No Backup Plan | ​​Don Mann | The Sean Trace Show

In this episode of The Sean Trace Show, I sit down with Don Mann, a retired Navy SEAL, adventure athlete, author, speaker, and television host, for a powerful conversation about resilience, discipline, mental toughness, and what it really means to push past your limits. Don shares how intense scenario-based training helped him stay calm in chaotic situations, why visualization played such a huge role in preparing for Navy SEAL training, and how the “combat mindset” can be applied far beyond the military.

We also talk about pain, regret, and the difference between pushing yourself in a healthy way versus going too far. Don opens up about extreme endurance races, climbing Everest, nearly losing his life at high altitude, and why he still has no regret because he gave everything he had. 

This conversation is about more than toughness. It is about identity, preparation, fatherhood, discipline, and learning how to face hard things without backing down.

Transcript

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And I didn't have a backup plan. There were no backup plans. My only plan was to go to become become a SEAL. And I think if you have a backup plan, it usually looks a little bit better once you get into some struggle with their their handling. We might say, oh maybe I should have been a pilot or something else. But um in SEAL training, the visualization and thinking about pursuing a goal. Like for instance, if you ever wanted to do a triathlon, um, all you if you just thought about it and visualize it a little bit, it would you would do it for sure. You'd have to want it, of course. But for me, for BUDS, what happened is um every day, every day I made sure I did that. Came back to my Barracks room, my rack there. I was thinking, okay, today was tough, tough. It was a tough day. But it wasn't as tough as I thought it would be. Buds was much easier for me than I thought it would be because I did all that visualization and thinking about how hard it was gonna be. And I love the state of flow. And um, you know, Bach, Beethoven, uh, Mozart use the state of flow. Sometimes they'd lock themselves in a room for two or three days and not either drink water, and they'd paint or they'd compose music, and they're in the state of flow. And I was working with bankers teaching the state of flow, where first thing you do is you clear off your desk, you turn off your phone, you don't let anyone come in your door, and you get completely obsessed with what you're doing. And you don't, and and that way, if you have one hour of being in state of flow, it might equal the four or five hours of constant disruptions and everything else that might prevent you from focusing on your goal of what you're pursuing. Well, welcome everybody back to the Sean Trey Show. I've got an awesome guest here, and we actually had this conversation before, but due to some technical difficulties, life threw a wrench in the works, and we're back here to do it again because that's what happens sometimes. But can you introduce yourself and tell people who you are and what you do? Sean, thanks for having me, and it's good to be back with you. My name's Don Mann, and um I'm a retired Navy SEAL and adventure athlete, and now I'm hosting a couple TV shows and writing books and doing talks around the country. That's awesome. Well, I I'm just so glad to have you. And it was super enlightening to talk to you because I think one of the things that everyone's life has a series of challenges, right? The the thing that's interesting is that special forces deal with challenges every day. You know, your your baseline is what people, a lot of people experience much less often. Today, I had a motorcycle accident on the way home. Wasn't bad, but I was driving with my family, front wheel caught on a rock, and I did everything I could to keep my balance and kept us from spilling. And just I would like to say it was me staying cool headed, but I think it was just breathing through it, understanding where the bike was at, where I was at, and I kept us uh up. And I would like to say I handled it well, but I could have handled it better, you know. And I think that like one of the things that I'm fascinated by is like my friends that were special forces, there is this cool, calm demeanor when stuff hits the fan and just, you know, you don't know what it might be. There's always challenges in our lives. But I want to I want to ask you, because you've lived through some like the most intense environments a human can experience. What does tough actually mean to you beyond what people see on the surface? Well, thanks for saying that, Sean. Um, you know, what you were saying about your motorcycle near accident where you almost crashed and you you got calm under under everything that was going on. You were calm. Um I I noticed like maybe a few years after being in the teams that um I started feeling that same thing happen. Whenever there was chaos or something terrible, it felt like things were slowing down and I felt so calm and relaxed. And even though other people might be panicking and stress and shooting or whatever everywhere else, I I always liked the sense of calmness that came. And I think that happens through, well, maybe not in your case, but I think usually what happens is just through intense training. Because you go through this training and you go through these scenarios, scenario-based training is what we call it. And so if you're practicing like an assault and all of a sudden the opposing forces are assaulting you, and that's what you're doing for training, and you're going through it over and over and over. When it really does happen, it's like you've been there before. And now you're just doing it once again, but this time it's for real. There's not a big leap to doing it for real. So I think that in the military and law enforcement, the scenario-based training really helps desensitize yourself to the chaos and the mass confusion that takes place in terrible when terrible things happen. And it does it, it desensitizes you in a good way that you don't lose control of your fine motor skills, of your reasoning, your logic, and you can act, and you can act with a clear head. Because if you lose control and you get all stressed out and everything goes to pieces, the situation is gonna go bad. It's gonna go from bad to worst. And you're really in control of it, not going from bad to worse. So if you let your emotions get the best of you and you lose control and you lose your calmness, that situation is just gonna get worse. And your teammates or your family, whatever the case might be, depend on you not to lose control. And that that's the way I feel about that. I think it's so interesting too, because I think that like we're not taught to stay calm. You know, we are people get reactive, and now it like with social media, people are doing a lot of reactivity stuff. Like, oh wow, you know, I saw this video about this guy the other day, and he jumped on a table and started screaming something in the restaurant for content. And I was sitting there going, looking at my daughter, I was like, really? But like one of the things too is like I think that what I try to do, and you know, for my daughter and for my nephews, we put them in the martial arts class. You know, she's been training Muay Thai. And a couple of reasons, it was that that was that Mike Tyson quote that says everything's going fine until like you have a plan until you get hit, punched in the face, and then like everyone's got a plan. But then yeah, wow, that sucks, you know, and then you're out of it. But the other day we were doing, and my daughter was doing some sparring, and I could see her, like, pop, she got popped. And she turned and like afterwards, like she was like, Wow, I had never dealt with something like that, and I got really freaked out. And I said, Okay. And she's like, What should I do next time? And I said, just try not to get freaked out because it's gonna happen again and again and again, and just stay calm, keep your hands up, whatever you do, keep your hands up right in front of you and and like block those punches. Whatever you do, don't drop your hands. And one of the things too, that she started doing it more, and the more she started sparring with, you know, headgear, protective gear on, and such, she started getting more comfortable with the challenge. And it's interesting too, because a lot of people think Navy SEALs are just built different, but like, were you always that way? Do you think these people are always that way? Or was that mindset something that you had to develop and that a lot of SEALs develop over time? Well, you know, I love what you're doing with your daughter with self-defense training, because she's learning so much more than just self-defense. And she's learning what pain does and how to try to prevent that from occurring and how to protect yourself. She's learning all those great things, but then also I think she's learning that she can be attacked. And um, so as far as the SEAL philosophy and the SEAL ethos and how we feel about that, everyone has a slightly different story on how they developed that mindset. We call it a combat mindset. I believe mine pretty much started way before I was even in the military. I just had something in me that wanted to be stressed and wanted to be scared, really, and wanted to be challenged physically and and any way you can think about it. I just had that urge for that. And then when you tie that in with a sense of patriotism and a sense of wanting to do a lot of physical activity, the SEAL program is the only thing that made sense for me to do, and and I it was the best decision in my life to do that. But we all had different reasons why we develop that mindset, that combat mindset. But I think the important part is that we do develop it, and a lot of folks, like thanks to you and people do what you do, we get to have platforms where we can talk about it, and you know, it's not just SEALs, it's a lot any military force really. Or if you're a mountaineer or race car driver or something, when you talk about pushing to the limits, I believe we all have it in us to want to push ourselves, but some of us just barely tap into those limits. And I I think of Reinhold Mesna quite a bit. He he's one of my mentors, and he he's the first person to climb Mount Everest without oxygen, the first summit solo, and he's climbed all the toughest mountains in the world. He said the world's greatest mountaineer. So he's he he I've done over a thousand competitions, extreme endurance competitions. But if I showed him my list, he would look at it and he'd smile probably. So, yeah, I see you like running around in the parks. Well, what I do, I take a backpack, I put it on, I tell my family and friends, I'll be back in a couple of months, I'm gonna climb a mountain that's never been climbed, I'm doing it solo without oxygen, I should be back in a couple of months. And and so, like all the rest of us who climb mountains, none of us are like that. You know, he can reach so far down deep in his gut, and he can reach and pull everything out. And I think a lot of people, generation after generation after generation, I think we keep getting softer, barely touching a source. And uh I think people like him is a great inspiration for the rest of us on how far we can push ourselves and to be inspired by people like that. And I think that all helps develop the combat mindset. I think some people don't realize, a lot of people don't realize how far they can go or how much they can take. For many years, I had um I got really sick a long time ago. And afterwards, one of the side effects is that I developed these really bad food allergies. And it's really wild that the last year they've kind of abated. It's been very wonderful, but for a long time, for about 13 years, all I could eat was rice and beans and some simple vegetables. That was it. And people go, oh, that's so horrible, that's so awful. And you know, when I would fly, like I would prepare food. And if I'm traveling uh from Asia to the US and I had a you know 36-hour flight with a 12-hour layover, I didn't eat the second flight. And people go, Oh, it's so horrible for you. I just learned to be strong, to be tougher, to be able to deal with it. And like I, at one point in time, one of the things that people said, like, you must miss all this stuff. And I was like, as I've been able to enjoy some of those foods again, I still found that, you know, one of my favorite things is a glass of sparkling water. Like, because that was one of the few things that I could have. And they're like, Well, you don't miss this. And no, I don't. Because I learned that I could deal function on less, I could thrive on less, and that what I everyone thought was essential was actually unnecessary, and that joy could be found in the simplest of things. You know, for me, when I had those extreme food allergies, a nice cool bottle of sparkling water was something that brought me a lot of joy. And it was interesting too, because, you know, when you are able to recognize that you don't need all that, when I was doing martial arts, you know, I still do martial arts. But, you know, when I was early on in my training, and I'm sitting there training with this guy three times my size, and like my teacher's like, now you gotta throw him. And one of the things my teacher had was a rule that we cannot use the word can't in class. And you if you say the word I can't do that, someone they would throw you. Like, and so he says, Whatever you do, you have to use the word can. And it might be hard. You might have to adapt the throw, but you can do it. And I was just sit there and I, you know, at first I I was soft like the rest. And then now, you know, I've gotten tougher. I was, I go, I'm kind of annoying at the gym. A couple of the guys kind of they laugh at me, but I try to push everyone. So when I go to run, I train at the same time as my daughter. And I don't train to be a professional fighter. That's not where I'm at right now. But I go and I work out, my daughter's there. And when I notice her and her friends slacking, I get on their case. And they're slacker McFly. Every time I use the word slack, I slack it. I just I think of that. But when I when they're there, like I'm 48 and I'm running laps around these kids, and they've just all like, oh, and I'm just like, come on, guys, get your you guys are like 20 something years old and your cardio's not there. Get running, keep running. And like with my daughter, when she gets, you know, tired and she and her friends are laying in the ground, and I look at her. This is something my judo teacher taught me. Because with judo, you get thrown in the ground. My teacher would look at me and say, Hey, yeah, what's up? I said, he said, can you stand? And I'm like, Yeah, but I'm tired. Can you stand? I said, Yes, I can stand. And he says, then get your butt up off the floor and stand up. And that's something that always stuck with me because, like, you know, if you're if you have that potential, there is someone out there who would love to be standing in your place. And if you're not aware of that, it's one of the best things that you can become aware of. Is that, you know, every single day I have an amazing wife, and she is stunning, she is talented, she is beautiful. And I am very careful and I work very hard because I know that someone could take my place really fast, really easy. She could have anyone she wanted, you know, and that pushes me to be tougher, it pushes me to be stronger, and it pushes me to try more. You know? That's nice. Yeah, that's really nice. You know, you let Cliss may say what you're saying about can and can't. It's so simple, we've all heard it in million years, but I believe it. If if you say you can't do something, you're right, you can't do it. But if you can't say you can, you'll find a way to make it happen, and you can do it. So I like what he told you. Don't say the word can't, because you'll be correct and you won't be able to do it. I love that. Yeah, 100%. But it leads me to ask you this question because I think that what I'm talking about is just those limits that we're pushed to. And when you're pushed to your absolute limit, like either physically, and again, not everyone's getting pushed to their limits physically nowadays, but they are getting pushed pretty hard mentally. You know, what actually keeps you going in that moment? You know, I I um I was an extreme ultra-distance runner, and I love the furthest I ran without a break was 63 miles, and it really made me happy that I could push myself that hard without taking a break. Um, once I did this, two Ironmans in one day. Uh I was doing the early man, early Iron Man uh triathlons back when the Iron Man first started. And then Iron Man triathlon's a 2.4 mile sway, 112-mile bike ride, then a 26.2 mile run. So I was doing those and I loved them. And then when I retired from the teams, I was thinking, well, before I was at in the teams, I used to do Iron Man competitions. And I used to do them in less than 12 hours. So when I got out of the teams, I thought, well, now I'm I'm gonna try to do, if I could do one under 12 hours, my retirement gift to myself is I'm gonna do two in one day. And um, so it's a 4.8 mile swim and 224-mile bike ride and a 52.4 mile run. And um, you know, the swim went okay, that's fine in the water. And then the 224 miles on the bike, your legs get tired, of course, and you get sore and you're bent over and your elbows hurt, and you see everything hurts. But then you don't feel like running two marathons, you know. And uh so the first marathon went by, it was okay. And then at mile 32, um, I was thinking all I have left is a marathon. That's all I have left. But my mindset at the time was just a marathon. How simple is that? You know, where a few years before that, you know, I was um a marathon was a pretty big deal, but now it's just a small part of this race. But at mile 32, I started seeing the white stars, and I started things were blurry. I started spitting up some bile and I was wobbling, and then I passed out. And I was on the side of the uh the course there, and the bikers were going by and the runners, but I was passed out on the lawn and I opened up my eyes and I was wondering why I was sleeping outside. And then I realized, my God, I'm in this uh double iron man, I better get up and finish. So I wiped the bile off my face and I got oriented and went off and finished and got the medal. And it dawned on me that any time before that in my life, any time where I thought something was too hard or too challenging, or this is just too much, I was wrong. Because in that double iron man had taught me when it actually was too tough and too difficult, too challenging for me, I didn't quit because my mind was stronger than my body. I didn't quit, but my body needed a break to the point where it passed out. So I passed out, got the break I needed, and got up and finished. So I never believe anything's too tough or too hard unless you get to the point of your body just giving up for on you for a while. And I went through probably 25 or so years, at least once a month, pushing myself to a point of hallucinations, passing out or bleeding. It sounds insane, but I just never wanted to leave anything at home or left it on the table. I wanted to give it my all, whatever I was doing physically. And then um I realized that we have this line, this imaginary line, and if we go over the line, that means you're not leaving anything behind. You're giving it your all. So that's the point where I start hallucinating or bleeding or passing out or something. And I would push seals this hard, I would push mountaineers this hard and triathlete this hard and adventure racers that hard. I always push people with that as the goal. You gotta go over that line. Don't leave anything at home. And I realized a few years back that I was wrong in doing that. So I almost killed myself twice by pushing too hard. And um, and now I realize there's a much smarter way, and that is you still identify what the line is. If you're a piano player and all you're doing is playing the piano, and you're giving up on your marriage, maybe, your kid neglecting your kids and not doing anything outdoors physically, that's going over the line. So if you go over the line and whatever you do, something else is gonna break down. And in my case, physically, I'm just pushing myself too hard physically. So my body was breaking down those two times. But um now I think you still identify that line. Just come up and touch it and then back up. Come back up and touch it and back up. Be careful not to go over it. So you're not gonna hurt your your body, yourself, your relationships, your family, other things you do in your life. But that that took me over 25 years to not to push too hard. I mean, I can't even imagine running that much. And it's like, and you did you did this a lot. But you know, as you're doing this, I mean people talk a lot about discipline, but not always about identity. Like you identified as someone that was resilient and and and and and disciplined and could do it. Like, how much of resilience comes down to who you believe you are? Because I mean, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna tell you the truth. I don't think, and that's right there, I don't think I'm I could run uh a triathlon, but I haven't done it yet. I haven't trained for it yet, you know, but the my mindset is already turned off. How do you turn it on to believe that you can do something? Well, um, I used to be very intimidated and um unsure of myself and um thinking, who am I? Why what why do I think I can compete with these people and whatever the sport might be? And then um I I I just focused so much on the endeavor I was pursuing. I I focused so much. I did a lot of visualizations, how hard it was gonna feel like, how hard it was gonna be. I did a lot of visualization, for instance, going through Bart SEAL training. I pictured how cold the water would be, how long those runs were gonna be, doing those sit ups on the cement, instructors yelling, how that how hard that would be. So a lot of visualization I did. You know, every day is what I thought about. Every time I trained it was to get ready for buds, a SEAL training. So then when it it worked, just thinking about it and thinking about it in the sit in the way that I thought about everything that I could think about from what I knew about buds. I thought about it so much that, okay, it's gonna be cold water, okay, it's gonna be really, really cold. Oh boy, it's gonna be so cold, my teeth are gonna be chattering so much, my fingers are gonna be blue, but I still gotta keep going. So I visualized it worse than it was. So when it came to going to buds, and you know, it's in my 20s, um, I was so ready, I thought, physically, because I'd pushed myself so hard for four years preparing for, and I didn't have a backup plan. There were no backup plans. My only plan was to go to become become a SEAL. And I think if you have a backup plan, it usually looks a little bit better once you get into some struggle with their hammering. We might say, maybe I should have been a pilot or something else. But um in SEAL training, the visualization and thinking about pursuing a goal. Like for instance, if you ever wanted to do a triathlon, um, all you if you just thought about it and visualize it a little bit, it would you would do it for sure. You'd have to want it, of course. But for me, for Buds, what happened is um every day, every day I made sure I did that. Came back to my barracks room, my rack there. I was thinking, okay, today was tough, tough. It was a tough day. But it wasn't as tough as I thought it would be. Buds was much easier for me than I thought it would be because I did all that visualization and thinking about how hard it was going to be. And I love the state of flow. And um, you know, Bach, Beethoven, uh, Mozart use the state of flow. Sometimes they'd lock themselves in a room for two or three days, not either drink water, and they'd paint or they'd compose music, and they're in the state of flow. And I was working with bankers teaching the state of flow where first thing you do is you clear off your desk, you turn off your phone, you don't let anyone come in your door, and you get completely obsessed with what you're doing. And you don't and and that way, if you have one hour of being in state of flow, it might equal to four or five hours of constant disruptions and everything else that might prevent you from focusing on your goal of what you're pursuing. And I and without knowing that that term state of flow, I got there every day, and I got that. My state of flow was in long runs and long bike rides and long paddles and long swims. Get into a state of flow where nothing else mattered. I didn't feel the pain. I just was enjoying every aspect of what I was pursuing. And I think for I anybody, if they get into the state of flow and doing whatever they do, it makes it so much more enjoyable. You you get to you you you know, we we've you have the chance, you have the ability of of reaching your full potential in whatever you're doing. But if you don't, if you just um never reach that point of state of flow and you're down here and you're just making a mean and you're doing this just to check the box, okay. I got that done, I got that done, you never get close to finishing all that you can do in life. And uh the my biggest re my regret that I saw in the civilian population when I retired from the SEAL teams, but when I retired from SEAL teams, I went to the CIA for 25 years. But even then, even with those agency people, it wasn't like the teams. And the biggest thing I saw is people, they set their goals low, they achieved them, and they were happy with themselves. They never pushed hard. Um, every everybody I talked to, I I'd look at it and go, wow, that's as far as you're gonna go. You you have a bicycle store and this is all you're gonna do. I mean, you're not gonna pursue and make it bigger or greater or expand, or you're a runner, and this is all you're gonna do. It seems like, in my opinion, most of the people I met, they set the goals low and they achieved them and they were happy with it. Um, so I I I was positive I was not gonna let that happen myself. Anyway, well my friends, if I could help it. I love it because it's like we we all exist in a box, right? Maybe you the box that you existed in uh was your family identified? Well, we walk 10 steps a day. We're the 10-step a day family. And then your family across the street is the 20-step a day family, and then the family up the street is the 50-step a day family. And I'm just picking a really random thing, but like everyone exists where they're at. And that 10-step a day family can't even comprehend what it's like to be the 50-step a day family. And I mean, we're talking about a random steps, right? But that might be workouts, that might be finances, that might be, you know, money, it might be health, it might be wellness, it could be all of these different things that that family, it's just this idea of being able to envision uh uh uh more potential for yourself, you know? And I think that one of the things that I find is interesting is that when you surround yourself by people who have this newer, this, this fuller picture of themselves, you know, they can help you see more potential. They can help you see, yeah, you can do that. Like right now, I I told you, I I would love to do a triathlon. I don't know where to start. But if I meet triathlon people and I start hanging out with them and they're like, hey, come on a ride with us, come on a swim with us, come on a run with us. I'm pretty sure that I could pull it off. I just need to get around the people that can help me get there, you know. And I think one of the things to do is like, you gotta find the people that can help you shift your mindset or start finding the outlets to shift your mindset in another way. Yeah, yeah. And you know, that 10-step, 20-step, 50-step families. Um I started saying this earlier and I I distracted myself. But what I what I would do is I'd I'd get in these races, you know, 5K's, 10Ks, things like that. And initially I think, wow, why how do is there any reason in the world I feel like I should be competing against these people? They're all better than I am, they're all faster. Really, the marathons and triathons is where I started thinking, like, look at all these great people. I have no right to be in with them. And then as my mindset starts getting stronger, I started thinking, well, why should I let anybody pass me? I'm not gonna let people pass me. And then why do I have people in front of me? I'm gonna do everything I can to beat those people in front of me. Excuse me. And then it became to the point, well, I'm gonna give everything I can to win this thing. And of course I wasn't gonna win a marathon or things like that, but that's how I thought. And it and it helped me out a lot. And and I and I'm still I I did a 10K, I've done two in the past couple weeks, and my lungs got injured when I was up on Everest. And so I have scar tissue in my lung tissue now. I got hape and haste, I almost died on Everest about nine years ago. And um I don't have any regrets at all. I didn't want to be the person who said I should have tried, I could have tried it. I you know, I I was saved by the world's most famous. All in all, it was a great experience, you know. But that's awesome. My kinds are all slower now because of the scar tissue in my lungs. And I now it just gives me a new goal. Now my goals are to try to beat the times I had before Everest. And it gives me something to chase. And then when I look at my heart rate and my zones on my watch after the race, I go, man, I gave 111% on that race. I gave so just knowing you're giving it draw, no matter where you are in the placing of the race. Um I just love that feeling. You're giving it your role. And the last face I did was a 5k and a 10k and half marathon, and all in the same, everyone started together, and we all so you don't really know who's in the 5k or 10k. I'm 68 years old. I was hoping I did okay in my age group. I won first overall with a slow time. With a slow time, and not to get off track, no, but that's not saying anything good about me. I think it's saying something poor about this generation. The times today, just an example, running times, the times that we used to do, they were blow the times away today. Now, winning, it's you're doing like slow mileage, and that's just in your typical neighborhood 10K. People are much slower now, they don't push themselves as hard, they don't train as hard, and uh, I don't think there's enough focus or commitment to pushing yourself hard enough to get something done. And that run was just an example. I come I I completely agree. I think that we're soft on ourselves at times. I think that we don't really lean into our potential. You think about that. How many people could be absolutely amazing at what they're doing, real leaders in their field or in their profession or whatever, but they don't get there because they pull back. My daughter was having this experience. I'm gonna kind of change gears here, but it's still the same thing. She's been learning to put her contacts in. One of the things I noticed is that she gets it close, she taps the eye and then she pulls it back. And I say, Lonnie, you're not going all the way. No, I did. I touched it and it didn't. I said, You're not going all the way. So she's getting in and pulls back. And finally, I she was doing it one time when I had helping her and I went, pop, just tapped her finger. She's like, ah, and the contact was right in. And she's like, Why did you do that? I said, because you had the potential to do more. And you couldn't see it. And one of the things too is I think that so many of us start leaning on our potential, we hit that discomfort and we pull back. And I think that is a dangerous thing when you hit that discomfort and you pull back. Because it's not pain, it's not something that it's just the unknown. And I I I wanted to ask you, how do you think people can start getting beyond that space? I don't want to sound like a sickie or a masochist or anything. I don't think pain is a bad thing. I don't think it's a bad thing at all. I think a little discomfort, a little pain, whatever you want to call it, is needed to push your boundaries. Yeah. We have boundaries and that keeps us in that comfort zone. And to break out of those boundaries is going to cause some discomfort or pain. And um, I like to welcome the pain. And I I have that as my motto all the time. I welcome the pain. Not to be cocky or arrogant or anything, but look at this mountain, or look at this 500-mile 10-day adventure race, look at SEAL training or anything. You look at it as a huge, huge goal, and you're just you don't think that um you're not bragging or pounding your chest or anything like I'm gonna go do that. It's just inside you're thinking, okay, this is gonna hurt, it's gonna be worth doing, but anything worth doing, it's okay to get some discomfort or pain. So I I like to welcome the pain. And then when you finish whatever that endeavor might be, and you've finished putting in the work or the the pain involved in getting it done, when that's done, that feeling is so much better than where you were before the pain came. And so, yeah, you're putting up through a little pain, you break your boundaries, you're reaching up a little beyond your boundaries, and now you're in a better place, and now you're out of the pain, and you're more comfortable because you've accomplished something bigger, and now it's time to look for the next what I call macroball. It's gonna hurt, I'm gonna go for it. And just I I I believe there's two types of pain though. Uh talking. And um yeah, so and it's not just some tough guy t-shirt saying or anything, but would always say pain is good, it's pain's extremely good, but that's just tough guy talk. I believe two types of pain. And one is just by having the discipline to push yourself beyond your boundaries, and that might be a little pain, might be a little comfort, but you're gonna get further than where you are right there without that pain. That's just a little bit of pain, and once you reach it, it's all over. But the worst type of pain, the pain of regret, is if you decide not to push yourself, stay in this little comfort zone, not to go after this, not to go after that project, not to put in for this job assignment, not to go climb that mountain, not to go do that trial on. That pain is the pain of regret, and the pain of regret is permanent and will last the rest of your life, and it's gonna hurt your psyche and your ego. Now, what you think about stuff like, I never tried, I should have done that, I could have, I would have, I did that, I should have done it. And I think that's a terrible thing. Like for Everest, for me, I didn't sum it. And my friends would all say to me that say, Oh my god, you must feel terrible. You must feel terrible you didn't sum it. I said, No, I mean, I feel so much better that I tried. I gave my all. I passed out on the ice field and I had to be brought down to base camp. But it wasn't a conscious decision. I was unconscious. I didn't give up, but I knew if I had stayed on that, well, I learned later, if I had stayed on the mountain longer, or if I was any higher, I would have died. I came pretty close to it anyways. So I don't have any regrets. I my worst regret would have been that permanent pain of regret that would have lasted the rest of my life. Like, oh, I wish I did it back then, and I could have done it back then, and have some excuse why you don't. That pain is way worse, a little bit of pushing the envelope and feeling some discomfort. I think that's huge. And it leads to my next question because, like, in your experience, what separates people who make it through some of those extreme challenges from the ones who quit? Well, for the mountaineering, um, high-altitude mountaineering, you're rolling the dice, really. I mean, weather could take the best mountaineer off the mountain and kill him. Um, hate and haze is what I got, the high altitude pulmonary edema and high altitude cerebral edema. Nobody knows why that happens to some people. So Edmund Hillary, the first person to sum it Everest, he got it. And nobody knows why people get it, but high altitude pulmonary edema is when your lungs fill with fluid. All of a sudden you're just choking and coughing and fluid's coming out of your mouth and nose. And cerebral edema is when your brain cavity, the space between the lining and the cavity, fills with fluid, and then the pressure puts pressure on your brain, and you start losing the losing cognitive skills, and you can't think clearly. So what had happened to me is climbing the this was the worst place and I was the most dangerous, the Kumba ice falls. And I was climbing this ladder, vertical ladder, little caven ladder, and sometimes you go horizontal across these ladders and you look down and see like what you think is the center of the earth, and these ladders shake and wobble and everything. But I was ready for these, you know. I was looking forward to it. And I was climbing up this ladder, and the girl on our team, Lydia Bradley, she goes, Don, you're the oldest one on our team, but this doesn't bother you, does it? You're not having any problems. And she summited it seven times. I said, No, knock on wood, I'm I'm feeling good. So I was going, I went from feeling good to climbing this ladder. I started feeling some symptoms, but all of a sudden, when I was putting my head down, fluid was just coming out of my nose and mouth, and I couldn't figure out why. And then it started getting dark, but it wasn't getting dark. The pressure on my brain uh shut out my um night vision. I I couldn't see anymore. I lost my vision. So it looked like it was nighttime, although it was daytime. And then I didn't know where I was when I was climbing this ladder, which is challenging, physically challenging. I was thinking, where am I? So I lost my memory and my vision, and when I put my head down, this fluid was I was drowning in my lungs, is what it is. My lungs were 75% filled with water, and so there wasn't room for air. So I couldn't get my breath. But instinctively I knew I had to finish climbing that ladder to the top of the ice cliff. And when I got there, I passed out, and uh Andrey Dorje Sherpa, the the Sherper most known to the world of mountaineering, he saved so many lives up there. He was the star of the movie into thin air and into the book. He's just a great guy. I got bec I became good friends with him. I have so much respect for that man. But um when I opened my eyes, he was on our team. He looked at me, he says, Can you walk? I said, Yep, because he's seen a lot of people die with hape and haze, and he saved some of those people. He kind of saved them all. So he put his oxygen mask on my mouth, and I put my hand on his shoulders, trying to make it down to this rotel site, but I had to keep taking his mask and get all the fluid out, because it was just filling the fluid. And I was passing out along the way. He he thought I was gonna die. Everybody did actually. No nobody thought I would make it. And I I couldn't even think enough to wonder what I had. I didn't even know what I had at that time because my brain wasn't working properly. And then we got to this uh 100-150-foot ice wall, and he said, Can you repel? My inner voice was saying, Of course I can repel. I've repelled all my life. But it it was dark still, even though it was daylight. I just thought it was dark because it was pitch black. So he propelled on, and I had my harness on, my repell device, and I got the rope in my hand. I've repelled thousands of times. And I was looking at the rope and my harness, and I thought, I figured how to repel because the pressure on my brain it just really caused a lot of problems. And um, but that morning, I think it was that morning, I saw a Sherper wrap the climbing line around his arm like a bunch of times, eight or ten times or something. And he went off the wall just releasing one loop at a time, and he made it down. And I was thinking, well, I have to get down. I remember seeing the Sherper do that. I just wrapped the rope around my arm a bunch of times. And I went off the cliff just releasing one loop off my arm at a time, and I made it down to the bottom. I luckily had enough loops in, and then we eventually made it down to base camp, which is 21,000 feet or so. And um, and they put me in a tent and they said, We gotta get you off the mountain today. You have to get up this mountain. And they called this doctor over and she said, I've never heard anybody's lungs with so much fluid in them. And I couldn't talk still. I said, coughing and choking, coughing and choking, and they put me in a tent. And when you're really sick up there, you kind of you want to be isolated because you don't want people hear you coughing and choking, and you know, it's just you don't want a real sick person next to all the healthy climbers. So you you get put in a tent far away from everybody, which is what I wanted, anyways, because I didn't like all the coughing noises I was making. I was just choking nonstop. Then the helicopter kind of came in that day or the next day, and everyone was like almost saying goodbye to me. They didn't think it was gonna work. And then um a Swedish helicopter pilot flew up, and this was all this is on Skeppy Channel TV, they filmed it all. And uh on Everest Rescues, they filmed my rescue, and he said, you know, I'm not acclimatized, I'm coming up here to save some people, um, I don't have any oxygen, but I can take you down back down, Kathmandu. So um, you know, he saved my life also, so I got in this helicopter, we just went down that mountain for an hour, and uh I'm still still recovering, but no regrets at all. I don't have that permanent pain of regret. I I went out, uh my body said no more. I had nothing to say about that. I added too, I was unconscious. But um the the temporary pain of the discipline you have to have to push yourself through some boundary. You don't have to go to the extreme of Everest, but you can push your boundaries and make them up, open them up little by little, little by little. And then I think it's well, us as fathers, we both have daughters. Um I feel responsibility to make sure my daughter thinks that way too. I don't want to do anything that's gonna hurt her, you know. But I don't want to stay in a little bubble where her boundaries are gonna be secluded and just isolated and she doesn't see what else there is in life for her. You know, one of the things too is um teaching my daughter that it's okay to look at her goals and to figure out what are the ones that she wants, but then the goals that are important to her to like not not quit, to lean in on. That there are some things that are important enough to keep going. I sit there and um when we train Muay Thai, like a couple of the fighters, one of the fighters came up to me and he says, Um, you're older, and like they were kind of cracking up like, we know we can beat you, but Like you push harder than anyone in here. And I was like, yeah. You know, and they're like, why? You know, I was like, you know, you guys are the better fighters. You guys are trained. But like, if we went up in the ring and my daughter was over there in the corner, you better believe I'm giving you help. You know, because I have this, I'm not gonna be, I'm not gonna, you know, you're gonna be like, stay down, stay down, and I'm I'm not. Because if my kid's over there, I'm not staying down. You know, there's nothing that's gonna be, and you know, it's like, and I think that again, you have to um think about what is the reason that you're getting back up, you know, why are you continuing to push yourself? You know, it's much easier to lay down and quit when you don't have a reason. You know what I mean? But if you have a reason to stand back up again, then it makes it much easier. And you've written a lot of books, you've put out, you've got these shows, you've got these creative interests. How do you take the lessons from extreme environments and apply them to everyday life? Because maybe someone's not going to be on Everest, but they're dealing with their own challenges. How can they use some of these things to help themselves? Well, you know, that I think that's another good thing that you just brought out about what whatever some people don't think Everest is extreme because it even though it's the tallest mountain in the world, not the toughest, K2, the second tallest, is way more difficult than Everest. And climbers I know who've climbed K2, they said their feeling is, well, we don't like wasting our time on Everest, we're not going to go there. You want to challenge, go to K2, you know. So I think it's all relative on how you define, you know, extreme or or pushing way beyond the boundaries. But as long as it's beyond the boundaries and you're pushing a little bit beyond, what happens, I think, people, I really feel firmly in this, if you push yourself beyond those boundaries, then when you come back to everyday normal life and something there's a hiccup and something goes wrong, or there's a little challenge that happens, you're okay with that because you've already gone beyond that in your experiences or your training. You've gone beyond that, and you're calm, kind of like you talked about the motorcycle accident. You're just calm because, yeah, I've I'd been through this situation and much, much worse. This is a little hiccup in my life. There's an answer to it. And and uh and it's not that difficult, and life's gonna go on. And I don't know who first came up with a saying. I know John Lennon, the Beatle, used to say it. I think about it quite often. He said, He said, everything's gonna be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end. So just keep pursuing what you're doing, and it's gonna be okay. And hopefully you'll find the best solution to make it okay, but it's gonna be okay. And um, I think that's how I feel about that. I love that. If people want to find out more about you and what you do, where should they they look? Well, probably the website um usfrogman.com, and uh it's usf-r-o-g M-A-N-N, like my last name.com. And then I'm I'm hosting some TV shows. Those are listed on that website, and the books I write on the website, and the talking uh things I do, the speaking, that's all the website. But and your podcast will be on the website.