Redefining Quitting: A Navy SEAL's Perspective on Letting Go for Growth

Welcome to the Navy SEAL Mindset. I am your host, William Branum, and this is Episode 019. In this episode, I delve into the concept of quitting within the context of the Navy SEAL mindset. I challenge the traditional notion that winners never quit and quitters never win, exploring the importance of quitting things that don't serve us, both in personal and professional aspects of life.

Key Takeaways

1. Reframing Quitting: I discuss why it's essential to quit things that are not beneficial, focusing on quitting habits, relationships, or activities that don't align with our goals and values.
2. The Importance of Small Victories: I emphasize creating small victories to gain momentum and the necessity of building up to bigger challenges, comparing it to weightlifting and gradual progress.
3. Quitting in Business and SEAL Teams: Sharing my journey, including 26 years in the SEAL teams and 5 years in business, I reflect on learning when to quit, even in difficult circumstances.
4. Quitting in Personal Life: I advocate for quitting toxic relationships, harmful habits, and anything that negatively impacts mental and physical health.
5. Innovation through Subtraction: I conclude with the idea of innovating one's life by subtracting non-beneficial elements, urging listeners to quit often and focus on what truly matters for an epic life.

--------------

WANT TO THINK LIKE A NAVY SEAL AND UNLOCK YOUR POTENTIAL?

Discover the 5 SEAL Secrets to Success

A short read with powerful tactical lessons to change your life

https://www.5sealsecrets.com/

Transcript

William Branum: 0:00

Welcome to the Navy SEAL Mindset. I am your host, William Branham. And this is Episode 019. Now, you've probably heard the quote or the saying that winners never quit and quitters never win. Well, I'm going to tell you today that that quote is a bunch of bull shite. You see, what I want you to start doing today is I want you to start quitting, which is something really weird for me to say because I often say never quit. You know, Michael Jordan once said that you should never quit because quitting is a habit. And I think we don't have a good enough habit of quitting the things that don't serve us. You know, the N in naked, when I talk about the get naked mindset, the N stands for never quit. And when I say never quit, I mean never quit on yourself. Never quit on those goals, those, those projects. Those businesses, those things that you made a very, deliberate decision to start. You know why you started those. And often times, it's very easy to get overwhelmed with so much crap that's coming at us, or just so much stuff that you have to do. And so to do that, to say, to never quit, and take that all the way to the end, whatever the end looks like. It could look like quitting. Whatever that end is, is you have to create small victories along the way. Stack up many wins along the way. Small victories. Do things that are easy to get momentum so you can go do the hard things. Just like going to the gym. I don't go to the gym and put 225 on the bar and just start cranking out reps. I gotta start by putting 135 on the bar and then 185 and then maybe 205 and then I'll throw 225 on the bar and I'll throw, you know, do a bunch of reps. That way. But I don't just start with the heavy weight. I don't put 500 pounds on the bar and start squatting. Or, I'm sorry, I don't squat 500 pounds. I can deadlift 500 pounds. I don't squat 500 pounds. Let's just be clear about that. My lower back would blow out all over the place. I could barely deadlift 500 pounds. It's a lot of weight. But I don't start with 500 pounds on the bar. I start with 225 when I'm deadlifting. So anyway, why do we need to quit? I've been on this journey, this Navy SEAL mindset journey for the last 31 years. And that was 26 years in the SEAL teams and 5 years in business. So I have a stack of lessons learned and one of those biggest lessons, one of the biggest lessons that I've learned is that I need to learn when to quit. It's not quitting the big things. It's not quitting the hard things. It's not quitting the actually, sometimes it is. Sometimes it is quitting the big hard things. If there's a reason to quit, you should have a reason to quit, but you should also have a reason that you're doing something. And if you don't have a good enough reason why you're doing something, then you probably should quit it. Before this episode, I got on the internet. I like to do a little research before I just start spewing nonsense, into a microphone. I did a quick Google search on why people should quit things. why do you need to quit? I got lots of stuff about quitting smoking and quitting your job. I got a lot of feedback on those two subjects. There were a few things about quitting alcohol, but when I typed in why you should quit in the Googler over here, It gave me all the reasons to not quit. It gave me all the motivational things, all the things I say, other people say. Everyone says never quit or don't quit, but no one ever tells you how to do it. Well, I'm gonna tell you that you need to quit yesterday. You need to quit the things that don't serve you, the things that don't give you a purpose. maybe One of those things is a relationship. Maybe it's toxic people in your life. Maybe you have a problem with porn. Maybe you have a problem with self doubt. So I did find some articles about things that you should actually quit. One article, it said, Stop eating mainly processed foods. I did a podcast interview a week or two ago with a young man, and I think his audience is, is young men in the kind of 18 to 25 range, roughly. young men trying to figure out their way in life, trying to figure out like who they're, their role models are, who they wanna look up to. And so this young man who reached out to me on LinkedIn, very professional and and wanted to interview me, and one of the questions he asked was. how can young men stop being depressed? And so, one of the things I told him, and I got some, I got a little bit of heat on one of the social media platforms from someone who has gone through some bouts of depression, and I said, stop eating crap food, all the processed food out there, and start moving your body. Those two things alone will help with most of the depression that's in America today. Stop putting crap in your body. Because your gut is actually your second brain. So there's a direct correlation between gut health and mental health. And, actually a friend of mine, Mike Day, who passed away, in 23, he was working with veterans and he was like, you know what, if I get them to start eating yogurt and start fixing their gut, their microbiome, they stopped being depressed. There's so much evidence out there to support eating healthy food is good for your brain. Moving your body, there's a ton of evidence that shows that vigorous exercise is as effective as pharmaceuticals for depression. Your brain is already a pharmacy. Your body is already a pharmacy. It already knows what to do. You just have to give it the right fuel. one of these articles that I found about, why you should quit, they all come up with things that you should stop, quit. That you should stop doing, or things that you should stop, or things that you should quit. And, so this one, I kind of liked it. It says, Stop eating mainly processed food. Quit eating crap. Stop smoking. Stop sitting still. Again, get out and move your body. I don't mean go out and do like a hundred burpees a day or sit by your desk and just do a bunch of burpees, but I mean get up and walk around. If you can take calls while walking your neighborhood or around your place of work, do that. I take calls all the time. I get miles under my belt, on my legs, on phone calls. You know, sometimes I'm kind of a loud talker on the phone. Which isn't great for walking through the neighborhood, because sometimes I get passionate, I get very excited when I'm talking, and so the neighbors get to hear me being very loud on the phone, but, I very rarely, I don't like sitting at my desk. Sitting at my desk is very comfortable to do, or, you know, standing right here, looking at the computer, while being on the phone, maybe looking at some notes. It's always better to get up and move. Take those phone calls while walking. Always better. Stop sitting still. That's one of the things that leads to depression, is we don't move enough. I think actually just changing your environment, changing where you are, changes how you think. And I've, this is my own personal experience, is if I'm stuck, I'm working on something, I can't figure it out, I'll get up and go for a walk, or I'll get up and go for a drive. By changing my environment, changing where I am, I change my state of mind completely. So when you're stuck somewhere, stop sitting, stop sitting still, start moving. Okay, so they said, quit processed foods, stop smoking, stop sitting still, stop holding grudges. You keep that anger deep down inside of you, and it's very hard to get rid of it if you keep holding those grudges. Stop keeping to yourself. I am a total introvert and I'll tell you what doing these podcasts is some of the hardest things that I can actually do. I don't mind getting on a podcast and doing an interview with someone, but sitting here talking to this camera and into this microphone. One of the hardest things I do all day, just doing it solo without any real interaction. So hopefully you guys are interacting with me while you're listening to these podcasts or maybe watching them on YouTube. stop thinking that. Only big changes count. I agree with that. the whole never quit creates small victories. I also believe that you should make bold adjustments if you want to make big, bold moves in your life. If the small things aren't working, make bold adjustments. Stop letting fear keep you back. I have a tremendous amount of fear, impostor syndrome, things like that, that I Have made a conscious effort to quit being scared of myself. Quit being scared of what I'm going to put out. Tim Grover in his book, he says that you have to flex your IDGAF muscle. Your IDGAF is, I don't give a fuck. Just stop caring what other people think. Quit. Caring what other people think. in SEAL training, in BUDS, Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL Training, the mantra there is to never quit. You just keep going, you keep grinding. It doesn't matter how hard it is, how much it sucks, you just go to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing, until you finally graduate. And then you start over the next day. And That's very valuable in real life and often in a ton of places, but there's a lot of places where that's not valuable. So to get to the SEAL teams, you have to have that never quit attitude. You can't make me quit. That has to be your attitude in business. If you're doing things for the right reason, you have to have that never quit attitude. However, that doesn't mean that you go down a road and you stay on that road. a very good friend of mine gave me a book written by, Annie Duke, I believe, and the title of the book was called Quit. And in that book, it was filled with, business leaders, it was filled with, professional gamblers, actors, comedians, all sorts of examples of people who either quit for the right reason, or people who didn't quit. And then died and paid the ultimate price for not quitting. They knew they should have quit, but they didn't quit. Or business people who, they had a business idea, they were moving forward, they got a bunch of money, and then they made a decision, you know what, this thing isn't working the way that I think it's going to work, even though we've had a bunch of investors give us a bunch of money, and they are pressuring me to keep going, and then, the guy who started the company decided to quit. And everyone thought he was crazy, like you're quitting too early. But what he did is he would take all the good stuff that was working and start another thing and got rid of all the stuff that wasn't working. So even though he quit, he started something new. And then he started this new thing, he's moving forward, he got some more money, and then he decides to pull the plug on it again. And everyone's like, why are you quitting? And his answer was, because I don't want to waste your money. And then he took all the good stuff of that second evolution, these were like video games, and then he turned that into something else. And so, time after time after time, he started something and he quit. He got rid of the stuff that didn't work, and kept the one or two things that did work. He created Slack. Which is one of the examples that I'm thinking of, which is a, business texting, kind of social media platform that tons of people, I hate Slack personally, but tons of people use it. I know people have hooked up AI to it. if he didn't quit, every time that he did, he would have wasted millions of dollars and gone nowhere. But because he quit over and over and over Early. He quit early, actually. Talking about failing early. Fail early, fail often. He quit over and over and over. But he learned lessons every time that he quit. Every time he launched something, oh, I think this is going to be great. It wasn't actually great. So he stopped it. Took the good stuff. Next thing. And he kept doing that. Some people call that pivoting. Some people call that iteration. Some people call it whatever they want to call it. Today I'm going to call it quitting. why should you quit? Or why don't you quit? Why don't you quit? One of the biggest reasons, and it's one of the biggest reasons that I haven't quit, oftentimes, every time that I should have quit, is my ego gets in the way. Your ego gets in the way. You know, we have this society, we have this sort of subculture. Society. doesn't push us this way. The subculture pushes us this way. it's this grit grind subculture, which I love. And I'm part of pushing that narrative. You do need to do the, push really hard. You need more grit than you need intelligence. I think in the book, Grit, I saw a very short TED talk of, golly, what's the girl's name that wrote Grit? I'm blanking on her name, I'm sorry. But, she did like a five minute TED Talk. Where they were doing experiments there were kids that had a very high IQ, but they were very lazy. They did not become successful. There were kids that could barely read, but they had a tremendous amount of grit. Determination, they became much more successful than the kids with higher IQ over time. That's how you get through SEAL training. It's not being an incredible athlete expecting to be praised for what you've done. No one cares what you've done in SEAL training. No one cares. Did you keep going? Did you not quit? That's a super valuable thing, but oftentimes it gets in the way. None of us want to be known as a quitter, and that's a problem sometimes. Sometimes we have to be quitters. We have to learn when the right time is to quit. there was a book written, probably by 10, 15 years ago now, maybe more than that. I think it was called Into Thin Air. John Krakauer, I think, wrote it, and where there was an expedition up Everest, and they had a drop dead time. If you aren't at the top by this time, you have to turn around and come back down. You did not make it to the summit. That's okay. You lived to climb another day. The men who decided to keep going to the summit after the drop dead time, I think every one of them are still on Everest. Their bodies are still on Everest. They did not make it back down. A storm came in, and they didn't make it. Because they didn't want to be considered quitters. Sometimes being a quitter is a good thing. If you're in a toxic relationship, maybe it's time to quit. If you are dealing with health issues, maybe you should quit the things that are causing those health issues. If you're addicted to porn, or drugs, or hate, maybe you should quit that. Start something new. Let's just talk about when we quit in the SEAL teams. So In SEAL training, you just push through, you grind, you're injured, you don't care, you just keep going because graduating SEAL training and getting to the SEAL teams is your number one goal. That's why you're there. You have a mission, you have a purpose to get to that SEAL team. When you get to the SEAL teams, that grind is super important because we go out and we do some really, really hard things. Whether we're climbing mountains at night, or we're climbing the sides of buildings, and walking across, from one building to another on a rickety little ladder that could crack under our feet, and, 50, 80 pounds of equipment, night vision goggles, the whole thing. Having that grit and determination is awesome for that. It's not awesome. For other things though. So let's just say we're heading into a target and we get in a gunfight, we get ambushed, we're outgunned, we're outmaneuvered, we are in a very bad position. If we don't have a quitter's attitude and say, you know what, this is not a good place to be, there's no way that we're gonna win this gunfight, we need to get out of dodge and live to fight another day. If we didn't have that attitude, if we didn't have that training, if we didn't have that discipline to not keep going. Then we wouldn't last very long. and I know other organizations. If we didn't, if we weren't disciplined enough to change our tactics, the enemy learned our tactics overseas. And so we had to change what we were doing. There were some other organizations, very high, very high caliber, elite military organizations that we went to. Then we said, Hey. This is what the enemy's doing. This is what we're doing to counter the enemy. And they said, we're not interested in what you're doing. We're going to continue doing business like we continue to do. And they continued to lose men night after night, after night, after night. It took them years to listen to us because their ego got in the way. Their ego was the reason that they continued to lose very, very good men. They wouldn't quit. They're like, we're not going to quit the way we do business. We're not going to listen to you. That was a huge mistake, and it cost many, many lives. why should you quit? What are some reasons for you to quit? You have to ask yourself some questions. Why are you doing what you're doing? Why am I doing what I'm doing? That's question number one. Why am I doing this thing? Why am I punishing myself? What is the outcome that I'm looking for? what is the thing that I want to get out of what I'm doing? Does it meet what you want? Do you still have that why? when I'm instructing the project, or the Masogi, or anything else like that, I ask every one of those guys, Why are you here? Why? If your why isn't strong enough, then you're gonna quit. Now we don't want guys to quit the project, but they will, because their why isn't big enough. Why are you here? To have a better life? Why are you doing the things that you're doing? Why are you doing the things that you're doing in your life that don't serve you? Does what you're doing align with your values? maybe you're in a relationship, and you were in that relationship for a super long time, and it could be family, it could be friends, it can be whatever. I'm not talking specifically romantic or otherwise. I just mean any relationship. It could be a job. It could be just a friendship. It could be romantic. It could be family members. Does being in that relationship serve you? Is it a toxic relationship? Do you get value out of being in that relationship? If you do, then maybe you should stay in it. If you don't Get value out of that relationship. If that relationship is making your life worse, you should probably think about quitting that relationship. Separating yourself from that relationship. Again, it's hard to push family away because they're family. But you also have to take care of you. And so this was something I learned over and over in the military, is if you don't take care of you, no one else is going to. And I try to teach that to as many people as possible. If you don't take care of you, No one else is going to. I believe as leaders, we believe that our job is to take care of our people. And it is. That is our job as a leader, to take care of your, is service. However, you got to take care of you first. You've got to lead yourself first. If you're not leading you, no one's going, else is going to. So you have to take care of yourself first. And I've had this conversation with many of my coaching clients. If they don't take care of themselves first, then they can't take care of anyone else. And that's on the health part of it, that's on the relationship part of it, that's on the mindset part of it, that's on the education part of it. They have to take care of themselves first. Then they have the tools to take care of their people. One more question to ask yourself is, do you want to keep doing this? Is the grind that you're suffering Because it's suffering, it's okay. It's great to suffer. I love suffering for the right reasons. Is the thing that you're doing still serving you? Is there a positive ROI that comes out of the thing that you're doing? Is scrolling TikTok or Instagram anything else, is that serving you in a positive way? And if it is, awesome. Sometimes it serves me because I want to turn my brain off sometimes because this thing just keeps going and so I'll just go and I'll scroll. Purposefully, to just turn off my mind, or I might, I have a little game on my phone. I play Clash of Clans, and I like that game because I can only play for approximately 8 minutes, max. Number one, I get bored, super bored, and number two, unless you pay a lot of money to play the game, then you can only play for about 8 minutes at a time. I'll play that game just to not think about something else. Be mindless. Then I'll put my phone away and I'll go back to work. It serves me for a reason. But does the scrolling that you're doing serve you? And if it doesn't, then stop doing it. Quit. Do the people that are in your life serve you? If they don't quit, does the food that you're putting in your body serve you other than binge eating serve you in a positive way? Is the food you're putting in your body making you a better person, making you stronger, making you more fit, making you more healthy? If it's not, quit eating the food that doesn't serve you. Now, like I said, I have many times let my ego get in the way and not quit things that I probably should have. Alcohol being one of them. I used to think that I was stronger than alcohol. And I've watched many of my friends Stop drinking, they say forever. And maybe they will. And I love that. I'm not. I'm not going to quit forever because I don't want to. I believe alcohol is a poison and I put other poisons in my body. And I don't think alcohol really serves me in any real positive way other than the way it makes me feel. And I have many friends who said pretty much the same thing and so they just cut it out of their life completely. I have Finally come to a point where I can Drink or not drink. I don't care. I don't care if I drink, and I don't care if I don't drink. Most of the time, 99 percent of the time now, I choose to not drink. Took me a long time to get here. Now I don't go through withdrawals when I don't drink. I don't go through withdrawals when I do drink. I like the taste of alcohol. I like the way it makes me feel. But most of the time It doesn't serve me. If it's going to serve me in some capacity, I'll do it. Most of the time it does not serve me in any capacity. So I just choose not to do it. So I have quit alcohol mostly, not completely, but mostly. And I think that's okay. Anyway, I hope you guys got something out of this episode and I hope you go out there and you quit as many things as you possibly can. You know, a friend of mine, I was about to close up the show, but then I remembered something because you know, my ADHD kicks in a friend of mine His name is Eric Antonson. He has a podcast called the progression project I found it through stand up paddleboard surfing and Now he focuses almost solely On foil surfing surfing with the foil where it's like a an airplane basically wing setup attached on a on a I guess a shaft is the right word that's connected to your surfboard or your stand up paddleboard And you're basically pretty much and so he created some surfboards a while ago, many years ago. I have several of his boards. And one of the things that he, when he was creating some of his boards, is he said, it was this, innovation through subtraction. So you take a whole bunch of stuff. This is why boards work certain ways and the rocker and the, you know, the tail and the, the hull and, and all these other things. There's all sorts of different things that go into the hydrodynamics of a surfboard. And so he just started taking things away. They're too complicated. Let's just bring everything back down to as simple as possible. Keep it simple, stupid. Innovation through subtraction. I would like for you this year, 2024 to start quitting. Quit the things that do not serve you. Start innovating your life by doing less stuff. Do less stuff so you can do more of what actually counts. That's what I mean when I talk about you should quit. Start quitting today. Quit often. Hurry up and quit and live an epic life. You guys stay awesome. Don't forget to get naked. Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Navy Seal Mindset. Again, this is episode 019. Happy New Year, or whenever you listen to this. Talk to you guys soon. And don't forget to get naked. Peace.