Teleos Training

You master mindfulness – the ability to be fully present and objective in each moment – by doing two things: 1.      Meditating consistently. Consistent meditation causes significant and lasting changes to your brain that make you more mindful. 2.      Learning strategies that optimize your ability to be present and objective. There are dozens of strategies that you can use to be objective, which are defined as your ability to think rationally and control your emotions instead of being controlled by them. Being mindful means, you are fully present and fully objective. Bring present means you are immersed in the moment rather than: -         Thinking about the past -         Thinking about the future -         Only partially being in the present Being objective means you are living life unfiltered. You are seeing each moment for what it truly is...

I know what you might be thinking: Meditation? What kind of psychobabble nonsense is this? I'm not a Buddhist, a vegan, a yogi, or someone whose favorite activity is sharing your feelings, so why the hell are you talking to me about meditation? Well, here’s why... meditation makes you extremely mentally tough. So, stop being closed-minded, get rid of your preconceived notions and embrace stepping outside your comfort zone. Based on my personal experience and an abundance of academic literature, meditation works. Meditation has been proven, through hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, to significantly improve one’s resilience, mood, focus, calmness, rational thinking, and discipline. Meditation has also been proven to significantly reduce one’s stress, pain, fatigue, emotional reactivity, and panic response. So, bring an open mind and get ready to start meditating. I’ll explain the neuroscience, types, and specifics of meditation, but for now, I just want to show you the basics of how...

From the 9/11 attacks in 2001 until 2021, the United States was at war. 20 years of war. During these 20 years of non-stop combat, more SEALs died from suicide than from being killed by the enemy. Thousands upon thousands of operations. Constant fighting and life-or-death threats. And yet – when all was said and done – suicide killed far more SEALs than combat. For a long time, being “hard” was seen as the most important attribute one can have in the Special Operations and Intelligence community. Being hard means you can be calm and effective in any challenge. It means you can endure breathtaking amounts of pain, suffering, and brutality without complaining, quitting, or failing to accomplish the mission. This relentless, obsessive focus in the Special Operations and Intelligence community of being “hard” has, unsurprisingly, created a community of extremely hard people. But the sheer amount of people who’ve taken their own lives has revealed a critically important lesson: Hardness is ...

The principle behind visualization is that when you imagine something good happening, the act of putting the thought into the universe magically makes it happen in real life. Isn’t that incredible?      Well… it’s also untrue. You might have a negative impression of the word visualization because there is a trendy and unscientific fad called “manifesting” being propagated throughout Tik Tok, Instagram, and Facebook. Proponents of manifesting state that if you imagine something happening, it will happen. Social media and the blogosphere are littered with videos of people saying things like, “if you imagine your crush texting you, they will” or “if you imagine yourself driving a Lamborghini, you will have a Lamborghini!” This is not true, and this is not visualization. Here’s how visualization really works:  There are numerous neuroscience studies examining what happens in the brain when we imagine doing something. This research was conducted because scientists wanted ...

Discipline is the practice of doing what needs to be done to achieve your goals. The human brain evolved into its current form approximately 100,000 years ago. This was a very different time that the one in which we now live. As a result, the brain prioritizes extremely important things then but are not particularly important relevant now. For example: The brain prioritizes expending as little energy and effort as possible because early humans needed to save all their energy for when they were attacked by a predator or needed to go on a grueling hunt. The brain prioritizes eating large amounts of fattening, sweet foods because early humans never knew when their next meal would come. When they got a chance to eat, they wanted to take in as much as they could because this strategy provided maximal energy and protection from starvation. While human life has developed dramatically in the past 100,000 years, our brains – just like our feet, legs, and arms – actually haven’t changed much at ...

You are what you focus on. This is a principle we’ve already explored with micro-goals and flipping the script. If you focus on still having 14 hours left of your double-shift at the hospital, you’ll feel overwhelmed. If you just focus on caring for the next patient or completing the next task, you won’t feel overwhelmed at all. If you focus on how the traffic jam is stupid and horrible, you’ll be frustrated and annoyed. If you focus on how the traffic jam is an opportunity to listen to a great audiobook or brainstorm creative ideas for your next date night, you'll feel calm and content. One of the best leaders says: “Your focus is the most important thing you have. If you point it at the right things, you’ll eliminate the challenge. If you point it at the wrong things, you’ll hurt yourself and everyone around you.” During moments of adversity, the most important decision you can make is what you focus on. This decision will determine how you feel and how you perform. During life’s...