Inside the Training That Prepares SEALs and Athletes for ‘Mission Critical’ Pressure

What do a retired Tier 1 Navy SEAL, a Green Beret mental coach, and an MLB performance expert teach that most execs never learn?

They train people to perform under pressure—when there’s no time to think, and no room for error.

In this episode, former SEAL commander Coleman Ruiz and Philadelphia Phillies Director of Mental Performance Ceci Craft join me to break down the exact tools used to prepare elite operators and pro athletes for mission critical moments.

You’ll learn:

• Why “feeling ready” is a myth—and what to do instead
• How elite performers train for decisions that must happen in 300 seconds or less
• What separates those who burn out from those who bounce back
• The underrated power of journaling, debriefing, and mental agility under fire

Whether you lead a team, a business, or yourself—this is an inside look at the mental training most never get.

 

Connect with Coleman:

💼LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coleman-ruiz-b65a2531/

🎙️Teamcast Podcast : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teamcast/id1506395878

Connect with Ceci:

🌐 Website: https://edgementality.com/

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilia-clark-craft-a6479170/

✖️X (Twitter): https://x.com/edgementality

 Follow me for more:

🌐 Website: www.toughness.com

📸 Instagram: @paddysgram

💼 LinkedIn: Paddy Steinfort

✖️ X (Twitter): @paddysx

 

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Ceci Craft: To me, self-awareness is the foundation of mental toughness. 

[00:00:03] Coleman Ruiz: Your mental proficiency in mental toughness, the route to it was 100% physical. 

[00:00:08] Ceci Craft: If you are currently comfortable enough in life or doing well enough in life, then I would say my piece would be find something that makes you uncomfortable, that gives you butterflies.

[00:00:17] Coleman Ruiz: If we're gonna say that we're elite, then let's be elite in every category we need to be in to perform under pressure. 

[00:00:29] Paddy Steinfort: Welcome to the Toughness Podcast. I'm your host, Paddy Steinfort, and today we have an extra special episode because we've got two of the most badass people that I know on this planet and they, they're both laughing and feeling a little weird right now, but that is a legit, honest statement. And in particular, it's an extra special episode because both of these incredible humans are working with different groups in the military, either have direct experience themselves as an operator or as a mental coach like myself. And so I'll start with ladies first. CeCi Craft Cecilia. Full name, but everyone just knows they're Ceci or Cec is the Mental Performance Coach or the head of the Mental Performance Initiative for the Army Green Berets in particular.

I met Ceci when she was working and still does consult with the Cleveland Unions back in baseball days. Ceci, welcome to the show. Thanks very much for joining us. 

[00:01:28] Ceci Craft: Thank you so much for having me, Paddy, excited to be on. 

[00:01:31] Paddy Steinfort: I am not as excited as me, but I think you'll get there. And Coleman Ruiz is the other guest. Coleman has an incredible story backstory. Before we even get to what he does nowadays, Coleman, can you tell us a little more about your history? As an operator within the armed forces, how long your career was and what you actually did into deployments, et cetera. 

[00:01:53] Coleman Ruiz: Short  compared to some people. But really, I know we're talking about toughness and some other things. Paddy, I really, my life in the military, I always say started really with wrestling because that combative background is what seasoned me too, this type of environment. And so then 13 years in special operations in the SEAL teams, four combat tours, probably seven or eight total type of deployments. But the four that I always think about are the ones that really delivered the most pressure when you're obviously in the garden spots around the country and you experience some sort of combat action, some worse than others. But that took me into the fall of 2011, and then I got out of the Navy in the fall of 2011. 

[00:02:29] Paddy Steinfort: And then from there, this is when we didn't meet at that point, but you moved into working with high level teams in other areas, and that's where we did meet in 2015, I think it was. Our paths first crossed when we were both guest speakers for the Philadelphia Eagles during their preseason work.

And at that point you were transferring the knowledge and experience that you had in those high pressure environments to other people who worked in high pressure environments. Arguably not as high pressure, 'cause bullets aren't flying, but it's all relative. And so from there you were working at that point just as a consultant and now it's crystallized into something more solid.

Do you wanna share a little more about the mission critical work that you do? 

[00:03:14] Coleman Ruiz: Yeah. All these Paddy were, I guess like some of our lives, Ceci can probably relate to this as well. It's just like accidents. As I mentioned, I got outta the Navy in the fall of 2011 and because I had the sporting background and the instructor background from being in the teams, both a basic training instructor in our hell week back in Coronado, and then advanced training instructor in Virginia Beach.

And I still stayed in touch with people in athletics and through a friend I was doing some work with like division one college athletic teams and I met some professional coaches and. Without a background even like yours, Paddy, or like Ceci's with some formal education. I was just reflecting on these experiences in these environments and sharing that with athletes and obviously they can relate to it.

And so at the same time, I was staying very close to our community, the mission critical teams community through Dr. Preston Klein's research at the time, which is at Wharton. Now we're separate from Wharton, but because that environment is such a collective of people from astronauts to athletes and everybody in between, special operations, firefighters that deal in environments where your core decision making is done in 300 seconds or less, which is Preston's doctoral research.

I'm not the OR research person, but because I stayed in the applied side of the business, so to speak, this kept pulling us into all of these environments, athletic or otherwise. So now in 2020, I. I have other parts of my life too, but this slice of my life has continued to like bring us back in touch Paddy, meaning me and you and folks like Ceci and hundreds of others now with athletics and the mission critical team. Community in general. Yeah. 

[00:04:45] Paddy Steinfort: Like you say, accidents happen along the way, but these were great accidents because I would hesitate to guess that I wouldn't know half as many people that are super relevant to what we do on this show. And also just that I've learned so much from, and the first time we met I was like, this is really cool.

I watched you tell a story about kicking doors in, and the football players were more into that than anything we saw over the whole training camp. But then afterwards, we kept in touch and I circled back and I was talking to, I think it was you or maybe Preston, but either way, one of you said, we're doing this mission stuff.

And so for those listeners who don't know what that actually refers to, I didn't either. At the time, I was just like, oh, that's cool. What are you doing? And you described the audience, which you said it's astronauts, heart surgeons, fire department, all of the branches of the military. And you were like, Hey, you should come along.

And my response was, are you fucking kidding me? All I'd do is coach athletes and I'd love to come, but it doesn't feel right. And then you went ahead and said, no, no, no, no. Here's why we think you should come. 'cause this is what a mission critical team does. You spelled out the definition, and by the end of the definition, I'm like, holy shit, you're right. That is kind of what these guys do. Can you share? You do it much better than me. The definition of what a mission critical team is. 

[00:06:00] Coleman Ruiz: So just think about becauseof Ceci knows this, and again, Preston knows this better than I do any legitimate research, you have to narrow down what you're talking about. Right? So I'll be a little bit, I'll be, as you ask specific about mission critical teams. Four to 12 agents or four to 12 members. There's a reason in the literature that it's not three people, that teams are, in this case, four to 12, and that work in that solve rapidly emerging complex adaptive problem sets complexity in the environment.

When you look at literature, simple, complicated, complex and chaotic have definitions. So we're talking about complex environments that have emergent characteristics that are non causal, meaning some crazy shit could happen and you couldn't apply for it, right? So four to 12 agents, or four to 12 members that work in complex environments that experience a thing called an immersion event, and think of a black hole Paddy, like there's an event horizon, and if you cross the event horizon, it's worse if you try to reverse than if you complete the process.

Okay? So those teams deal with environments that have, where you deal with an immersion event where the consequences are catastrophic loss or death. Now. As you mentioned in our conversations years ago, many people initially say, well, my job isn't a death. And when they think catastrophic loss has to be, the car blows up or you don't land the plane.

No, no, no. Catastrophic loss for an athlete can be missing a fuel goal with zero seconds on the clock in Super Bowl, right? I don't really, it doesn't matter what sport it is. And so the last point to keep in mind is the four to 12 members that experience immersion events that work in complex environments that have a potential for a catastrophic loss or death in their core decision.

Throwing the football, kicking the soccer ball, combat action, landing an airplane on aircraft carrier, you name it, right? Just go through the list. The, your core decision happens at the immersion event in 300 seconds or less. I mean, it's five minutes, right? And the reason for the 300 seconds or less is because of the physiology and the neurobiology behind mission critical teams.

Essentially, if we were to stop right now Paddy and just count, we have about 300 seconds of oxygen in our brain to work the physiology of a mission critical problem. And that's why the research is sectioned off that way. So for a listener, if you have a job that requires a decision in 300 seconds or less, that once you cross an immersion event, it's worse to reverse yourself than to keep going. You are essentially an MCT member, 

[00:08:28] Paddy Steinfort: right? And that for me was like an eyeopening like kind of brain explosion event. If you think about the emoji with the brain floating at the top, that's kind of what I would've pictured that day that I look like while you're telling me that, because I will sometimes refer when I'm sitting with an athlete or a coach to a sweaty palms moment, which is the anticipatory.

This shit is about anything could happen right now within reason. I'm about to step off a threshold and I can't go back. Like the ref has the ball in his hands, he's about to throw it up for the tip off. Tipoff is at 8:00 PM the, it's not stopping just 'cause I feel nervous. It's not stopping 'cause I didn't prepare properly.

It's not stopping for me to calm down. It's just this is gonna happen. And it, for me was the embodiment of that. I had a, an experience coming overseas from a different country, seeing the athletes here have absolute reverence for the military and it's similar back home. And I couldn't work out why. And then your description gave me a little insight into that.

It's because it's very hard for pro athletes to find other people to go through what they do go through by physiologically and psychologically. And there was one great example of they share that experience. See? So I mentioned the sweaty palms moments, my own pretty bad term for that experience for pro athletes, but.

You worked with the Indians and still do in some capacity, but you were full-time there running that program for how many years? Like you were there a long time, right? 

[00:09:54] Ceci Craft: Six years, yeah. 

[00:09:55] Paddy Steinfort: So over the course of that six years, can you share with like when you think of a mission critical operator as Coleman's just described it, like what scenario jumps out to you, the Cleveland Indians looking at a, an athlete or maybe even a coach where you're like, yeah, that's really where mission critical comes into it for a major league baseball player.

[00:10:12] Ceci Craft: I think there are a lot of moments. If you think about every reliever stepping on the field, your best relievers get put in positions where there are men scoring position and they are brought in for a brief period of time. Maybe one pitch, maybe they get two guys out, but they're there to strike people out.

They have one mission, they know they're coming in for it. They know there's pressure. You certainly can't get off the mound once you're on, you are at the center of a stadium with 40,000 fans and it's time for you to deliver. And I think that's true even for the starter that in the fifth inning, all of a sudden gets.

A bomb hit off him and you know, he's just has given up a two run home run and the game's changed momentum and how is he gonna respond? And the ball comes back to his hand and he's gotta respond right there. Clearly not the same as life or death. But I think what gets interesting is when you look at some of the physiology and you're seeing very similar physiological states and reactions, a hitter that's stepping up in the bottom of the ninth and wants to bring it home for their team, those pressure moments exist. I think you're right. We had a great initiative when I was up with the Indians, where we brought special forces, green bere families up to throw out a first pitch and hang out with our guys a little bit so that they could tell those stories to each other. And I think for the baseball players it was pretty amazing perspective.

One of the side notes that I also liked for the baseball players was that you could watch a Green Beret get nervous to throw out a first pitch, and it kind of brought home that these amazing soldiers that can tell you about stories and places you'd never want to go, they get nervous too. And they would range walk.

They would fast move off that mound after throwing off that pitch. They couldn't wait to get out from the center of that ballpark. And you know, it gives you appreciation. We all get stressed, we all get nerves, we all get sweaty palms and you know, it's just handling it and moving forward. 

[00:11:54] Paddy Steinfort: It's one of the rare occurrences where you'll actually get someone's hero who their hero is. The person who's the hero. It's almost a reciprocal hero, whatever the word is there, because. The athletes look up to the soldiers and the soldiers are just so happy to be in the locker room with these athletes that they love. It's a very rare and unique and special thing. You mentioned physiology. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. 

[00:12:16] Ceci Craft: Oh, I was just gonna say one of my favorite moments was that the kids of the soldiers very rarely realized that people would look at their father as a hero. And so when the players were saying how much they respected and were thankful for their dad, it was kind of a shocked face on the kid who was getting baseball autographs. But I always loved it. I thought it was the most kind of badass moment of the whole thing. 

[00:12:35] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. You both mentioned physiology. I just had an experience of physiology. As you were describing, that square got little goosebumps. Things happen to us that sometimes we're aware of, sometimes we're not.

But particularly under these amazing, unique environments, like you said, some of them you don't want to go to. I would not wanna be in Fallujah. Some of them you do want to go to Yankee Stadium. Sounds pretty cool. But they both produce similar physiological events within us. In terms of your work with major league players, how do you bring about awareness?

Probably a little bit easier 'cause they're feeling it, but help them gain some sense of control over how to handle that. On the biggest stage, 

[00:13:19] Ceci Craft: There's a lot of bad information put out about nerves, about physiology, about what you should feel and about how it should look. And so I think one of the biggest things working with pro athletes was normalizing what people would feel and also trying to put out accurate information.

So information like butterflies mean you're not ready or when your mouth goes dry you should start to panic. Or when you're hand shaking, it's because you're a wuss. But in fact, all those physiological components are your body reding itself for a big moment. And they're good. They're all good for you if you don't fight them, if you can accept them, if you understand them.

And so I think there's a lot of myths around performance that do. Athletes injustice or do any performer in injustice. And the other thing I think is people don't tend to talk about them. So I remember a baseball coach looking at me in shock when I told him that I would call pitchers that were gonna be brought up to the major leagues and I would tell them that they might not feel their hands or their feet or their legs during their debut, their major league debut.

And he was like, you tell them that? Absolutely I do. Because I don't want them to think that they're wrong or messed up or don't have a right to be on that mound when it happens and it's gonna happen to him. They all describe it in retrospect. So if I can describe that that to a player early on, and if he's up on that mound and he is pitching and he goes, I can't fill my hand.

Oh yeah, she told me that was gonna happen. No big deal. Keep pitching. Great. We're gonna perform through all kinds of uncomfortable states. I think there's this myth that you should feel in the zone. There's this myth that it's gonna be a great day. There's a myth that you're gonna feel ready. We feel all kinds of things when we perform.

And so just creating that acceptance around it, and your job in some ways is to. Except where you're currently at and then compete with wherever you're currently at with whatever you currently have. And so I, I think myth busting and then also honest expectation and acceptance. 

[00:15:07] Paddy Steinfort: That is an interesting and very counterintuitive insight that I tried to lead you in a trap there that you clearly as a veteran avoid of it 'cause it's less about, as you're saying there, part of it is like some control strategies and techniques or like an ability to reroute physiology. But it's not all about control. Some of it is like, this is just what happens to your body when you're doing cool shit, right? Mm-hmm. And Coleman, how much of your work, you mentioned that you were doing the instructor training, how much of that work was in helping people prepare physiologically for stress as opposed to like, you're gonna be badass athletes. Tactical athletes, we're gonna train you with an inch of your life. But when you started that, let's say, 'cause I know that there's an interesting evolution in that phase, which is where mission critical teams. Initiative has been so cool to help that evolution. When you started as a training instructor, how much of it was about just becoming very good athletes versus physiologically handling stress?

[00:16:07] Coleman Ruiz: 100% to 0%. 15 years ago as a basic training instructor, 12 years ago in advanced training, Paddy, we did not talk about this hardly at all. So a hundred percent of the training was about your, for lack of a better term, and bear with me, your mental proficiency and mental toughness. The route to it, and maybe the route to it still was 100% physical.

Like the more you could grind and the more you could deliver in the event, it was that being able to deliver in that event. And Ceci knows like there is some value in just straight up physically taking that pathway was almost like the signal that you had. Mental agility or mental toughness or mental proficiency.

[00:16:49] Paddy Steinfort: It was a war of attrition for you either survived or you didn't. And that was that. 

[00:16:54] Coleman Ruiz: That's it. And and the best example Paddy is like just go to basic training, right? You come in, at least into our training wrestlers, swimmers and water polo players are the highest percentage of graduates in SEAL training.

I can give you those five obvious reasons, right? Right. You over time they built up the comfort, but they weren't trained in some mental agility. It was like the sport, just like they built up that proficiency. So since, I would say since probably 2009, 2010 to now, and I'm obviously not on active duty anymore, our relationship with mental agility and mental fitness has come a long way to incorporate the things that that Ceci was just talking about, which it wasn't even in our curriculum. 

[00:17:33] Paddy Steinfort: And so how did that, you said it's gone from zero to now. It's incorporated it, but it's still physical and rightfully so. At what point did you notice it, either a need for it to change and then when you actually have tangibly can say that's the point when it started to shift?

[00:17:53] Coleman Ruiz: Yeah. I'm gonna take a stab at when it started to shift, but I'll say right around when I was getting out 2011 or 12, where our selection and assessment psychologist, that department started to grow with folks like UNC. So like people who were professionals in mental agility and mental training that wasn't just.

A selection and assessment or a off ramping transition type psychology department. Right. Or a checkup from the neck up. So around just, let's call it 2012. I personally got interested and it's why I'm always nerding out on these topics with you guys is because in 2008 I think, or 2007, I picked up John Rady's book Spark, which wasn't even about mental performance, right? It was about the brain really learning and the physiology connection to the brain. Right? It's the first time I ever, 

[00:18:42] Paddy Steinfort: and his work was a lot about children and learning at school, right? It had nothing to do with the Navy Seals on the surface. 

[00:18:47] Coleman Ruiz: The opening story is about the school in Naperville, Illinois and learning and the science and technology scores of the kids, because they were running a mile every morning to anaerobic threshold, blah, blah, blah.

And then he goes, as you know, Paddy chapter by chapter to talk about brain derived neurotropic factor, the hypothalmic pituitary axis. And I had, I had gotten a small taste of it when I read Dave Grossman's book, On Combat. And I admit this all the time in the open. I went through Buzz in 1999. I had already had two or three combat tours under my belt by 07 and Spark and On Combat, those two books handed to me by a peer with the first two like legitimate pieces of mental agility training I got other than go harder for longer with more intensity. That was my mental training from the time I was a little kid. Now it works, but it works until it doesn't. Right? So he's then the shit hits the fan or, or you just run outta energy for it, or you have some sort of adrenal burnout and then your toast and you don't even know what the hell happened to you.

[00:19:47] Paddy Steinfort: Does the same level of burnout happen, or, I mean, I've worked in baseball almost as long as you ceased, but did you notice, given that you've worked, prior to baseball, you worked as same role but for the military and now you work in a very specialized special operations, like pointing into the spear stuff. Does the same burnout or war of attrition that you saw on the military front exist in baseball? 

[00:20:10] Ceci Craft: I don't think it does quite on the same level. So one of the experiences that I've had that's been really interesting is my first six years with the military, I was working within a special forces population.

Uh, but the people I was around, I was younger and the people I was around frankly were younger. As I've come back into the military, a lot of the people that I got close to when I was there the first time are now retiring. They're getting out and they're much older in their careers and they're broken and they're exhausted and their lives are all at different spots.

And actually, Coleman, I just sent a bunch of 'em, the podcast on residue and the one actually on the physiology and psychology of deployments before that because I wanted them to hear it, to normalize it in the same way I would with an athlete on nerves of, hey. You didn't lose your motivation in a way no one else has, or you're not struggling with this transition in a way that no one else has, and that's such an important message.

I think in baseball, the lifespan frankly is shorter. The average lifespan for pro baseball, and there's more of a thought of we need to keep this person healthy. There might be a little bit more thoughtfulness on sadly protecting what is very broadcasted as a multimillion dollar asset. Mm. And so I don't think you see the end of the career in the same way someone that's jumped out of a plane with heavy weight and landed on those knees and those hips looks pretty beat up at the age of almost 50 or 40 something. If you see some of our older coaches walk on the field, you may notice they're pretty beat up too. I used to joke that two of my AAA coaches, I knew amputees that walked better than they did.

Their hip were awful from the rotations. Yeah. Um. So I, I mean, I think you do see some of the physiological breakdown, maybe not the psychological breakdown in the same way, but I will say, I think that was something that we talked about as Buan Indians too, is how do we support, support our coaches and their families and all that they're going through.

Because it's a very unique lifestyle to have someone away from home eight months outta the year, have them be away from home, have them want to connect with their kids. There's a whole component of general health in both of these domains that frankly, I think were just probably in the last few years really. In my current job, I'm not as cool as you initially described me, I am, I'm the head of the SOCEP program, which is within SWIC, but not every Green Beret. There are amazing people working all throughout the country for Green Berets. 

[00:22:30] Paddy Steinfort: So, okay, well I'll let you have that. That's cool. I'll let you have that moment of humility, but I'll also probably edit that out now.

I'm joking, I'll, I'll leave it there. I like accuracy. One of the things you just mentioned there, which was an absolute eyeopener for me coming into baseball in particular in this country, but specifically baseball as a sport is like no other in the sense that you're playing pretty much every day like you do.

There are mandated days off, but when you get on that plane to leave spring training and you go to the first Home series or away series, whatever it is, like that's it for six months and it's about, I've always said to people who probably don't know better, 'cause I wouldn't say it to you two 'cause you do know better.

It's about as close to deployment as you can get. You leave your family for an extended period, you do get to visit them. So it's definitely not the same. But in terms of being an athlete in America, that's about as close as you can get in terms of that experience. And that to me was something I, I underestimated.

Probably the biggest being for me, biggest learning for me was how important sleep is and how important human connection is. When I first went on the road with the major league baseball team, I first worked with for six weeks in a row and I was just like, at the end of it, I was, I had no energy to talk to a coach who had no energy.

And I was like, wow, I gotta look after myself better. But now I get why they didn't want to do those things that I asked them to do two weeks ago, because they're experiencing stuff that it's just really hard to comprehend until you do it. And so I'm curious, how much for you C's been in both camps, how much of that element, the chronic fatigue and the chronic stress.

As opposed to that sweaty palms moment, which is where we started. This is a different type of stress that is just always there. Are there some similarities there or am I way off? 

[00:24:18] Ceci Craft: No, I think there are similarities. I definitely would defer to Coleman on the deployment experience and MCTI did a really good job on, I thought the podcast on that, which I think a lot of people could relate to in, in some different fields.

You guys even mentioned hospital workers right now, which was, I thought such a good one. Baseball is a really unique sport and at the grind of every night, and I think it does systematically beat you down. When I first switched from the military to baseball, I remember thinking the schedule is not hard.

You guys talk about long days and this is not a long day. Like we start at a very civilized hour. You don't call anyone before 11:00 AM in baseball unless it's spring training and even if you go till midnight, like that is not a long day compared to military stuff. What does get you and Paddy, you hit the nail on the head is over time and over years.

I used to feel like I stepped on the escalator at the beginning of spring training and I got kicked off of it rudely sometime in October or November. And people would ask me all throughout those months how my life was. And I'd say, well, look at the box scores because there was no life. And then you started to watch years tick by and kind of think, ah, like there are years going and this is what I'm giving my life to and and know how do I feel about that?

And I think that's true for the athletes and they're trying to live lives and have marriages and have kids. I [ think that's true for soldiers too, without a doubt. But I would defer a lot to Coleman on, on kind of that comparison point. I mean, you've been around pro athletes and you've experienced deployment.

[00:25:41] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah. It was so common for you on that point, like having experienced it as an operator, but then also trained people to get ready for that and probably receive them back after deployments and now doing the work you do with mission critical, where I know a recent paper was on the residue of post-deployment or post operation, post exposure to these environments.

What is. What has been your learnings over that period of, I'm just gonna get through it as an operator, which is normally, most people are just like, head down, bum up, like CC said, and then you start to realize there's a toll and you start to try and work out ways to manage it. But now you are looking at people who are doing that.

What's been the biggest learning for you across that spectrum? 

[00:26:20] Coleman Ruiz: In a really, really practical and tactical sense as well? Pat is like, one of the things working for us, but also against us is our youth. When we're in our deployment peak is like, here's the truth, is like you can get away with a hellacious schedule 'cause you can just put out that kind of energy, right? And you have no rec. I'll implicate myself. I have no respect and no recognition for the fact that my. There were, as I say a lot now, we're still trapped by the laws of physics. Like this engine inside. My skin does not have unlimited capacity when I'm 27 years old. You could have not told me that. I would've never heard it because I have evidence every day that I can go at a hundred miles per hour nonstop, including deployments and training.

Remember Paddy, when it comes to deployments, at least for us, our type of folks that cease works with and you know, the training cycle going on, deployment was oftentimes a break. In a way, it's like that for athletes. It's a lot sometimes too, right? And so the analogy I I talk about now is to get to your point about the learnings.

I have a laundry list of learnings, but one to bring up in the context of what we're saying now is that I'm not a private pilot or anything, but I'm, somebody listening will know the numbers or maybe not. We can look it up at some point. Aircraft engines, they get rebuilt and refit a lot more often than car engines, right?

The car that you drive, Paddy, than I drive. Once every engine may never get rebuilt. Right, and that's because it runs at what, 3000 ish RPMs a aircraft engine runs at whatever it runs. It's not 3000 RPMs and those engines need to be rebuilt more often. What we're dealing with with CECs, dealing with the folks you're dealing with in professional athletics, we're dealing with aircraft engines.

And what I learned was we weren't doing a great job of rebuilding the engine on a regular basis. And for the audience, remember, I try to always make sure I caveat this with my view of this topic is not like, oh, woe was me. Like, we need more rest. No, no, no. The purpose of learning about the system is so that you can run the engine is hot as possible because that's still your job.

I think sometimes we make a mistake. Just close my answer. This point is we make a mistake sometimes and like we get. Post career or afterwards, and then it's almost just like, oh no, take it easy. Like you shouldn't go so hard. No, no, go hard. But we need to figure out how to refit the engine properly to go hard when it needs to, you know?

And I wasn't doing that. All my peers, we were just hot on the gas 24/7, 365. 

[00:28:45] Ceci Craft: I think one of the pieces that started to make sense in my mind is if you see some of the amazing sports cars that some of these baseball players get to drive around, you'll notice that oftentimes the brakes are like bright red on them.

They'll highlight the brakes on the vehicle. Well, why? Because if you're gonna drive a sports car that can drive 200 plus miles an hour, it's gotta have a damn good brake system. You don't wanna drive a car that fast, that doesn't have a good brake system. That would be a terrible idea. But I started to realize with soldiers, and I definitely realized with the better people in baseball.

I wasn't necessarily there to help them learn how to press the gas. They were really good at pressing the gas. They really sucked at their brakes and their first gear. They just had no clue. Like they lost the ability to use different, those first three gears. And so they'd be running in fifth and sixth gear everywhere they went and they'd hit a wall or break an ankle or Tara Labrum.

And it was catastrophic versus just saying, Hey, we're gonna take a second. We're gonna drop gears for a little bit. We're gonna pull out of this, we're gonna be fine. And you're gonna hit fifth and six again. It's gonna be okay. But it was relearning to walk was someone that had only been running and that was this really essential skill.

And so to Coleman's point, I think it's a great one. The point in the brakes is so that you can corner and drive fast and have fun. It's not to stay in first gear all the time. That's not what we're recommending, but you have to know how to use those other gears to then throw one into six. 

[00:30:05] Paddy Steinfort: I love that analogy, and I'll extend it one extra bit, is particularly with the current circumstances for athletes at least.

And I'm assuming for some military is neutral is a pretty important gear as well. We need to get used to being able to sit in neutral and just wait. Sometimes neutral is used as a brake, right? I was amazed when my mom told me that while I was driving lessons, but being able to sit still and wait and not have that push us into red or just turn the engine off is sometimes just as important.

I'm struck by the examples you used there, Cecu and the fact that you've been in both camps obviously super helpful, but that particularly in my experiences as a pro athlete from the age of 17 to 26 was very similar. I think to, as you were describing your experience there, Colin, in the sense of it was a hundred and it was always a hundred, and it was a hundred when we were playing and training and drinking and traveling, and this was like how you accrued credit points in the locker room, right?

You train hard, but you play hard, and this is just like at the age of 22, it didn't matter. Nowadays, it might take me probably a month to get over one of the nights we used to have or a week of training, and that was the definition of toughness in particularly in Australian football. But I think just in general in the in pro sports and in society, like toughness was being hard and being maximum and just going like that, Coleman, you've used the word agility a few times and that's not a common word used in, I guess a young person's understanding. Would 20-year-old, you as an operator have talked about mental agility as part of toughness, or is that something you've come to learn over the time? 

[00:31:46] Coleman Ruiz: It's something I've come to learn over the time. However, Paddy, I think we can jump the gap or explain it a little bit better. And I'll use like the obstacle course example in our training or any training, if you're lined up with, let's say you're in your basic training class and you're lined up with a hundred guys, a. All separated by 90 seconds on the obstacle course.

And so you're watching people go in front of you and everything is about how good your time is and are you doing a good job and whatever, right? And you're watching a guy in front of you and he's just ripping through the obstacle course. Like that dude's agility and power is incredible and the guy's agility and power is incredible.

And what we don't say though is we don't recognize later that this person's his or her physical agility, there's an equivalent game to be played in mental agility or not even game. There's an equivalent level of skills to be learned in mental agility because as we talk about a loss cease with like, at least I do with athletes is my guess with use basketball analogy, my guess is if LeBron James or Steph Curry wins a championship and they sit down at the press conference and the press conference folks ask them, what did your team do to win this championship in tight circumstances or whatever.

They don't typically say that we shot the basketball really straight. They don't typically say a physical thing. And the reason is, and just like a soldier won't tell you why their combat deployment was successful is not because we shoot our weapons really straight. That's why it was successful. No, no.

They're gonna tell you something about the training, the perseverance, the adaptability, the agility of the team, which is an indicator of their mental capacity for work and that mental agility Paddy. And if someone had just told me said mental agility back in the day, I wouldn't have listened to it in the same way.

But my point is like telling the obstacle core story is we have how much we respect physical agility, but we hesitate to respect mental agility in the same way or train for it in the same way. But we all know based on research and where we are in 2020, that when you're really pressured way out on the edge of your physical ability.

The only thing you have left, the only gear you can go into, I is a mental one. And so what I share with our teams all the time is if we're gonna say that we're elite, then let's be elite in every category we need to be in to perform under pressure. Otherwise, don't say you're elite. 

[00:34:10] Ceci Craft: My first boss working for the military named Mike Lore, who's a retired lieutenant colonel, still is. Um, he would do a whiteboard exercise that I loved and he would throw up agility, flexibility, power, strength, endurance. He would say, okay, physically, how do we define each of these? No issue. How do we train each of these? No issue mental, same five, hi. Oh, how do we define these? And people would work out how to define 'em.

What's mental flexibility? What's mental agility? Okay, people can start to work through these. How do we train them? And you think, okay, do you want these skills? Yeah, absolutely. We want these skills. Like we need to be mentally flexible. We need to be agile. Okay, but we're not training 'em, so why do we think we should have them?

And I think that's one of those pieces that we miss on the mental side, right? Like we know physical gifts. Some of 'em are, we're born with, they're genetic or God given. And some of them we have to work really hard to acquire, but we notice sustain 'em at a high level. We have to put in work. But like I've joked with a lot of people that teach them the graduate programs for mental performance.

Like none of us got issued fairy ones or fairy dust at the end of our graduate programs to do mental performance. Like I don't have anything that's gonna give it to you off that you're gonna have to work at it. I think the challenge for our field sometimes is, Hey, how do we tangibly create the training for you to work on it and make this something you understand that you are building and that you understand you're gonna have to work at to build?

[00:35:30] Paddy Steinfort: In terms of what you just mentioned there, cc, like the ability to train some of these things, it's kind of a given in terms of mental endurance, right? Let's just do something that's mentally taxing for a long time. Cool. But Julia, mental agility, how have you found the best way, whether it's in pro sports or with tactical athletes? How do you go about improving someone's mental agility? 

[00:35:52] Ceci Craft: I think context is incredibly relevant, right? Ken? Ken, what has said? Context, context, context. He probably would've used it in a slightly different way, but I think that's important too. One of the areas that you're gonna work a lot with in the military on the mental side, oftentimes is memory, which is not as necessarily essential in sport, but that's a huge piece of cognitively what's oftentimes getting processed along with the ability to exert adrenaline, keep going, carry weight, yada yada.

But we know things like, for example, for working memory. The training outta context doesn't always transfer very well. So if you're gonna be working with soldiers where facial recognition is important, or remembering license plates or numbers or things like that, context matters. And so I think when you look at mental agility.

One of the pieces that's really interesting on the mental side is you have to understand the context for that performer, whether that's an athlete or a soldier, and then you're gonna build within that context to help them create agility. So if their job is going to demand that they are switching focuses or that they're able to ignore a distraction and listen in on something else, build within those contexts.

And ideally, just like in sport, I think mental performance, if you can do it on a baseball field when it's applicable, is oftentimes better for the athlete, better for you than being in a office. I think that's true for soldiers too, right? The more you can get within their normal training domains, the better it is.

When you find yourself in a sterile office, you're doing a lot of trying to replicate or a lot of trying to build a scene to create generalization from that training to wherever you want it to go. 

[00:37:21] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, and also I remember being impressed when I was first talking to you guys about some of that element of like, let's try and put 'em in context, right?

You talked about an exercise you did, I think, I'm pretty sure it was you. Hopefully it's, otherwise, this story's going nowhere, but you had guys get into a physiological state on the mound and then you would actually talk them through the process of getting down from nine to a seven, right? Is it, is that, 

[00:37:52] Ceci Craft: Well, you may have talked to multiple people about it.

I'm sure we're not the only ones, but I think if you can get people in their performance state and talk about it, I think that's an area we're working with their instructors. Cadre or coach becomes a really big deal too, right? If you're pitching coach is part of that, is noticing things and oftentimes they'll notice it faster than I will, and they're able to talk that piece.

Hey, remember this is where we talked about finding a visual cue. Hey, this is where we talked about a breath. Hey, this is where we talked about a reset button. I think that's absolutely huge in terms of the ability to learn it and put it into context for where you actually. And if you look at the military settings, like what's so amazing is oftentimes they've talked, like when you put it in special forces terms, when you talk to a team sergeant, right?

The guy that's been around and is running a team, you'll describe something and he'll be like, oh, we do imagery. We call it this. Or like, that's a rock drill. We talk about self-talk or cues. We just do it this way. They have things that they have done that are well honed, incredibly smart mental performance skills or assets.

They don't always have the language to relate them to the younger guys, and they don't always remember to relate them to the younger guys because for them it's common sense. At this point, of course, I go through this procedure. I think where we fail is to deliberately realize, hey, this is a really essential component to your success, and to remember to talk it to the novice.

Again, I think true on the picture, the first time you're teaching him that he can actually down-regulate for the guy that's behind a gun the first time learning he can down-regulate or that he can regulate, period. Sometimes those lessons are passed really well. Sometimes we forget to pass them. 

[00:39:26] Paddy Steinfort: And now I've, you mentioned the experts dilemma there, and I see this sometimes in a veteran player talking to a rookie, right?

They're trying to tell 'em this thing. They're like, it makes sense. And they're like, oh, I remember the first time I saw this was in cricket. So for those of, you're not familiar with cricket, I usually describe it as the rest of the world's baseball. And they're talking about a certain type of delivery, so certain type of pitch they might wanna throw.

And in particular in cricket, they throw the ball at the, it hits the ground before it gets to the batter. And if you make it bounce just in front of a person's toes, it makes it very ib. You can imagine. Right? So that's called a Yorker, or up in the block hole where it's, this is the thing, trying to dig into that as an example.

Like, so can you tell us what the block hole, like what do you mean when you said block hole and the guy was like, well it's the block hole. Like that's, there's no other way to define it. It's just like that. It's just the block hole. What are you talking about? For veterans talking to rookies or for leaders or coaches talking to new recruits.

Like it's often a spelling like of there's this thing that we know what it is and come on, you gotta know and we can't even words. And so that question can go a couple of ways that I'm gonna throw it to you, Colin, where it's either one. You've used the term mentor agility, which is great. I didn't have to introduce it, but have you either seen what's the best activity you've seen in the military context?

You're like, that's the way military can train that. Or, what's an example that you've seen in terms of describing these different components of mental fitness that the language just wasn't there until you perhaps worked your way around it? Found a, a naive way of saying it.

[00:41:04] Coleman Ruiz: Yeah. What, what you just described, Paddy, was the tacit knowledge transfer problem. You know how to ride a bike, but you can't necessarily describe how to ride a bike. Most people will say, just say, pat, tell me how to ride a bike. You'll say, get on and pedal. For the most part, you might say something about balance and proprioception or who knows, right? And you're gonna want to ask Preston about this and then hit Paul.

You'll ask Preston about TA knowledge transfer, then hit mute on your mic and just let him go. But there's a couple different ways you hit a couple Cs already hit a couple. And one that was jumping to mind when you guys were talking was all these other examples about different types of mental performance and one context obviously matters.

And just telling somebody, this sounds ridiculous, but for years. In my career in special operations from 99 until say, maybe I'll say till roughly 2006, I don't know that I ever had an instructor say, this training is for this mental skill. We just did training, and as C mentioned, I realized later that I picked up a bunch of mental skills that I could translate, but that's highly dependent.

Paddy, as you know, unlike your learning style, your capacity for learning all the way down to like, are you a note taker? So when you do four or five, six free fall jumps in a day out at a drop zone, you may be out for three weeks and you're gonna do a. 40, 50, 60 jumps in three weeks. Are you keeping a jump log on what you did?

Because if an instructor or the system isn't set up to simply just tell you high altitude, low opening, which is roughly speaking in the daytime, jump at 13,000 feet open at 4,000 feet, fly your canopy in to the drop zone in the daytime, right? That's a certain set of skills because obviously if you jump out of an aircraft at 13,000 feet and you pull at 4,000, you have less time to make decisions, right?

A high altitude, high opening jump. At nighttime at 25,000 feet, different things can go wrong. But when you jump at 25,000 feet, if you have a mistake early in the jump, you are working with 20,000 feet of airspace to make a decision, right? That's a different set of a completely different set of skills, but you have other options, right?

And so number one, I think in our context, particularly for young operators, doing something really high risky and is high risk training, is being clear about what you're training on, like in given event, right? Because as you guys know, as professionals in this space, you can stress somebody and you learn something or you can teach somebody, you cannot do both at the same time.

People can argue this all day long, but you guys know the physiology better than I do. You have to choose one of those, and you learn different things in those environments, right? So just saying that would've been useful to me, like it would've been useful, Paddy, if an instructor had said Coleman for the next six hours, or let's just use hell week for five days straight.

We're just gonna smash your head in. That's what this training is for. Just smashing you. You're not gonna learn anything. Be like, okay, no problem. But I didn't think in hell week I was learning anything useful. I just knew it was a test. Right. But you, you, you get my point. And then the only other one I wanna mention in terms of when I learned that learning something about mental agility, like how to set it up was, as you mentioned, where we, I think in special operations and military stumble our way into help solve the TAA knowledge transfer problem is our very deliberate after action review process.

That even though we don't like to talk about stuff out loud in front of each other, and I think it's actually worse in locker rooms, pat is a lot less open assessing of your performance in locker rooms. We do a decent job of that. We're not always kind and gentle with each other. And I don't really think in those environments we should be, we have to get down to the brass tacks.

But even by accident, that activity builds a shared language that helps you describe the block hole problem when it's hard to describe decision making and pressure if you don't have a normalized or shared language to use the same words.

[00:44:57] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah. You mentioned something there about, specifically I picked up on you talking about the intent of a, here's why we're doing this drill, here's why we're gonna bash it in the face for five days.

And it immediately made me think of as a 17-year-old. So one of the scars, a few scars from my football career, but there's three of 'em on my shoulder from three separate shoulder reconstructions over the course of six years. And part of it is because when I was trained as a 17-year-old, they just put me on bench press, said Just press that weight up these 24 year.

And so my shoulder mechanics were horrendous and I would like curl around and just do whatever I could to get it up there without knowing that actually part of the training is supposed to be setting your scapula so that you can be solid and move the weight more efficiently. And so by the time we worked that out, it was too late.

My shoulder's pretty screwed up, but it's a great example of it. If someone had told me early on, here's what we're trying to do with this exercise, here's what you need to pay attention to while you're doing the exercise. It's a totally different learning outcome in a physical sense, but you talking the same stuff and emotionally as well.

Ceci you, I mean, Colin just mentioned there the after action review and when, I'll circle back to you in a second comment. He mentioned also a jump log, right? And I've seen hitters come back to the dugout and that I will write down every pitch. It's a rarity, but it does happen. And they will be like, here's what happened.

Here's what he threw me, here's what I did. Here's how many runners were on and score and all that sort of stuff. But also there are some who take to the next level and they're like, here's what I felt. It becomes a self-learning tool as opposed to, I'm just trying to learn about, is there a review process you've seen either from someone who's really good at baseball or perhaps even a good manager to help their team reflect that stands out to you as like, given that you also have seen good after action reviews military wise, what stood out to you in baseball as like, that was a really cool way to build?

[00:46:53] Ceci Craft: Uh, yeah. I, I mean, I think I was shocked when they first got into baseball and it took me some time to appreciate that they didn't do an after action review of some kind. Every night I was, we go back from 3:00 AM or you'll finish a training with 'em at 2:00 AM and they'll be like, all right, way hour in an hour when you're kind of thinking, holy hell, it's gonna be three in the morning. Okay. But they, after actual review everything, and it's very candid. 

[00:47:13] Paddy Steinfort: I think I was actually with you guys when I was with the Eagles. We came and visited Akron and I was in the dugout. Yes. And we were talking about the starting pitch just got whacked. He came off and everyone just kind of avoided him.

Mm-hmm. Because he had screwed up probably cost from the gain. And just no one's talked to him. And both myself and my colleague from the Eagles were looking at you being like, but wait, don't you need to help the guy? Like he's a good bad spot right now. You either help him feel better at the very least or help him learn. Right? And it was like, nah, it's kind of not what you're doing. Baseball. 

[00:47:45] Ceci Craft: Yeah, baseball. You leave him be for a while and depending on who it is, it might be the next day, it might be later that night. It's always interesting. 

[00:47:52] Paddy Steinfort: But there's an element of that thing that if they play every night, it becomes exhausting to degree that all the time for them. Yeah. 

[00:47:59] Ceci Craft: And it's just culturally different. I think the older players in baseball would tell you that they used to sit around clubhouses and have beers after the game and they used to do a debrief and informal debrief and they used to talk about how the guy pitched that night and then who had success and what did they see and how did it work.

And I think they would tell you that some of that's missing in baseball. Is it that that guys tend to clean up, shower, get out of the clubhouse nowadays, and that the culture is shifting and they don't sit around the same way. And I think there's probably truth there, but I do think your best players are really reflective on their performance. And I think journaling is huge. No one loves to talk about it, but sniper journals, there're badass people of the journal. 

[00:48:37] Paddy Steinfort: Can you say that again? Sorry? You say Sniper journal? Snipers Journal. Heard those two words in the same breath. 

[00:48:44] Ceci Craft: Coleman can elaborate probably way better than I can, but they, every, every bullet that has gone, every round that has gone through that rifle has been journaled.

They know exactly how many rounds have gone through the barrel of that gun because they wanna know how the gun shoots when it's cold. They wanna know how it shoots when it's warmed up. They wanna know all the, they call it dope, all the data on it. So Coleman can talk way more about that than I can, but yeah, they journal, they know everything about how they perform.

[00:49:07] Paddy Steinfort: I actually am super curious to hear more about that. And you even cc you gave a couple of great examples of like just learning about the instrument we're using. Mm-hmm. A little similar to the human who's the, the extremely neurotic, conscientious hitter that I was referring to. I might name them.

They would log time, date innings, score, runners in position, picture how many innings they had, what their normal mix was. Here's what he gave me, here's what I did, but here's what I felt. Here's what I was playing. Like he went into learning his own instrument. This is great example for some military focus.

It may sound like, yeah, this is what we do, but for those who aren't military or aren't snipers and may not know about this, can you tell us a bit more about what that looks like? Cool. 

[00:49:50] Coleman Ruiz: It's funny since you brought that up, because in 99 when I checked into SEAL Team three, I had a gap in picking up my first platoon and officers don't service snipers ultimately, but I went to sniper school with the rest of this big group.

There was an open billet. It was an opportunity to go and understand the craft. I was never gonna obviously serve as like a platoon sniper, but I graduated from sniper school in late 1999 or 2000, I can't remember now. But what sees described is exactly true. So you record every bullet through the gun, you record humidity, temperature, wind.

Who your shooting buddy is, what drill you're doing for obvious reasons. Are you shooting a known distance target? Are you shooting an unknown distance target? 'cause there's a way to get distance on a target where you don't know how far it away is. You using this process called milts and you have to know everything about the environment Paddy because the bullet behaves differently depending on how hot it is, how humid it is, what elevation you're at, et cetera, et cetera.

Dive logs are the same way. Temperature of the water, what's the current, what's the everything? Jump logs are the same way. Where did you jump? What was the altitude? Who was around you? All these different things. And so when it comes to, these are things we don't often, I'm glad this got brought up 'cause we don't often get into this kind of thing.

Cause in in the general conversation of like performance today and everywhere, it's always, oh, use the five minute journal, write the three things you're grateful for. I think that's fine. Do all that stuff. But when you're talking about a very precision performance instrument. In professional athletics, when you go overseas and somebody is trying to take your life away from you, it is not trivial to know exactly what you described, Paddy.

Not only how you feel, but how do the instruments of the job work together? Meaning your teammates, the gear that you use, and no one can remember all that stuff. Like you have to track your performance in some way. To know how to make adjustments. Otherwise, back to my point earlier, you can talk about being pretty good, but don't talk about being elite if you're not doing elite behaviors.

[00:51:49] Ceci Craft: I think self-awareness is so much of what underscores that to me, self-awareness is the foundation of mental toughness. It's like doing land navigation and not knowing the first part place you're starting from. Like how do you get to point a B if you don't even know if where point A is where you're currently standing?

You can't. And so I think that's that journaling piece, that's that reflection at the end of a game. That's that time to write it down. That's what being a lead is, having such a good sense of how you function, that then you're able to be agile, then you're able to be flexible, then you're able to adapt and evolve and persist because you know how you function, you know what your strengths and weaknesses are so you can grab the teammate. It helps you cover down on that weakness if that's what you've gotta attack, or you've got the strength there and you're gonna move forward without hesitation. Candid feedback and moments where you get to see yourself clearly, or peer evaluations or moments alone in the woods are probably the greatest gift we get given because we have to see ourselves. And I just feel like those moments, that's what starts to create the ability to be elite. The ability to succeed. 

[00:52:54] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, the ability to get better, even if you're not elite, just to be out, learn and learn. Like I think that's why that sniper journal really grabbed me, because I assume Coleman, you can't be a good sniper if you don't know how your gum works, particularly if it changes how it works in different conditions.

And that's what we all do as humans. We naturally, there's a lot of research now that says personality is not fixed, and depending on the situation. Depending on your physiology, depending on what's on the line. We are different people, different contexts. And if I don't know that, and I'm just gonna pretend that this gunfire iss the same as it did yesterday because I'm in a different spot and I'm in real trouble as a human operator.

And that's why I think that really grabbed it as a metaphor. We're gonna move a little more to a broader view because not everyone who is listening is gonna be someone who holds a gun potentially. There are a lot of people who might be medical operators, or there may be teachers or instructors, or there's a wide array, but a lot of people are also husbands and wives, children and uncles and aunts and all sorts of things.

And so one of the things that often comes up when I'm having these chats offline, but particularly on the show, is it moves into the realm of like how this spreads, how we can talk about. Your ability to deal with a gun in different conditions or your ability to step off a mount of control physiology and that somehow seeps into someone's personal life.

Do you guys see that in, in the various crowds that you are working with? 

[00:54:25] Coleman Ruiz: Say more about that, Paddy. What do you mean exactly? 

[00:54:27] Paddy Steinfort: So I will often relay the story of one of the first athletes who went all in, I guess in terms of the stuff that we were doing here. And it took a little bit of convincing and he saw some results and then it became his thing, right?

Mm-hmm. His teammates would rib him about it and eventually he was to say, I don't give a shit. 'cause I know when I go home and I actually, I started the conversation that I always reflect on my son, Hey man, I'm proud of her. Like, your teammates are ing, you're sticking to it. You're seeing like he was having a career best stretch.

It's really cool, man. And he was like, yeah, that's kind of cool. But the best part is I'm the better father because of this. I'm better. Like I, I guarantee you, my wife will tell you I'm better around her. And that was like, I get my speaking of physiology and my hair are standing up on my arms as I tell that story.

But it is a real effect of, of not always, but sometimes when we work on this stuff, it translates into other areas of life. Is that your, your experience there? 

[00:55:30] Ceci Craft: Yeah, I, I think that's, so I'll give a simplistic and silly story and then I'll hit one that's maybe more in line with family, but simple and silly is.

[00:55:38] Paddy Steinfort: Correct.

[00:55:39] Ceci Craft: Well, so I had a baseball player that was actually at a strength camp in the off season and they were hitting a lot of the mental stuff and they were talking about what it takes to really do stuff right, consistently every time, making the right decision. And I came out to to see the crew at shrink camp and a piece that stuck with me.

He's like, I can't fold laundry without making sure that my socks are properly put together and I have folded them properly and put them away. He's like, I used to not give it about socks, but you know, if you're into a right, do right. And I actually like shared that I, for something for the Association for Applied Sports Psych, like I was like, the habits become trends.

They do, they generalize into other parts of life. Like this guy's socks now had to be done right too. And that's just where he had gotten to. He was trying to do, if you're gonna do it, he was gonna do it right. And I thought that was pretty amazing. The other piece that always makes me laugh, particularly when I'm working with instructors and we're talking about like coaching methodologies or feedback or way to do stuff without fail. One of the first pieces of feedback I get if they go try any of the mental performance stuff is they're like, it worked on my kids. And I'm like, you tried this on your child before you tried it on a soldier. Really? You know? But they did. Yeah. I tried it and it totally worked. And so I was like, that's kind of that cool moment of like, yes, this stuff tends to universally work.

We are dealing with humans here, whether they're a 5-year-old human, which might give you much faster feedback, or whether it's your student that's learning something at 22. 

[00:57:06] Paddy Steinfort: Very cool. Come. Do you have an example? 

[00:57:09] Coleman Ruiz: Oh, yeah, tons. One of the things that I always try to remind myself of Paddy, is the brain's agnostic to your activity.

It doesn't know if you're being shot at or if you're being attacked by a great white shark, or if you're in a fight with your spouse or girlfriend. The brain falls to physiology and the psychology of the evolution that we have been given. That's it. And so if you are building new mental and physical skills in this realm.

In one area, you're gonna get seepage, as you guys know in other areas. And that's not surprising. It's obviously really encouraging. And when I think I have almost 18-year-old son, 15 and 11, 3, 3 boys, and I was talking with Sean Halls who, you know, Paddy, and we were talking about performance and Sean was talking about work capacity, right?

And I'll bring this back to parenting. To your point, Sean said, remember like the acquisition of a skill happens in I guess five or six stages. Let's see it first, you do it slowly, then you do it at speed, then you do it at speed with fatigue. So five stages. Then you do it at speed with fatigue under external pressure conditions, and you have to do that consistently.

And so when I think about just being a good father and a good spouse, trying to be good at those things and being a good friend to people, you practice the new mental skills slow, and then at speed, and then at speed and under fatigue, and then under fatigue and under pressure, and do that consistently.

And I was long having a long conversation with my oldest son last night, and not for anything you did wrong, just a long conversation about whatever. And you are invested for a long period of time, and you have to do these things consistently over time. And if you run yourself into the red as an athlete or a soldier, your body doesn't just magically perform better when you walk into the house.

Like it's in the red for everything. That's something we have to watch for. 

[00:58:59] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah. So I mean, I lo I love that there's some great analogies there, which might be your answer to this final question, particularly when it gets to talking about how this affects life. I'm often reminded of a quote from William James, who I think he actually bastardized it from.

Socrates are our soul, but we're just gonna say it's William James. And he said, so a thought reap in action. So an action, reap a habit. So a habit re character. So a character reap a life. The basic premise of like how we think affects or what we focus on affects how we might act in the moment. But if we do that regularly enough, we create habits which essentially form our character or our personality.

And if we hold onto that for long enough, it basically dictates how our loss can up. And so I'm prompted to think of that because we're talking about how these little acts can seep into other areas of our life because kind of atch the way we annal things. You set it much better though, Colin, with sexier language, that if you were gonna give as a final takeaway, if you were gonna, if each of you were gonna give one, like, here's a thought or here's an act that if you sow this often enough, it'll lead to good habits or the character you might want.

That'll give you the good life or the type of life you might wanna end up. It may not be easy, but it could be simple that if applied regularly and consistently could really change someone's toughness, their ability to deal with discomfort and to your point, since early on to just at least to put up with feelings and still do their thing.

Or Coleman, like you mentioned, to be mentally agile. What's the one thing to pay attention to? Or something you can do that if you do it often enough, it'll make you better in that area. 

[01:00:40] Coleman Ruiz: Yeah. Ceci, give you a second to think here and formulate your answer. 'cause I have a couple just 'cause I just prepared some notes here, which was actually, this was designed for earlier, but I think it fits here, Paddy as well.

I think of maybe top two or three questions since I've been out of the military and just moving around the regular world. This thing I'm about to share is one of the top three questions I've been asked by literally like every single person I meet who's even mildly interested in talking about my old life and special operations was.

What you've alluded to here and what this show is really about is like Coleman, what's your definition of mental toughness? I've been asked that seems like 10,000 times, and the way I think about it is, and I can check myself in almost any realms environment when I'm sitting in freezing cold water. When you're overseas, when you are doing something uncomfortable in your house or with your family, it's a situation you don't like, is, is your desire for mission accomplishment greater than your desire for personal comfort?

And when I cop out, when I fail to have a hard conversation with my boys or my wife, or a teammate or a friend, or I fail to do something tactically in training and in preparation or overseas, typically it's when I'm deferring to my personal comfort. Coleman wants to feel better physically or emotionally.

And that sacrifices an opportunity at accomplishing the objective you're going for. And so insert 6,000 examples in athletics, right? If I just, I really don't wanna run those wind sprints that hard because we've been working hard this week, okay? Don't run 'em that hard. But remember the enemy opponent, whatever.

The enemy does not care about your comfort. Their mission in life is to take your comfort away sometimes permanently. So when you choose your own personal comfort and your training and your preparation and your behavior, you are building a habit that the enemy is more than willing to make you pay for the right definition.

[01:02:35] Paddy Steinfort: A very strong, you got some thinking time there. 

[01:02:40] Ceci Craft: That's. My definition for mental toughness was the foundation and self-awareness, but the capability to adapt and persist towards goals. And I kind of love Coleman, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna raddle this a little bit. I'm gonna say, if you are currently comfortable enough in life or doing well enough in life, then I would say my piece would be find something that makes you uncomfortable, that gives you butterflies.

And learning something new is the easiest way to do it. And it doesn't have to be a big thing. Just doing something where you have to do the research, see what you're like when you're learning, see what you're like when you're challenged. Get to know yourself out of autopilot. When we're good at stuff, we're oftentimes an autopilot.

So if life is okay right now, get uncomfortable If life's not okay, if you're struggling, you're slumping. It's the same advice I'd give a player is, what's one thing that when you're playing well, you do consistently? What's that? What's that one strength that you come back to? Hey, when I'm playing, well, I always do this, or I'm consistently this person.

And then just let that be the bar of success for that moment, and do that consistently. I think oftentimes when we're slumping or we're struggling in life, we wanna jump out of those moments or get out of them really quickly, and we forget that we have to find our first handhold or our first foothold to start to climb up out of that.

And so set that firsthand foothold. And then the hard part on this is to let that be success for a while, is just doing that one piece well and letting go of the net. You know, you know you're gonna have to climb another eight feet, forget about the other eight feet for now, just do the first one. And what I usually find is that people can focus on that before they know it.

They're climbing way higher than they thought they would, but you gotta come back to simple. You can't solve all the problems at once, which half the time what got you in the hole to begin with. So yeah, depending on where you are now, I would have slightly different pieces of advice. 

[01:04:26] Paddy Steinfort: Love it. That's a very nuanced answer that no one has taken the time to split their answer into.

So well done. You've set the bar higher now for everyone else. Colin, I love the definition of mental toughness there, which we sort of skirt a past earlier, but that was a very helpful definition to the point that CC ended on have you gotta take away or a, here's something you can do can do to improve that 

[01:04:55] Coleman Ruiz: Other than recognize where you start to, so the story I normally tell Pat is when I went back to Buds as an instructor, after being a student, I went back as an instructor and watching other students go through hell week is such an easy example. 'cause it, it's so difficult physically and mentally and surf torture is such a miserable event where you just sit in the water and get frozen. It doesn't teach you a lot, but you can start to recognize for yourself it's the recognition is, do you know, do you recognize those moments?

Where you start to toggle your decision making. Like TA's point is like, things are, I'm on autopilot, I'm on autopilot, I'm on autopilot. I don't feel like I'm on autopilot anymore. Do you know when those moments are coming? Because if you work on recognizing when they arrive, what you're starting to do is recognize when your physiology or your training or your psychology, or what your life experience has, quote unquote, like in a way failed you.

But really it's just signaling to you. And that's when you have an opportunity. When you're on] autopilot, you're not using any mental agility skills. Like it's when you start to waver a little bit on something that, and so what that, I think something we can do. Look for any listener, forget practice, forget a game.

If you're pre professional, forget a deployment in a regular day, catch yourself. Recognize places where you don't feel like, for lack of a better term, like you just don't know exactly what to do and have the right answer. Like, hmm. Why am I a little bit like uncertain about this? And just observe how many times in a day you are toggling in this uncertain position that's mental toughness.

Like there's no magic fairy dust. Like for other people it just happens to be different phases. Right? A, a player like Steph Curry, LeBron James, they don't toggle till ever in in the playoffs. Right? But everybody has their own range. But you have to know when you're toggling. Otherwise you're guessing.

[01:06:52] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah. And also if I create examples there of guys who may not in a certain niche, in a certain arena, may not toggle I, you master that shit, but at home you toggle when the baby starts crying. Like it's important to be able to spread because you can develop it ending any arena. As you were talking about, being able to get to that point where you toggle.

I was reminded of a quote I saw on an INTA account today, which I'm not. I'm proud of sharing this because it's not something I normally do, but the quote said, life begins at the end of your comfort zone. That's a little bit airy fairy, but I'm gonna, yeah. Twist it a little bit about growth begins at the end of your comfort zone.

In particular, growing mental toughness or mental agility is like, you just have to get to the point where you toggle out of comfort, where you lose a little bit of control. That's where you can start to stretch those areas. Same as you do physically until your heart starts beating. You're not really trained.

[01:07:46] Coleman Ruiz: Yeah, yeah. I mean, when we're younger, right? We don't like for the coach or the parent or the teacher or the administrator or whoever. Let's just use athletics. 'cause it's an easier example. 'cause that more people have played childhood athletics than they have done military. Right? So the first time the coach gives you some feedback you don't like, you're toggling.

Make no mistake. You're like, I don't like the way he's talking to me. I was doing, I think I was doing that right? But that is a great example of the encouragement that I always share is when you just don't like the situation you're in, that's when you're toggling and that's when you have to get much more curious, less certainty, more inquiry.

Just ask yourself, slow down for a second and ask yourself, why don't I like this? And do I need to do something to get better? Because otherwise, you are gonna resist your own future potential at being elite because you just don't like the way the situation's unfolding. That's mental toughness. Like it isn't.

I can do a thousand pushups. It isn't. I can throw a perfect game in Major league baseball. Like we all, as you've brought up here, Paddy, we have long and complicated lives that don't always, they're not always in major league baseball in the military, right? There's situations all the time that I think we can recognize that.

[01:08:54] Paddy Steinfort: Love that. That's a pretty good note to end on there. And I wanna say thank you to both of you for making time to come on here. Obviously this is a topic that's close to both of your hearts and it's gonna help a lot of people and specifically sharing the experiences that many of our listeners may not have had yet, but hopefully you're helping them.

[01:09:17] Paddy Steinfort: For those who want to find you after the episode, find either the other work that you do or get in contact, what's the best way for someone to, to find you? 

[01:09:26] Ceci Craft: I am on Twitter as @edgementality, and that's probably the easiest way to find me. 

[01:09:32] Paddy Steinfort: Perfect. I'll put a link under this episode and Coleman I'll share with others.

You've heard both Ceci and Coleman mentioned the MCTI podcast. So the Mission Critical Teams Initiative has its own podcast, which is much better and has much smoother vocals than this one. So if you wanna, uh, if you want to tune into that, I'll put a link at the bottom of this as well. You can probably just search MCTI podcast. Is there any other way if someone wants to get in contact with you? 

[01:10:02] Coleman Ruiz: Yeah, a couple. So thanks for the plug Paddy. The team cast, if you search team cast on Spotify or Apple, it'll come right up. And then the mission cti.com website. You can get to Preston and I, you can get the old, the episodes and all that kind of stuff.

: And some of the papers research we post and we post like things that are coming up next, summits and things that you guys have been to and that's pretty much it. Or if people have direct contact with Ceci or you Paddy, you can share my email or I don't share my email openly on venues like this, but I'm a pretty wide open guy, like I don't hide from the general public.

[01:10:34] Paddy Steinfort: Perfect. I'll add links to all of those things underneath the episode. And I'm gonna say because I love this so much and I love number links below an episode. People are, you guys are gonna have the most links, so far. So that’s just a little observation. I wanna say thanks again, appreciate your time, and hopefully it’s not too long before we talk again soon.