Mark Divine: [00:00:00] So like one day I was at SEAL team three and we were doing some shooting training and I was walking, it was five in the morning and I was walking toward the range. I felt as if I say as if, but I felt as if someone put their hand on my shoulder and whispered stop, but it was like a forceful, stop now.
And I stopped. And the moment I stopped a teammate of mine had an accidental discharge and the bullet went like zoomed right by my right ear. Had I taken that next step, it would have gone in the back of my head. That’s intuition.
Mike Matthews: Hello, and welcome to a new episode of muscle for life. Thank you for joining me today.
I’m your host, Mike Matthews, and in today’s episode I have my buddy Mark Dev Divine back on the podcast to talk about the material in his newest book that he released a few months ago called Uncommon. And so today’s episode is going to be about what it means to be and to become [00:01:00] uncommon in body, in mind, in soul.
And that means building physical and psychological, emotional, spiritual, resilience, and awareness, and capacity. And then using those things to build confidence, to improve emotional control, to overcome self doubts, to improve decision making, to enhance focus and clarity. And break through negative thought patterns to find more purpose in life and more.
And all of those things are what Mark is going to be talking about in today’s episode. And in case you are not familiar with Mark, he is a former Navy SEAL. He is a best selling author. He is the founder of SEALfit and several other companies. And in his books and in his writings and in his speeches, he shares his approach to [00:02:00] cultivating mental toughness, inner strength, and what he calls a warrior mindset for personal growth.
Before we get started, there are very few supplements that I would say everyone should be taking. Most supplements are very supplemental by definition. They’re not essential. An exception, however, a supplement that I do think everyone should at least strongly consider taking is creatine. Now you probably know that creatine is the most studied molecule in all of sports nutrition.
You probably know that hundreds of studies confirm that it can safely boost muscle and strength gains and improve muscular endurance. It can reduce muscle damage and soreness from exercise, helping you recover faster from your training. It can help you preserve lean mass and strength while you are restricting your calories during a cut, so you can maximally improve your body composition when you’re cutting, which is the goal.
It’s not weight loss per se, [00:03:00] it’s fat loss and muscle gain or at least muscle retention. However, what you might not know is that there is creatine also supports various aspects of brain health. And that’s why experts are now starting to think of creatine as less of a fitness supplement for meatheads and more of a must have supplement for everyone, like vitamin D or vitamin K or omega 3 fatty acids, a few supplements that I also think everyone should strongly consider taking.
And all that is why I just, and finally, I should have done this a long time ago. This was a mistake, but I just released a micronized creatine supplement. Monohydrate supplement or My sports nutrition company, Legion, has just released a micronized creatine monohydrate supplement, which you can find over at buylegion.
com slash creatine, that’s b u y legion. com slash creatine. And in case you’re wondering why creatine monohydrate versus another Maybe more exotic [00:04:00] form or at least exotic sounding form like creatine citrate or creatine malate It’s because creatine monohydrate is the most studied form It is the gold standard in the scientific literature of creatine’s effectiveness.
And contrary to what many marketers would have you believe, research has also shown that a number of these other more quote unquote exotic forms of creatine actually perform worse than creatine monohydrate. And in case you are wondering about the micronized part, that simply means the creatine molecules have been broken down into very small particles.
Up to 20 times smaller than regular creatine monohydrate crystals. And the primary benefit is solubility. It mixes in water better and it also can be easier on your stomach. Some people can get an upset stomach from creatine and they often don’t get an upset stomach from monohydrate. micronized creatine.
There also are some claims about enhanced absorption with [00:05:00] micronized creatine monohydrate, faster and more efficient uptake by muscle cells. But I think that is mostly speculation. So the bottom line is creatine is not going to help you pack on brain shrinking amounts of muscle in 30 days. It’s not going to add another plate or two to the bar, but it is going to help you train harder.
It’s going to help you recover better. It’s going to help you gain muscle and strength faster, and contrary to the supplement fake news, it’s not bad for your kidneys, it doesn’t cause men to lose their hair, and it won’t make you bloated. So if you want to see for yourself, head over to buylegion. com slash creatine b u y l e g i o n dot com slash creatine pick up a bottle take five grams a day if you are mostly after the performance and body composition benefits and take 10 grams per day if you want to also maximally benefit your brain health and cognition because That is the amount that research is [00:06:00] suggesting is optimal for both body composition, physical performance and mental health or brain health and cognition and see how it goes.
Hey, Mark. It’s good to see you again. You too. Mike. Thanks for having me on your show, buddy. Yeah, absolutely. It’s been a bit. We’ve emailed a couple of times, but haven’t spoken in a while. It’s true. Yeah. Life goes on. Yeah, exactly. Very true. So we’re here to to talk about your new book, which is called uncommon came out a few months ago.
I was excited to see as someone who keeps writing books, even though I could find reasons not to, I’m sure you could find reasons to not write the next book, but something in you says now you got to write the next book. Yeah, the books right
Mark Divine: us, I think, right? It has to come through you. There’s a principle called way.
I think even made it might mentioned in the book way means action without the actor. Way, who is action and way is [00:07:00] inaction. When you put them together, way, you’ve got action. Within action, but what it really talks about is not without the actor and that what that means is the egos out of the way and so where I’m going with that is this is the nature of what it means to be a real, if you understand consciousness and spirituality, like we are being lived by spirit and the cause of suffering, the cause of all the problems in the world is to mistake Yourself to be an independent, self organizing being with an individual consciousness, which is the Western way of seeing things.
But it’s actually not the way things work. When I what I mean by this is if a book wants to be written, it’s being written through me. And there’s nothing, no way in hell I’m going to stop it. I can slow it down. I can resist it, but if I stop it, then ultimately I’m doing a huge injustice because the words need to come out.
Mike Matthews: What are your thoughts about what you just said in the context of individualism, which is also, there’s a lot of emphasis on that here in [00:08:00] the West. Yeah I think
Mark Divine: individualism is a false ideology that’s led to a lot of, again, a lot of suffering, a lot of pain because we, human beings are, first of all, we’re not separate from each other.
Secondly, we don’t ever create anything of value alone, right? It is always a team effort and it’s always built on the backs of countless others. And so the ego that believes that it can go it alone, the lone wolf, and even that kind of American exceptionalism and sense of being that pioneer, rough cowboy individualist.
It always leads to less optimal results and regret in the long run, because at the end of your life, you’re like geez, all of that accomplishment was meaningless without, if I can’t share it with others or if it wasn’t in service to others.
Mike Matthews: But at the same time, of course, if you swing to the opposite end of the spectrum and you are now in, to the realm of collectivism and in politically, that’d be statism.
That’s. Or different type of horror.
Mark Divine: Yeah, [00:09:00] when it comes to, I would say that, the Buddha had the best kind of path, the middle path, right? Collectivism and having a belief that the state can and should control all the affairs of its citizens always leads to. Disaster in the long run, and just to let everyone be completely free would lead to anarchy, which means that then a lot of individuals would be hurt by those who are have, a lower level of consciousness or, are working on some extremely negative energy or negative comments.
So they’re going to be there’s gonna be a lot of victims. There’s gonna be victims in either case, but in 1 case, the victims are. Randomized and at the expense of the wolves and the other the victims are going to be at the expense of the state’s going to be. I wanted
Mike Matthews: to talk about the spiritual mountain that was on my list of things.
I had it later, but let’s just start with it because what I wanted to talk about and specifically relating this this mountain and For people listening, so mark in this book, you use this metaphor of different mountains. We have to climb in the spiritual one being one of them.
And you talk [00:10:00] about aligning your heart and aligning your mind to every action. And I was curious, what does that look like for you? What is your primary purpose that aligns your Mind that aligns your actions. And how has that changed
Mark Divine: over the years? No, that’s a great question. My purpose is to master myself as a warrior leader teacher so that I can serve humanity.
Now, how that has changed is. I didn’t articulate it that way. I would have said in my twenties, as I uncovered it through meditation, that my purpose was to be a warrior and to serve my country. And then as I evolved I recognized that warrior was just one archetype, right? It was a dominant archetype and it was very present still for me to this day, but eventually it gave way to where there was room for the leader archetype.
To emerge the strategist. The alchemist. And so those other archetypes are really starting to assert [00:11:00] themselves. And while simultaneously the expansiveness of how I’m meant to serve has really dramatically expanded. And so it’s gone well beyond, serving my country as a Navy SEAL to serving all humanity to help uplift humanity, move away from violence and negativity.
Now, this mountain, which I call Kokoro Mountain, Kokoro is a warrior term from the Japanese martial tradition, which means to merge your heart and mind in action or a whole mind. Ultimately, it’s an uncanny thing to discuss because you can’t really, it’s hard, right? Because from the Eastern perspective, we are already whole.
It’s our natural state. We’re spiritual beings, having an an instant of this kind of physical manifestation, but because the brain, the way it’s organized and the way our training is in the Western world, especially we are led to believe that we are an individual separate self. We call that the ego [00:12:00] personality, which has to find spirit somehow
Mike Matthews: or not or we’re just
Mark Divine: a brain and that’s it, or you’re just a brain.
Yeah, exactly. A lot of people, especially the scientists don’t even think they just think consciousness is a manifestation of brain activity. And because there’s no evidence behind spirit, because it’s all subjective, they just completely deny it. That’s nihilism. But you and I know, and most of the listeners know that that’s not accurate, because there is a spiritual aspect, and we just don’t understand it very well.
And so it’s very valuable to have a an approach that is a process or an approach, which means we can work on the ego. And so this is like the Zen tradition of taming the ego. Some people talk about killing the ego. You can’t really kill the ego. If you kill the ego, the, the body would die. The ego is necessary for survival, but.
Emotional process depth, psychology, personal development, even physical development, like you and I in our core that, you’re training the body. You’re training the mind as you train the mind. You have more clarity of thought. You have more insight. You [00:13:00] develop a little emotional awareness, emotional control, and then you open up to your intuitive centers.
And then you’re starting to be able to be much more sensitive human being where you’re now suddenly experiencing non physical aspect. And you could call that spirit. We all have this much bigger component of ourselves, which is the non physical. And so the Western model and even to a larger extent, what I present in uncommon is this, and those are the five months physically, really refining your body physically.
So it’s a app vessel for this further development then mentally, not just. podcasts or, getting another certification or doing another course, but really, Changing how your brain and how your mind works through processes of breath work, meditation, visualization, mindfulness and witnessing, and then recognizing that a lot of times we, we can stop there and think we’re making great progress, but emotionally, it’s the traumas of our childhood [00:14:00] and conditioning.
Of our upbringing that are inhibiting our progress. So we’ve got to turn to the emotional mountain and begin to do that work as well, or else we’ll be thwarted in any further progress. And then that leads us into the intuitive mountain. And then ultimately, we end up at the coral mountain, but the coral mountain is never not there, right?
Your spirit is always there. You’re just like chipping away at the layers that are blocking it from being expressed. In its glory. So that’s where uncommon is unique. It’s like this, it’s like this combination of this deep Eastern wisdom that says you are in your natural state. Perfect. The way you, where you’re meant to be.
So own it. But from the Western perspective, like it’s hard to own it, right? If you’re clogged up, if your plumbing is all clogged up, cause you’re not physically healthy and you’re beating like shit. And so physically you don’t feel You don’t feel like a spiritual being because your physical vessel is corroded and corrupt.
So we got to get that healthy. [00:15:00] And then we haven’t learned how to think well, to be positive, to be optimistic, to separate yourself from future and past thinking, to be more present. And in that presence. We can enter that timeless state where we have that experience of witnessing awareness and, more spiritual insight.
And again, that leads us to the openings in the emotional mountain and the intuitive mountain. So it’s a both and we attack it from both sides, so to speak. So I’ve covered a lot of territory here, but ultimately from that natural state. You are who you are and you’re perfect the way you are when you tap into that through stillness, which takes a lot of work, as I said, then you begin to experience the, what the Easterners would call karma and dharmic energies, right?
Karma is the energy that propels you into this lifetime. It’s the latent energy from your past lifetime of desires and fears. And the need to learn things that comes in, and that’s going to drive you to have certain experiences, which is then going to either add [00:16:00] more negative karma, or it’s going to bleed it off and bring you some positive benefit.
And then the Dharma is the calling. It’s like how you’re meant to serve. Every one of us has a unique kind of imprint. As to how we’re meant to serve and the challenges we’re supposed to overcome and it’s always in my experience. It’s not a, it’s not something about what you’re going to do. It’s not a career.
It’s not a job. It’s this archetypal energy, right? Of being this or becoming this. This is why. When I was in my 20s sitting on my meditation bench and before I joined the seals, I kept having the experience internally, both in a felt sense and also just really subtle imagery that I was meant to be a warrior.
And yet there I was working on becoming a certified public accountant and getting my MBA. And I didn’t feel like that was very warrior ish.
I was doing something that was like physical karate and mental Zen, that was a first and second mountain, and it allowed me to tap into my [00:17:00] intuition, my fourth mountain, which is that inner whisper, the inner voice of my heart, my biome. And that was saying that my, my inner intuition was saying, telling me in its unique way that I was off target.
I wasn’t gonna be fulfilling my dharma, my calling of being a warrior if I stayed this track of being a CPA and going and making a lot of money on Wall Street. And so I started, that was a pivotal moment in my life. I was 22, maybe 23 years old. At first it was rather jarring, almost like you would expect from midlife crisis where I’m like, holy shit, I’ve invested a lot, but I hadn’t really invested that much time.
It just appeared that, here I am. Halfway done with my MBA CP, I’m barreling down the wrong road, but what a great opportunity to suddenly to sit there on that little meditation bench and to be told, stop. Or just stop long enough to pay attention and ask better questions. So I started to ask if I’m not meant to do that and I’m meant to be a warrior then what would that look like?
And that’s when I was showing the seals,
Mike Matthews: you speak with a [00:18:00] lot of conviction particularly about spirituality. And I think one of the challenges that many people have is. Speak of intuition, they have an intuition that something like that is probably true. Different religions have different answers but it can be hard to have firsthand experiences that, that take you from maybe an intuition to something closer to conviction.
I’m curious what firsthand experiences you’ve had that my sense of my interactions with you over the years is that you’ve probably had a number of firsthand experiences that. Have logically led you to conclude a lot of what you just said that it’s not simply a matter of these things sound nice and a lot of other people believe them and have believed them So and they confirm my biases and I like it.
So i’m just going to go with it You know what?
Mark Divine: Yeah, most people especially i’m not talking about religion, by the way, as I don’t have a religion I’m, not a religious person and the term [00:19:00] spiritual and spirituality has a lot of baggage attached to it for a lot of people, but we don’t have much better term to use and you’re right.
Unless you have direct experience, then it’s going to be faith for you or belief and faith are closely related faith is. You don’t really need to believe. You just trust belief is. Okay. I believe this teaching or I believe this teacher. And, or I believe my parents, because they told me this and what to believe when I was a kid, and so you’re going to go on that.
Neither faith nor belief are going to lead to certainty. Only the subjective experience can lead to certainty. And the only way to have that subjective experience is if you’re looking for it. So if you’re a complete denier, you won’t have it. And so that’s just going to reinforce your belief that, we’re just physical beings with a brain and the brain’s creating consciousness.
But if you are Someone who’s intrigued or interested and patient and worth investigating, [00:20:00] then there’s a possibility that you could have some direct experience. You can be that study of N equals 1 and actually find some proof. I was extremely fortunate to be 21 when I was introduced to meditation back in 1985.
Had I not been, we certainly probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d be on Wall Street or back running, the Divine Brothers family business in Utica, New York. But meditation and I believe that I was successful at 21 years old with meditation because, I grew up in the 60s and 70s.
And there was no TV, very little TV, three channels. We had, of course, no internet, no iPhones, no video games. And and I had a lot of sounds like a paradise in some ways compared to it was paradise. And I was in upstate New York and my family, my father was like, Not easy to be under the roof, right?
A lot of alcohol, a lot of stuff. And so I would spend a lot of time out in wilderness, right? [00:21:00] So one of the most powerful ways to experience spirit is to spend a lot of time alone in nature, quiet, right? People who, like we’ll walk the Appalachian trail, for 3 months, they’re having 10 spiritual experiences.
I, I used to go on long hikes with my brother and I had so many really strange, generally strange things that I experienced. Once we were in the woods for days and with no contact, except for, with a few other hikers here and there. Also, incredible flow state experiences. I remember I used to run the mountains in the Adirondacks.
I would get back to meditation a 2nd, but I jumped forward or. Earlier, a little bit in my teens and I would cruise up these mountains alone. And I remember, maybe 4 to 5 hours to like, find my way to the top. It wasn’t these aren’t like Rockies, but, 4, 000, 5, 000 feet tall and, and just from the sheer bliss of being in nature, of being alone, and the exhaustion, I remember once just sitting down on the rock, [00:22:00] pulling out my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and I’m just looking at this expanse of beautiful trees and lakes, and having this like, Radical kind of like 1st experience where I just shift my, my, my awareness just shifted perspective to, what you would call an out of body experience where I saw myself from outside myself.
And so that was like a really kind of foundational. Experience where I’m like, Oh, the mind is more than the brain. And if that’s so then, wow, that’s how far does it extend? And,
Mike Matthews: And also are you your mind or are you suffering from your mind? Or
Mark Divine: am I my mind? Exactly. Is this, what is this experience?
I didn’t know how to answer that back then. And I’m still not clear. And I think there’s,
Mike Matthews: that’s a long philosophical debate that’s still going.
Mark Divine: Yeah, I’m very clear. I would say, I don’t want to tell you [00:23:00] more than I know. That’s 1. I don’t know, because I think it’s possible that, some people say that’s pure awareness.
And I would say pure awareness, but it’s connected to my mind. And so there’s a connection between. Pure consciousness, which the spiritual tradition is called awareness and your mind and the witness is the kind of the doorway. And this is Suzuki in his book Zen mind, beginner minds talks about the swinging doorway that swings on the inhale and the exhale and the swings between personality and just pure awareness, non personal awareness.
And the witness is that kind of doorway, right? The witness is connected to pure awareness, but it’s also connected to your mind. And those experiences that allowed me to say what I just said to understand what Suzuki was saying, who was an enlightened master, didn’t come until much later. But that experience of me having that kind of like shift in perspective I believe meant I was suddenly Perceiving from [00:24:00] witness, which wasn’t separate from the mind, but it was more than the mind anyway.
So that’s an example. So when I went, when I started studying Zen with Tadashi Nakamura in New York city through my karate practice, extraordinary experience, because we had the, think about the five miles we had the hardcore physical with the karate, we had the mental training with the focus, concentration, the breath work, and now the Zen training emotionally, right?
Fighting a fighting art is. Really powerful way to do some, introductory emotional development work. You got emotional control. There’s a lot of shit that comes up when you’re getting your ass handed to you, time and again, and so it was very rich environment for development, especially at a young age.
We know with neuroplasticity, what now your brain isn’t fully developed until you’re like 26 is a guy. So a lot was happening. When I sat down, that Zen bench, yeah. And I had started to have like real success pretty quickly. I could hold my attention really well. It took maybe six or nine months, but I was able to hold my attention.
And then I [00:25:00] would routinely drop off into these like non dual states where time just was so malleable, right? Sometimes it felt like I was there for hours, but it was minutes. Sometimes I felt like I was there for minutes and it was hours or vice versa. And and whenever I dropped off into those that non dual ever present, fully present, radically here, but not thinking state, I would come back with something, some insight.
And this is where I, I earlier talked about starting to get the sense and the feeling and the ideas and images that I was meant to be a warrior. It all happened because of my meditation. So I was very fortunate to Uncover that at 21 and practice it for four years. And it led me to completely change my life.
I transformed from, a young common guy who was trying to be, follow the common path and making a lot of money on wall street. And my peers went on to make a lot of money on wall street. A couple of them are running fortune 500 companies right now. I. Had transformed and I [00:26:00] said, I saw that’s not my path.
And if I follow that path, it’s going to bring me great suffering, or at least I won’t be, I’ll be living that life of quiet desperation that Thoreau talked about or Emerson. And so I developed the courage, I built the courage for that practice to be like, I’m going to. Live the life that I’m meant to live and that’s to be a warrior.
And then I was shown the Navy SEALs. And that was, I said, when I saw them, when I figured out who they were, I was like, that’s it, and I didn’t even learn them until I was 23, there wasn’t much information back then, no TV shows, no nothing, right? There was one recruiting video. It hadn’t been built yet. So back to your original point, how do you go from faith belief or faith to certainty?
Because you’ve got to you’ve got to want it, right? And then if you want it, then there’s practices that will take you away from the, just the experience of everything’s happening out here to draw your attention inward to begin to experience. The inner world, [00:27:00] the inner domain, and in the inner domain, it begins to open up for you and you begin to have some really interesting experiences.
I’ve already described a few. You get imagery, you get sensations, you begin to experience the vast expanse of pure awareness, pure consciousness, which is alive. They use the term Sat Chit Ananda and in the Eastern traditions it’s being it’s consciousness. It’s bliss. It’s love. It’s life. And that’s what we are at a non personal level.
We are all that. And you experience that. And when you experience that, there’s no turning back. There’s no question. It’s a defining moment in your life, and you can also have really interesting mystical experiences along the way and mystical experience really are just pointers.
You don’t want to get too hung up on him or to, thinking, wow, that’s I’m really special. I have mystical experience. It’s just you’re being able to access a non physical world, right?
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So the bottom line is this, you can get that head turning, beach ready body without following weird, extreme or complicated diet exercise or supplementation strategies. And fitter, leaner, stronger will show you how. So get your copy now and start your journey to a fitter, leaner, and stronger you. What are your thoughts on the popularity of using different drugs to try to accomplish a lot of what you’re talking about?
Mark Divine: I have definitely experienced many of those on my journey as a warrior to heal others. I have a foundation for vets who are suicidal, post medic stress. And so in order for [00:32:00] me to Really recommend certain things, which included psychedelics. I wanted to make sure that I was I could understand them.
And so I’ve experienced like psilocybin and ketamine and ibogaine. That was a real doozy and ayahuasca. And what my insight and my experience told me was that they’re very useful for healing from trauma, but they have to be done. Or administered in a very thoughtful way, right? With a lot of preparation, a lot of care amongst the administrator or the facilitator.
The situation itself has to be very well curated. It should be a small, I’ve been. Ayahuasca ceremonies like 50 people and I know I’ve seen heard people have been it with hundreds and I think that’s reckless. Like it should be small so that the facilitators can really pay attention what’s going on, especially with traumatized human beings, which is everybody.
The space has to be held to, to make sure that energy that doesn’t belong there doesn’t creep in, etc. And then after the experience, there [00:33:00] needs to be some handholding and reintegration that. Is skillful, right? So therapeutic process, if all those exist, I think that psychedelics can be very helpful for healing from post traumatic stress also from any type of real trauma, like sexual trauma or abuse.
And it is Useful also for anxiety and depression and often anxiety, depression go, as a go hand in hand with that trauma, it can be useful for spiritual development as well. But, and this is a capital B, but I don’t believe it is a spiritual practice and I know some people do. I don’t believe that psychedelics.
Should be a spiritual practice. I think it’ll lead to a bypassing. I think it, it can get people stuck in this kind of like magical mythical thinking and even stuck in kind of astral reality. Level manipulation and and so I’m very cautionary about that. It [00:34:00] should be I like it for healing, but I don’t like it for spiritual development unless it’s maybe 1 or 2, let’s just see what I learn and it’s mostly going to show you the emotional traumas and what needs to be healed so that you can move on.
In your journey, that was a long winded answer to your question, but I a lot of caution. If you’re just a recreational, you think it’s fun, a lot of caution, a lot of caution. If you think you’re going to use it as your spiritual practice, best spiritual practices, sit down and be quiet.
Mike Matthews: Yeah, I’m not speaking from personal experience, but if I were approaching this for me, my.
And my instinct would be if I’m trying to get out of doing the hard work and a lot of the stuff that you’re talking about that, that you did for a long time to reach these heightened levels of awareness. And if someone was trying to sell me that I could shortcut all that with drugs I would be skeptical.
That would
Mark Divine: be me. I think that’s very wise. That’s exactly right. I think, and that’s what I meant by the spiritual bypass, bypassing all the work, [00:35:00] right? Go from zero to hero. And, our culture wants that a lot. They were taught that we can go straight there. We have chat GPT.
Now we don’t have to think anymore. Just get the answer. Psychedelics have led to that. Here’s a great story. So back in the in the 70s, LSD was the big thing, right? And a lot of the people who are doing the psychedelics, we’re also connecting with the yoga, the Indian yogi tradition, which is, the oldest science and mental development, spiritual development.
I don’t mean the stretchy bendy, just, physical yoga that we have here in America. And A number of these individuals would go to India and meet some of the sages and learn from them. And so even the Beatles went down and spent time with Ramana Maharshi and he was a great sage, Jnani Yogi sage.
And Ram Dass was a Harvard professor, who had psychedelic experiences and went down to India and changed his name. And, now he’s still very famous. Anyway, so Timothy Leary and maybe it was Ram Dass and Timothy Leary brought some LSD to Ramana Maharshi when he was alive and they said, this is [00:36:00] what we’ve been doing in the West.
We’re having tremendous mystical experiences. We think it’s a solution that may, get us to where you are or where you’re pointing to faster. Can you help us validate that? And Maharishi is okay. And so they give him a hit. He takes it, they give him another, takes it, give him another, give eight hits of LSD and this guy, he is an enlightened master.
Meaning he’s completely no sense of personal self there. There’s no ego. And so his mind is working in a very different way. And people who have those, that, that state that their mind is operating at like a, Theta level all the time in waking state. It’s just extremely calm, clear, awakened awareness.
If you, again, if you. Think about it from the perspective of that Western spiritual, like consciousness is living. Consciousness is actually what enlivens the brain. The brain is responding to consciousness. So thoughts happen, then the brain responds. People think that the [00:37:00] brain creates the thought.
He’s in these states where you put all this psychedelics in and he’s just doo. Do, just breathing, meditating. And then he opens his eyes and looks at him and goes, Oh, I see. He goes, you want to feel powerful. That’s what he said to Timothy Leary and Ram Dass about the LSD.
You want to feel powerful. He cut right to the chase.
Mike Matthews: Immediately makes you think of the CIA’s involvement, MKUltra. There were other things. There were other things going on.
Mark Divine: Psychedelics. It’s like a trickster, right? It can edit at a very low dose level and a very, just this.
Okay. I got good intention. I’m going to try it for healing. Great. But if you get married to it, then it’s going to own you and you’re going to feel powerful. You’re going to feel like you’re special because you’re having all these experiences and you can change your name and put robes on and call yourself rum, whatever you want, but it’s all ego.
It’s still ego, so psychedelics aren’t going to get you beyond the ego. And [00:38:00] I know there’s certainly I know, certainly people would challenge me on that. And I also know that I’m right.
Mike Matthews: Let’s talk about intuition, which I thought was great that you included that in your book because. Maybe it’s a Western thing, but certainly the culture here that we’re in, I don’t know if Eastern philosophy has different, has a different view of this, but intuition is often discounted as less valuable than rationality or even something to be ignored altogether.
Obviously, you have different thoughts on this, but I wanted to hear some of your thoughts on intuition and the role this can play if it’s properly attuned, if that’s the right way of putting it or however you might describe it. Yeah,
Mark Divine: I would say that let’s look at the world around us and see how rationality has served us on the
Mike Matthews: brink of World War
Mark Divine: 3.
Mike Matthews: I was just going to say, global thermonuclear war. Cool.
Mark Divine: Yeah. That’s served us really well. Hasn’t it? So now there’s something [00:39:00] beyond linear rationality that we need to tap into, and intuition is that link. It’s the bridge to the spirit. Or you could say it’s the way that spirit non physical communicates.
With us that allows us to perceive things that are normally hidden from view. So let me give you some examples. And this even like dovetails into kind of that conversation about certainty versus faith or belief. So one day I was at SEAL team three and we were doing some shooting training and I was walking, it was five in the morning and I was walking toward the range and I felt.
I felt as if I say as if, but I felt as if someone put their hand on my shoulder and whispered stop, but it was like a forceful stop now. And I stopped and the moment I stopped, a teammate of mine had an accidental discharge and the bullet went zoomed right by my right ear. Had I taken that next step, it would have gone in the back of my head.
That’s intuition. Right now, that’s a powerful intuitive hit and into [00:40:00] a signal, you could say, how did that happen? I, and if I know, but I do believe the biome was involved, right? And so that we have the gut brain and we have the heart brain and the other head brain, right? So the gut brain, you literally, we have neurons and neurotransmitters, neurochemicals in our gut, and they work through the internal nervous system and they communicate with the biome, the, all the little bugs in your biome and those bugs.
Are able to communicate what they experience from the outside world that you can’t possibly know. And so there’s some capacity for. Because, again, everything is connected at an energetic conscious level, they have this experience of this event that is about to happening, and they communicated it.
And I was open enough. I’ve been training by then in meditation for six years, and I had already had a lot of other experiences where I I believed in this, and so I was able to receive [00:41:00] that. I didn’t blow it off, and it saved my life. And I can tell you there’s countless stories like that from SEALs and other special operators where they just trusted their gut or listen to their intuition and it saved them.
I had a friend, Mike Jaco, who literally tells a story in his book, Intuitive Warrior, about being able to intuit where IEDs were being placed and having his team kind of route around it and finding out later that sure enough, there was an IED there that was, put there to blow them or someone else up on that route.
I don’t think we’ll know probably for many years, like how this really works, right? When we’re talking about the gut, brain connection, same thing with a heart, like you could say the intuition of the heart is empathic. And so you say some people are highly empathic and others aren’t, but why?
Was because they’re open, their heart is really open and they’re able to receive energy from other people and also able to give energy so healers are able to heal right by opening by [00:42:00] sending their heart and their love energy into other beings and which actually has a dimensional effect and healing.
Jesus was a greatest example of that. So that you could say is yeah. An intuitive strength or a spiritual strength is again spirit and intuition is like the language of the spirit. Another way to experience and express intuition is the brain, the head brain, right? And the head brain intuition is experienced as I mentioned earlier through subtle imagery.
It’s not the imagery that you would expect with a sports visualization where you’re like, you’re remembering an event and you’re replaying like you’re. Yeah. Sport or let’s say, in your domain, let’s say you’re working on, or you’re coaching someone in in power cleans and, you have them visualize, the perfect power clean doing the weight, which is going to be their next PR.
Or like Michael Phelps, that type of visualization, what you get instead is like really subtle, almost background imagery. And it’s just emerges. It just shows itself to you without any type of [00:43:00] effort on your part. So that’ll happen. A lot of times, like we do these extended breath trainings in our unbeatable mind training is 45 minute, like really intense.
We call it warrior breathing. And this is a pretty common experience to have this imagery to show. And some people, say that like a loved one is, was there sitting with them and they could see and feel them, you’ll see like an image in your mind and it might be a teacher, a non physical teacher or animal that’s there to be like a totem, kind of thing.
It can be all sorts of things. You can even have an image of your future self, right? If you invite that in and sure enough, like there he is, or she is it’s amazing. So imagery and also something called direct perception, right? This is trans rational intuition. Direct perception is you suddenly have a knowingness of something, but you don’t really have any idea why, like it’s not something you studied, you didn’t hear it in a podcast.
And so that is That’s the directly perceiving things and that’s being able to recognize that information just came into [00:44:00] you that wasn’t something that you studied or knew. So the point with my writing that chapter is, again, we’re in a world that is barreling toward, more and more distraction, more and more separation, less health.
Look at our, the health in this country is insane, right? And the fact that the government’s not doing anything about it is crazy. Yeah. You keep on promoting disease, related things to include more vaccines. But we won’t go down that rabbit hole.
Mike Matthews: Now people have a semaglutide which I don’t know if you saw, I saw a graph recently basically the headline is that we may have reached peak obesity here in the West because there actually is now a downtick in obesity here in the West and of course it’s driven by these GLP one.
Yeah, but yeah, factually, yeah, which is an indictment. Yes. Though, on balance, probably a net positive considering how [00:45:00] utterly destructive it is to remain.
Mark Divine: Yeah, again like any pharmacological intervention, I’m fine if it gets people on the road, but if it becomes a crutch, then it’s just a burden on them as well as society because, I saw some, factoids that could be like a multi trillion dollar product and they’re bringing it into Medicaid and Medicare.
That means us taxpayers are going to be funding an obesity pill that everyone’s going to be taking. And if they come to rely on it, and addicted to it,
Mike Matthews: Which will be the intention,
Mark Divine: let’s be clear. Exactly, that’s what I’m saying, exactly. Then ultimately they’re not, just because you’re stripped, you get addicted to another drug and it strips some weight off you, does not mean you’re getting healthier, right Mike, necessarily.
Anyway, so let, so I’ve talked a long time about intuition, so it has these nuanced aspects to it. There’s the gut intuition, which is like instinctual life saving. I’ve had numerous moments that [00:46:00] my gut saved my life. Then the heart’s intuition, which is empathic, where you really feel someone’s really suffering, or you feel the energy of your team is really off, and then you’re, you’re compelled.
Okay, I gotta do something about this, right? There’s the intuition of direct perception and that sense of Oh yeah, I got to pivot, in my business, like something bad is going to happen. Or, like I’ve had this in the last couple of years where I’m, I need to shed some old structures and to release some energy so that I can really set the stage for the next, 5 or 10 years because I’ve changed so much since when I started, my core business, which is seal fit.
It’s a very powerful where I was going with that last piece, the world’s barreling down this kind of seems to be a dark place and exponential technology and AI and blah, blah, blah. And I do a lot of speaking to leaders and they’re all like, like Einstein’s quote, we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, but we’re not getting them because the same thing is all that left behind.
Western left kind of brain linear, like cause and effect type training, [00:47:00] horizontal training. And what I teach is to have them tap into the kind of like the nonlinear, which is the nonphysical, which is the field of intuition and spontaneity and creativity. And and that is the next frontier of leadership and personal development, because, computers and AI are going to do a lot of that kind of linear stuff for us.
But it’s not going to lead you to massive innovation or massive creativity. Those are human skills, but the tap into those skills, you’ve got to teach yourself how to do it. And that means you’ve got to slow down and be comfortable in the being space as opposed to doing space. We have such a massive bias toward action and doing and putting points on the board and oversaturating our task list here in the West.
And we have to overcome that and start to do less things do them with more attention and intention and to become more present and to spend every day in silence. One of my great quotes from another Indian sage guy named Poonjab said sitting in silence is the most important thing to do. Don’t waste time not doing it.[00:48:00]
And that’s where you’re going to learn to develop these skills.
Mike Matthews: Let’s talk about the emotional mountain, which is extremely important because ultimately every decision we make is emotional in the end. As De Bono said in his classic book, I’m sure you’ve read it. I think many people listening have. I’ve recommended it a number of times.
Six Thinking Hats. He said, quote, When we have used thinking to make the map, our choice of route is determined by values and emotions. And The problem, however, of course, is that very often emotions can dominate our thinking. Emotions can lead us astray. What are your thoughts on how we can develop a healthier relationship with our emotions and ultimately have them lead us more in the right direction than the wrong direction?
Mark Divine: Again, you’re going to get a different answer for me from like a classical emotion, something like an academic or psychologist. [00:49:00] What we’re dealing with here is energy. Thought is energy and emotions are energy. So an emotion is really just energy that has a particular experience and meaning that place on it.
Mike Matthews: Maybe
Mark Divine: even a
Mike Matthews: wavelength,
Mark Divine: so to speak. Or yeah, it could be like, exactly. It’s like a resonate resonant wavelength or energy is flowing through you. But also if you don’t allow it to flow, a healthy individual who’s got, high self esteem and maybe he’s done some emotional awareness development, will still experience.
The full range of emotions, but they won’t they won’t block the emotion. They don’t have unhealthy meaning making associated with emotions. So we might experience the same wave of energy that in one person might be experienced as rage. And another person that might be experiences exciting anticipation of a pending event, right?
Or excitement about or. Just a wave of energy around the event that just happened that you’re not going to label, you’re just going to let it flow, [00:50:00] right? Let it flow through you. Also so it’s important when we’re talking about emotions to think that there’s a healthy way to deal with emotions.
I want to say manage because management is like controlling, right? You deal with emotions by becoming aware of them and letting them flow, because if you don’t let them flow and you try to manage them, then they’ll like really locked down and then they’ll become trapped. Now, don’t get me wrong, right?
If I’m experiencing an emotion in the middle of a firefight, and that could be a debilitating moment, takes me off my gun, then I will manage that emotion, right? I will park it. Say not now, but then I’ll come back and address it and release that energy. And so that’s like healthy way to deal with it.
So emotions are really just a different form of thought energy that are experienced in the body and the emotion can have. A meaning or a story that it, that comes along with it, that either triggers it preceding it or that trails it or both, but it doesn’t necessarily [00:51:00] have to have that because a lot of times we’re talking about energy from energy that gets corrupted by trauma in our early years, especially in our first, 3 or 4 years of life where we didn’t have the intellectual Capacity and the ego development to deal with it effectively and so some strategy was created for survival mechanisms, which was very useful at the time, which then later on was not so useful.
This is a very subtle this, we call this subconscious program. It’s a very subtle form of emotional work, right? There may not be some great explosive feeling attached to codependence, right? Or to anxiety or feeling of. Worthlessness, this is where like NUI are very, things that don’t really feel like emotions, but just like angst, a general, like angst, not feeling whole in your [00:52:00] skin just, being moody or it doesn’t have to have the charge of like anxiety or even depression, right?
So that type of emotion work, requires some real patience and courage, especially if there’s trauma that life threatening trauma like physical, mental, and emotional or sexual abuse. And, frankly, it’s, that’s more common than most people would ever like to believe or admit, based upon my research and understanding.
So it’s a very vast subject. It bleeds into the mental mountain, as well as the intuitive mountain, and even the spiritual mountain. It takes a lot of spiritual strength. In fact, probably the quickest healing program for emotional challenging situations is, like forgiveness, like the course of miracles, just go right to the spiritual truth that you are spiritual being, and that, ultimately you are forgiven, and even to forgive whoever you think harmed you, that [00:53:00] releases a lot of like truth releases, The darkness of the trauma, right?
When you bring, those truth statements in and you believe them so you can use healing. Multidimensionally to really clean up the emotional baggage and emotional traumas, there’s physical, like we know that physical movement, like yoga, right? So somatic movement, exercise helps release and move that energy, emotions, energy in motion.
So you move your body, you begin to move the energy, it’s why, I generally fit healthy people who do a lot of movement. And somatic work like yoga, martial arts, dance are usually emotionally more mature and healthy as well. So there’s the physical mountain, and then we can use the mental mountain through meditation.
The whole practice of mindfulness is to develop the capacity to separate from your thoughts. And so we, we begin through meditation to see that we are not, our thoughts are happening, but it’s not my field of awareness where it used to be merged. Like I am [00:54:00] this thought.
And through meditation, you create that space where you say, I am this, but those thoughts are happening over there. So I am not those thoughts. And that’s the 1st step that we call metacognition to be able to be aware of your thinking and to think about your thinking. But then it becomes 1 of constant monitoring or witnessing, and when it kind of locks into there, the combination of metacognition and witnessing, we begin to see the nature of our thoughts.
And the stories that are underpinning them and even more and more of the subconscious becomes accessible to you. And so that’s the way you use the mental mountain to really get into the emotional mountain work as you start to see the stories and then you ask better questions like that. I don’t think the story is serving me because every time.
This situation happens, I respond in this way, and at least to this terrible result. So why do I keep doing that? It’s just who you are. No, it’s not who you are. It’s how it’s the story that was conditioned into this body mind. [00:55:00] It’s not who you are, because who you are is the one that’s watching that can now ask the question.
And so from that space you have incredible freedom to
Mike Matthews: rewrite the story. I was just gonna say, I want metacognition, but a random question that coming back to spirituality momentarily, because I’m genuinely curious as to your thoughts. If it’s true that we are spiritual and that the essence of us is spiritual in some way.
And if it’s true that we’ve lived before and we’ll continue to exist as separate from our body, which it sounds like that’s in line with what you’re thinking and you’ve mentioned trauma a number of times and bad things can happen to us early in life. What about in earlier lives?
And if that’s true, then who knows how long we’ve been around for and what we’ve experienced, we might’ve experienced trauma that is. Actually inconceivable forget about taking a bullet or something like that. Again, if you have a spiritual essence that has been around for a long time, who knows what type of things we’ve got, what we’ve gotten up to,
Mark Divine: it’s quite [00:56:00] likely we’ve all experienced trauma. That’s inconceivable. And some of that energy can take lifetimes to heal from, I think, and same, if you were the perpetuator of that, Trauma on someone else, right? There’s a good chance that you’re going to be experiencing what you doled out in a future life.
The yogis said, and this is just like metaphor, but talking about it relates to what we’re saying that it takes a thousand lifetimes to find yoga. And what they mean by finding yoga is to find a path. Back to your spiritual center. That’s all yoga is. It’s a path. It’s a process. It’s a set of tools and processes and there’s hundreds of different yogas out there.
Each one has a different kind of take on, what’s the path and the guru thinks is the right way because they’re all from that perspective from that individual’s perspective, but the overarching Vedic philosophy of yoga, which says there’s a way to reunite with your spiritual self to reunite the ego or yoke the ego with the spirit.
So it takes a [00:57:00] thousand lifetimes to even be interested
Mike Matthews: in that. That’s interesting concept. All right, that was that question. Now, quickly, I want to come back and we’re coming up on time. If you have a few more minutes, I just wanted to ask about this metacognition, which I think is extremely important and underutilized.
You commented quickly on what that is, but could you explain to people what that word means and why it’s important?
Mark Divine: The cognition is to be aware of your thinking. Like, when you cognize something, you become aware of it oh I said, or you recognize something, you recognize it. It’s oh, I’m reforming an image of something I already known in the past.
I’m recognizing and recognizing. Metacognition is, and meta means. More expansive view, right? Beyond the narrow, right? So metacognition is to have a broad perspective of the cognition. That is what you take to be your mind, right? You’re thinking. And so let’s say level one thinking is just be merged with your thoughts.
And most [00:58:00] people merge with their thoughts are wrecking balls, right? They’re just all over the place. They are at the vicissitudes of their thinking and they don’t often don’t do anything to change the nature of thinking and so they often and they’re just playing out the patterns.
They’re just acting impulsively and if they’re conditioning and their conscious level is low because conscious, the more light and love you let through your mind. And your heart, then the higher vibratory quality, higher conscious level, you could say that you’re carrying or you admit, and so if you’re a really low level conscious person, then, you’re going to be in prison or you’re going to be a violent criminal, right?
Or, politician, whatever. You might, I was just going to say you might be president of the United States. I don’t know. So metacognition is developing the capacity to go from that level one where I am, my thoughts to be able to, to either just because the natural development that you have and your intellect, or maybe your conscious level, or you’ve turned to a practice like mindfulness, [00:59:00] where you, Through some discipline training, you separate from the thinking and that, oh, I’m not my thinking I have a more meta cognition.
I can cognize that. I’m not my thinking from a more expansive perspective. Okay, so so meta cognition and that is still from the mind, right? And so the mind is like a, it’s like a computer in 1 sense. If you want to partition your mind into hard drives 1 way, we talk about the hard drives of the mind is the left hemisphere and right hemisphere.
Left hemisphere is the rational decision maker, right? Hemisphere is the creative contextual awareness and, pattern recognizer. It’s just like saying, you have a hard drive you partition into. Metacognition is like creating a third partition, which is watching the patterns and how they interact of the other two.
And being able to begin to make some distinctions about the quality of your thinking. One of the most important distinctions is the litmus test of positive versus [01:00:00] negative, right? You’ve heard that the brain tends to be five times more negative than it is positive. It’s because it’s all the conditioning, like media is so negative.
News is so negative. Even our language tends to be really negative. And humor can be really negative. And then, of course, we put a bunch of shit into our bodies that’s negative and that, just becomes a reinforcing loop. So metacognition leads you to see that. Wow. I have a lot of negative internal dialogue and negative external dialogue.
I’ve got a lot of negative information. I’m allowing into my body and mind. And so then you can do something about that, because as soon as you stop putting all that negative information in, it has a dramatic effect on your mood, your optimism, and your positive out like, and the energy that you carry and you emit to other people.
I I teach people in my community is 1st thing you do is get rid of your TV. I haven’t had a TV, like a real TV. Where I watch news or. Like TV shows with the commercials. And I think it’s almost 30 years,
Mike Matthews: social media too. I under, I understand if you use it for your work and but as [01:01:00] a, just a private individual consumer, I just don’t, I just don’t see the value.
Mark Divine: I got back on, I got on Twitter slash X cause I wanted to support Elon. I was curious where he’s going with it and I’m really glad that he bought it, but I can’t spend more than a minute on there. And I just skip by all the crap. I’m like, oh, I don’t want to let that in.
Mike Matthews: Yep.
Yep. I just go straight to replies. If people, sometimes people ask questions or they’ll comment. So I use it to try to interact with people who care about what I’m doing, but otherwise try to spend very little time on. On X, although I like X actually, I like it more than the more visual I don’t, I’m not on Tik TOK, but Instagram, because I like the text base.
Cause I like to read. So that, that is appealing.
Mark Divine: Yeah, I’ve seen some really interesting things where people like thread things over like 8 or 10 posts. And they go really deep on some really interesting things, but there’s so much negative crap, too. Yeah, so the metacognition is a very important skill.
There’s another way to look at this it’s for business people, you could say that [01:02:00] weekly planning, where you look back at the week and say, oh, these were my goals, these are my results, this is what went well, this is what didn’t go the weekly debrief, that’s a form of metacognition.
Mike Matthews: Yeah, it’s a good analogy too, because a lot of business people will say how they get stuck in the business and they forget to make time to work on the business. We’ve got to work on the business. That’s a
Mark Divine: form of metacognition. Even like we, we promote a morning ritual and evening ritual. I’m sure you, you have very similar practices where, morning ritual is to prepare to win the day and evening rituals to make sure that you retain the victories and learn from them, but also clean up any kind of mess you might have made during the day, right?
You have an opportunity before you go to bed to say, sorry, or to be like, Oh, that could have gone better. Let me take this action tomorrow to make sure I can, fix that relationship. Yeah.
Mike Matthews: What else can I learn here to use Jocko Willink’s terminologies? I like the extreme ownership, like extreme personal.
Let me look at what I did here, regardless of whatever else.
Mark Divine: What was my role? Yeah. You always have a role. That’s a form of metacognition, right? So you’re taking a look at the [01:03:00] day and you’re learning from it, right? And you’re saying yeah, that went well, and that didn’t go well. So I’m going to change some behaviors and I’m going to do better next time.
Ultimately, we want to develop our minds to where this is in real real time, right? You’re able to, to in real time. Moderate and modify the thoughts and words and actions, right? Because you have we have such intense conditioning and there’s always going to be a pull to react based upon the conditioning and metacognition allows you to, in the seals, we say, pause, breathe, think, and then act.
So pause, breathe is the preface, thinking is the metacognition. I’m looking at this thing in real time saying, Oh, this is what I, this is the compulsive, impulsive thing that’s about to come out of my mouth. And I see that’s not going to lead to the results I want. So I’m going to interdict that or intercept that, and I’m going to shift my mind to a different, more positive thing to say, or do, or respond.
And then you deliver [01:04:00] that. And with training, this can become lightning fast.
Mike Matthews: With it takes training though. I was just going to say, I can say personally, I, in some contexts, I’m probably good at it. In other contexts I’m not so good at it when you’re building a house that’s been going on for two years and you just want it to be over and you’re sick of hearing.
Mark Divine: Yeah. Or, if you have some substance, for me, when I used to have yeah, some wine or something it would like. Interfere with my metacognition. Let’s just say
Mike Matthews: that’s funny. That’s funny. I know we’re coming up on time here. And so that was we got to most of what was on my outline.
That was great. So a lot of great ideas really enjoyed the conversation before we wrap up is there anything else that you would like to share with the listeners?
Mark Divine: Again, the meta message here is don’t fear, right? Recognize that you create your world, right?
Gandhi had a right. You can be the change you want to see in the world. If you [01:05:00] don’t like what’s going on out there with all the craziness then work on the craziness within yourself. And you will see the world begin to change around you, right? And the way to do that is to slow down. Do less, better.
Thank you, Kel Newport. That’s his thing. Do less, better.
Mike Matthews: Instead of doing things right, doing the right things, that concept. Sure, you want to do things right, but you got to make sure you’re doing the right thing.
Mark Divine: And do fewer things, right? There’s fewer right things. There’s a lot of wrong things that you could do and a lot of people do, but figure out what the right things and those right things are always going to be aligned with that purpose, that archetypal drive, which then, you can create a mission around and how you’re going to serve and how you’re going to be and show up in the world.
So find the things that align with that and then choose wisely and then radically focus on those and to say no to pretty much everything else and recommit or commit to a daily practice of being in silence and develop some skillful means for drawing, being able to take [01:06:00] yourself there. And so we teach box breathing.
Box breathing is a multiple multifaceted practice that takes people out of arousal through arousal control. Then it brings to develop, starts to develop attention control and concentration like my Zen training did. And then it opens up naturally into mindful awareness, the ability to develop that metacognition.
And ultimately it will lead to witnessing as well if you stick with it long enough. So take on a practice of a box breathing and sitting in silence every morning and every evening. And if it’s only 5 minutes, just that’s fine, but do it every single day and report back to Mike in 60 days. And I guarantee if you do that every single day, ideally 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes evening, but it’s the daily consistency, just like training in the gym, right?
If you’re coaching someone, Mike, and you said, yeah, we’re going to. Get your 400 pound deadlift. You’re going to go in and train on Saturdays, right? Notice chances of the guy getting to the 400 pound deadlift are 0. 0. Unless he starts with the 400 [01:07:00] pound deadlift. Yeah, unless he starts with 400.
Exactly. No, it’s but daily, right? Daily effort, consistent effort, same way with meditation practices. So start a daily consistent practice and the path to the stillness you’re looking for is always fun through the breath. So start with the practice like box breathing and we have a box breathing app.
You can learn more. Go to unbeatablemind. com is our website for our training like this. We have a 30 day challenge. Yeah. unbeatablemind. com slash challenge is where I teach the box breathing and a lot of the principles we talked about. I have it’s a short, it’s just 10, 15 minutes a day, all video based with some exercises, really powerful 30 day way to get.
You jump started in this
Mike Matthews: whole five month training. I love it. That’s great. And again, the the new book is uncommon. So if people want to check that out, they can get it wherever they want to buy a book and social media, anything else you’d like to tell people where they can find more of you and more of your work.[01:08:00]
Mark Divine: I’m like you I’m out there, but I don’t personally interact much, even though you might get a response that looks like it’s for me. So I’m just very, I’m very transparent about that. It’s not it’s my social media team, but we use I have a LinkedIn. That’s 1 place. I actually do respond to people.
I have a LinkedIn profile is pretty active. I’m on Facebook and obviously, Instagram and X. I got a YouTube channel and I’ve got the my own podcast, the Mark Devine show, which is on Apple, Spotify, et cetera. You can learn all about that at markdivine. com, which is my personal website. Perfect. Thanks again, Mark.
Great conversation. Yeah, it’s been a pleasure, Mike.
Mike Matthews: There are very few supplements that I would say everyone should be taking. Most supplements are very supplemental by definition. They’re not essential. An exception, however, a supplement that I. do think everyone should at least strongly consider taking is creatine.
Now you probably know that creatine is the most [01:09:00] studied molecule in all of sports nutrition. You probably know that hundreds of studies confirm that it can safely boost muscle and strength gains and improve muscular endurance. It can reduce muscle damage and soreness from exercise helping you recover faster from your training.
It can help you preserve lean mass and strength while you are restricting your calories during a cut so you can maximally improve your body composition when you’re cutting which is the goal. It’s not weight loss per se, it’s fat loss and muscle gain or at least muscle retention. However, what you might not know is that there is new research suggesting that creatine also supports various aspects of brain health.
And that’s why experts are now starting to think of creatine as less of a fitness supplement for meatheads and more of a must have supplement for everyone, like vitamin D, or vitamin K, or omega 3 fatty acids, a few supplements that I also think everyone should strongly consider taking. And all that is why I [01:10:00] just, and finally, I should have done this a long time ago, this was a mistake, but I just released, I a micronized creatine monohydrate supplement or my sports nutrition company legion has just released a micronized creatine monohydrate supplement which you can find over at buylegion.
com slash creatine that’s buylegion. com slash creatine and in case you’re wondering why creatine monohydrate versus another maybe more exotic form or at least exotic sounding form like creatine citrate or creatine malate. It’s because creatine monohydrate is the most studied form. It is the gold standard in the scientific literature of creatine’s effectiveness.
And contrary to what many marketers would have you believe, research has also shown that a number of these other more quote unquote exotic forms of creatine actually perform worse than creatine monohydrate. And in case you are wondering about the micronized [01:11:00] part, that simply means that the creatine molecules have been broken down into very small particles, up to 20 times smaller than regular creatine monohydrate crystals.
And the primary benefit is solubility. It mixes in water better. And it also can be easier on your stomach. Some people can get an upset stomach from creatine and they often don’t get an upset stomach from micronized creatine. There also are some claims about enhanced absorption with micronized creatine, monohydrate, faster and more efficient uptake by muscle cells, But I think that is mostly speculation.
So the bottom line is creatine is not going to help you pack on brain shrinking amounts of muscle in 30 days. It’s not going to add another plate or two to the bar, but it is going to help you train harder. It’s going to help you recover better. It’s going to help you gain muscle and strength faster, and contrary to the supplement fake news, it’s not bad for your kidneys, it doesn’t cause [01:12:00] men to lose their hair, and it won’t make you bloated.
So if you want to see for yourself, Head over to buylegion. com slash creatine B U Y L E G I O N dot com slash creatine. Pick up a bottle, take five grams a day. If you are mostly after the performance and body composition benefits and take 10 grams per day. If you want to also maximally benefit your brain health and cognition, because that is the amount that research is suggesting is optimal for both body composition, physical performance and mental health or brain health.
Cognition and see how it goes. I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don’t miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you.
And if you [01:13:00] didn’t like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have. Ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, Mike at muscleforlife. com muscleforlife. com and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you’d like to see me do in the future.
I read everything myself. I’m always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.