Ep. 229 - Brandon Webb: Becoming The Master of Your Own Fate

The James Altucher Show

His platoon was counting on him. He couldn’t come back a failure. Brandon had been deployed to the Middle East four times. He’d seen the ugliness and destruction war had caused. And now he was being sent straight to sniper school. This is one of the most stressful jobs as a Navy SEAL. He would have to learn how to make quick decisions. Hard decisions.

“The only easy day was yesterday,” he said. “That's our motto.” Brandon is one of the most accomplished sniper teachers of his time. He changed the system. And implemented positive reinforcement, which allowed him to see firsthand how having a good “mental mindset” propels people into success.

In his memoir, “The Red Circle” and his newest book, a New York Times bestseller “The Killing School: Inside the World’s Deadliest Sniper Program,” Brandon shows you exactly how to train for a “champions mindset.” He uses mental management strategies: visualization, positive self-talk, solution-based thinking and so on.

He is the master of his own fate.

And now you can be too...

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Here's what we talk about:

[6:08] - I don't normally do this. But this time I gave away the “table of contents” of what I wanted to discuss with Brandon Webb:

- I wanted to cover Brandon’s ideas on war- discuss the issue of teaching people to kill people (to me, this is the elephant in the room)- Brandon was one of the first deployed to Iraq. So I wanted to ask about his ups and downs going to war, coming back and going to war again

-“Obviously, I don’t want to learn how to be a sniper” I said, “but what I really want to talk about is peak performance.” Both of Brandon's books to talk about this, especially his section on “mental management.” I wanted to learn what tools and habits I need to do today to make myself a master of my own fate. That’s essentially what this show is about… becoming the master of your own fate. “Choosing yourself.”

[30:16] - I needed to know. Islam itself. What is the fight? Is this really a fight of religions? I asked Brandon why radicalism has spread so quickly in the Middle East. He pointed out the economics and the gap between rich and poor. “The social and political situation is not very good… Saudi Arabia, for example, has a very elite royal ruling class but the working population is very poor.” He said people join the fight because they need a cause. They need to belong to something. A military is a tribe. I get this question all the time. “How do I find my purpose?” Some people find their purpose in a fight. In a mission. In a cause… Brandon explained that the people who join these radical groups, or any group, were probably suffering in life. And they wanted to fill a hole in their life. They wanted what any human wants: a feeling of belonging. That’s the powerful force pulling them in. When Brandon was 16, his dad threw him off a boat in Tahiti. Brandon had to find his way back. And eventually he joined the military, became a Navy SEAL and then became a special ops sniper. There were 23 of them and 220 tried out. The question he gets most often is one of ignorance, “How many people did you kill?” But that's not what it's about for Brandon. And maybe that's what separates good from evil. He continued to tell me how radical governments incentives people to join “the cause.” He said they pay you to become a martyr. I couldn't believe it. “Is that true?” I asked. “Yeah,” he said, “As a state sponsor of terror, Iran is funding and fueling the conflict in the Middle East, especially with Israel.” And the Internet makes it worse, too. Brandon tells me how...

[59:03] - Brandon was training people to be peak performers in incredibly high stake situations. It wasn’t just target practice. Someone would be shooting back. He expected each and every one of his students to perform at a perfect level. Eighty and ninety percent was no longer acceptable. I wondered how you could teach someone to perform under these high standards. The key: visualization.

[1:02:30] - “I’ve seen it,” Brandon says, “I’ve seen it while on the firing line. They think about it and then it transfers to behavior.” If someone says don’t flinch, they’re going to flinch. Brandon made up the ranks. His job was to train snipers. And he wanted to start by programming his students with good habits. So instead of focusing on the negative (don't flinch), he focused on the positive (keep your eyes on the target.)

[1:03:52] - “I’ve always been pretty good at math,” Brandon says, but once he started his own business he started to doubt himself. The financial statements were too hard, he was no good at it. He started thinking he “can't”, but he caught himself. And change his self talk. Listen to how he did this in our interview. You’ll also hear how to create the narrative necessary to support it.

[1:07:26] - Brandon left the Navy. And started his own company. But he didn't know when to let go. It wasn't working out. He lost everything. A month later his wife was asking for a divorce. And the kids went with her. “I had to have the conversation with all his neighbors: “Where'd your family go?" It was embarrassing. He said it was the first time he felt like he really failed in life. I asked how he bounced back. He told me this: “Failure is necessary to being successful in life. There's a big difference between quitting and failure.”

[1:17:14] -We we're talking about gold medalists. And how they have a different mindset. He told me some of the expectations he holds for himself. And how you can create “the mind of a champion” with visualization tactics, hard work and confidence. (He also tells me how someone even gets confidence to begin with.)

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