How We Train the Mind with Clint Bruce
We couldn't think of a better way to start season 3 than with Clint Bruce. As you're going to find out, Clint has an amazing background. He was a professional football player with the NFL, and then decided to leave the NFL to join the Navy seals. Since his time as a Navy officer, Clint has founded multiple companies and a foundation, one being Trident Response Group, and he works with veterans with the Holdfast speaker’s bureau. We know you guys are going to love today's conversation!
A year ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with Clint, and it was so powerful. I want him to share what we talked about that day because this book about our mind is warfare. We are looking at an all-out fight. First, I wanted Clint to share a little bit about himself and why he’s here.
I was born in Arkansas so we have that in common. You know, wanted to be a Razorback. Then moved down here to Garland. My father passed away my senior year. I played at the Naval Academy, which is great. Actually when I was there, it was a great Naval Academy, it was a great place to be from, not an awesome place to be at the time. So played at the Naval Academy—we had a really, really successful tenure there. It was just really favored and really protected by God.
Then I met my bride, Amy, actually here in Dallas, and it was over for me. I was like, “you want to get married?” She's like, “can we go on a date?” And I'm like, “yeah, but I'm probably gonna ask you to marry me.” And here we are almost 23 years later.
I played a little bit in the NFL. No one knows that because I played the same position as Ray Lewis. He's pretty good. I was also selected to earn an opportunity to be on the SEAL Team. So when I was in the NFL, it was just very clear to me—I love the game, and I continue to love the game. The game taught me a lot, and I like to think I gave the game a lot. But to be successful in the NFL would've just been more of what I already knew, right? I’d love to go where I don't know. And here's this opportunity—this tremendous honor to be selected and offered 1 of 16 SEAL bids coming out of the Naval Academy. I just told Amy, “babe, we gotta go where we don't know”. And so we went on that amazing adventure and had some amazing tours. Those are some incredible guys. I didn't do very much in the SEAL Teams. I like to tell people I did more than some, but less than most. But I'm so proud of the guys that got to serve with and be around—that I continue to call friends now.
Then I came home, and my integration was not smooth. I was fortunate to work for some amazing guys in an industry that I didn't fully comprehend or necessarily appreciate at the time. But then Katrina happened, and some people in Dallas/Fort Worth knew my background and asked me to go into Katrina. And when Katrina pulled out about a thousand people and came back and had this really neat opportunity to be an advisor to families and businesses on matters of readiness. And we love to use the word “ready”. Because if I use the word “security”, whatever you think security is is what I just became. So if you just watched a season of 24, that's great. But if you just watched Paul Blart: Mall Cop... Listen, that's an important part of it. That's just not what we are, right?
So I love helping leaders feel ready to protect, perform, compete, recover, and transition. And that's what we get to do with The Ready Lab. We get to help leaders feel like they, themselves, and their families are ready for their risks. We get to help leaders feel like they're ready to perform at a really high level from the neck up. Compete is kinda from the neck down, and then recover is part of all of it. And then the fourth pillar for me is helping the leaders from the ball field and battlefield transition more effectively—better than I did.
So I got to go to Clint’s office, and his office is a wild place. He’s making people ready. Next, I want him to talk about the mind because obviously as a Navy seal and even NFL—to be excellent at the things you've done takes an incredible mental capacity to focus, to not be discouraged, to not quit, to have endurance.
I think it's one of these situations where less is more. Typically, the most talented people don't make it through SEAL training because they've ridden their talent. The mountain makes all men and women average at some point in time. And that's the highest mountain they’ve ever climbed. So it's not a character flaw. They've just never exceeded themselves before. They had the hardest Tuesday of their life. Like every third Tuesday is the hardest Tuesday in my life. So I was familiar with that feeling, and that's what it was. It was a feeling. And I love this distinction. I was telling my daughter this—you have the body, you the brain, you have the mind. And let's call the brain monkey brain, right? And the more you cultivate your mind, you're not surrendering the wheel to monkey brain, right? My monkey brain will take the wheel if you let him, you know?
There's an amazing resource right here in Dallas, Texas called The Center for Brain Health and The Brain Performance Institute. And it's incredible. And what it helped me do is really understand how I'd done some of these other things in the past so I could do them again in different situations. And I could cultivate others like Philip. A University of Texas guy that just feels compelled to serve. Everybody's got to make it through SEAL training. I can't make it through a formal, but what I can do is I can help him be ready for the surprises. And the cultivation of the mind allows you to weather the surprise, right?
Then we talk about fear. I want to talk with Clint about “fight or flight” and what that response is. What's happening in our bodies? What's real, what's not, and how do we need to think better about fear?
So I would tell you that neither fight nor flight are bad. I mean, God programmed those into us. So these are two really good things. Do I fight this or do I run from it? And what training and what understanding your mind and what understanding how to cultivate this positive self talk and and this chatter—look at the brain as like an open mic night, right? And then something bad happens. If there is no discipline, monkey brain is going to grab the mic and start doing what monkey brain does. Just spewing poison or negative self image or all these other things, right? And I told my daughters, absent this language I give myself, I know what my inside voice is going to tell me, and it's not good. My inside voice is going to tell me what the world's always telling me. My inside voice is going to tell me what the teachers who didn't believe me told me. My inside voice was going to tell me what the doubters and the naysayers and all these others will always tell me. So absent that, in order to not surrender that mic to like this mental entropy, you got to create this positive language, right? And that positive language is unique to you. So to be able to hold the mic right when something bad happens.
I mean just this morning, a series of things—truck breaks, accident on the toll road, supposed to be here at 8:45/9:00, but it's just like, Hey, she's awesome. This is a great deal. We'll get there. Hey, we always win. We always win. And Amy used to hate that. She goes, ‘why do you say we always win?’ I'm like, you think I'm saying we're always victorious. We're not always victorious, but we always win. And when I say we always win, I mean whether I win or lost. If I lost, then I’m still going learn something, and you have to beat me a different way next time.
Victory, that's a scoreboard, right? Winning is kind of a relative thing that you define for yourself. And I think that's one of the things we struggle with, as veterans and athletes, is recreating a language where daily wins and a good day's work is real to us. Because as on the ball field, on the battlefield, you get really fast feedback.
I relate to this so much. So what we do, we run a large nonprofit for women, and we realized we were never celebrating. We were never reveling. And that fatigue that comes from a type of martyrdom. I mean that's really what was happening. When we added celebration in, it really changed everything. It changed our moods. And all of a sudden, we were seeing the wins and we were seeing how much we had to be thankful for. And yeah, it was just a whole different way.
And we have to create that language, right? And here's the beauty in it. It can be totally relative. Now you want to sanity-check it with community, and you want to live around people who have a conviction. That's where having this conviction really matters because the conviction sets the ridge line. And then common sense and community kind of dictate what a win can or can't be and what a good day's work can or can't be. But you have to create those things.
Now Clint works with all types of companies. He was just telling me about being at Vineyard Vines, working with them, but he’s a believer. Next we talk about that. When he’s talking about fear and these voices and what he’s going to listen to, where does God enter that picture?
So this is where I think scripture is really important, right? If you want to be a great player, memorize the playbook. If you don't memorize a playbook, you're not going to be effective as a player. And a coach writes a playbook to protect you and to protect the team from not doing what you and the team said they wanted to do. And God's really clear in this.
It’s interesting, I was reading this morning—Satan is who Satan is, and we're not worthy foes. I mean, we're not formidable, right? Until we invoke Christ and we evoke scripture. And you look at the very beginning at Satan, he says all the right things, and he's a marvelous liar. Just like you read about the temptations, and the first one is ask for bread. And then the second one, Satan actually cites scripture and says what God's going to do. And Jesus is like, Hey, don't test God. You didn't use complete scripture. You used partial scripture. And so Satan will use incomplete scripture, but because it's scripture, we'll take it out of context and we'll justify things and all these other things, right?
Timothy Keller writes this really amazing short book called The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. And basically what he says is like, Paul goes, Hey, I don't care what you think about me, but the sentence isn't done, comma, and I don't care what I think about me. I care what God says about me. And scripture allows us to hear this triumphant, complete voice and no one gets the mic when you can do that, right? And to be able to have this kind of James Earl Jones or whoever's voice you like to imbue God's voice with. That crowds out everything. And that's why I think memorizing scripture is so important. Because without scripture, you're going to do your best thinking or you're going to submit yourself to the best thinking of someone else. And you know where the origin of that is, right?
So let's talk about flow.
Let’s go back to the fight or flight. So a fight or flight—neither of those are inherently bad or good. They're just responses, right? And without cultivating a process, you're going to either go to freeze or flow, right? So freeze is, we call it the paralysis of analysis. And the brain science would tell you that the amygdala is stimulus agnostic. Like it does not care. Something comes in, and it's going to instantly make sure you make it. And so it'll freeze unless you give yourself a process to take in what's happening, reconciled against goals and objectives and the people with you and what you have with you, and then make a decision, right? And so flow is something, when we were growing up, they call it the zone. But flow is a state where almost time slows down and you can decide whether it's right to fight or flight. And the ability to expand time and not be kind of a victim of the circumstances, and you can acclimate yourself to them.
Then we talk about Angles, Allies, and Advantages.
Yeah, so we have a presentation. We're really fortunate. We have four presentations companies have asked us to come and give. And Achieving Average for me is probably one of my favorite presentations because it really stabs a needle in the heart of talent. And I think all these people just kind of advocate themselves from these amazing adventures and endeavors because they think they're not talented enough. But if you slow down and go, Hey, listen, do you know enough about yourself or that adventure to really know whether you shouldn't do it or not? And are you over celebrating this perception of talent? Because if you really study elite performers, what you'll find is the majority of the time, they weren't the best. They had good talent. And then they cultivated this amazing mental strength, and then all of a sudden their talent kind of blossomed. And then you have this perfect storm of mental and physical talent, right?
But for me, I've never been the most talented person in the room. So when I say I'm the “achieving average”, it's a little bit of a play on words. And you know, the “achieving average” means, I'm not achieving average things—I’m an average person that's managed to be able to achieve these things. And so when you look at that and you go, well, why were you able to achieve those things? Well, it's very simple because of angles, allies and advantages.
Angles are understanding your craft. No wasted motion. Like I'm not fast enough to make mistakes, so I need to know where you're going to run so I can marginalize this gap in speed between you and I.
Allies—that's community. That's surrounding yourself with people who mean what they say as much as you mean what you say.
Advantages are really understanding yourself well enough to know what your gifts are because you are gifted for things.
And I tell my daughters, Hey, run away from easy, but pay attention to easier. Easy is an ambush. The only person that can make a mission easy is the bad guy. And that's called an ambush, right? Easier means if you're doing something that's worthwhile and good and it's easier for you than others, that just means you might be gifted for it and advantaged for it. So pay attention to what's easier for you than others because they are probably some of your advantages, right?
