How to Become a Master of Uncertainty (with Rich Diviney) | Ep. 448

Former Navy SEAL Rich Diviney joins Kimberley Quinlan to share practical tools for managing anxiety, reducing fear, and thriving in uncertainty.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The simple equation that explains fear—and how to break it down
• How to use the “moving horizons” technique to stay focused in chaos
• Practical ways to lower anxiety and get your decision-making brain back online
• Why stress and fear can be powerful allies instead of enemies
• The key attributes that help you adapt and perform under pressure

How to Master Uncertainty: Lessons from a Navy SEAL

We often see uncertainty as a threat—a problem to be eliminated. But what if the very thing we fear could become the skill that changes everything? In this powerful conversation, Kimberley Quinlan sits down with former US Navy SEAL and author Rich Diviney, who completed over 13 overseas deployments and helped design the “Mind Gym” used to train SEALs’ brains to perform under the most intense conditions.

The takeaway? If his strategies can help elite warriors stay calm and effective in chaos, they can help you face anxiety, fear, and the unknown in everyday life.

Fear = Uncertainty + Anxiety

Rich shares a simple but game-changing equation:

Uncertainty + Anxiety = Fear

You can have one without the other:

• Anxiety without uncertainty: You know what’s coming, but still feel nervous.
• Uncertainty without anxiety: Think of kids on Christmas Eve—unknowns without fear.

It’s when the two combine that fear takes hold. To reduce fear, you can work on lowering either uncertainty, anxiety, or both.

Step One: Managing Anxiety

Anxiety is always about the future—it hasn’t happened yet. In the SEAL mindset, that makes it fiction. This doesn’t mean the stress it causes isn’t real, but it does mean we can work with it.

Key strategies SEALs use to manage anxiety:

• Stay in the present moment: No worrying about problems too far ahead.
• Conserve energy: Even flying into combat, SEALs might nap instead of mentally spinning about “what-ifs.”
• Use physiological tools: Breathing techniques, visual focus, or other calming methods to bring down autonomic arousal and get the decision-making frontal lobe back online.

Step Two: Reducing Uncertainty with “Moving Horizons”

Our brains crave certainty and are always scanning for three things:

1. Duration – How long will this last?
2. Pathway – What’s the route in, out, or through?
3. Outcome – How will this end?

When one or more is missing, uncertainty spikes. Rich’s tool for this is called Moving Horizons—choosing a short, achievable goal to focus on, then moving to the next.

How to use it:

1. Ask: What do I know? What can I control?
2. Pick a small, meaningful “horizon.”
3. When you reach it, choose the next one.

 

Example: During SEAL training, freezing in the surf, Rich would focus only on counting five waves. On a plane with anxiety? Your first horizon might be 10 slow breaths.

Why Horizons Work

Choosing the right horizon length matters:

• Too far away – You run out of motivation (dopamine) before you reach it.
• Too close – It’s not meaningful enough to give you momentum.

The sweet spot is different for everyone—and changes with intensity. The more discomfort, the shorter your horizon should be.

Reframing Stress and Fear

• Stress isn’t the enemy: It’s nature’s way of motivating us to act.
• Fear is a risk assessment tool: It keeps us alert and prevents complacency.
  

Rather than trying to eliminate fear, learn to work with it—don’t let it restrict you, but don’t ignore it either.

The Power of Attributes

Rich identifies 41 core attributes—qualities like adaptability, resilience, and compartmentalization. Everyone has all of them, just at different levels. Your “low” attributes aren’t weaknesses—they’ve likely shaped your successes in certain ways.

Knowing your attribute profile helps you:

• Recognize why certain challenges feel harder.
• Adjust in real-time when facing uncertainty.
• Use your strengths while building skills in other areas.
  

Practice in Safe Environments

Like training a muscle, you can strengthen your “uncertainty tolerance” by practicing in controlled situations:

• Cold plunges
• New social settings
• Physical challenges
• Breaking work into small, focused chunks

 

Each repetition builds the part of your brain linked to resilience and longevity.

Curiosity: Fear’s Counterweight

Change the equation and you change the emotion:
Uncertainty + Curiosity = Excitement

When possible, shift from What if this goes wrong? to I wonder what will happen? This simple reframing can transform dread into engagement.

Self-Talk: Your Inner Coach

SEALs aren’t formally trained in self-compassion, but they do use self-talk—sometimes encouraging, sometimes gritty. The style that works is deeply personal:

• Encouraging voice: “You’ve got this—just one step at a time.”
• Gritty voice: “Come on, keep moving. Don’t stop now.”
  

The key: find a tone that keeps you moving toward the next horizon.

From Survival to Growth

These tools don’t just help in crisis—they prepare you to deliberately step into uncertainty. That’s where growth, learning, and new opportunities live.

“Our potential is always outside our comfort zone.” – Rich Diviney

By practicing these strategies, you’ll not only handle the moments that blindside you—you’ll also be ready to take bold steps toward the life you want.

Learn more: Visit theattributes.com to explore Rich Diviney’s books, take the attribute assessment, and dive deeper into mastering uncertainty.

The podcast is made possible by NOCD. NOCD offers effective, convenient therapy available in the US and outside the US. To find out more about NOCD, their therapy plans, and if they currently take your insurance, head over to https://learn.nocd.com/youranxietytoolkit

Transcription: How to Become a Master of Uncertainty (with Rich Diviney)

Kimberley: Here we go. What if I told you that the thing you fear most uncertainty isn’t a weakness to get rid of, but this very skill that could change your life. Today, we are going to learn how to master it from someone who is faced uncertainty in the highest stakes imaginable. Former a US Navy Seal and author Rich Dini Rich has completed more than 13 overseas deployments where.

Every second was unknown, every outcome, unpredictable, and yet he and his team thrived. He spearheaded the creation of the mind gym that seals used to train their brains to perform faster, longer, and more effectively. In the face of some of the highest stress environments. I can barely contain my enthusiasm for this conversation because if he can teach elite warriors to operate with clarity in chaos, imagine what his tools could.

We could use his tools, excuse me, let me say that again. Imagine what his tools could do for us and our anxiety. Let’s consider this a masterclass on how to become a master of uncertainty. Welcome, rich. Well, 

Rich: thank you, Kimberly. Thank you for Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

Kimberley: So I have your book here.

You can see I’ve like tagged a bunch of things. It was such a wonderful read. You’re an amazing author and so inspirational. The reason I loved the idea of getting you on is you bring, um, interestingly, a different approach to managing uncertainty, but still very in line with. The tools and concepts that we’re talking about here on the podcast all the time.

So can you share, it’s a broad question, but how can somebody, let’s talk about you first. Mm-hmm. You’re out in very, very stressful. In situations. I have been on a binge of learning all about Navy Seals lately. I don’t know why. I am on like my third book and it’s so, I find it so fascinating how mindset is such a huge piece of survival and getting through really hard things, even like your buds training.

Yeah. Um, tell us how you as a Navy SEAL manage those highly stressful, highly. Difficult moments. 

Rich: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is a, it’s a, it is a very broad question, so I’ll just take it piece by piece. And I think the first thing we want to think about is this idea of uncertainty and, and kind of how it manifests in our, in our, in our lives and our systems and our environment and, and what our reaction is to it.

And I think one of the, one of the biggest things we have to recognize is that the, there’s a specific type of uncertainty that in fact. We’re talking about having to get good at managing and, and it’s the uncertainty that actually causes fear, because fear is really the, the, the thing, uncertainty is external to us.

I mean, it’s all external. Fear is the internal thing that’s happening in our system that’s causing us all of the, the stuff good, bad, or indifferent. Uh, and so, and so one of the things that we did and, and you know, Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist, uh, at Stanford, and he and I are good friends and he wrote the forward of the book.

But we and I, he and I were working on this years ago when we first met and, and trying to determine really what we were talking about here. And one of the things we hypothesized is that fear is in fact a combination of two very distinct factors. And those factors are uncertainty plus anxiety. So uncertainty plus anxiety, equal fear.

Now, the reason why this matters is because you can have one. Without the other, you don’t necessarily have fear. You can be anxious without being uncertain. Well, that might be, um, I have to give a presentation next week to my colleagues. I know the presentation, I know my colleagues. There’s no uncertainty there, but I’m just a little anxious about it.

There’s no necessarily, there’s not necessarily fear there. Um, you can be uncertain without being anxious. Well, that’s every kid on Christmas Eve, and we know there’s no uncertainty there, right? So there’s no fear there, right? So it’s when you combine the two that you in fact get fear. And so one of the things we want to consider is that there’s, the way you begin to, uh, to, uh, combat or, or decrease the fear is to decrease.

Either one or both of those equations, you decrease uncertainty or you decrease anxiety, or both? Most likely both. And so each one, each of those requires specific tools. Um, we can talk about, we’re gonna talk about both. I know, but let’s talk about anxiety first and, and because anxiety is a, a big one and one of the things that Navy Seals do, and I just want to give, uh, a, a, a context with which the audience can reframe uncertainty as we.

Think of Uncer, uh, excuse me. Uh, reframe anxiety. We think of anxiety as fiction. In other words, anxiety is always ahead of us. It’s always something that is it. It hasn’t, it hasn’t happened yet. We’re just worried about it happening. So it’s all fiction. You know, the past is history. The future is fiction.

Um, now the, the effects of anxiety, the stress induced by anxiety is, is absolutely present. And that’s what we’re really talking about. But as soon as we start thinking about reframing it, because one of the things you’ll never see Navy Seals do. Is worry about stuff that’s too far ahead of us that, that we can’t control.

Now, that does not, does not preclude proper planning. We, of course, plan our missions. We say if this, if X happens, we’ll do Y, but we don’t overplan and we don’t suffer paralysis through analysis. We, we pick one or two or three top things, plan some things, and then we say, Hey, when we get out there we’ll figure it out.

Okay. And so, but we’ll not, we will not, um. We will not, uh, uh, restrict ourselves by worrying about stuff that we that’s in the future. So this is exactly why, by the way. Um, we would, we would be in our helicopters flying into combat, for example, and the guys or Romney would be napping, they’d be asleep. And it’s because we’re, we’re conserving our energy.

We’re not gonna waste any energy thinking about what’s ahead of us. That anxiety, we’re, we’re, we’re taking that, so we’re, we’re taking that away. All that said, the stress that is induced from our anxiety is very real. That autonomic arousal that happens. And, and, and, you know, our amygdala gets tickled. And, and we know that, and I’m preaching to the choir here.

We know that our frontal lobe or decision part making part of our brain begins to actually recede to, to take a backseat to our limbic, our emotional center. And in the, in the extreme cases, this is a amygdala hijack or autonomic overload. Our, our limbic brain is now in charge. Our, our frontal lobe has take, has taken a full backseat, and we are acting without thinking.

Now, that’s a, that’s very handy when we’re jumping outta the way of a moving train or running from the bear. But it, it doesn’t come in handy for about 99% of everything else where we wanna actually engage in, in conscious. Frontal or conscious decision making. So, so part of that ability to reduce the stress that is induced by that anxiety, that autonomic arousal, is to start looking at techniques that reduce our autonomic arousal.

And I know you’ve talked about this. You, you, you, you, you teach it. There’s visual tools, there’s respiratory tools, um, there’s also many other tools, but, but any of these tools that we use, whether visual or respiratory, what that’s doing is that’s bringing our autonomic arousal down. It’s in doing so, bringing that frontal lobe, that decision making part of our brain back to the fore so that we can begin consciously making decisions and in fact, consciously dealing with the uncertainty part of it.

So you almost have to manage that anxiety piece so that you can actually deal with the uncertainty piece. So that’s kind of part one. Understanding this, reframe what anxiety is, and then also start thinking about ways and tools that you can actually bring that autonomic arousal down and bring that frontal lobe, that decision making part of your brain back online.

Kimberley: Right. You talked about, you know, being in a helicopter, flying in. To where you’re going to do something that I would think would be terrifying, and I’m sure my limbic brain would be flipping, but yet your folks are sleeping or napping. I was watching a documentary on the weekend about the BUDS training and I thought it was so interesting that.

They’d said they were rolling in water and then rolling in sand and then they had to run four miles. Yeah. And he said, before you run four miles, get down and give me in the pushup position. And then he said to the guy, what are you thinking about? 

Rich: Yeah. 

Kimberley: And I was thinking he, I’m gonna be thinking this run is gonna be hell.

But he said, I’m thinking about the pushup position. 

Rich: That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. 

Kimberley: And that’s the work. Yeah. So can you, can you tell us, like, again, you’re talking about these, um, visual and, you know, sort of bringing the Yep. Can you talk about what that looks like? 

Rich: Yeah. So, so now, so what you just talked about, by the way, is actually getting into the tools to decrease uncertainty.

Okay. So, so. Let’s, let’s just assume that, uh, that we are in a, a position now that we have, we have our autonomic arousal managed to the extent that we can actually start thinking and making decisions. We get, we’re not, we’re not, we’re not hijacked by our amygdala or otherwise. So now we have to think about how do we buy down uncertainty?

Uh, one of the things we have to understand about how our brain processes our environment is our brain is constantly trying to create and generate certainty. That’s what our humans love. Certainty. We, we love to understand what’s going on. So in doing so, there’s three primary factors that our brain is trying to figure out in any environment.

Those are duration, how long this is gonna last, pathway, what’s my route in, out, or through, and then outcome. What’s the end state of all of this. If we are in absence of one or more of those factors, we begin to feel that uncertainty bubble up. And then, and then of course the anxiety and the stress that comes with that.

So we’ll just give you an example with, uh, we will take illness as an example. So, so strep throat is an illness. We all know, we all understand. Um, there, there’s an antibiotic that can cure strep throat, you know, so most people, uh, in today’s environment do not, uh, die or are, are seriously, um, affected by strep throat.

So if, if we get strep throat, we are in fact. In absence of only one of the three factors, and because we know, so we know the pathway, it’s an antibiotic, we know the outcome, we’re gonna get better. What we don’t necessarily know is the duration, because you may respond to antibiotics a little bit differently than me.

It may take you two days, it might take me three days. So we’re an only absence of, of duration, which means our, our, our uncertainty level, and therefore our anxiety level is maybe mild. Now let’s take the flu. The flu is also a known illness that, uh, that in today’s environment, at least, most people in today’s world do not die from the flu.

Um, so we all know we’re gonna get better from the flu, but there’s no known cure for the flu. In other words, no antibiotic or medicine. You can take. There’s a lot of people who have crazy ideas about what you should do, but there’s no known codified thing that works for everybody. So. If we get the flu, now we are in absence of two of these things.

We know the outcome, we’re going to get better. What we don’t know necessarily is the pathway. How to, you know, what, what route to take, and then the outcome, you know, or excuse me, the duration, how long it’s gonna be. So our anxiety, uncertainty level is now the moderate level. Now let’s imagine a disease shows up and we’ve never seen it before.

Uh, there’s no known cure or vaccine. Some people are dying and some people aren’t dying, and we don’t actually know how long this is going to spread across our planet. Enter 2020. This is why during COVID, we all felt the way we did because we were in absence of duration, pathway and outcome and our, and, and we were at kind of max uncertainty, max anxiety level.

So, so the tool, the technique, and you just mentioned it because any seal that you ask how they got through training or get combat, they’ll, they’ll give you an answer that highlights This tool is a tool that I call moving horizons. All moving horizons is, is the ability to, in a moment. Ask yourself, what do I know and what can I control?

You pick something to focus on. You pick a horizon and you move towards that horizon. Now, what you’re doing, in essence, is you are creating your own duration pathway outcome. You’re, you’re generating certainty by creating your own duration pathway outcome. I’ll give you another SEAL example, which you probably saw in these documentaries and in in Bud’s training.

You spend hundreds of hours running around with these big heavy boats on your head and, and certainly before hell week and during hell week. Everywhere you go, you have these darn boats on your head. I remember being, um, it was during hell week, I think, and it was three in the morning. We were running with these things.

We’d been running for hours and we didn’t know how long we’re gonna be still running with them. And we were on the beach and there was, there was a sandburn next to us. All of us were miserable. And I, I remember saying to myself, you know what? I’m just gonna focus on getting to the end of this Sandburn and what I did in that moment inadvertently.

I basically picked a horizon and then created a duration pathway, outcome duration from now until end of Sandburn pathway from here to end of Sandburn and outcome, end of sandburn. Now, by doing that, I again inadvertently manipulated my own dopamine reward system by giving me, giving myself a dopamine push that allowed me to, to, to, uh, to begin to execute that goal.

And then I also gave myself a reward at the end. That also gave me a dopamine reward when I accomplished that goal. So in two ways, I’m manipulating my own dopamine system so that once I hit that goal, I could come back out and ask the question again. Alright, now what do I focus on? Now, the interesting thing about these horizons, these horizons are, uh, very subjective to the individual and subjective to the intensity of the environment.

So, in other words. Uh, the more intense environment, the shorter that, that horizon probably is. Um, in, in seal training, they sp you spend hundreds, you spend a lot of time freezing in the surf zone. Um, in fact, most people quit seal training ’cause of the cold, not because of the physical stuff. Right. And I remember freezing in the surf zone and, and saying to myself, I’m just gonna count five waves.

That was my horizon. Sometimes the horizon. Horizon was, I’m gonna make it to the next meal. Sometimes it was, I’m gonna run to the end of the Sandberg. What we have to understand is by picking a meaningful horizon, we have to understand our own dopamine system and understand that if we pick too much of a.

Horizon. Too far of a horizon. We will in fact run out of dopamine along the way. Dopamine, as you know, as most people know ’cause it’s, um, it’s, it’s a, it’s kind of very, uh, well known now. It used to be known as a reward chemical. It’s in fact a motivation. Chemical dopamine is what gets us up in the morning, gets us going.

Um, and if you pick a horizon that’s too far away, then you are gonna run out of dopamine along the way and you are going to quit. Anytime we quit anything, it’s because we’ve run out, we’ve run out of dopamine all along the way. So you want to pick your horizons. And if, by the way, if you could, if you pick a horizon that’s too short, too close, you’re not gonna actually feel, you’re not gonna register the reward enough.

It’s not gonna, you’re not gonna feel anything. And so, so we can modulate. And the good news is you can modulate as you go. If you pick something that seals too far, you can bring that horizon in. It’s all very subjective. All we’re talking about though, the primary tool, the reason why on the, on the video you said, I’m just thinking about the pushup position.

That was the horizon in the moment. Um, and I remember being in SEAL training and I was freezing in the surf zone, and I said to myself, well, soon I’m gonna be doing pushups on the beach and I’m gonna be really hot. That’s my next horizon. And sometimes I was doing pushups on the beach and I was miserable, really hot.

It’s like, well, soon I’m gonna be freezing the surf. Sos so, so you start picking these things in a way that’s very meaningful. And this is exactly how we buy down uncertainty when we look at those two equations. 

Kimberley: So just quick question. When you said you were had the sandburn, how, in that example, how far away was that?

Was that five seconds, was that 50 seconds? Was that five minutes? Like, and I know you’re talking about, it’s constantly adjusting. Yeah. But in that moment, like, is it, the more discomfort you’re in, the shorter the um, that horizon. Is it a personal decision? Do you have advice on that? Yeah. No, because some people with anxiety are gonna have, let’s say they’re having a panic attack.

Yeah. Maybe they’re getting on an airplane. Um, in their mind they’re like, um, their uncertainty is, is that it might be for the whole flight. But how might they make that decision? Well, the great 

Rich: news is, so first of all, it is entirely subjective. It’s personal. Um, so there’s not much advice you can give to someone because it has to be part of the moment.

Uh, I do the, I will say that you can modulate it. So in other words, you could pick a horizon. And if you are like, oh my gosh, that’s too far, you’ll feel that you can bring that horizon in. What’s really cool though, is you can actually combine the two. You can combine buying down uncertainty and buying down anxiety.

You can say something like, someone getting on a plane, they’re nervous. I’m gonna take 10 breaths right now. That’s your horizon. You know, you take 10 breaths. In fact, in fact, one of the ways we practice this hu uh, huberman and I actually, uh, determined that one of the best ways to practice this in an intense yet safe environment are cold plunges.

Um, because I don’t know if anybody, you know, I’m sure some people out there do cold plunges. I have one of my garage and I do it, and by the way, I hate it. Every time I do it, I dread it. Every time I do it, it’s so cold. It is just awful. People’s like, well, you’re a seal. You’re used to the cold and you can’t get used to the cold, or you just can’t.

Okay. Cold plunge is one of those things, and my wife and my son wanted to try it when I first got one and I was like, okay, here’s what we’re gonna do as soon as you get into the cold plunge. I said, as soon as you get in, I want you to stare at my hand and count to 10. I gave them their first horizon and I said, as soon as they hit 10, I said, okay, now pick another point on the wall and pick a number.

They picked the next horizon and both of them got through at least a minute and a half with their first try try. But we can actually combine just 10 deep breaths or five deep breaths or counting waves. So, so part of the process is experimenting as you go through. The coolest thing about this is you can actually practice, you can exercise the picking.

Horizons muscle, and there doesn’t have to be an uncertainty involved. I mean, most of us, if we work out in the gym, we do this automatically. No one goes in the gym and thinks about the entire workout, say, oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do arms, I’m gonna start with biceps. I’m gonna just do this set. You know, you’re exactly, you’re, you’re, you could do this at work.

Hey, I have all this stuff. You know what, I’m just focus on just doing this, these 10 emails or these five emails, or this one email, whatever that is, so you can practice this, this act of, of picking horizons in any environment so that it can then be applied. But I would say when, when you do feel that autonomic arousal rise up, that anxiety, all that stuff, the physiology of stress, combine it, combine it with some of the other tools and say, I’m gonna, I’m gonna take 10, I’m gonna do 10 psychological physiological size, which is one of the best tools to actually, you know, bring down automatic arousal, do that.

And then once you’re done, okay, what’s my next horizon? You know? Um, and start working through the project that way. 

Kimberley: So folks with anxiety, um. They don’t wanna be uncomfortable. 

Rich: Yes, 

Kimberley: we could. We could argue that you signed up to be a seal, you signed up to be on the airplane, you signed up to be on the sandburn.

Um, and people with anxiety may be thinking, I don’t want this. Mm-hmm. What would you say to that? And what are your thoughts? 

Rich: So first, again, it’s part of, it’s reframing, all right? And we have to understand that life itself is going to produce anxiety and stress and hardship and challenge. And there’s a couple things, a couple ways and fear, a couple things we have to think about.

First of all, stress is not a bad thing. Stress is nature’s designed for us to get up and moving. In other words, when we feel hungry. Our body’s feeling stressed. It’s telling us to go get food. If we feel lonely, our body’s stressed. It’s telling us to go find companionship. So stress is by design, by human nature designed to get us up and moving.

And so, so the, the I the, so one of the, one of the things I always tell people is don’t demonize. Stress because it’s there for a reason. Now, we certainly don’t wanna get hijacked by it, and these are some tools we can, we just talked about to not get hijacked. But stress is, I mean, if we weren’t stressed, we wouldn’t, I mean, we wouldn’t do anything.

You know, it’s, you know, we, we, we wouldn’t feel motivated to do anything, you know, so we can’t, and honestly, every human being is gonna feel, you know, you put anybody in. You put someone on vacation, you know, for four days, they love it. Five days, they love it a week, they love it. Two weeks, they love it. A month they start getting sick.

I gotta get back to my life. I mean this, this is too easy. We always want some sort of challenge, some sort of stress, so it’s a good thing. We also need to reframe fear. Fear is quite literally nature’s risk assessment tool. Okay? It’s telling us there is something out there to be. Cognizant of, right. Be careful.

It, it actually, it actually produces some biochemistry in our, in our system that actually gets, gets us focused, gets us on alert. So, so, so people think seals are fearless. We actually we’re not fearless at all. In fact, I always felt like fearlessness was a, if I saw fearlessness, I would get them out of the.

Outta my group because fearlessness means I’m gonna see complacency and it’s the, the bulldog run into the, into the, into the, into the charge without thinking. We need fear to keep us from being complacent. But you know, my fear of heights allowed me every single time I had to jump out an airplane, which I had to do hundreds of times to really start saying to myself.

Think about my emergency procedures, make sure my equipment’s all set right. And so, so we want to, we don’t want to ignore fear. We wanna understand the, the benefits of it. We don’t also though want to get sidelined or, or, um, or, uh, muted or, or restricted by our fear. So, so the idea is don’t, don’t be afraid of fear.

It’s very natural. Just don’t let it restrict your movement. So start, start understanding that this is the way you can actually move through life more effectively. And the last note on this, just a a little bit more reframing, if I were to have anybody, any human being, draw on a piece of paper. A line, a straight line, and the, the, maybe the left side of that line represents the day that person was born, and the right side of that line represents today.

And then I would just say, map out, uh, the highs and lows of your life, right? The, the, the great stuff and the bad stuff. The great stuff can be above the line. The bad stuff can be below the line. And then connect those dots. All of our lives would look like a sine wave. Okay? And this is the spice of life.

You know, I say anybody who loves rollercoasters. I usually, I usually do this in a crowd. How many of you who love rollercoasters would want to get on a rollercoaster that only went up or only went flat? No one would like that ride. Okay. The reason why people love rollercoasters is ’cause it’s loops and goes ups and downs, right?

This is the spice of life. So I think part of this, and again, it’s easier said than not, I do a admit that, but part of the reframing process processes to understand that this stuff, this is the spice of life, and we can start to. Conquer and really move more confidently through those lows, man, it, it opens up a whole new world of our possibility and our potential.

Kimberley: Yeah, yeah. I love that you say it’s an opportunity. 

Rich: Yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Kimberley: yeah. You talk about attributes. 

Rich: Yes. 

Kimberley: Some folks with anxiety may feel like they don’t have any of the. Quote unquote attributes to, or they haven’t strengthened them mm-hmm. Um, to move through high levels of uncertainty. Yeah. What are your thoughts on, and I know you attributes is a huge piece of the work and another part of your writing.

Do you wanna share a little bit about what attributes. Maybe Navy Seals, um, need to get through these moments and what people, what attributes people with anxiety can rely on. Yeah. 

Rich: Well, the good news is that, uh, when it comes to attributes, everybody has all of the attributes. We all have all of them. And we, right now, we have, we talk in the book, in my original, my first book, I talk about 25.

We now have 41 that we talk about. We have an assessment tool and everything. Um. We all have all 41 attributes. The difference in each one of us are the levels to which we have each attribute. So if we take adaptability, for example, um, uh, I would say I would be, I’m about a level six on adaptability. Uh, which means when the environment changes around me outside of my control, it’s fairly easy for me to go with the flow and roll with it.

Someone else might be a level three on adaptability, which means when the same thing happens to them, it’s difficult for them. To go with the flow. They are still adaptable because all human beings are, there’s just more friction there. And so if we were to line up these attributes on a wall like dimmer switches, all of us would have different dimmer switch settings, which start to speak to our own unique attribute profile or our attribute fingerprint, if you will.

Now, the cool thing about this is that we are all kind of like, I, I always, I always relate human beings to automobiles. We’re all automobiles. In other words, we all have the same. General parts and makeup, but some of us are Jeeps and some of us are Ferraris, and some of us are SUVs, and there’s no judgment there because the Jeep can do things the Ferrari can’t do and the the Ferrari can do things the Jeep can’t do.

The key is what kind of vehicle am I? And so if someone starts to understand their attributes, they start to understand their own unique attribute profile. What they recognize is there’s no judgment here. This is who I am. So if you were to do our assessment, for example, you’d see your top five and then, you know, you’d see all the all 41 rank, but you look at your top five and your bottom five.

It’s not like a personality uh, test where your top five and bottom five equal strengths and weaknesses. In other words, your success as a human being is as much because of your bottom five, as it is your top five, your low patients. Has made you successful in certain ways. You’re low charisma, you’re low, you pick whatever you’re high.

Now, each one of these also comes with some blind spots. In other words, your high decisiveness. While advantageous also comes with some blind spots you have to be aware of, but the key is to take the judgment out of these attributes and have everybody understand that your unique attribute profile is exactly what makes you the human being you are.

And there’s tremendous success in that. Now to, to kind of address your other question in terms of uncertainty, the bad news is that we can’t predict. Uncertainty by definition, you know, which means we don’t know exactly what attributes are gonna be required depending on the uncertain moment. So whatever your profile is, you’re fine.

Right? Compartmentalization is one of the attributes. Compartmentalization, I would say. It’s probably if you want to move horizons effectively com compartmentalization is the attribute that allows you to do it. So, so if you are lower on com compartmentalization, all you need to do is begin to practice horizon shifting and horizon moving.

You’ll get better at com. Compartmentalization, some of us are a little bit higher on compartmentalization. It’s a little bit easier for us, just naturally, but we all have the capability, so, so the idea would be understand your attribute profile if you find yourself low on some of these attributes that you think are so.

Um, essential. Say you’re low on adaptability, then guess what? You have now given yourself a conscious, the conscious ability to, in the moment recognize that you’re gonna be low on adaptability and say, you know what? I’m gonna be low on adaptability. That’s why this is feeling so bad. I need to, I need to, uh, I need to address that in how I’m acting.

By the way, what that’s also doing, bringing your frontal lobe back online and allowing you to decision make, it’s actually taking away. The anxiety because you’re actually bringing your frontal lobe back online. And so and so, all of this to say that understanding ourselves to the most, um, precise levels that we can provide us the opportunity to not only interrogate our own performance after the fact, but our interrogate our performance during the fact and actually in fact perform better.

Kimberley: Amazing. Has there ever been a time where you couldn’t get your brain back online? Has there been a time where you got hijacked by anxiety and uncertainty and fear, and where were you, what were you doing and how did you get back? 

Rich: Yeah, that’s a great question. The what, what I will say is, and I’ll say this quite honestly, is that if, if you get good at, and when you get good at moving the horizon process, fear goes away almost completely.

Um, or at least gets. Postponed. Right. And, and, and the, the example would be, I, I can say very, I can say quite honestly that there was never a moment in, in my career whether we were in gunfight or combat or whatever, where I was afraid. The reason is not because I’m fearless. The reason because in that moment all I was doing was picking horizons.

I was, I was working the problem. Do this then that, then that, so much so that in, in many of these cases after the fact, like everything was over, we’re back at our, you know, all the reports have done. I’m back by myself. In my, in my, um, in my hooch or whatever, and I then the fear starts hitting me. I start thinking back, it’s like, oh my God, that was close.

You know? And you start feeling it after the fact because you look back on it. But in the moments, I was actually just working the problem and I, you know, I was, I was watching an interview with, um, buzz Aldrin and the, uh, the interviewer saying, Hey, you’re, you’re, you’re in that lunar lander with Neil Armstrong and you’re landing on them.

Never been done. There’s so many things that go, go wrong. Were you afraid he was? I wasn’t afraid because all we were doing was just we were doing what we needed to do in the moment. We were just working the problem moment by moment by moment. They weren’t again, um, uh, hijacking themselves with anxiety, thinking about things they need, need to think about, think about the now.

So that is one thing we have to understand is if we move horizons effectively, we can actually mitigate or take away, or at least de delay and postpone fear so that we’re actually acting in the moment. Um, but I will say that there have been times where after the moment. I felt, I was like, oh my gosh, I’ve had this.

Like, okay, breathe for a second. ’cause that was really close, right? But again, that’s a better place to experience it and work through it, because now your environment is in, in fact, certain and safe. Uh, but in the moment, no, I, I, we, we really, I mean, buds alone, you know, seal training alone really just, it, it hyper develops this ability to work the problem and focus on the moment.

Kimberley: So it, it was funny. I, I’ve been, again, going through a major deep dive on this. I don’t know why I am so fascinated by it. My husband, it was even like, this is getting crazy. Kimberly, what, what are you, what are you, what’s happening here? Um. Just so you, maybe I’ll explain something for you so you can explain, uh, we can talk about it is a lot of the treatment we have for anxiety disorders and OCD and OCD related disorders is this fairly intensive lean into fear model.

Yeah. Right. Like. Identify specifically what your fears are. Yeah. And then go and face them pretty, like on a, on a hierarchy from easiest to hardest, but maybe not. Sometimes we have to go straight to the hard and it’s pretty intensive. Like that’s the work that we do. Yeah. List out the things you’re afraid of.

Let’s go. Um, and that’s not that much different to BUDS training. I mean, it’s very different to BUDS training. Well, phy, 

Rich: psychologically and physiologically. No, not much different. 

Kimberley: Yeah. So ex we call it exposure and response prevention. That is the specific type of treatment. It is an, it is an example of the BUDS training where you guys are just being pushed now.

You guys are doing 10 out of 10. Too exhaustion to the point where you either drop out or you make it through the day. Yeah. And we are not doing that on our end. Um, but if someone was having to sort of step into treatment and it’s like stepping into Buds training where you have, I think it’s five weeks, is it?

Or nine weeks? Well, it’s 

Rich: six months actually, but, uh, yeah. 

Kimberley: Isn’t there like a Yeah, the fifth 

Rich: week is hell. Week. Yeah. So you have That’s the big crucible. Yeah. So, so. 

Kimberley: What is the, is there a part of the training of Navy Seals? Similar to that in that you’re trying to push someone so to the level that everything sort of seems easy beyond that.

Yeah. Like you, what is the psychology of going? So we are constantly in our community, um, really negotiating and questioning and discussing what, how much is too much or, you know, to what degree do we push our clients That is. Ethical and kind. And, um, so for you guys, it’s a whole different environment. I understand that and it’s a completely different goal, but can you talk to me about the extremes and the degree in which you push and how that may impact someone’s ability to tolerate and become a master of uncertainty?

Rich: Yes. Uh, but first I do want to, I want to just. Remind the audience that the thing about fear is that fear is subjective. Um, and this means yet the, the, the physiological and, and, uh, psychological effects of fear are identical. Um, but what this means is that, uh, you can have a group of Navy seals. In a gunfight with Al-Qaeda, and they are literally in that moment feeling less fear than the 8-year-old.

You just asked to step in front of the classroom and introduce themselves. Okay, so, so first thing we I wanna do is I wanna make sure everybody understands that, that comparative, it’s, it’s not a good idea to compare fear. Okay. Um, because they’re all afraid of certain things, you know, and, and so SEAL training is one thing, but, but SEAL training for me, I’m sure there are aspects of SEAL training that would terrify most people.

But what’s, were fine with me. Whereas, you know, you know, maybe, you know, starting a conversation with a stranger for me is like, that’s tough. Uh, that’s tough for me to do, you know? Um, so, so first let’s just make sure everybody understands we’re all human and the seals aren’t super human. We’re just, we’re just managing our fear in different ways.

And, and for some people they’re not even feeling fear. I mean, some people don’t, like, you know, some people love jumping out of airplanes, but they don’t have to manage anything. So, so it’s subjective. Thank you. The cool thing is the tools are all the same because. Since the physiology is the same, uh, the tools you can use to actually manage your fear is the same.

Here’s the other thing. I’ll also say, uh, two things. First of all, um, there is a part of the brain that psychologists, uh, and, and neuroscientists discovered, uh, I can’t, I don’t know how recently, maybe a decade or so called, uh, the anterior mid cingulate cortex on this part of the brain. Actually, they re they realized, they discovered it gets activated.

When we do challenging things, when we do things we don’t wanna do, and it’s challenging and it’s hard, and in fact when we engage in those things, that part of the brain in fact grows and it’s been linked. The growth of that part of the brain has been linked to a couple things. First of all, it’s linked to longevity.

People live longer as if it, as the more it grows, the more, the longer you live. And it’s also been linked to the ability to actually do more hard things. So, so, so I think one of the, one of the. The, just, again, this is, these are facts that people can take, put in their toolkit and they can remember is that by pushing yourself, you are in fact making yourself live longer and making hard things.

Better, easier to do. Um, so this is why even now to this day, I try to still engage in things that are hard, that I, you know, yeah. Path is a great example of that. I don’t like getting into it. I got into it this morning. I dreaded getting into it. I didn’t like it, but it’s, it’s, it’s growing that part of the brain.

So I think one of the encouraging factors is that we are designed to, in fact, grow from doing hard things. Now, again, it’s gonna be a subjective thing, and I think we, we want to make sure that the. The things we’re asking people to do, the horizons we’re, we’re asking people to pick. They’re just outside the comfort zone, but not too easy.

There’s somewhere in that, in that sweet spot, because again, if it’s too hard, then you’re, you’re, you’re gonna quit. You’re not gonna wanna do it. The, the saying in seal training for hell week and just for your audience, hell, week is a week where you, you start on a Sunday afternoon and you go all the way to Friday, the following Friday afternoon.

And during that entire week, you sleep for about two hours For the entire week. Right? The entire week. And you’re just, you’re constantly wet. Sandy, you know, this is where most people quit. It’s actually, you get most quitters during hell week. But, but one of the sayings in in Buds training when you’re a student is if you think about Friday, on Monday of hell week, you will quit.

You never think about, I mean, you’re just, they, you never think of the entirety of SEAL training at all. You’re always picking horizons. And so, so in in, in the conduct of people picking challenging things to do, just take it in small steps. Take it in small steps. ’cause you’ll feel that you’ll register that reward and it’s gonna be different for everybody.

Um, but just step by step, every people who always say, uh, talk to me about, yeah, I want to, I wanna start working out. I wanna get in shape. It’s like, okay, well, you know, just. Go to the gym one day, you know, just start going to the gym. You don’t even have to do anything. Just, just make the transit to the gym, look around and then leave.

And the next day do it again. Eventually, if you do that every day, you’re gonna pick up a weight once in a while and you’re gonna start doing something. And that’s gonna translate slowly into you working out, but you generate these habits, right? So that’s another thing. And the other final thing I’ll say is that it it, the interesting thing about this, this equation and, uh, uncertainty plus anxiety equals fear.

Um, another reframing technique that I’ve used before and that I can offer is that, um, when you combine uncertainty with other things, a different results take pi. So, so uncertainty plus curiosity equals excitement. Yes. And um, and so part of a strategy, again, this is easier said than done, is to sometimes be able to ask yourself, Hey, can I actually turn my anxiety into curiosity?

Mm-hmm. Um, an example I’ll give you is, again, I don’t, I, like I’ve said, I don’t like heights. So, so I, I obviously, I also don’t like rollercoasters. I’ve, I’ve never been a fan. My wife loves rollercoasters. What’s interesting is that just from a subjective fear thing, right? When we get on the ride together, we’re going on the exact same ride, okay?

She’s feeling uncertainty plus curiosity and excitement. I’m feeling a uncertainty, anxiety, and fear. So by the end of the ride, I’m drained and she wants to go again. All right? All this to say we were at Bush, uh, no, we were at, uh, universal this last spring. And, um, she, it was her birthday and she said, Hey, can you ride this Velociraptor?

Which is like the fastest rollercoaster I’m gonna say yes. ’cause I love my wife. And, um, and so I’m, I, I’m getting ready to go on that, on that ride. And I say to myself, okay, well, you know, I grew up wanting to be a, a fighter pilot. I wanted to fly fighter jets. I ended up going seals. Um, but I said to myself, you know what, while I’m in this ride, I’m just gonna pretend I’m in a fighter jet.

I’m trying to, flying a fighter jet. That’s what I’m just visualized. And I did that and it worked. Now I didn’t, I can’t say that at the end of the ride I wanted to do it again, but I certainly had a different experience than I would’ve. Had I been reduced to, you know, total fear and anxiety, so, so just generating some curiosity about something you are anxious about can help to change your fear to excitement, and that’s actually a powerful tool.

Kimberley: Amazing. Last question, and I’m, I could talk to you for hours. Um, we here talk a lot about self-compassion. People are suffering, they’re really, you know, they’re having such a difficult time. They’re being comp constantly being tr like. Terrorized by scary thoughts and so forth. And we talk a lot about having a kind voice, an encouraging voice, um, someone who cheers them on to sort of help them, I think, get to that next horizon.

Mm-hmm. As a, because maybe they haven’t got a strong inner coach that coaches them to the next horizon. Is that a piece of your work? I’m guessing that folks Navy Seals aren’t practicing a ton of like self-compassion. Yeah. I’m making that assumption. I, maybe I’m completely wrong. I, I think that there is a misunderstanding that self-compassion is just kind and warm sometimes for me.

It’s like, you can do this, come on, get to it. Like get to to the work that it can be both, but. How, is there any training for Navy Seals who are doing this really difficult thing and they’re moving horizons, they’re constantly facing? Are they trained on how to the tone of voice or how to coach themselves, um, or for them in that extreme environment, are they actually, is it more helpful to be like more gritty?

Yeah. Yeah. In the way they talk to themselves? 

Rich: Well, the answer, the, the first answer is no. No. We’re not trained in that at all. No one’s, no one’s trained in breathing. Anytime you hear someone like, oh, this Navy Seals. Trained in these breathing techniques. We never got trained in any breathing techniques.

We just figured it out on our own. So, um, uh, same thing with, uh, with self-compassion, although I would say it doesn’t mean we don’t do it. And the way I’d actually define it, just self-talk. Self-talk and self-talk can, can be compassionate and this could also be non-compassionate and be very abrupt and violence.

I mean, so I think what it, what the key is to figure out what works for yourself. Um, because some people respond to self-talk. That’s very encouraging. I know people who, like, they, they need to stress themselves out to actually get moving. Mm-hmm. So their self-talk will be about stressing themselves out.

Saying, Hey, if I don’t do this, then this disastrous thing will happen. Okay, now I’m gonna do it. So, so I think absolutely self-talk works. Um, I think it just, the key is to find the self-talk that works for you as an individual and start noting those and, and, uh, and using those as triggers. And again, what you’re doing.

Quite literally is whenever you’re self-talk, you’re bringing that frontal lobe. Anything you’re doing in a moment to bring that frontal lobe back online, it’s why, um, in your, it’s in your, in your, in your field. I mean, uh, the whole, um, name it to Tam when it comes to emotions. That’s why that works, is because by naming it, you’re taking your brain out of the limbic and into the, into the conscious mind, and you’re actually pulling yourself back into a conscious state of good decision making.

So, so any type of self-talk that works. Do it, uh, figure out what works. Um, if, you know, I, I would, I, I wouldn’t say, you know, beat yourself up all the time, but I mean, listen, David Goggin’s a famous Navy Seal and I know David, you know, we, we went at least one deployment together. But his whole, uh, thing is a very violent self-talk.

I mean, it’s like, it’s like crushing demons and crushing souls and all that stuff, but for him it works. He is inspired a bunch of other people to work for, for it to work as well. So, so find your own thing. That works, I think is the, is the key. 

Kimberley: Yeah. Amazing. So do you wanna round this out? What we’ve been talking about, how to become a master of anxiety is, is there one message you want to leave us with, particularly for folks who are struggling with uncertainty?

Their brain telling them what if, what if, what if, what if all day long? What are your final thoughts? 

Rich: Well, I, I’ll leave, I will leave the audience with this. And this is really the reason why I do this work and why this work inspires me. And that is because these tools will, of course, allow you to, when practiced and, and mastered, will allow you to of course deal.

Uncertainty, challenge and stress when it hits without warning, which is always gonna happen. That’s just life. But more importantly, more, uh, inspirationally is that these tools, when you are good at these tools, when you start getting really good at them, you begin to deliberately step into uncertainty.

This is where all of our growth, all of our evolution, all of our discovery lies, uh, we are, we are in fact a species that has gone from caved dwellers to space explorers because of this ability to step outside of our comfort zone very deliberately. That’s where the, the juice of our potential is our potential lies.

That our potential is always outside our comfort zone. It’s always outside our comfort zone. So, so to anybody who is. Willing to practice this and make the journey. Yes, it’ll help you in those moments when it hits without warning, but you get really good and you’ll deliberately do it. And that is really, it takes your life into so many.

That’s why I, I feel like that’s why I’ve been able to do what I’ve done, what I’ve done. I mean, I deliberately made a choice to go to SEAL training, and it changed my life, and it continues to change my life. But this is the power of the, of the tool. 

Kimberley: Yeah. I, I love that because, and I do think the success I’ve had in my life has only come by accumulating minutes and hours of being uncertain.

Yeah. Like ev the, the most success is almost directly related to how uncertain it was. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I, I totally resonate with that. So, oh my gosh. Thank you. I cannot thank you enough. I swear to you I was. I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited to interview somebody. So thank you so much. Thank you for coming.

Thanks for a 

Rich: wonderful discussion and, uh, and, and I always love to get the message out to people who can really use it. So thanks for that. 

Kimberley: Yeah. Tell people, uh, tell us where we can hear more about you get your book. Yeah. I wanna know where we can learn more. Well, it 

Rich: certainly, it’s on Amazon books. Uh, uh, both books are on Amazon.

Uh, the attributes.com is our website, so it’s www the attributes.com and there you can see, you can get, you can. Uh, look at both books. You can look at our attributes, you can take our attributes assessments and look at a bunch of stuff we have there. So, and then of course I’m on Instagram and um, and uh, LinkedIn as well.

So 

Kimberley: Amazing. Thank you again, free and honor. Thank you.

Not knowing is hard. But you can do hard things.