got a real special one for you today I'm in Tel Aviv Israel and here on the Mediterranean Sea
and our special guest today former Navy SEAL Chad Williams how's it going yeah man great to be with
you guys super stoked to be here it's amazing yeah hey let's take a little walk along the sea
and hey we've known each other for a couple years now haven't we that's right yeah I think we first
got connected over social media and I reached out to you before I was gonna go on the news one time
and be talking about Isis I'm like you know what I want to pick the Michael OCONUS brain on this
one if that's possible I think it's the first time we actually got on the phone together and
you gave me a really good line for the news that the latter Mohammad you see in history is very
much like the ISIS of today and that one really resonated with everyone oh well thanks man yeah
that's cool man I just mean you sent me your book which seal for God and I've read that thing it's
probably one of the only three or four books not related to my field you know that I've read in
the last 30 years so man what a gripping book man highly recommended I recommend you reading yeah
I had to read it for the audio if anyone wants to get the audible it's my voice oh really yep
well that's pretty cool they did that on Amazon and Amazon or our deal oh Christ calm and get
a signed copy there oh man well you gave me a signed copy huh I definitely go with that one
so how are you right now chapter 35 years old awesome and like how long have you wanted to be
a seal well I guess I started it all started kind of coming out of high school going to a
local Community College I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life and I really kind of
felt like things were going down the tube really it was my own fault I wasn't attending school I
was just hanging out with friends going surfing in the ocean and as the end of the year was coming
up time to take finals for whatever reason that was the moment that it took to really
hit me like wow I'm turning out to be a loser I mean the kind of guy that no young person wants
to be and so I'm just thinking how do I turn this around I want to do something big something great
something significant with my life and so I was brainstorming just sitting in the parking lot at
school that's when that idea entered my mind like I know what I want to do to turn this all around I
want to be a Navy SEAL and I understood that it's the most difficult military training in the world
like hands down and so I had this determination very early on like I will die before I quit and so
I decided well if I'm gonna be a seal that means I don't need to go to class anymore so I started my
truck up and took off out of that school parking lot and I started preparing though right away Wow
hey now we're here we've been here the whole week in Israel with John Lovell former Ranger you said
the seal is the toughest military training what would he agree with that uh you know what I don't
think that he would agree with that and you know I understand the partiality but the numbers do
speak for themselves I served the class of 173 guys by graduation day there's only 13 of that
original class number still standing there and we can't forget you know who was it that got bin
Laden there may be seals they call the best for those kinds of guys no could could he come back
and say well the reason that you know there were how many that started in your class 173 maybe he
would say all of those were flunked outs from Ranger training all the guys I didn't make it
yeah if you didn't you know how they say you know dentist were people who flunked tell them there's
a lot of guys that go through SEAL training and they decide they want to go get their their Ranger
tab so they go through the Ranger training too and they say it's child's play it's child's play
the comparison it's awesome so all right so what was the hardest part of your SEAL training the
hardest part is called hell week it's five and a half days long you get four hours of sleep that's
not per night that's a grand total of four hours of sleep for the next five and a half days from
the moment they wake you up in the dark hours in the morning by surprise I went through in February
so I had a winter time hell week but air so cold you know it fights and then you're getting hit
with a hose now you're shivering cold and they got you know loud noises machine guns going off
your nade simulator smoke and this is the exciting stuff because you know this is an adrenaline rush
and you want this to happen this is your rite of passage but eventually the adrenaline dumps
and all the bright lights and loud noises go away and you perform it's called surf torture and surf
torture is basically laying down in the surf zone without a wetsuit on until you're shivering turns
into what we call jackhammering you look like you're jackhammering cold and the instructors
play head games they say hey we're gonna keep doing this until and they'll come up with an
arbitrary number three of you give up and quit and these are guys that have all vowed the same thing
that you've a lit I will die before I quit and so all I can say is I had to dig deeper than I ever
have in my life to be determined and make sure that I'm not one of these guys that gets up out of
the water and rings about three times in front of everybody signifying that you quit and they have
to take their class helmet with their name their rank class number and lay it down on the grinder
which is the section we do our morning workouts and that stays there for the remainder of training
so you know who quit when they quit it's all there on display these surf quarters you do over
and over and over I lost track of how many times we did them if you're not in the water performing
surf torture you run over 200 miles during those five and a half days Wow and that's not
just running around through a body weight they're carrying a boat or a telephone log probably 90% of
the time wherever you go and that boats so heavy on the top of your head it literally rubs through
the hair and through the skin in the top of your head in fact a guy in a class prior to mine broke
his neck underneath one of these boats so they're no joke and then you can imagine what it'd be like
to have that salt water and beets and rubbing and grinding in all the unfriendly places on your skin
for 5 and 1/2 days straight you know you just every nerve you feel exposed and then on top of
all this physical exertion and sleep deprivation and leads to another thing hallucinations and you
just see things that just flat-out aren't there and looking back on it it's pretty funny you know
but when you're going through it not so fun so I guy who loosen agency Ninja Turtles in the water
I'm trying to whack them with paddles other guys are throwing hands to Lutz out into the water of
people they think they see riding bicycles across the ocean and so yeah it's pretty funny looking
back on it but by far that's the most difficult part of training how weak oh that's that's just
amazing so I mean there's something most people don't have that kind of mental toughness that you
have to have to be a CEO and I guess you're kind of born with that is that right all right you know
I used to think you either have it or you don't but I've begun to realize that it is something
that actually can be developed I really do believe mental toughness to be developed I think even to
that degree could you think anyone can develop mental toughness to that degree I think anyone
can develop mental toughness to that degree the same way that you could develop physical
strength you develop this sort of mental strength what it is is it's mind over matter and I've got
kind of like you know my theories on this but it definitely makes sense mind over matter your
mind has to overcome the material body and so how do you develop mental toughness it's very
similar to the way that you develop some type of physical toughness you have to actually train it
you have to push and so you know way back during like 9/11 there was anthrax it was getting sent
around throughout the u.s. mail it's office not by them but through them and it was a big concern
because you know here we are we got this like bacteria that can you know kill people and so
the military decided let's get you know our guys to be immune to this well how are they going to
do that well if we just hit them with anthrax a lethal amount that will kill them but if we
dilute it and we inject it into them in a series of shots eventually don't develop a toughness
and a tolerance towards it and so that if they do get exposed to a lethal amount they will be okay
theoretically they should live in a very similar way there are certain things when it comes to
mental toughness that it's like it's almost like mentally lethal it's like mental anthrax to most
people but if you expose those people to i diluted version of those things that would mentally break
them in a series of steps eventually they should develop a sort of tolerance and toughness towards
what would normally be mentally lethal now they actually could thrive and endure through that type
of scenario and so I think that mental toughness has a lot to do with just the experiences that
you've had in life and you develop it very much like dig David Goggin says you know like calluses
on your hands they get tougher and tougher the more you get your hands on those bullet bars
that's pretty amazing yeah it's amazing and Wow so you know kind of wrapping up this session I mean
even though you've been off the teams for a while you're still staying in shape you were telling me
the other day about your workouts I mean how many pushups and and pull-ups the G do and I said the
day was up here made up to 20 back down it was 400 push-ups and 400 squats it was supportive
amount of time but yeah and and when you do a workout with pull-ups what how many do you do
that day was just a hundred yeah well it's just amazing girl well alright well hey that's pretty
interesting stuff in our next session we're gonna talk about what it was actually like to
be a seal and Chad's gonna share with the some of the missions he went on looking forward to it you
you