Mark Divine [00:04:54]:
I’ll be doing a series of solo podcasts, teaching training, discussing the principles in the book. And so this will be an introduction. So the title of the book was Uncommon. So Simple Principles or an Extraordinary Life. It really is that principles are simple. But like we said in the SEAL teams, simple is not always easy. Not always easy because here in the west, we have a highly complicated society and our language is complicated, and we’re trained to really love shiny objects and shiny things and the complex. And so getting to simple, as Steve Jobs said, is hard, but it’s worth it.

Mark Divine [00:05:37]:
So in the book Uncommon, I distill some pretty powerful principles into very simple concepts and simple training that are easy to apply and build into your daily routine to ritualize excellence. Okay. The big picture of how to be uncommon is that you take charge of your own development, right? You don’t allow culture, society, social media, your teachers, your Family to dictate how you develop as a human being. That has to be a very personalized journey. And most people don’t get that. When they do wake up to that, then suddenly they take their own development, their own evolution extremely seriously. You could equate that to Carol Dweck’s growth mindset versus fixed mindset. Most of humanity has a fixed mindset.

Mark Divine [00:06:24]:
They are who they are. They have no compulsion to change, and so be it. And unfortunately, they live lives of quiet desperation and usually drag a lot of people down with them. But if you have a growth mindset, then you’ve woken up to the fact that you are an evolutionary being. You have the potential for extraordinary things, to do extraordinary things in life, and you have a unique purpose for being here on this planet at this time and in this place. So what are you going to do about it then? Are you just going to take the training, the education, the conditioning, socialization and the family patterning that was the template for what got you here? Are you going to just take that and go forward that and think that you’re going to get different results, or are you going to look at all that and say, you know what? That’s not serving me. There’s a large part of that training and conditioning that’s not going to work for me. And so what am I going to do about it? And then you set off like on your hero’s journey, looking for mentors, coaches, guides to help you.

Mark Divine [00:07:24]:
You’re looking for personal development program, leadership development programs. You might consume a ton of books and the fire is lit. And some of you have found your way through that fire to the Mark Divine show or one of my programs. Unbeatable Mind being the most germane for this journey. And so what I’m teaching and what I have been teaching for many years as part of my own personal journey is that we can take control of that evolution and we can accelerate it and we can make it a more holistic or whole type of development. In the Western world, development has been largely horizontal, which means it’s really teaching you new skills and teaching you how to think a little bit differently. And what we do and what I’ve been teaching with Unbiel Mind and what Uncommon Book is about is is to activate what we call vertical development. Vertical development is the kind of development that changes not just what you know and how you do things, but it changes who you are.

Mark Divine [00:08:25]:
It changes the very nature of your mind, your character, your attitude, your mindset, and it expands all of that so through the vertical development, you become more. More whole. You feel more complete, you feel more compassionate, you feel more peaceful, you feel more engaged and present, you feel more focused, you feel more aware and more inclusive. And you take a world centric, cosmocentric, hey, we’re all in this together attitude. And you begin to appreciate the small things and the beauty in life as well as the uniqueness of every individual. And you turn your attention toward not just transactional making money, as in, I’ve got a job, but toward a life of service. In other words, you live with meaning. You move from success to significance, and you have no regrets.

Mark Divine [00:09:21]:
That sounds pretty good to me, and it certainly should sound good to you. So the model that we’ve been fleshing out over the years since roughly 2006, when I trained this to Navy SEAL candidates with great success, 90% success, getting them through the hardest training in the world. That’s Navy SEALs. Bud’s training is what I call five mountain development, integrated development. The five mountains represent the five aspects or domains that we have as human beings. Now, there are more than five, but these are five that I feel are really, really important and that everyone experiences in big doses, but they may not be aware of a couple of them. So the five mountains are your physical life, your physical body, your physicality, your physical health, how you move about in the world. Basically your body as a vehicle for expressing and getting stuff done and fulfilling your mission in this life.

Mark Divine [00:10:26]:
That’s the first mountain, the physical mountain. The second mountain we call the mental mountain. And the mental mountain is really the subjective interior domain. It’s obviously merged with the physical. It can’t exist without the physical. But we want to look at it as a little bit separate, as something that’s unique in and of itself, its essential nature, and that it can be trained, it can be developed, it can be reconditioned, it can be expanded. And so that’s the mental mountain. And then the third mountain we call the emotional mountain.

Mark Divine [00:10:59]:
Of course, this is not new to anyone, but we have an emotional life, emotional body, you could say, and we have emotionality. A lot of it is misunderstood or not examined by most people. So we recognize that the emotional mountain is really an important mountain. In fact, it’s. It’s critical, right, for any type of development to really, really double click on the emotional mountain and to learn what’s driving our reactionary behavior, what’s driving our default mode, network thinking, which is those constant 60,000 thoughts a day that we have every day, which are the same ones we had Yesterday and the day before, which. Right, Living from memory with emotionality, which is basically creating a today that’s going to ensure that tomorrow is exactly the same as today as was yesterday. And which is why people do not change, because they don’t investigate their emotional life, which is largely subconscious and baked into the body and the nervous system. So that’s the emotional mountain.

Mark Divine [00:12:05]:
Extremely important there as well. The fourth mountain is the intuition mountain. Some people, many of you, feel like you have strong intuition. Many women have stronger intuition than men. But also many people don’t have a clue. They’re completely cut off from intuition. They don’t even understand what it is. And they don’t believe in it either.

Mark Divine [00:12:30]:
They don’t trust it. They think it’s just bias. So what I believe is that your intuition, right, is certain signals from the different brains or different parts of your body that have an intelligence, meaning making role, right? So you have your heart with this neurological processing capacity and neurons and neurotransmitters, which acts as an empathic brain. And then you have your gut, your biome, which also has neurological processing neurons and neurotransmitters and neurochemicals, which acts as a second brain as well and driving a lot of mood, a lot of behavior that is kind of hidden from your conscious view. So intuition is basically becoming aware of the signals of your heart and your biome in other areas of your body. And it could be even what we call transrational, meaning it’s coming from the outside of your body, your perceived body, which you think is separate from everything and everyone else. And it’s not, it’s just a misperception. So it could be coming from another individual or it could be like in the air, in the ether, that type of thing.

Mark Divine [00:13:43]:
So you develop that mountain so that you can take advantage of this incredibly deep and broad intelligence that we all have. Intuition mountain has saved my life many times and led to the creation of Seal Fit, led to many other things that we’ll talk about when we do the training on intuition Mountain. So that’s the fourth and the fifth mountain is the spiritual mountain. Early on I would call the spiritual mountain kokoro. Kokoro is a Japanese warrior tradition term that means to merge your heart and your mind into your actions. Super powerful concept, whole. It also means whole mind. So when we’re talking about spiritual mind, I don’t want you to get all weird about the term spiritual.

Mark Divine [00:14:30]:
It just simply means that there’s an aspect of you that is beyond physical. It’s beyond Mental, it’s beyond emotional and it’s beyond intuitional. It is the reason you’re alive. It is your energy, your life force, your chi, your prana, right? It is your higher mind. So there’s a lot of ways to look at it, and you choose, and I’m fine, and I’m not. There’s no religion associated at all with this concept of this mountain. But whole mind is a good idea to sit with. So how do we integrate everything across all the other four mountains? And how do we live a life on purpose, which is the purpose and the reason that we are here on this planet? So the fifth mountain, spiritual mind, is alignment with your calling and to ensure that you are receiving the lessons that you need to in this lifetime.

Mark Divine [00:15:26]:
And you’re not running away from them, you’re not shying from them, you’re actually embracing them. So ultimately, right, if we look at this from the Eastern traditions, you are aligning with your dharma, your calling, so that you fulfill that mission and you don’t accrue any new negative karma by missing it. And in alignment with that dharma, that calling, then you’re going to receive and you’re going to act upon and you’re going to be engaged in the challenges in those heroes journeys, which are the right ones for you again, to give you the opportunity for the most evolution in this lifetime, which is what you designed, is our belief. You designed it, so own it, live it. Okay, so those are the five physical, mental, emotional, intuitional and spiritual in the book Uncommon. I have a section for each one of those and we’ll go through those in depth in future trainings. Okay, so what about the order of these mountains? So I put the mountains in the order that they are for a reason. Physical mountain comes first because we have the saying that the mind is the body, right? So your body is your mind, your mind is your body, which includes the emotion, which includes intuition, and it includes spirit.

Mark Divine [00:16:43]:
Everything is in mesh. Look at it like a Russian nesting doll, right? The outer layer is the physical. That’s what we think of as the body. But then a little bit in from that, you have the layer that would be the mind, and then the emotionality, and then the intuition, and then spirit, which is at the center in your heart. So in order to get inside, in order to go through and address all five mountains or all the other four mountains, you got to do the work on the physical mountain. Otherwise it’s an impenetrable barrier. Furthermore, if your body is not healthy, let’s say you have not attended to it over the years. Maybe you were an athlete in high school or college, but it’s fallen off.

Mark Divine [00:17:27]:
Life gets busy. We live in a culture that’s wickedly fast paced and you’re over committed and you’re hyper aroused, burned out and your body’s just not doing so great as a result of that. So if your body isn’t great, which means if you’re overweight, if you’re unhealthy, if you’re in hyperarousal, if you’re inflamed, if you’re agitated, full of anxiety or depression, all these things, then you’re inhibited from doing deeper work. Because the body becomes your obsession, it’s your obstacle. And also it cuts you off, it blocks you from experiencing whole mind, the totality of your mind’s power. Because your mind, if you have an unhealthy body, then you have an unhealthy brain. It’s just that, that’s just a fact. I go into that in great detail in the book.

Mark Divine [00:18:19]:
So the physical mountain is first because this is like foundational to the rest. If you want to do the work, you got to get the body healthy, right? So we talk about six pillars. There’s a lot you can do. And I’ll go into these in detail also around exercise. Simple principles to get into really, really good shape. Movement, knowing somatic movement, proprioception and interoception so that you can move gracefully in the world. Nutrition, how to eat simply how to eat close to the earth, the timing of eating, the why to eat. Again, simple principles.

Mark Divine [00:18:54]:
I don’t offer any diets. It’s all principle based. Simple principles for an extraordinary life. Hugely important is rest and recovery. Another one that’s hugely important. And it’s also hard for a lot of people, especially in the cities is time in nature. You need to be outside your body requires to be in nature and to receive sunshine. It’s just the way we are built.

Mark Divine [00:19:17]:
And then the last of the six is that to be recognized that you’re not alone. Even though the west and America especially is about staunch individualism, that’s a pure fantasy. Nobody thrives alone. Nobody. Right. So we are a collective. We operate in pods of we’s. We call those teams or family units and communities.

Mark Divine [00:19:41]:
And so when it comes to your development, we also want to work with a team. Okay, so those are some really powerful things that we’ll get into that you can start reflecting on right now. Like how am I doing in those areas for my physical mountain. So as your Physical health gets better. You start to de stress, start to get back into shape, your weight comes into your perfect range, you’re sleeping better, you’re just feeling a lot better. Then your moods improve, your attitude improves, and now your mind is ready for the mental mountain work. This is why physical mountain then bleeds into the mental’s next. So we’ll take control of our mind.

Mark Divine [00:20:23]:
We learn to concentrate deeply, we learn attention control, we use visualization skills to broaden our vision. And we develop mindful awareness to become aware of patterns and conditioning that might not be serving us. And we create new stories around our future so that we can begin to embody that. So that’s the work of the mental mountain. Now that last part I mentioned, the pattern recognition of mindful awareness that opens up, that’s what leads us to the emotional mountain. Because we begin to become aware of the the patterns that aren’t serving us. And 99% of those are emotional patterns. Childhood conditioning, small T traumas from lack of love or abandonment or abuse or you name it, insert that little T trauma and those things because you had to adapt as a child to survive.

Mark Divine [00:21:15]:
Then you have that adaptive child still in you that’s playing all sorts of games with you as an adult in ways that aren’t productive. So you have to see those patterns. And you do that through mindful awareness, through the practices developed in the mental mountain. And then you go to town to work on those, to eradicate them, to let them go and to forgive. And the emotional mountain then opens up into open hearted, compassionate, forgiving life which reaps extreme rewards. This work in the emotional mountain also opens us up to do the work in the intuitional mountain. Because emotionality or being blocked from your emotion also blocks you from the finer sensations of your intuition of the gut and the heart and the enteric nervous system, as well as the transrational intuition. So we’ve got to go through the first three, physical, mental and emotional in order to open up to and begin to really refine the intuitional bound to be able to receive and act upon the tremendous amount of insight, intuition and instinctual energy that you are being given every single day.

Mark Divine [00:22:25]:
And all four of these are supported by your work in the spiritual mountain, which is all about alignment, as I said earlier, with your calling, understanding, trying to figure out what is that. And if you have an idea what it is, to really, really refine it and develop a huge powerful gravitational vision pulling you toward that and living your life on purpose, with passion and in alignment with powerful principles so those are the five mountains and putting these together into an integrated development plan will unlock massive potential. Massive potential. 20 times what you can even conceive right now and then 20 times again you are whole. You just have been split into parts by the way we’ve been trained. So if you’re not training yourself, the world’s still training you and the results will speak for yourself. So uncommon and unveiled mind. What we do with unveiled mind is a path to reintegration.

Mark Divine [00:23:25]:
Coming back to wholeness by training the five mountains physical, mental, emotional, intuitional and spiritual and activating accelerated vertical development. Becoming the person that you were meant to be. Thanks for joining me today on the Mark Divine show. Look forward to seeing you next time as we talk about the physical mountain in more detail. And yeah oo yah. Go out there and do great things. Be the change you want to see in the world. Thanks for joining me.

Mark Divine [00:23:56]:
Divine out.