[00:00:00] I think a lot of people are, are confused and suffering because the message from culture is that you can’t express power. We also have forgotten that we are predatory animals. You see now a world of men and women who cannot stop apologizing for their own power. So that can be learned. Yep. Human beings just do not learn.

[00:00:20] Have the ability to look away from a predator in the wild, you know, it’s life and death. That’s why everything about you is so alive. And when you’re like that, no one looks away. Tell us about that in terms of helping others to kind of derive that story and to live it in their mind before they step foot in the battlefield.

[00:00:42] First of all, Mr. Bo Easton, thanks so much for joining me on the Mark Divine show. Super stoked to have you here, sir. Yeah, you’re welcome, Mark. Thank you. It’s my pleasure. Yeah, I think we’ve had this scheduled for a long time. I was just talking to John about that. It seems to me that your name came across my desk like over a year ago.

[00:01:00] I’m not sure why it took us so long to get this thing nailed. Yeah, we’ll get it today. So, no plan B, huh? Is that like burning your boats? It kind of is. Same thing. My dad would always say that. He would always say, you know, the less options you have, the better. More success you have. Well, you know, one of my mentors always says focus precedes success.

[00:01:20] And, you know, I’ve actually breached that so many times in my life. And right now I’m trying to simplify things cause I’ve got three different businesses and now this podcast and I can really get behind what we’re saying, but it’s difficult to have no plan B. Right. I think the, the ego really wants to have some security and wants to know that, Hey, you know, there’s an off ramp, but this thing doesn’t work out, especially if it’s a pretty, you know, VHAG thing, like playing in the NFL, for instance, or being an Navy SEAL.

[00:01:47] Yeah, no, for those two things for sure. Right. So it’s, I mean, the guys who do have options and enter that, you know, the training of that, whether it’s NFL or, or they go to buds, they’re not going to make it. Right. I mean, it’s a pretty predictable. And that, I kind of grew up that way. It was, it was, you know, on a ranch, cattle, animals, you know, four older sisters.

[00:02:13] No plan B with them. There was no options for anything. You just walk the straight and narrow, but you know, in the end. Especially in the NFL, because when people ask me, they go, well, how do you, you know, how do you, a guy like you get to be in the NFL? And I was like, the dream took a long time to come into existence.

[00:02:32] Like 17 years from when I started, my son is kind of following in those footsteps now he’s 17. And every day, every hour of every day, it seems like that dream is never going to come true. For him, right? Because the obstacles are always there ever present, right? And yeah, it’s just this one thing after the next and there’s always somebody better and older and stronger and goes to a better school every single day that you’re on this journey of these dreams.

[00:03:08] What I have found is that every single day it looks like there’s no way in hell that this is going to happen. It just can’t. Based on the evidence I’m getting back the feedback that I’m getting and then those years pass and that day You’re the last guy standing. You’re like, you’re the only one left.

[00:03:29] You’re this you’re the guy You just keep going in spite of those obstacles one foot in front of the other day in and day out But so you you kind of discovered or uncovered or claimed at nine years old that you want to be in the NFL Where did that idea come from? So I’m the youngest of six kids And this was, I guess it’s 1969 ish, right in there.

[00:03:52] We’re watching OJ Simpson of all people on TV. Okay. Right. Can you imagine? Yeah. And my dad, who’s a cowboy, you know, doesn’t talk a lot. Certainly doesn’t. You know, talk about his feelings or any of that, you know, and we’re watching this guy play football run with the ball and my dad’s says this kid is beautiful and I never heard my dad call anything beautiful play a man in a football uniform.

[00:04:24] Right? Right. And I’m like, that could raise some eyebrows. Okay. I’m like, wait a second. He thinks I’ve never heard him say that word for one. And secondly, it’s a guy in a football uniform running and I could see what he was talking about based on the movement of OJ Simpson. Like when I, you think back or you watch old videos of him, that guy was like poetry in motion.

[00:04:52] And that’s what he was talking about. Well, during that time, I was like, I wasn’t jealous of OJ Simpson in a way like, Oh, I want to be OJ Simpson. I more took the route of, you know what? Who are these guys trying to stop OJ Simpson? I want to be one of those guys. Did you know what I mean? Isn’t that funny?

[00:05:15] That’s how your mind works. Right. 

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[00:05:17] 

[00:06:24] And I said to myself, I don’t want to be OJ Simpson. I want to stop him. I want to be able to get him on the ground. That’s where I got really distinct about football. It wasn’t just football. It was this position called safety, which was the last line of defense. And if you could get past the safety, You score, you win.

[00:06:48] But if you could not get past the safety, you can’t win. And that’s what I recognized about it at a pretty young age. And I go, that’s what I’m going to be. I’m going to control my destiny by not allowing people to score the ball. Yeah, a little pop psychology thrown at you. But do you think part of your interest stemmed from wanting your dad to see you like that?

[00:07:14] Oh, probably. Uh, you know what I’ve been in a lot of hours of therapy and I’m guessing it’s, it’s pretty much a hundred percent.

[00:07:25] And I wonder if he ever watched you on TV and said, beautiful football player. Yes, son. Funny enough, years later. Many years later, the play opens in New York, right? So I wrote a play, OJ Simpson, that story that I just told you. That was the name of the play, right? The one man play? The name of the play is Runt of the Litter.

[00:07:49] Runt of the Litter, right. Yep. And so the play kind of became this hit in New York. And it got bought as a movie and it ran for many years. And one day my wife and I, we just got married. She’s the producer of the play. She had cell phones were fairly new and she goes, Bo, I just got a call and he says it’s OJ Simpson.

[00:08:20] And she hands me the phone. So this is after the trial, right? Yeah, getting a call from OJ now is a little different than, you know, when he was in his football days. That’s right. So this was after the trial, I pick up the phone and you look, I idolize OJ Simpson as a boy growing up, you know, just like a lot of boys did.

[00:08:42] And so when that whole trial and all those things happened, you know, I was like torn because here’s your, yeah, your hero. Well, I get on the phone and he goes, Bo, hey, it’s the juice. And it was his voice. It was him. And I go, Oh, really? And I just remember like everything just turning into slow motion. And he said, because he’s, he’s a character in the play.

[00:09:12] Now I was going to ask you that. Yeah. He must’ve seen the play or heard about it. Right. Yeah. A friend of his saw the play. told OJ that he’s in this play in New York City and they’re not dogging you. The writer actually didn’t dog you out because when I wrote it from the perspective of the kid, you know, before all that stuff happened.

[00:09:38] So anyway, he was calling me, Mark, to thank me for He goes, Hey man, I heard your play is very successful. I know I’m in it. I just want to thank you for not taking any cheap shots. That’s all he’s kind of said. He wished me good luck. And that was pretty much it. That’s cool. That’s crazy. Come in full circle like that, especially given the circumstances.

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[00:10:55] Hooyah. Let’s do this. Devine out.

[00:11:03] That is delicious. The NFL career, I wanted to ask you, so you talk about, you know, you set this thing in your mind that you want to be a safety, and then you just kind of started working toward that, obviously playing, you know, high school, college, whatnot. Did visualization play any part for you? And the reason I’m asking is when I decided, you know, decided, chose to be a Navy SEAL, I started, you know, using some sports visualization techniques that my Colgate swim coach had taught me.

[00:11:30] You know, practice visualization, I decided to practice being a person who’s worthy of being a Navy SEAL. And so I started to visualize myself going through SEAL training, and I had one video, and it was a recruiting video called Be Someone Special, and I watched it like 20 times, till all the imagery was like really solid.

[00:11:49] And then I put myself into that video. So I played that video in my head every day, you know, on a meditation bench. At first it was just blind faith, but something shifted in me that was profound. It took nine months and I had this sudden kind of like sense of knowingness, just wash over me that it was a done deal.

[00:12:11] There was nothing that was going to prevent me from being a Navy SEAL that I’d already accomplished it somehow in the universe. And time just had to catch up and the recruiter called me. I’ve told the story a few times. The recruiter called me about a week later and said, Hey, Mark, congratulations. Like you’re one of two people who are going to get into the seals this year from the civilian world.

[00:12:31] Cause I didn’t go through the academy or ROTC. So I guess that’s a long winded question to say, did, did visualization play a role in you kind of cementing this future for you? Cause I think that’s a powerful practice. Yeah, that played a huge part. And I didn’t even realize it, you know, I kind of did it innately.

[00:12:48] At first, just because I was dreaming about it and I was pretending I was already it. It was a fantasy that you believed in. That’s right. Like every time I would just carry a ball or I would practice diving on the bed, you know, and me and my brother both had this same dream. My brother’s quarterback and we would just play catch every day.

[00:13:12] We made up scenarios where he had to throw a thousand balls a day and I had to catch a thousand balls a day. You know, there was really no. TV watching. There was like three channels. There was no phones. There was none of that. We lived on a ranch. So it was our nearest neighbors were miles away. So everything we did was together.

[00:13:33] And we were the only two boys. It’s four older sisters and then us. And that’s what we did. But visualization was huge. And just the rehearsal of what it would be like to be the best safety, like, how do they walk? How do they talk to people? What do they eat? What are the best safe to eat? How did they train all these different things?

[00:13:58] I would pretend I was already it a lot like you, you know, and I don’t think your brain knows the difference that you actually graduated from, but, or I got drafted into the NFL body. Didn’t know the difference. It already had happened. I remember when it did happen the day, just like you, when you got that call, I was watching ESPN.

[00:14:20] It’s like five 30 in the morning. And they say. that, you know, the Houston Oilers choose Bo Eason. And I’m like, it felt like they were way behind me. Like I wasn’t, I wasn’t happy and I wasn’t surprised. I was like, it’s about time guys. Totally. That’s funny. You say that because when that recruiter called me, I knew already that I had gotten in and I knew that I would succeed.

[00:14:47] And I ended up being number one in my class at SEAL training. And I actually had fun, SEAL training. That’s how crazy I was. But the guy said, Hey, you don’t sound that excited. I said, Oh yeah, I’m excited. But, uh, yeah, thanks. I already, I knew this was happening, you know? So thanks, thanks for the call. Yeah.

[00:15:03] I’ve seen this over and over in my head so many times and it’s still true today. Like I remember when we were teenagers, me and my brother, my dad bought us a book. Now you got to remember this is like the seventies. So. There weren’t book, there weren’t like bookstores everywhere. We, we lived way out and I don’t ever remember my dad seeing my dad read a book ever.

[00:15:26] He read the newspaper, but I never seen him read a book. So one day he comes home with this book for me and my brother. You’re not going to believe it. It’s called sports psyching, sports psyching. And me and my brother go, well, shoot, you know, dad’s never given us a book before we better read this thing.

[00:15:47] And where the hell did he find it? And how did he find it? So we started reading it. It was all about visualization. We got into the book where we would like visualize the whole game that we were about to play. And we would talk about it later. And we go, God, there was this ball flying toward me during the game.

[00:16:08] And as it was flying toward me, I had seen that ball thousands of times before it had already happened. And I just reached up and caught it just easy, no problem. And it, because we had seen it before. And then years later, when I was in the pros, Mark, I remember being in the Houston Astrodome and I was playing this game and all of a sudden the game was a game that I had already played when I was a teenager years before, just the way I was tackling people, just the way people were running at me or by me.

[00:16:45] It was so weird that I could actually predict everything that was happening out there. It’s very strange. That is incredible. Was time malleable in that game? I mean, because often times, like when you’re in those flow states, or especially when you’ve had deep imagery practice, right? The whole perception of time can kind of warp, right?

[00:17:05] And slow way down, or, you know. So I know a lot of times you get, you experience that in pro sports. We experience it a lot in the SEALs. Yeah, I bet you do. Yes. I just remember those moments being in slow motion, very slow, people that are very fast normally in front of you. And that’s usually the biggest thing when you play in the NFL is adjusting to the speed.

[00:17:27] So if you can’t adapt to the speed of everybody, then you can’t play there. You got to go, right? It’s just like your guy’s adaptation that you must go through. But speed is the big thing once you’re in the NFL, because Even the dudes who are 360 pounds are actually really quick. Whenever you see something that big moving that fast, your body has to like, wow, you have to like get your mind around it.

[00:17:54] But during that one game, everything was just so slow, so manageable and everything was coming to me. It was very strange. Instead of away from me. So you do a lot of executive coaching, leadership training. Now, what was it from the NFL experience you like to share? You know, that is maybe unique to that experience that can help a leader succeed today.

[00:18:22] Yeah. You know, that’s why I always think like, you know, elite warriors or elite athletes. When I train them on the stuff I train in my life story. Uh, you know, presentations, you know, speaking, they always have a leg up. You know why? I, and I think it’s what we’ve already talked about a little bit. If you can’t adapt to a demanding situation, right?

[00:18:49] Cause that’s all speed is about. That’s all elite athleticism is about. That’s all, you know, elite fighting forces are all about. Is who can adapt to the demanding situation the fastest? And you know, like I always give the example that there’s no dinosaurs on this planet because they couldn’t adapt.

[00:19:06] There’s no saber tooth tigers. You know, they’re bigger than us. They’re stronger than us, but we adapted faster than them. And even the human species that were here that aren’t here now, it’s because their adaptation is not fast enough. The same thing with, if you look at the fastest human beings on the planet, In the Olympics, everyone else, there’s only 10 of them and everyone else is eliminated based on adaptation to speed.

[00:19:39] Well, same is true for your training, same is true for my training. We’re all really good at adaptation, but we just don’t do it enough. Because we don’t put ourselves in that situation. Right, you gotta practice it. And most people don’t want to be in a demanding situation. Like, I love this one quote, I forget who said it, but they said, The world was not created by great men.

[00:20:03] The world was created by a demanding situation. Which created great men. Right, which is where it all starts. And this one thing really, I try to help my people with this, Mark, I’m sure you do too. The first time, the first play that I was in the NFL, like, you know, what we would call live fire. Is when you’re, you know, because you can watch it on TV.

[00:20:27] That’s one thing, or you can see it from a distance. That’s another thing you came from college. So college has a certain tempo and speed and danger, but when you’re in the pros, none of your college teammates are there anymore. And there’s a reason they’re not there anymore. No one you played against in college is out there either.

[00:20:49] There’s a reason they’re not out there too. They’ve all been eliminated at that point. So the first time I lined up, it was against Tampa Bay. We were in Tampa. They go, okay, rookie, get your ass out there. Uh, show us what you got. So I go out there and I’m going to guard a guy who, a guy named James Owens, who would win the gold medal in the four by 100 relay in 1976.

[00:21:16] So he’s one of the four fastest men on the planet. And they go, okay, Bo, guard him. And now, and so I’m like, okay, okay. I’m really fast. And I have been trained to be a world class athlete and be very fast. I was already that, but I’d never seen speed like that. And it was an emotional experience when he ran past me.

[00:21:44] I’d never seen anybody move that fast. Smooth and that effortless and gone, like gone. And I just remember it being emotional, like, Oh, like having to get my gather myself, you know, I could run, but I’d never seen anybody like that. Well, that was first down by the second down mark. I could almost handle him.

[00:22:09] So that’s 30 seconds later, 30 seconds later, all of a sudden I can keep up with them a little bit. I can hang in there. You now know what to expect. But yeah, by third down, I’m going, my body’s done. I’m adapted. If I can’t guard this dude, they’re sending me home. I’ve trained too long to be sent home. I’m going to stay up with him.

[00:22:30] And my body just like adapted to this new speed. And it was mostly my eyes that had to get used to that. Get used to somebody moving that fast. And then my body naturally. Developed into having that kind of speed because I knew in my mind it was life and death, right? Like that’s how it felt to me. I’m not saying it was like it was for you, but I’m saying that’s how it felt.

[00:22:58] It felt like if I can’t do that, I’m going home. I’m going to drive a tractor for the rest of my life. That felt like death to me. So my body just went, you know, why do you actually think that you got faster in that game? Yes. Well, that just demonstrates, I agree with you, that demonstrates the power of the mind over the body.

[00:23:20] And we used to say in the seals, where the mind leaves, the body will follow. You got to put your mind there though, right? And that intensity and your perceived danger, you know, of this dream, lifelong dream of yours evaporating. So out of necessity, you told your body we’re doing this and the body complied.

[00:23:37] It’s incredible. And the power of the human mind is extraordinary. No, it really is. And I just don’t think the civilian world gets that opportunity too often. Right. I agree. And that’s what I really try to help people with, is like, this actually can happen. You just, your body’s not, has not been in that position.

[00:23:58] To let it happen. And when I wanted to be a really great stage performer, I had to surround myself with people who already were, you know, and there were so much better than me and they had so much like Al Pacino, I became a mentor and I just being around him and asking him, what does this take? What does it take to be the best at being on this stage and moving the people the most?

[00:24:25] What does that take? And he can actually tell you. He actually told me what it takes and what it looks like and that it’s really difficult because people just don’t have the time to spend up on that stage training. They just don’t want to spend that kind of struggle and time. Because they got a plan B.

[00:24:44] They’re always bailing out to go, Hey, this is getting hard. I’d rather go, you know, be famous. Then, you know, great. So I think timeline has a big element to do with that too mark is like we’re just so stuck on make believe Timelines not big on timelines for mastery to kick in. It takes years, you know, and if no one else is up for those years, then I’m going to be up for those years.

[00:25:15] I just saw that as a big advantage. If you won’t do the mileage, I think I’m going to do the mileage. And, you know, I’ll meet you on the other end. And usually they’re long gone by then. That’s right. Yeah. And our culture kind of supports that. They think they can get things fast. You know, an AI is going to make it even faster.

[00:25:34] And that’s just a misperception. The true mastery, you know, it’s like Malcolm Gladwell’s 10, 000 hours. You know, it’s, I don’t know if I agree with that. I think you can speed that up when you use your mind properly. Right. This just doesn’t have to be wrote repetition. Yep. No, a hundred percent. I think that too.

[00:25:51] And I’ve come up about on that, like I’ve, I’ve had a turn of that lately, you know, maybe in the last eight years. Where it was all effort for me in the beginning, you know, in the first 40 years, 45 years, it was all effort. It was all, you know, willpower. It was all make it happen. It was all timelines are long.

[00:26:13] And then something kind of, I don’t know if it was a book or somebody, something kind of just flipped around as far as the speed of mastery. Like how quickly that could actually happen. And, and just me, I think personally inventing obstacles for myself that weren’t there, you know what I mean? That weren’t actually there.

[00:26:36] Like when I tell the story of playing in the NFL, I always name a bunch of obstacles, right? Because there’s a lot of obstacles, surgeries, and being little, and not being great, whatever. There are all these obstacles, people telling you you can’t do it. And then people would tell me, Well, Bo, I don’t, I don’t know if you had those obstacles, or were you making those up?

[00:26:56] Or were those actual real obstacles? And I think, looking back, I probably just created them for myself. Just to give myself a game to play, you know? Sure. It’s interesting you say that because in my book, The Way of the Seal, I talk about bringing the challenge to yourself instead of waiting for it to show up.

[00:27:14] So that you can get comfortable being uncomfortable. You know, you can stub your toes, you can, you know, figure out how to find a way or make a way through the obstacles. That’s why we created this one program that’s 50 hours of non stop physical, mental, emotional team training, largely based off a Hell Week.

[00:27:30] Just deciding to do this event. Is a big deal for a lot of people. You know, they hover their finger over the enroll button for years. Cause it’s painful. And we’ve had NFLers go through it. You know, I had a, a guy named Derek Price. He, he made one season with the Detroit lions, broke his neck. Great guy.

[00:27:48] Then he went on to become like a, a triathlete and everything. And he made it through Corcoral cap. And he, at the end of it, he’s just like, Jesus divine. Like, what the heck were you thinking for this thing? Because that was like doing three back to back Ironman. But it was even harder than that. At any rate, the whole point of that, and I call them crucibles, is that if you can curate your own crucibles in life, this is really kind of to your point, bring the challenge to you so that you can get a taste of that extreme discomfort.

[00:28:17] And it doesn’t have to be physical, right? You know, like, you setting up a condition so that you’re standing next to Al Pacino, getting his mentoring, that’s an example, because that would scare the s out of a lot of young, you know, emerging actors. So it’s a powerful principle. So whether you created those knowingly or subconsciously, I think that’s an important kind of aspect of the journey.

[00:28:39] Without those obstacles, you wouldn’t have been, you know, you wouldn’t have cut the grit to go the long haul, you know? That’s right. So your, your, your book, No Plan B for an A game, it’s about the power of story. So tell us about that. I mean, you, you already told about the story that you were telling yourself kind of that led to your NFL career, but when you frame this up for leaders or for executives, like what does it sound like for you in terms of helping people?

[00:29:06] Others to kind of derive that story and to live it in their mind before they stepped foot in the battlefield. Yeah, that’s been really powerful for me. In fact, I think that storytelling for me kind of saved my ass at one point going from the NFL. I just remember being, I was on a stretcher and they were taking me out and rolling me off the field and it was like the, it was the seventh knee surgery that I was, About to have juice.

[00:29:34] And on that play, I broke my ankle and my foot and then blew my knee and they were wheeling me off the field. And I, I just had this image of my whole life. I just, I said, I am good at one thing and that is violence. You know, like if you look at the safeties back in the eighties, they were the most violent people and they got the more violent you were, the more people you knocked out or knocked their teeth out or intimidated, the higher you got paid.

[00:30:03] The more acknowledged me you got. So that was me. And I remember being stretchered off. I don’t even know if that’s a word, but a stretcher. It is now. And my life passing before me, I go and I was arguing with God. I’m like on the field and the orange bowl in Miami. And I’m arguing with God. Like this is this, this is I’m great at one thing.

[00:30:29] And these legs provide that thing. I’ve trained over 20 years to be the best at this one thing. And now you’re taking it away. What am I supposed to do? What is being dangerous, being violent and intimidating? What, how does that transfer to the civilian world? What am I going to do for myself? And the, I swear, that was the question.

[00:30:55] And in the next moment I got the answer and I’m still on the damn stretcher. New York city. All I saw was New York city. And a stage. Huh. A state. No kidding. In New York City. You had that vision on a stretcher as you’re getting wheeled off your last game. That’s right. That’s crazy. Because I felt like what I’m trained for right now is illegal in the civilian world.

[00:31:20] Like what I do best is, is kind of like what you were trained for. Join the club of my SEAL teammates and I, they’re like, where do we go? Yeah, where are we supposed to go? Yeah, I think an orange jumpsuit is my next job. That’s going to be fantastic. And so to avoid that, again, the visions come in. I had been to New York City just as a player, but I never lived there.

[00:31:47] But I knew that they did theater there. And I always loved theater. I knew that they did live shows where a person is in front of you, and you’re supposed to believe they’re. Some character. And I said, that’s where I’m going. That’s, that’s my next job. Because if I, because I thought of football, like a stage, I thought of the field, like a stage.

[00:32:14] I was really good at expressing myself on that stage. And I felt like if I could get the same training, but on a stage, then I could have a occupation. I could make a living. And more importantly, it will be safe for me to express myself on that stage. The people would be safe. I would be safe. And so that’s exactly what I did.

[00:32:42] I went home, I had surgery, I rehabbed and moved to New York city. And that’s where I met Al Pacino. I just, I studied with the best they’re possible. I saved all my money and I figured it would take me 15 years. That’s just the number I had. Al Pacino became a mentor of mine. I just studied with the great.

[00:33:03] How did you hook up with him? By the way, I was at a dinner with a lady named Anna Strasburg. Now, Anna Strasburg was Sophia Loren’s best friend. She was in an acting class with Marlon Brando, James Dean, all the legends. We’re at a dinner together. She’s sitting across from me. She used to be married to Lee Strasberg, who was the famous acting coach of all those actors I just mentioned.

[00:33:29] All the legends. Yeah, I’d heard his name. Yeah, Lee Strasberg. It’s the Strasberg Method, right? So, he had died, and they had two twin boys. She was at dinner with me, with a couple of friends, and she goes, you know, you ask a lot of good questions. That’s true. Because I kept asking her about Sophia Loren, and Marlon Brando, and James Deep, because she was classmates with them, and her husband taught them.

[00:33:55] She said to me, How would you like to meet and sit down with Al Pacino? And I said, Yes, that would be great. That’s, that’s the guy. Because, all I had heard up to that point, because I was fairly new to acting, was, I was asking everybody I knew, including the kids in my class, classes, Who’s the best stage performer of our time?

[00:34:22] Who is that? You know, Marlon Brando had just died and, or, or, you know, was, wasn’t acting anymore. And everybody at that time, this was 1990 said, Al Pacino is the best stage performer right now of our time. And so I kept asking everybody, where is he? Where is he? Where is he? Well, Honest Strasburg, Al Pacino is the Godfather.

[00:34:46] Can you imagine this? He is the godfather of her two sons. I go, you gotta be me, you mean Al Pacino’s really a godfather. He is really a godfather. You know what I mean? It was just crazy. So within a week, it was during Thanksgiving, snow all over the ground, went to Al Pacino’s house. Man. I sat down and I didn’t sit down.

[00:35:06] We were playing pool. For about three hours and he knew why I was there. He knew what he was there to help me with. And he did. We played pool three hours. He broke down like the next 15 years. And that’s what he said. He goes, look, Bo, that’s going to be, that’s going to be 15 years, man. You just have to have your butt on a stage more than everybody else out there.

[00:35:31] Can you do that? I said, that’s one thing I could do. I knew I could do that. Mark. I didn’t know if I could be a great emotional actor. I didn’t know. I knew I could spend more time on a stage than anyone else and train more than anyone else. I knew I can do that story. Yeah. Yeah. And because I had done it before in football.

[00:35:57] So he goes, that’s what it’s going to take. And literally I went to work. I just went to work. I saved my money. I pretend like I was an unemployed actor training to be the best safety in the world. But at this time, it was just the best stage performer in the world. And then I wrote a play, you know, I’d never written a play before.

[00:36:15] I didn’t know what I was doing, but I, again, I surrounded myself with smart people that helped me. And literally 15 years later, I am opening a show on Broadway in front of the New York critics, a play that I wrote and I’m the only guy in and I run out on the stage. I swear to God, I had never been more nervous in my life

[00:36:39] /

[00:36:39] 

[00:43:21] I had taken on like the biggest dudes on the planet. And I wasn’t that scared. Well, if the critics had heckled you, you could have tackled them at least. That’s right. Probably would have been the end of your career. Yeah, that’s, that’s true. Anyway, I just remember running out on that stage and I was like, I can’t, I can’t even breathe.

[00:43:39] I can’t even get the next word out of my mouth. And I’m up there and I’m talking to the audience cause it’s a one man show. And about a few minutes into the show, I started to relax. I started to find my footing. And then I make eye contact with a dude that’s sitting right, like, on the aisle in, like, the fifth row, and it’s Al Pacino.

[00:44:03] No way. Yeah, and I hadn’t seen him, I hadn’t seen him in 15 years. I mean, I saw him in movies, but I hadn’t, hadn’t talked to him. And there he is, in the opening night of the show. And he’s just like this, got his arms crossed, looking like, you know, Like Al Pacino looks like, you know, and he’s just looking and he just nods his head.

[00:44:27] We made eye contact and I’m, I’m trying to do the show. Right. And he and I make eye contact and I’m like this inside my head. I’m going like this. That’s Al Pacino. Al Pacino is sitting in the theater that I am performing a play in. This is so weird. And all he did was just, he had his arms crossed, and all he did, Mark, was do this.

[00:44:52] Just a little half nod and I said, okay, that’s, that’s all I need. I’m good. And then that just, you know, built into, you know, what I do, but learning to be on a stage or in front of a camera and tell a story, I think save my ass because That just gave me an outlet. It gave me this power that I only found playing professional sports that I felt safe and I felt like I could express myself and I felt like I could move the dial, you know, like I could impact people.

[00:45:36] People really connect to stories when you teach or coach, like What are the key elements to be able to, you know, both craft and articulate or tell a great story about your life or your career or whatever it is that’s important to you? Yeah. First of all, it’s got to be personal. It’s got to be very personal to you.

[00:45:59] And most people don’t want to tell personal stories because they, they use terms like, Oh, it’s not about me. Well, To get any kind of trust, to get anybody to listen. It has got to be personal and really personal, not only personal. It’s got to be your darkest moment. It’s got to be a lowest moment. It can’t start at the top.

[00:46:22] If you ever just like every, every great movie that you love, you know, I always think of Tom Cruise in this moment because, you know, you go to a movie and the movie’s called Mission. Impossible, right? So, you know, it’s, you’re like, okay, good. Okay, good. It’s impossible. But who’s going to make it possible?

[00:46:42] Tom Cruise. And what’s the first thing they show? What’s the first frame of film that they show? He almost dies, fails. Yeah, things get blown up. Yeah, his family’s dead. His kids are kidnapped. He’s bleeding He’s all messed up like they messed up tom cruise because he’s too pretty so they messed him So you have to start a story your lowest moment.

[00:47:07] Thank god for us. We’ve had a lot of low moments a lot of pain but now I always tell my clients that now you get paid for the pain you’ve already had. You get paid, you get trust, you get intimacy, you have, you get influence, because you start at the bottom. impossible. You started your lowest moment where there’s no answers for you and it’s personal to you.

[00:47:34] Well, that’s what the audiences all connect to. This is the reason why leadership is in such struggle. I think, you know, like politicians, for example, is because nothing’s personal to them. Everything is kind of kept at a distance and they never share anything that’s That’s a low moment for them. RFK broke the mold on that though.

[00:47:57] It’s like, he’s the only guy ever heard or seen do what you’re talking about, right? Where he was very open about his failures. And yep, it’s the best connective tissue that we have. The guy who trained me, Mark, he always said embarrassment and shame. We try to avoid our whole lives. We just try to avoid it.

[00:48:20] In reality, it is the greatest human connective tissue there is. Because guess what? Everybody knows that pain. Everybody knows that feeling. And so they connect to you. If you start at the bottom, you start personally and you start telling the story, they go like this, bam. I love this person because they’re like me.

[00:48:43] And that’s, that’s why story has become so important in, you know, executive lives and trainers, life’s coaching lives, because the level of trust is so low. Now. That somebody has got to rebuild it. And the fastest way to rebuild it, trust and intimacy is through personal storytelling. And once you have them now, once they’re connected to you, you have that human connection.

[00:49:10] Now you can pretty much take them anywhere that you want to go. That’s called leadership. That’s greatness. It doesn’t feel great. It doesn’t feel like leadership. You know how you think leadership has a certain look to it or a certain feel. It didn’t never feels like that. It never does. It always feels like kind of humiliating.

[00:49:35] I think that greatness, I think leadership, it is so revealing about you that it’s so humbling. I 100 percent agree. I think humility is the highest and best quality of a great leader. And that is found by, you know, dropping all the isms, especially perfectionism, and just showing up. Just be authentic, vulnerable, owning your screw ups, not having all the answers.

[00:50:03] Being willing to say, I’m just as clueless as you are, you know what I mean? But together we’ll get through this. Do you use any elements of the hero’s journey in storytelling? Oh, yeah. Right when I started writing the play, this was way back, I’d never written anything, a great writer friend of mine, a guy named Frank Darabont, who wrote the Shawshank Redemption, he wrote The Green Mile, he wrote Saving Private Ryan, he’s been nominated to 12 Academy Awards, he’s the one who bought my play as a movie.

[00:50:35] Really? Yeah. Oh, cool. So he taught me how to think about writing and how to write. Great dude, but the main thing for him was that same thing. Like you’re facing a blank page, you know, that there’s no more pain than that. That is a blank page that has to be filled with you, with your blood drops. You know, that’s why he’s able to write Shawshank Redemption, you know, or the Green Mile or same.

[00:51:04] He could write those movies because those movies cost him. They cost him something to get that down on paper. And that’s kind of how, you know, I was trained. Storytelling to me has really saved my life. And it has given me occupations that I never thought I’d ever have. Once you can tell a story, people invent occupations for you.

[00:51:28] They go, Hey, Hey, man, you’re a speaker. And you’re like, no, I’m not. And they go, well, will you speak in front of my group? Here’s how much I pay. And I’m like, yeah, maybe I could do that. I could do that. I love it. So that’s why I, I just trained a lot of people. People on how to tell their personal story. And there’s one more thing that I’m big on training as far as speakers.

[00:51:55] Presenters, you know, leaders is this term I call. I just simply call it physicality. I just feel like it’s a lost art in our world. Our body is believed a hundred percent of the time. So I was trained by a guy because he knew I was going on this 50 city tour. He’s a movement coach. And I was like, there’s no such thing as a movement coach.

[00:52:17] Really? There’s a thing. Yes. And when people win Academy awards, they thank this dude. Cause you don’t win Academy awards for what you say. You win Academy Awards for your body, your physicality of the character. And I’ve been working with this guy for, since forever. And it is such a part of my communication is the physical.

[00:52:43] People believe it a hundred percent of the time and they believe what comes out of your mouth 50 percent of the time. You need that body. You need that physicality to be able to, to lead people. And I noticed so much, this is so big in storytelling, but no one uses it. But I noticed great coaches, Mark. I’m watching like a great coach, whether it be Bill Belichick or somebody like that, talking about the physical presence of the players that they draft.

[00:53:14] Not necessarily their ability to play, but their body language. And I keep hearing coaches of great note, always saying, you know what? If your body is, if your body is telling a different story than winning, you ain’t playing, you’re not going to be in there. And I know, you know, this from, from fighting.

[00:53:39] Look, I don’t care what somebody says. Hey, I’m the leader. You follow me. I ain’t following that leader. They better be physically in front of me, fully expressed, fully free body. And they go, guys, we’re going in. I I’m with you. I’m going, I’m just going not because of what they said, because of their body language.

[00:54:02] Because that body will betray you so damn quick. In fact, the guy that works with me that I train with and trains my people, he once got a call, Mark, this dude is a professor at UCLA. He trains musicians, actors, speakers, people with their physical body. He gets a phone call. They say, this is the FBI. On the other end of the line.

[00:54:26] He’s like, I’m a professor at UCLA. What website was I on? Why is the calling me? Do you know what they wanted? You know what they wanted training? They wanted frickin training because they were being killed because their body betrayed all the training that they had. That’s right. You know, it’s interesting because I’ve trained a lot of law enforcement and I could see how that could come about.

[00:54:51] You know, in the SEALs, we train that in order to save a life, you’ve got to learn to take a life. And so you start there. Wow. But in law enforcement, they say you can’t. The last thing, you’re screwed up if you take a life. So they call it, you know, this escalation or force, you know, kind of hierarchy of force.

[00:55:10] And so they start all their training with not doing that, which then it doesn’t build the confidence. And so when these agents get in an altercation, they don’t project, they don’t embody that confidence that if this comes down to a real, you know, gunfight, that they’re going to dominate. Wow. Real difference between how you train a Navy SEAL and how law enforcement is trained.

[00:55:31] So I can see why they would make that call. Oh, no, that’s exactly, that’s exactly it. That’s a, I’m going to use that. That is a great. Metaphor straight across because you know I tell my clients I go look I know you’re a financial advisor look I know you’re a doctor, but if you suck at your job Isn’t your life kind of over?

[00:55:52] Are you gonna go bankrupt like if I suck at my job? I’m not a business That feels like death to me. So why don’t you train? This body to be like, well, you and me are talking about Mar, let’s have that kind of training. That’s the only leader I’m following. And I’ve also heard this theory too. Podiums were invented for people to make speeches and their body is hidden behind the podium for a reason.

[00:56:26] It’s because the body is betraying what’s coming out of their mouth. Right. I totally agree. I don’t even like to use PowerPoint. Sometimes, you know, the organization was like, Hey, get a presentation. So I’ll just throw it full of pictures and tell a story, you know, with those pictures. Usually. Oh, yeah. Like I hate when they do debates, you know, and they they’re behind a podium or sitting at a desk.

[00:56:49] They’re just hiding their body. They’re hiding the betrayal. And imagine if they were out in the open and you could see him and you could look where you want to look. Well, you’d know who to vote for based on that. You know what I mean? You would. I’m only laughing because of what happened with Biden and them hiding him for the last two years.

[00:57:10] Oh my gosh. Oh my God. And it’s, and it’s just so, it’s just so bad. But. Yeah. Anyway, I just, I love a personal story starting at the lowest moment. And the third would be physicality, man. You have to learn to have permission, to be free, to express yourself physically. Yeah. That’s when people trust you. I know we got to wrap up soon, but I’m curious that coach, the UCLA guy, like what was his biggest training advice or tool or methodology to embody a story?

[00:57:44] I’m so glad you asked this. Most of the time people don’t want to know this part, and it usually scares people a little bit. It won’t scare you, obviously. But, and I don’t think it’ll scare your audience at all, but it scares the faint of heart. And it’s only because we have forgotten, us, us human animals, that we are animals.

[00:58:06] We forgot we’re animals. We also have forgotten that we are predatory animals. And not only are we dangerous, And noble and predatorial. We’re the most lethal predator animal on the planet. Sometimes I give that news to my, my groups and they go, I didn’t sign up for this. Well, well, my guy, his training comes from the world of animals.

[00:58:38] Interesting. So you guys can do yourself a little favor and go watch this girl named Margot Robbie. This actress who was nominated for Academy Award for I, Tanya. She played Tanya Harding. She played opposite light Leonardo DiCaprio in the wolf of wall street. She’s this beautiful blonde. She played Barbie.

[00:58:58] If you guys saw Barbie, I’m guessing a lot of you didn’t see Barbie. My daughter’s didn’t watch it. Yeah, it’s great. Yeah, but the physicality of this girl, she is completely in touch with her predatory nature, but she looks so pretty, you would never know it. Women are really good at this because they have the ability to have babies.

[00:59:25] They know how to protect a baby cub with life and death. They know what that takes. Well, that’s what my guy teaches us when we’re speaking, when we’re presenting, when we’re just running our practice from our doctor’s office to he reintroduces us to our predatory animal nature. And I’m sure in the seals, you guys, this automatically comes into being because it’s life and death and you’re, you get the trigger turns on like, Oh, here we go.

[01:00:00] Well, that’s what I want for my leader. I want that from males, females leaders. We’re so powerful. That we apologize for it way too much. And you see now a world of men and women who are, cannot stop apologizing for their own power, for their own physicality, for their own size that they take up on the planet.

[01:00:24] They’re just apologizing and they do it in really weird ways. Like cross their arms, like put their hands in their pockets, put their hands over their sex. There’s so many tells to apologize for your own power. And everybody does it once they get on stage. My weatherman does it every night. I watch him. He does it every night.

[01:00:43] I’m like, I got the weakest ass weatherman on the planet. Right. And Oh, and you know, he’s a weatherman in LA. How hard is that? Like it’s, it’s going to be 74 today, every day of the year. Anybody could do that job. That’s funny. So physicality big in my trainings. Because my guy comes and, and does it and you know, if I told you the list of performers to go watch, you’ll notice his performers are completely different on, on camera than any other performer.

[01:01:21] They have just this, the word he uses is gravitas. Weight, they have weight. and they’re unbending like you can’t push them over. There would be like, like John Wayne, like that kind of performer, like just not going to be messed with. That’s cool. Yeah. So that can be learned. Yeah. Oh yeah. That can be, it’s actually relearned.

[01:01:46] It’s kind of funny. He w and we go through some animal exercises and people are uncomfortable, right? But he’s trying to get them to the Zenith of presentation and the promise that he makes and the promise that I make to the people I work with is really simple. Mark. It’s. If you do what I tell you to do, or more importantly, if you do what I do, then people won’t have the ability to look away from you because human beings just do not have the ability to look away from a predator in the wild.

[01:02:23] They can’t, you can’t look away. You try it. You know, if you’re in front of an alligator or a lion or a silverback gorilla, or, you know, uh, a Falcon, you can not look away. You’re a hundred percent focused on the unpredictability of what could happen right now. You know what I mean? You know, it’s life and death.

[01:02:44] And so that’s why everything about you is so alive. And when you’re like that, as you know. No one looks away. Nobody looks away. If you’re watching a woman baby in the middle of the street and a bulldozer is coming to run over the baby, watch what happens to that nice feminine, polite woman. Watch what happens.

[01:03:12] And all of a sudden, that woman has this superhuman strength, no different than a grizzly bear. To rescue that child. Well, that’s what I want as a leader in front of me on stage as a leader, as a presenter. And the minute I was trained to do that mark to be reintroduced to that concept, I swear I knew that I could create any brand or any business because I knew I could get in front of a person or persons and And share my vision with authority.

[01:03:54] And then they would help me build that vision. I knew I could do that once I was taught that. Gravitas. We’ve got to wrap up here. One last question. What’s the most important thing that you do every day? Wow. I wake my kids up every day since they’ve been born and I’ve only got two left in the house. So one’s 17, one’s 15.

[01:04:18] And. I always wake them up by rubbing their back and telling them they’re the best in the world. Oh, that’s cool. Yep. And then when they drive out, I make a breakfast. Now they drive. So as they drive or however, they left when they were little kids, get driven, walked school bike. I would always see them out the door onto the street always.

[01:04:45] And go like this to them. This is our head’s And they do it back. They did it this morning. They went like this, the power move for them. Yeah, this is our thing. Like we, we got this. So we’ll be in the middle of a game or in middle of a dance show. And I’m like, you’ve got this. And they’re like, I got this.

[01:05:04] My dad did that with us. I always fall back on it. It’s always there. That is the one thing that I know my kids dreams. Are going to come into fruition because they know that they’re safe and they know that they’re the best and that’s expected of them. And they know that you’ve got their back. Yeah. Hey everyone.

[01:05:24] This is Mark Divine, founder of Seal Fit and Unbeatable Mind. And I’m super stoked to announce that my new book, Uncommon, is due out from St. Martin’s press this summer, July 16th. And we’ve launched a pre order campaign. You can learn more about that at readuncommon. com to try to get early awareness for the book, which I hope will help a lot of people where I go and do a deep dive on the five mountains of personal mastery, physical, mental, emotional, intuitional, and spiritual uncommon, simple principles for an extraordinary life, check it out at readuncommon.

[01:06:00] com and thank you for your support and being part of the change that you want to see in this world. Divine out. Well, this has been a great conversation. I can talk to you for an hour. This is a lot of fun. People can, um, how do they reach you? How do they find you? You know, what do you want to share in that?

[01:06:16] Yeah, you know what? I’d love to send them. Mark is a storybook. Storytelling playbook that I have. It’s a video thing just to get them started on their personal story. So just text personal story, text personal story to, I’ll give you the number 3 2 3 3 1 0 5 5 0 4. Yeah. Text personal story to that. And I’ll automatically send you a, I just want you to get started on your personal story.

[01:06:50] We’ll start at that lowest moment. And once you have that. The hero is my experience. I just knew I wasn’t going to hurt people. I knew I had a weapon like I knew I had something that I could share that I could start a toast with that I could lead any meeting with and I could go from there. So I’d love for everybody to have that just so you know, because I just feel like in this world, Mark, we’re just looking to, you know, get this thing expressed.

[01:07:21] And if we can’t do that, I just think it turns, it turns back on ourselves. Yeah, the bad way. I agree. I think a lot of people are are confused and suffering because the The message from culture is that you can’t express power that way and right you said people are apologizing for it Yeah, especially men, you know, I think men are really in a culture of traces of confidence for sure.

[01:07:46] I see it in the best of schools. I see it in the best of anything. You’re like going, Oh man, they’re just, they’re so busy trying not to be something instead of be something. You know, like, I just don’t want to be exposed, so I’ll just turn into nothing. I’ll try to be invisible. They’ve been taught that the slightest word said the wrong way with the wrong intonation is going to offend somebody.

[01:08:12] Yep. So they, you know, especially in the, you know, the academic situations, that, that microaggression, microtrauma, whatever, has, has really, I think, scared a lot of people. Oh, yeah. So, time to take a power back, sir. Yep. I agree. Yeah. Give back that predatory nature. Let’s do that. Well, thank you again, sir. And I look forward to meeting you in person.

[01:08:35] Mark. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Likewise.