes and this +1).
P.S. Emerson comes to mind here as well: “Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of revolutions. One thing he teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears.”
Be Aggressive = “To move toward” life!
“I have a motto I always say in class: ‘Aggressively live life.’ A student helped me understand that the Latin root of the word ‘aggressive’ means ‘to move toward.’ So when I say I live aggressively, it means I go after the experience of living. When you’re doing that you’re open, your energy is unlimited, and you can do anything.”
Did you know aggressive comes from the Latin “to move toward”? <— Love that.
Lest we think this is a SEAL going nuts on us, let’s bring in Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello who tells us this in his book Awareness (see Notes): “Live dangerously, and when I say ‘Live dangerously,’ I mean live according to your own self, whatever the cost. Whatever is at stake, live according to your own consciousness, according to your own heart and feeling.”
Plus: “Life is for the gambler, it really is.”
MOVE TOWARD life. Be aggressive.
Be you. Intensely you.
110%? Not so much. Go for 80%
“You often here the expression ‘giving it your all’ or ‘giving 110 percent effort.’ I don’t believe in thinking that way. You can’t put 110 percent into anything because it’s against the law of physics. You only have 100 percent, and I believe that the closer you push yourself to 100 percent, the closer you are to shutting your body down. You can run your car at top speed for a few seconds, but after that it starts to shake, and ultimately it falls apart.
The more effective way to think is to aim for bringing all your skills to 80 percent of your maximum, in whatever you do. At this point you are able to think, to use your body to stay in balance and harmony, to flow rather than to force.”
For all the talk about being intense (in this Note and all the others), we’re talking about SUSTAINABLE awesome.
NOT throttle-it-all-up-to-max-speed-red-line-and-crash-and-burn intensity.
The amateur goes gonzo then burns out. The Pro knows it’s a long road and leaves a little in the tank every day. (Remember: You don’t start your ascent of Everest at a sprint.)
And, remember that there’s no such thing as 110%.
Settle in to a focused 80%. <— That’s sustainable.
This is how I (strive to) approach things these days. With my workouts, for example, I’m WAY MORE committed to never missing a day of movement than I am to having one gonzo intense workout. Therefore, doing something that might injure me (aka going to 11o% nuts!) doesn’t make sense. I prefer the nice, sustainable, 80% max on days I’m training more intensely.
Same with work. It’s funny b/c the days when I’m “most productive” and get a TON done, I’m actually coming close to red lining and often need a recovery day after. It’s very fun for me to take that data and play with the right calibration on juuuuussssttttt the right level of intensity that pushes edges while doing so sustainably. (Note to self: 80% + Make waves, sir!)
How about you?
What Will You Create w/ the Gift that is your life?
“To choose the path of a warrior means you must develop an inextinguishable passion for life. When you do, the amazing value of it is always in the forefront of your mind and propels your body …
This, above all, will unleash the warrior inside each of us. It’s not enough to understand the principles in this book, we have to continuously apply them. Don’t look for ways to get around life. Grab it, jump in it. Do something, anything, but get amongst it!
In the end we all will die. There is no way to get around that fact.
What will you create with the gift that is your life?
My only aspiration for this book is to humbly serve you in knocking down your targets. Thank you for reading it.”
Those are the final words of the book.
—> What will you create with the gift that is your life?
Actually, make that: WHAT WILL YOU CREATE WITH THE GIFT THAT IS YOUR LIFE?
About the author
