Chriss Smith: Navy SEAL Mental Toughness and the Trident Mindset

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 324 with Chriss Smith.

Chriss Smith: I got a rule in life I try to live by every single day. I'm not successful every single day, but I try. That is to make seven strangers smile.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Chriss Smith: Every day I fail because I don't always get to see seven strangers. And I go out — I'm a jackass, dude. I go out of my way to get a giggle, a little chuckle, you know, back when we can actually touch people, a little high five, a little connection. I go out of my way just like I'm here to inspire that person. I'm Chriss Smith, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Reconnecting After Kokoro

Tom Rowland: Chriss Smith. Man, thank you for doing this. It's an honor to be with you, and I appreciate your time.

Chriss Smith: Yeah. It's been a while since we talked, so I'm excited to just get a little chitchat going and express some interest and share some likes and see what happens.

Tom Rowland: Well, you were one of my instructors at SEALFIT Kokoro 30.

Chriss Smith: And still like me.

Tom Rowland: I was scared of you. I was scared of everybody. But it's one of those things where you're an interesting person like that. You have a very interesting kind of energy to you, to where people around you know that they have to be excellent. And before you even say anything, it's amazing. There's a few people I've been around in my life. You're one of them. And it's just like you know that you gotta be on your A game to be around you. And that was really cool. And the way that you taught us all the lessons that I learned in Kokoro, I really appreciated it, because there were some hard times. You made us pay, but then you also stayed true to the lesson throughout. And I wanted to thank you for that, because Kokoro was really — I went when I was, like, 46, maybe 45 — and it was profound and a huge thing in my life. I came back with tons of lessons. So thank you for that.

Chriss Smith: Awesome, man. Thank you for the compliment. It means a lot to me. I try to put out a good product back then, still try to put out a good product now. You're talking about my beliefs. I love excellence. I try to exhibit excellence and try to forward that onto people that come into my contact. So, yeah, thank you for the compliment. I appreciate it.

From Engineer to Navy SEAL

Tom Rowland: That's good. So how did that start for you? I know that, for people that don't know who you are, you are a tier one operator. Is that a fair thing to say? Tier one operator, Navy SEAL. And how did that start for you? Did you always have kind of a desire to go to the military when you were young, or what?

Chriss Smith: Actually, no. I didn't. I'm a tinkerer by trade. I love problem solving. I love creating solutions. So the engineering world kind of was what I gravitated to, just because I love building with my hands. I love doing things. I didn't really get introduced to the SEAL teams or the ideal of the SEAL teams. Back then, it was a lot less open. It was a more clandestine thing. But I didn't really get into that until I saw the movie Red Dawn, actually. I love that movie. It's the best. It literally changed my life. It made me realize — so I have a mother, father, two sisters — it made me recognize that I had no skills. I had no skills to protect anything that I cared about or that I loved. I mean, okay, I'm a good builder, I'm a good thinker, whatever. But I had no real actual hard skills I could use to protect anything. I've always been naturalistic, love the country and all that stuff. But that movie kinda propelled me to thinking, I need to go somewhere and find some skills. And for me, it's like, there's only one place that you can go and get the kind of skills I was looking for, and that was the SEAL team.

Tom Rowland: And so what was your path there? Did the recruiter send you straight there? How did you make your way to BUD/S?

Chriss Smith: Oh, man. So I didn't actually go into the Navy until I was 29 years old. I had an entire professional career. I was an engineer for Westinghouse for nine years prior to that. Whole thing — company car, good lifestyle, good health, good apartment. Everything was rolling really, really well. But once I made that decision, it was pretty cool. And like I said, technology was different back then. I remember going to the recruiter and saying, this is what I wanna do. I'm 29. This is what I wanna do. He's like, oh, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? I'm like, no, brother. This is what I wanna do. I don't need to talk to you. Don't contact me with anything. Tell me the steps I need to do to accomplish this goal. That goal was only to be a Navy SEAL. I really didn't wanna join the Navy. I was like, I don't know if I wanna be on a boat anywhere, but I knew I had to join the Navy to become a SEAL. So that was my sole focus. And I'm talking about that technology because my recruiter gave me a pager. He said, hey, carry this pager. I'll let you know when you gotta come in to MEPS and do the PT test and all that. I'm like, alright, man. But don't call me before that. I just need to do the steps it takes to get in the Navy. Just like — I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Still the fear was there. Still, BUD/S, man, it's a scary place to go. And I'm giving up a lot.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Chriss Smith: I'm giving up everything to go to this thing where eight out of ten men fail. But it just meant so much to me that I just knew I was gonna be successful.

Tom Rowland: Do you think that helped you, to give up everything and just — I mean, you created a situation where there's no other choice. Success is the only choice at that point.

Chriss Smith: Success was the only choice, but it was a difficult choice. From the time in my mind that I was telling everybody that I knew that I wanna become a Navy SEAL, it took me six years. So I started thinking about that at twenty-three, twenty-four-ish, whatever it was, before I joined the Navy. Six years. Six years of actually vacillating. Yes, no, giving up, thinking about the chance of failure. What am I gonna do? Six years before I actually felt like it was the most important thing for me to do next.

Tom Rowland: Was there something that made that click for you?

Chriss Smith: Yeah. Time. At that time, you had to join the Navy before you were 30 years old. And I'm already 29. I'm like, if I'm gonna do this thing, I gotta get to it now. Literally, I joined the Navy in May or June, and I turned 30 in August. So it was tight.

Tom Rowland: When's your birthday in August?

Chriss Smith: Twenty-seventh.

Tom Rowland: Oh, I'm the nineteenth.

Chriss Smith: Virgo, still a Virgo?

Tom Rowland: I'm Leo.

Chriss Smith: Yeah. So, yeah, I'm a messy Virgo.

Tom Rowland: So you're 29. You've got a life. Like you said, you got everything. What are your friends and family saying at this point?

Chriss Smith: At that time, there wasn't all the stuff around Navy SEALs. People didn't even know what that was. I didn't even know what a Navy SEAL was until a guy that I respected in high school — great football player, great baseball player, all the chicks liked him, super studded-looking dude. His name was Bruce. He was just an awesome dude. I was working at Walmart, and he came in. I'm like, dude, I haven't seen you forever. And he was like, well, I just tried to be the best, tried to train. He didn't make it through the program, but I'm like, dude, if he can't do it, I am definitely gonna try to do it. At that time, I was doing a lot of triathlons, a lot of endurance events — small endurance events, it's not like now. And it just triggered me. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna be better than that cat. Heck yeah. I'm gonna be better than that cat. So that was like a little infamous trigger for me. But I told everybody, man. Every single person that you cared about, everybody knew that this is what I wanted to do. Everybody. So I kind of pushed the boundaries, tightened the noose. Right? Turned the wrench, tightened the noose to make it, like, dude, you can't not go. And you have to be successful.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Chriss Smith: You have to be successful because, A, you're giving up a lot, but, B, you're telling everybody this is what you wanna do. Even back then, I was kind of a leader and just prideful, I guess.

The First Day of BUD/S and the Power of Mindset

Tom Rowland: Man, that's awesome. So you get in. BUD/S — was that a problem? Was it as challenging as you thought? Of course it's a problem. It's a problem for everybody. But is there a time when things just kind of clicked or got a little bit easier for you? When did you know that you were gonna make it — this is a career, there is a future for you here?

Chriss Smith: Yeah. First problem set with BUD/S — BUD/S is a difficult program. It's typically a six-month program. At that time, six-month program, still is. Was there ever a time that I struggled? We're gonna say yes. I struggled on day one, first day in BUD/S, hour three, first day, third hour. Right? Before you start your class, there's a place called PTRR where you go and learn some skills and practice all that kind of stuff. And then day one starts. Your class date starts. Remember, I've told every single person that cares about me, I've sacrificed all this stuff — I'm not just talking monetary stuff, whatever — I sacrificed all this stuff. First evolution, first day, obstacle course. Crush it, dude. Crushed it. Not the fastest time on the O-course, but, man, I was up there. I'm good on land. I'm bouncing around. I'm light. I'm a hundred thirty, hundred thirty-three pounds or something. Crushing it. I got this, man. I get to this thing — you gotta come to this pole, ring the bell, come to this pole. And there's an instructor there — I'll leave his name out for now because it's kind of a tense time. And the instructor's going, you know, black guys can't swim. I'm like, whatever, dog. I got this thing. Second evolution, hour three, in the pool. Right? Life-saving exercise. Go up to the high dive. Get all your clothes on, your boots on. Jump off the high dive. Take your boots off. Tie a knot. Put them around your neck. Take your pants off. Make a floatie. Take your shirt off. No problem. Put it on the high dive. Jump off. Tread water. Treading water. Treading water. Treading water. I'm like, goddamn, I'm treading water for a long time. Forty minutes of treading water. I am smoked, exhausted. And they're like, take off your boots. I'm just hyperventilating. I can't even hold my breath long enough to untie the square knots of my boots.

Tom Rowland: Oh, boy.

Chriss Smith: Right? And this is like, hey, you gotta be able to save your life. I really had no experience up to this time in an ocean. I can swim, but not treading water for forty-five minutes and trying to do all these tasks. So needless to say, I failed that evolution. Yeah. I failed the second evolution in BUD/S on the first day. Three hours in, I told every single person that I cared about, loved, or that I even knew that I was gonna join the elite special forces, the elite Navy SEAL team. Third hour, I failed. And there's no options back then. It's like, you fail, you leave. So what — I have fun in the regular Navy?

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Chriss Smith: Not part of the plan, man. Not part of the plan.

Tom Rowland: So what happens?

Chriss Smith: So me, four of the black guys, two of the white guys failed the evolution. We run back from the pool to the grinder, and we're on the red carpet, man. We're on the red carpet in front of the CO. And at this point, someone else has my destiny in their hands. I am no longer making a choice because I had an opportunity to be successful, and whatever's going on in my head, I was less than successful. I couldn't finish the evolution. So someone else has my destiny in their hands. I didn't like that at all, but I can do nothing about it because I squandered my opportunity there already. We're on line. We're sitting there. We're in our greens, and we're just waiting for somebody to tell us whether we're gonna be going to the regular Navy or sweeping sand or whatever next. You don't even know, because third hour, fourth hour. A senior chief that I highly respect, Senior Chief Gower, comes up and starts giving us this speech. He's like, you know, look here, dudes. Gave you an opportunity for this. This isn't gonna work out. Yada yada. And it just happens to be like this — it's not because of what's going on today — but he's a black senior chief. A lot of black guys in this group, they couldn't make this happen. And he's talking to the whole entire group, seven or eight of us. I can't remember exactly, but he's focusing on us. And he says to me, see, the problem is you think this is about you. This is bigger than you. I'm gonna give each of you guys a silver bullet, which means he's gonna vouch for us. I expect better from you. I got chills off some of that stuff. I'm serious. It's so emotional for me. I remember this day so clearly. I expect you to do better. This is bigger than you. Here's my expectation. And he gives a little pep talk, whatever. Then they go talk to the officer, and we all get a second opportunity to do this test again. We're looking at about a forty-five-minute span. So I failed the test, ran back, got my little lecture, got my silver bullet, go right back in the freaking pool, man. Get off the high dive, start treading water. Treading water. Treading water. Same forty minutes go by. Same exhaustion. Able to get out of the water, take off my boots, tie my pants, tie my shirt, successfully complete the evolution, get to join my class.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Chriss Smith: So you talk about mindset here, Tom. I didn't get any better. Didn't learn how to tread water any better. I learned no new skills. I just changed my mindset, and that allowed me to complete that evolution. That's it. And that was the trigger for me. It's like, oh, you're in control of this. If you can control your mind and your passions, you're in control. If your why is big enough, you're in control of what's happening. So I just didn't love the feeling of someone else telling me that I couldn't do something, or that I gave it away and now you have to decide what my life track is going to be. Super pivotal, super powerful.

Tom Rowland: So that one lesson — when I came to Kokoro, what I learned is it's not one thing. It's that lesson piled on top of another lesson piled on top of another lesson, and then you kind of open the door into this new understanding of mindset. Like, okay, I understand this. And it took fifty hours to beat me over the head to get a few of these lessons, but I'm understanding this now. That was the first one for you. And did you take that as a growth opportunity? Did it help you learn other lessons that are obviously very important to your success in the SEALs, or in life? Or did you have to get beat over the head for another six months to learn these lessons?

Chriss Smith: Yeah. You still gotta get beat over the head to learn some lessons sometimes. That's what Trident Mindset does. It tries to make that beating a little bit more palatable, a little more digestible, which is kinda cool. But, yeah, I remember the same kind of thing. There's a lot of success, a lot of failures, a lot going on in BUD/S training to get you to become a SEAL, and you're not gonna pass everything. I remember after I recorded the lowest rectal body temperature ever in BUD/S, I got recycled back —

Tom Rowland: That's not what I thought you were gonna say. Wow. You're really cold.

Chriss Smith: Yeah. Very cold. I think that might be a record at BUD/S. So I remember being back at PTRR to start this whole thing over — I had hypoed out in Hell Week. I remember sitting there, and at the beginning, until you get to your second phase, you're wearing a white t-shirt. And then after you finish Hell Week, you wear a brown t-shirt. Well, there were some guys wearing brown t-shirts in that space. And I remember a guy telling me, you know, you can hold your breath for the rest of your life. Makes the idea of, like, if you think you can, you can.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Chriss Smith: If you think you can, you can. You're the only person holding you back. You just have to have a big enough why, a big enough goal, a big enough target, a big enough idea that's gonna keep moving you forward, coupled with some skills that you're learning over time. Again, everything isn't just right now, but some skills you learn over time. Couple all that stuff together, and you can accomplish magnificent tasks. You just have to have some skills, you have to have the right mindset, and a solid why to get those things done. Those are my two biggest lessons there — that, wow, dude, I am totally in control of everything right now. It's all my choice. I choose to run faster or I choose not to run faster. I choose to swim faster or not swim faster. It's just choices. And having a solid mindset, a solid foundation of some great mental toughness, is what makes all the difference. But some say it takes fifty hours getting beat over the head, six months getting beat over the head.

Taking SEAL Lessons Into Everyday Life

Tom Rowland: A lot of the lessons are interesting because in a lot of ways they're counterintuitive. To a previous mindset of, well, I can't swim faster because I can't swim faster. No. It's because you're choosing not to swim faster. That's a foreign concept when you've never experienced that before, or never experienced that success. So as a Navy SEAL, I think a lot of people look toward the Navy SEAL and the elite military operators — whether that's Green Berets or Rangers or whoever — because it is such an extreme situation that if it works in those situations, it is absolutely going to work in regular life. And that's why so many people are so interested in the SEALs, in the military operators. There are a lot of secrets that you guys have learned and teach one another, and it becomes a part of the culture that you can pass on. So that's kinda what you're looking at right now when you start up a mindset program like Trident Mindset. At what point did you realize that you had a lot of information that would do a lot of good for a lot of people if you could communicate it?

Chriss Smith: Yeah. I know one thing for sure in my life. I am crystal clear on my why, why I'm on this planet. I'm on this planet to find a better way to create deep and meaningful relationships. And since I have that clarity, I don't know how the universe works, but people keep coming to me to find help — to help them find solutions, help them find answers to gain some mental toughness, to gain some durability to go do the things that they wanted to do. And just over the years of working with people, talking to people, helping people, I started thinking, man, I tell people the same things over and over and over again. I'm giving them a toolbox of things to use. They're choosing what they want to use, but I'm giving them a toolbox of things to use in sport, in life, in family, in love, that they can pull from and use to become mentally tough or more durable. I'm like, why don't I just gather all these things up and offer it up in a way that it's digestible, that it's easy, that anybody can use it — not price it off the market, just an idea where, hey, you have the basis of what you need. Let me sharpen those tools for you. If you don't have those tools, let me give you the tools and teach you a way to hone that skill. Then put that in practice in your daily life. Right? You're not supposed to use all twelve tools at one time — pull the right tool for the right job. It's a flathead screwdriver, use a flathead screwdriver. Don't use a Phillips head. Use the right tool for the right job. But if you don't have those tools, where are you gonna get them?

Tom Rowland: Right.

Chriss Smith: Somebody's gotta give you a tool bag.

Tom Rowland: You gotta get the tool bag from somewhere. And it's not like what you're teaching is all brand new. It's that it has been proven to work in the most extreme situation. So if it works there, it's gonna work getting yourself to work on time. It's gonna work in giving that extra effort as a parent or as a husband or whatever. You are going to learn all of these lessons, and the same lessons you're learning on the battlefield somehow, in some way, can apply to your family.

Chriss Smith: Absolutely.

Tom Rowland: That's what I think a lot of people may not understand about the type of mindset tools that you're talking about — how to apply something that you use literally to save your own life and all of your buddies' lives and accomplish the mission, how that could apply to something as mundane as being a good dad or being a good husband. How would you talk to somebody that had a question like that?

Chriss Smith: Well, I think first, I gotta find a similar example that people can resonate with. Most people drive. Right? Driving in your car, some bad guy, douchebag, whatever, comes and cuts you off. You have a choice. You have a choice to either let that ruin your day, get you agitated, honk your horn, be belligerent — or take a deep breath, let that pass. That's not good. Don't let that affect my day. He's having a bad day. I'm still in control. Maybe take a deep breath. Practice some stoicism. That guy's gonna have his day. Don't let that affect you. Your kids are screaming at home. Everything's going on. Hey. People get frothy together. You can de-escalate a situation by breath control, mindfulness, flipping the script — all these things that we're teaching in our Trident Mindset course. You are in control of that. Have you ever tried to have an argument with somebody that doesn't wanna argue?

Tom Rowland: Right.

Chriss Smith: You can't do it.

Tom Rowland: Right. Exactly.

Chriss Smith: Using your mind — not mind games, but using some tools — you can de-escalate an escalating situation. You can control the tempo of a conversation by just how you present yourself, how you're gonna engage with other people. We have those opportunities all day long to choose to be upset, choose to be unhappy, choose to not do things well, or choose the latter. So we're trying to give you some tools where you can go, you know what? This is getting out of control right now. Let me — you know what? I'm gonna take a step back. I'm gonna change my body language. I'm gonna take a deep breath. Let it come over. I'm gonna get back in control of the situation. When you understand the power that you have using these tools, or just understanding that, then you get to walk away with what you want out of the situation instead of letting them dictate how you're gonna feel about something. Those everyday situations all day long. Like, all day long.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Chriss Smith: So it's just giving you power, self-control, oneness. 100% accountability to yourself of, wow, I let that person make me mad. It's on you, brother. That's on you. You chose to get mad. Own it. Or you chose not to get mad. Own that too. It's all good. Get mad. Just be okay with you getting mad. So it's you. You get to control those things. And having durability, having mental toughness, having those skills, having the idea how to reframe things — man, if I could teach that and just walk by and high five people, it's awesome. That's really what I wanna do. I just wanna create those relationships. Oh, man, that's a great tool. You didn't even know you did it. That guy's yelling at you across the street because you parked in his parking spot. It's crazy. So, yeah, they're simple. Over time we learn these experiences. I just wanna share those experiences with people and give them an opportunity to be happy, or control their own happiness.

Flipping the Script

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I like that. That's a big part of your key tenet in what I saw on your website — being happy. I wanna talk about that in just a minute. Let's talk about flipping the script. That's something that you talked about in Kokoro, and you've already mentioned it a couple of times here. I know that's a big tool for you. Explain that.

Chriss Smith: That is like — we just kinda talked about it a second ago. Taking the idea and going, wow, this could be a bad situation, but I'm gonna flip the script and make it a better situation. I might have to swallow my pride, or use a little — again, I always go back to breath, which goes to the number one tool. If you take anything away from this, man, the power of breath is just amazing. It's just amazing. But flipping the script is you having the wherewithal, the understanding of what's happening, changing the dynamics by how you engage with somebody else. We're gonna change the dynamics. If I start yelling and cussing and get agitated, I can get somebody to start yelling and cussing and get agitated. Or they can flip the script, reduce their tempo and vocal pace, lower their energy, take those pauses between the things they say, and de-escalate that situation. That's understanding what that script is saying. Like, no, I'm not gonna fall privy to that. I'm gonna control this situation by flipping the script and putting it back where I'm the person controlling the situation. They're not controlling the situation. That's the lesson we're teaching, and that's what it's about. Gaining control of the situation you're in. Well, first, awareness of the situation you're in, understanding of that, changing that dynamic or flipping the script, and then controlling the narrative from there. And that starts with how you go into situations.

What Trident Mindset Is

Tom Rowland: Right. You stay in control the whole time. That's awesome. And this new — I mean, you've been teaching mindset for a while in a lot of different ways. If you're a guest instructor at Kokoro, or if you're at your Trident CrossFit, you're coaching in a lot of different ways. But this new thing that you have that you just launched, Trident Mindset — how is that different? What is it? It's a whole holistic mindset program. Would you say that's fair, or how would you describe it?

Chriss Smith: Yeah. Imagine if — not to be a douchebag here — hey, man, you could just spend an entire day with Chriss Smith, or an entire fourteen days of Chriss Smith. You're gonna hear these questions.

Tom Rowland: Of Chriss Smith. I haven't forgot it.

Chriss Smith: It's awesome. But if you talk to anybody that knows me and communicates in my circle or is with me — man, I'm a coach. I believe in building relationships. So what are their problems? I'm constantly teaching, maybe to my demise. I'm constantly teaching. So what we do with Trident Mindset is, let's make a short online program. People can get the value of some of the lessons that I just spit out all day long if you're in my circle — but I don't live where you live. I don't live in your house. So how can I make that a digestible online resource? All the lessons are really short, three-to-five-minute lessons, for the first fourteen days. You take a lesson. We give you an exercise that goes with that lesson. We give you examples of how to employ that lesson and move forward. In the longer course, we have a mastery course where each lesson is one-month based, and we just dig into that lesson more and more, a deeper dive into the twelve individual lessons that we're teaching. So the first fourteen days online, we don't make it video-based. It's audio-based and written-based. You can either read it as a PDF, or you can just tune in in your car. I personally have a hard time listening — I got ADD or ADHD or something-D. I got a lot of them. I need things short and digestible for me. So I needed something that was kind of short and just like, oh, you know what? Let's plant that seed for the day. If you get an opportunity to utilize that seed for the day, high five yourself.

Stoicism and Taking the High Road

Tom Rowland: Wow. So what would one be? Could you give us an example of what one day might be? Any kind of one of these lessons? I'm sure we've already talked about quite a few. You're probably gonna talk about everything we've talked about.

Chriss Smith: Yeah. One of my favorite ones is stoicism. It's you taking the higher ground. Again, I kinda talked about it — driving your car and someone cutting you off. Or this happened to me the other day. I'm in a line at a grocery store, got my mask on, but there was a distance between the register and where the line started. And everybody knows that, but now we've got six-foot dots all over, so people are confused, yada yada. I'm trying to get out of there really quick, so I could go to my boat and have some beers on my boat. Not that I'm drinking and boating — I'm just saying there were beers on the boat. So there's that natural gap. And this older woman comes in, and she plants herself — I'm next in line — between me and the register. And at first, it triggered me. I'm like, oh, how rude of her.

Tom Rowland: Right?

Chriss Smith: Oh, how rude of her. I could ask her to go to the back of the line because there's, like, 14 people back there. I could get agitated. I could do all these different things. But I chose the high road. I'm like, apparently, she wants to leave the grocery store faster than I do. I just let her go. That's just stoic. So I'm just being more stoic than she is. Now she might not have seen it — she did see it, she turned around. But whatever her situation is, she felt like that was her place to be. I have every right to say something, but really —

Tom Rowland: Do you really need to get out of that grocery store that fast?

Chriss Smith: Right. Can I just take the higher ground? Can I just express some stoicism and go, let her be? That's gonna cost me a whole four minutes of my life.

Tom Rowland: Four minutes. But think about all the energy that it costs when you get upset about that, and then you think about it for an hour after. I can't believe she just came in. She looked behind and saw a whole line, and she just went ahead and stepped in front. People will let that bother them for an hour, two hours. Maybe even the next day, you're still like, man, I can't even believe it. I was just sitting there, and she just walked in front. And when you kind of learn these lessons, you can at least catch yourself — you're not gonna be perfect every time, but you can at least catch yourself and be like, oh, I almost let that bother me for a day and a half. This meaningless little thing.

Chriss Smith: And the awareness is there too. I'm like, hey, if it bothers you, it bothers you. Okay. Accept that emotion. I'm not trying to just get rid of all your emotions. It's like, okay, understand that's what you feel right now, but what are you gonna do about it next? That's mental toughness. I'm upset. I'm gonna control that though. If you need to blow off steam somewhere, go blow off steam somewhere. But be in control of that. Own that emotion. Choose a path that you think is a better path to choose. And hopefully, by doing some of these lessons — I know if you do these lessons, you're gonna make better choices just for the sake of humanity, just for your own sake of happiness, just to optimize your own life. Like you said, you hit it on the point. You can be upset about that tomorrow. Then all day long, you didn't give the people that you cared about a hundred percent. You were so distracted. You're putting off negative vibrations in the universe. Everybody's coming to talk to me. Man, Tom's upset. What's wrong with him?

Tom Rowland: Yes.

Chriss Smith: You're ruining everybody else's day. You could be the beacon — maybe somebody's having a really bad day, comes across your energy, and you have that bad energy, and you just made their day worse. But if you just took it, understood the emotion — I was a little upset, blow it off, not that important. Boom. That person comes by again, like, oh, bro, what's up? How are you gonna interact? And you might have saved them six hours of bad energy.

Tom Rowland: Yes.

Chriss Smith: So you're just in control of that stuff. You're mentally tough to stay in control of those situations. And that's what we're trying to get across to people, man. Easy lessons. Anybody can do these. You don't have to be an elite sports player or have a ton of skills. We're giving you everyday, easy things that you can employ to just be a better, happier, more productive human being.

Happiness and Knowing Your Why

Tom Rowland: Right. So that, in turn, is that where it leads to the happiness? Because I did notice, and I thought that was really interesting — you see this big tough Navy SEAL program, Trident Mindset, and then a key tenet is happiness, man. That's awesome. I love that. But does the happiness come as a result of stoicism and flipping the script and all of these other things, or is there another little aspect to happiness in your program?

Chriss Smith: Happiness comes — I think happiness is built upon, wow, I'm in control of myself. I take my onus for being happy. The choices I'm making are making me happier. You can choose to be upset or you can choose to be happier. And all these tools in regular life too. Like, all these tools — dude, I'm happy. I'm this every single day, bro. Every day. Do bad things happen to me? Absolutely. But you get my best all the time. This is me every day. My wife is like — really? And she's like, yeah, he's like that every day. Because I know my why, I know my purpose, I'm clear on what I wanna do, and I refuse to let someone else make me unhappy. Because I've been doing this — I'm 53 years old — I've been doing this for a long time, and it's just not worth the effort. If I'm gonna choose to be unhappy, that's on me. I'm trying to give you tools that you can make your life happier. To me, it's about the ripple effect.

Tom Rowland: Mhmm.

Chriss Smith: Who else is gonna be happy because they got involved with you?

Tom Rowland: Whoever comes across you, man.

Chriss Smith: Yeah. Whoever comes across you is gonna be happier. I got a rule in life I try to live by every single day. I'm not successful every single day, but I try. That is to make seven strangers smile.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Chriss Smith: FBA. I fail because I don't always get to see seven strangers. And I go out — I'm a jackass, dude. I go out of my way to get a giggle, a little chuckle, back when we can actually touch people, a little high five, a little connection. I go out of my way. I'm here to inspire that person by any means necessary, so to speak.

Tom Rowland: How did you become so clear on your why?

Chriss Smith: Actually, a really good friend of mine, Gary Sanchez, has a program called Discover Your Why. It's discovering your why, how, and what. A little quick app. You just go online and answer all these questions. And it gives you clarity on, basically, the nine whys that Simon Sinek discovered or helped uncover. Better way, challenger, mastery, contributor. And it gave me a sense of understanding of self for communication, and I was able to distill down a paragraph — actually a couple sentences, a paragraph — of this is why I'm here. This is why I'm here. I can only imagine the man that I would be if I knew that twenty years ago. It's relatively new. I'm about five years in, and just having that clarity — and it morphs into better and better. My why is better way. Every single person I talk to, how's them doing is to make their way better. Find creative solutions for their problems. That's how my brain thinks. That's how my heart thinks. And gaining that clarity has been super important to me. Communicating with my wife, every single thing. And having that clarity and understanding — I've always understood the power of mental toughness, but having those two things together, it's just — not that I don't waver, but I'm really, really clear on what it is I'm supposed to be doing here.

Tom Rowland: It's fascinating to think about what you did in the SEALs and to become a SEAL. You basically need a singular focus, at least for a good portion of that. There is no other choice.

Chriss Smith: There's only one choice.

Tom Rowland: There's only one choice. You have to complete what is in front of you. Just with those small lessons of fifty hours of going through a similar kind of thing to what you went through — it's nothing like what you went through, but you remove all thinking, basically, and someone tells you, okay, this is what you're doing, and you either do it or you don't. And that's it. So you just said, like, I can't imagine what kind of man I would be if I knew this why as crystal clear as I do way back then. Do you think if you had your why, that same why to deepen relationships and all of that, do you think that you would have been successful like you were in the SEALs? Or is that a way that you got to your why?

Chriss Smith: They're kind of in concert, because it's just my natural being. So I'm an engineer nerd, but I just — I'm an engineer nerd. I like nerd problems. I'm an engineer nerd because I just like things that are broken, and I like to fix them. That's just me. And I've always been like that, but I didn't really know why I was like that. Now I know why I was like that. So if I knew that twenty years ago, just communicating with people would have been different. Before, I'm gonna solve your problems, man. If you come in with a problem, whether you want me to solve it or not, I'm gonna solve your problem. But now that I know that that's my why, I can — yeah, maybe they just wanna listen. They just wanna be listened to. I don't need to solve their problem. I'm thinking about solving their problem, but I don't need to say that to them. So it's giving me more power and influence and confidence. That's why I'm fluttering off right now, because I've already solved their problem. They're still talking.

Knowing When to Coach and When to Listen

Tom Rowland: Man, that's gotta be one of the biggest challenges for you. Having coached so many people and seen so many people with similar problems, and they're coming to you with this problem that they think is totally unique — I'm the only one that's ever dealt with this — and you're like, I already know what to do. How do you zip it until they ask for it?

Chriss Smith: Dude, that's — I practice stoicism.

Tom Rowland: I mean, that's really hard. I try to do that with my kids, and they come to me with a very simple thing. And I wanna just say, you do it this way. But I'm kinda like, this seems like a safe place to fail for you. Maybe you should try it yourself, and maybe you should learn this lesson yourself. I don't tell them that. But man, you gotta hold your tongue a lot of times until someone asks for it. Because — do you feel like a lot of this kind of information that you have to give, people only want it when they want it? That's what it seems like to me. Like, man, you're the person that needs it the most, and you don't want it.

Chriss Smith: You don't want it. But you know what? I'll go back to two things. One, to answer your question — I'll use my wife for this example. My wife's why is better way. I'm always on problem-solved. Her why is challenge status quo. She's always gonna think out of the box. So for our relationship and our communication, I ask now. I'm like, hey, babe, you want me to solve this problem? You want me to listen? You just wanna listen? Go off the hook. I'm gonna listen. For me to solve this problem, you can stop talking, because I already got an answer. No. You know what I'm saying? I forgot the second part of that question, though.

Tom Rowland: How do you know when to zip it?

Chriss Smith: Oh, how do you know when to zip it? Again, that's what I use. I use, hey, do you just wanna be listened to? Do you want me to solve your problem? Or — god, this may sound so mean and so abrupt — I just say, stop. What I heard was this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. Have you thought about this, this, this? And I put it back on them to give them some things they're gonna think about, to help them come up with their own problem set. So that's my gift of communication — if I can get you to come up with the right answer, I know the answer. If I get you to come up with the right answer, you're gonna be a happier person.

Tom Rowland: So what about somebody that really needs this information but isn't ready for it and doesn't want it?

Chriss Smith: Yep. Chriss has a rule of seven touches. My goal is to make seven people smile a day. They might not want this answer right now, but between now and seven times, they're gonna want the answer. It has to be the right timing for them, has to be the right energy for them, has to be the right space for them. So I'm not gonna quit on them. It's gonna come back. It's gonna be when they're ready to hear it, I'm ready to deliver. I'm gonna try — this time, you should go this path. Path didn't work. Go this path. Path didn't work. Go this path, this path, go this path. Eventually, when the time is right for them, they'll hear what you're saying. But you also have to know their language, how they hear the words that you're saying. Is your intent matching your impact? Are you saying words that you like to hear, or are you saying words that they need to hear? So you have to have a little bit of communication skill inside there as well to understand people, and the timing isn't right all the time. So I don't take it personally when I'm like, dude, just do it this way, you'll be okay, and they go do something else. I'm like, that's not on me right now. They're just not ready for it. And not to say I'm always right — I'm not trying to be braggadocious — but I'm willing to work the problem set with them for as long as they wanna work the problem set.

Life on the Water and Adventure Racing

Tom Rowland: Yeah. That's cool. So what kind of boat do you have?

Chriss Smith: Me and three friends own a 24-foot Sun Ray. We just put it out there in the Potomac, go hang out at Georgetown. I stay in the shade.

Tom Rowland: You go skiing? Is it just like a ski boat?

Chriss Smith: No. We pull a little —

Tom Rowland: A tube?

Chriss Smith: A tube. Yeah. We stand-up paddleboard off there. We're just there to get on the water, man. One of the guys that owns the boat, he's like, dude, soon as you step foot on the boat, it's a boat vacation. Even for two hours, you're just like, oh, my life is so much cooler, just being on the water. It's a little stress relief for all of us.

Tom Rowland: Most of the people that listen to this podcast own a boat of some sort or go out on boats all the time. That's what we do.

Chriss Smith: Yeah. Notice I said I share a boat. Three of us bought a boat. For me, owning a boat by myself — I don't know if I wanna do that. You gotta find some boat buddies. One guy has to fix it all the time. You gotta share it, because that's a lot otherwise.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, man. So what else do you like to do for fun when you're not coaching people?

Chriss Smith: When I'm not coaching people, I'm training for some type of event. So I got a new event coming up called the Arrow. It pains me to say, I'm redoing the Arrowhead 135.

Tom Rowland: Oh, I know a little bit about that. Explain what that is.

Chriss Smith: So that's a race up in Minnesota. They kinda push the race out on the coldest day in January. It's a 135-mile trek. Most people are pulling a sled. You can't ride a bike, but most people are pulling a sled. And I attempted this race with a friend, like, three years ago. It was the first time — in a long, long, long time — it was the first time I quit an event. So it's been honking at me a little bit.

Tom Rowland: That's incredible. How did — what happened? You can survive the coldest rectal temperature of anyone to ever go to BUD/S. I can't imagine. Maybe in Minnesota, it gets colder. I don't know. Does it?

Chriss Smith: Apparently, it does. Yeah. What happened is this. I quit the race. Okay. I quit the race.

Tom Rowland: I think I'm —

Chriss Smith: Mine is irrelevant. It's binary. Did you or did you not finish the race? I did not finish the race. Took me three years to get to the point to say that. Here's why I feel I didn't want to complete the race. My why for the race wasn't strong enough. My friend had asked me. He'd had some trouble a couple years back. He didn't complete it three years in a row. He's my racing buddy. Love the guy. Literally, we — I love racing with him. Pushes me to my limits. I think he's trying to kill me, personally, but I love this dude. He's like, hey, man, I need you. I need you to help me get through this race. Yada yada, storms, all kinds of stuff, bad stuff happened. And now I realize I was doing the race to help him get through the race. I wasn't doing the race because Chriss wanted to finish the race. So it's been a couple, three years or so. Now I'm doing the race for Chriss to finish the race. So I'm really excited to see how this is going to play out, and nervously scared, which is awesome. Yeah. Me and my race team, we just did the Eco-Challenge 2020 in January.

Tom Rowland: Okay.

Chriss Smith: We televised it on Amazon Prime, I think, in August, I believe.

Tom Rowland: Where was that held?

Chriss Smith: Fiji.

Tom Rowland: Okay.

Chriss Smith: Yeah. So it was pretty cool. We were a featured team — the first ever all-black adventure racing team.

Tom Rowland: Really?

Chriss Smith: Scary. Scary. Scary.

Tom Rowland: Can you say how you did?

Chriss Smith: I can't say how we did. We won't — mind, we've got a month or so. So yeah.

Tom Rowland: But you've done that adventure racing quite a bit. Right?

Chriss Smith: Yeah. Me and, like I said, my friend Tasha, we raced. We did GODZone maybe a year ago. Done Primal Quest.

Tom Rowland: Crooked Butterfly?

Chriss Smith: Charles, Crooked Butterfly. Oh, boy.

Tom Rowland: I follow him too. He's got a lot of good lessons. I mean, there's another mindset wizard.

Chriss Smith: Bro.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Bro. He's got a lot of good messages. I really like what he puts out there. How many people are on that team?

Chriss Smith: Right now, there's, like, nine people on the team. Five people raced in Fiji, one support for racers. We had a good collection of individual sport athletes, which is really good. We're just trying to raise awareness that there are more sports than basketball, football, and baseball. Let's do some other things. So that was our mission for the event, which is really awesome. As a team, we gelled well. It was really good. Actually, Tasha's putting on a race for his foundation, the Big Fish Foundation.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I saw that.

Chriss Smith: Yeah. So I was out there helping with that, which is great. But I was gonna say — it's a quick story about how we love tough events, and everybody is weak at a particular time. During GODZone, I had some serious foot problems, man. We're, like, midway in the race. We got, like, a twenty-hour walk, and I was just bitching, man. I was just complaining, bitching. Wrong mental space. Wrong mental space. I was looking for validation to not finish racing. I was — you know, you're looking for all the excuses not to finish. And this is where a support — I mean, you use mindset as your support team, but a support team — I'm holding the team back. I'm walking real slow. And I'm like, I'm just looking for something. And Tash is like, dude, are you gonna walk or not? Let's flip the script real quick. Guess I'm walking. Let's go.

Tom Rowland: Right on.

Chriss Smith: Didn't care about it as we're walking. Didn't care about that. It's like, are you gonna walk or not, dude? All this energy you're using in your brain right now to make excuses for how you feel, it doesn't really matter. And I heard that same lesson again last week at Tasha's event. A guy was complaining about his ankles. He goes, man, ankles don't make decisions.

Tom Rowland: Did that make him go?

Chriss Smith: Continued to go and continued to go and continued to go. Yeah. Ankles don't make decisions.

The Team In Your Own Head

Tom Rowland: That's so awesome. What do you think about the difference between an individual event like that and a team event, where you have somebody like Tash to say that to you versus having no one to say something to you?

Chriss Smith: You always have someone with you. I personally like team events. I love the team atmosphere. That's why I'm a coach. That's why I love trying my best. I love the team ability. I just love the shared suffering. Individual events are really, really hard, but you always have a team. You have a team on this side of your brain and a team on that side of the brain. The one that's feeling that shit hurts and you wanna quit, and the one that says you can do it — whatever it's saying. And the beautiful thing is that you can only focus on one thing at a time. If your feet hurt and you focus on your feet, yeah, your feet hurt. But if you focus on getting to the next tree, your feet don't hurt. They still hurt. I just do it. On that event that Crooked Butterfly put on, a good friend of ours was struggling, man. They had an hour to get, you know, the 2.5 miles. He was coming in at 59, 58, 58, 57, just struggling. And he was digging deep in the well. But I know him, and I'm like, I know he's got more to give. Now I'm gonna help him. So I start doing laps with him, and I just flip the script with him. I changed his mindset. He was worried about his legs being tired — this is forty-eight hours in or something — his legs being tired, his feet hurting, and the clock. And we start doing some laps, and all I'm doing with him is going —

Tom Rowland: Oh, it's an experiment. Oh, that sign's got this on it. Oh, what's around the corner? Oh, there's three rocks on the bench.

Chriss Smith: Oh, what's that tree? That's the hay tree. Hay tree. You know, just changing the mindset to think about something besides his tired legs and his tired feet. He went from close to an hour on those treks to fifteen-minute cycles, so forty-five minutes. We took about forty-five minutes off his trek just by changing what he was thinking about. Just by changing what he was thinking about. I got a text from him a couple days after the race. The text said, hey, tree.

The Front Group at Kokoro

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. One of my fondest and least fondest memories of Kokoro was — you guys took us over to that short little hill that was close to the original SEALFIT location. It's not there anymore. This was in Encinitas. And we're running sprints up that hill. And it just seemed like we were never gonna stop. And as we do it, the group starts to break into two groups. And I was at the back of the front group, barely in the front group. And you started running between the two groups. And you were saying, here it is. This is it right here. This is where you decide you're either gonna be in the front group or you're gonna be in the back group.

Chriss Smith: Be in the back group.

Tom Rowland: And I was like, okay, I wanna be in the front group. And so when you start doing that, the front group gets a little faster. And it's like, this is it. And you were really talking to about four of us there, because the back group wasn't gonna catch up.

Chriss Smith: They're not gonna catch up.

Tom Rowland: The front group was gonna take off. And, man, it was just like what you were talking about in the very beginning. Like, you can choose right now whether you're gonna be in the front group or whether you're gonna be in the back group. It doesn't matter about your athletic ability. It doesn't matter what your feet are feeling like. It doesn't matter how you're doing. You are here. You have proved you're in the front group. Now you can choose to stay in this front group, or you can let the front group leave you behind. And that's a choice. That was profound. It was pretty good, because I chose to stay in the front group. And then later, what was so good about that whole thing and your coaching was, coming up later, you're like, you chose to stay in the front group. I saw you. And it's like, okay, cool.

Chriss Smith: Alright. Yeah.

Tom Rowland: That's cool, man. You were good like that, man. You did a lot of good things in that. You kept it light. And it was interesting how all the different instructors had a different way of hammering the nail. Some of them were real hard-asses and tough, and you were funny. But there's some humor in those things, man. When you're going through that suffering like that, there's some funny shit that happens. There's no doubt about it.

Chriss Smith: You know what I like most about you? I'm gonna say thank you first — that's a big conflict for me. But here's what I like most about that. That was a hard event for you. That's your specific small moment in time. Why do you still remember that? You remember that. You know what I mean? That's impactful. You're gonna share that with someone — you shared it with your audience right now. That meant something to you. Now imagine passing that on to your kids, to your friends, to your other race mates.