#10 - Persistence w/ Alden Mills (Entrepreneur, author, and former Navy SEAL)

Alden Mills is a three-time Navy SEAL platoon commander, entrepreneur, Inc. 500 CEO, and author of Be Unstoppable and Unstoppable Teams. He joins us to speak about the #1 trait when it comes to determining success...persistence. 

Transcript

Erol Senel:

Think about a time you've come across someone who possesses something special. Imagine taking ordinary topics and viewing them through their lens. Welcome to Success Shorts, insights that challenge us to be extraordinary. Let's go.

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Erol Senel:

Hello everyone. I'm Erol Senel and today I'm joined by Alden Mills. Alden is a force. He’s a former Navy seal platoon commander, entrepreneur, Inc 500 CEO and  author of two books: Be Unstoppable AND Unstoppable Teams. Alden, it's an absolute pleasure.

Alden Mills:

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me Erol.

Erol Senel:

We're definitely in for a compelling few minutes together, but first, we got to get to know you, so we're going to play two truths and a lie. Are you ready?

Alden Mills:

Fire away.

Erol Senel:

All right, let's hear ‘em.

Alden Mills:

Here they are. Number one, I earned a coral belt in jujitsu. Number two, I'm a lifetime member of the Walt Disney family museum. Number three, I turned down the Olympic training camp to go to seal team.

Erol Senel:

All right, a coral belt in jujitsu, Walt Disney family museum, and Olympic training team. I did my homework, so I know the Olympic training team is true. And the fact that you have all those kids, I want to think that the Walt Disney museums true as well. I'm going to say that it's the coral belt in jujitsu that's the lie.

Alden Mills:

Wow. I love it. Good job.

Erol Senel:

Thank you. Always good to nail it. So what is it you wanted to share with us today? 

Alden Mills:

What I want to talk about today is the single most important thing to success and that's persistence.

Erol Senel:

Nice. You could've gone in so many different directions, but I'm glad you've chosen persistence because I agree with you. When you think about all the traits, persistence is that one that keeps you moving forward no matter what. So long story short, when did you begin to internalize the importance of persistence?

Alden Mills:

I'd have to say it was shortly after I was diagnosed with asthma and my mom would just continually remind me that it was up to me to decide what I could or couldn't do. The doctor had told me that I should lead a less active lifestyle and learn the game of chess. And my mom pulled me out of that meeting, dug her fingernails into my forearms and said, now you look at me. Nobody defines what you can or can't do, but you and I was lucky. I have two parents that were just continually supportive of me pushing myself beyond what I would originally think was possible. That took me to learning the sport of rowing. Rowing took me to the Naval Academy. That took me to seal team. Seal team took me to the entrepreneurial path and here I am today.

Erol Senel:

Well, I'd have to say that you're very lucky to have your mom there to just kind of tell you it straight. And As a history buff, I can’t help but make the parallel with Teddy Roosevelt. He went through something similar with asthma as a kid AND shared your rowing background and he had a very strong parent in his dad, much like you had your mom and your dad to push you through. I think it’s cool that you have that, fun parallel with one of our nation’s greatest leaders.

Alden Mills:

My mom would bring him up when I was a child and tell me about Teddy Roosevelt and ha and that if he could overcome it, that I could overcome it. That I just needed to get out there and she'd give me the medicine, but keep pushing.

Erol Senel:

Damn right. I'm glad she did. So, obviously this isn't only a trait that’s led to your success, but it's something that you've cultivated and it's been the focus of your attention for quite some time. Why do you think persistence is so vital when it comes to success?

Alden Mills:

If you start to peel back the layers of the onion of success, you'll hear folks say, "Well, you need to have a growth mindset. Oh, you got to have a positive attitude. Well, you got to believe to achieve. No, you got to work hard." Couldn't agree more with all of those components. At the end of the day, all of them add up to do one thing and that is continue to press on when everyone else especially the voices inside your head are saying, I don't think you can do it. Who do you know who's done this before? Or other people who haven't done it before, but misery loves company wants to bring you down to their level. Now at the end of the day, if you add up all the different components of attitude of your beliefs, your ability to work hard, it always comes down to putting them all together into an attitude of persistence.

That, to me, is the single most important thing to succeeding. The ability to get up one more time than when you fallen down and it's not pretty. It's like sausage making. If you were to map it out of the failure and success chart, it would almost look like an EKG chart, but it would just over time move up into the right cause I've certainly failed way more than I've succeeded, but what's gotten me through every single one of my greatest challenges is the ability to press on despite everyone else saying it couldn't be done despite the whiner that comes along in my head saying, "Who do you know who you can do this? This is going to be too hard." When I hear that whiner in my head going, I know I'm on the right path and I know that persistence at the end of the day, we'll win the race.

Erol Senel:

Totally, and I think the tenacity part of persistence that’s pretty much the easy to comprehend. But it’s also the hardest part to do in practice. But besides that, what are some things we should be thinking about after what we just hear that can maybe help optimize our approach to persistence going forward?  

Alden Mills:

The single most important thing about persistence is owning the understanding that it's always up to you. It's always up to you on how you decide to respond to a situation that could be come totally out of your control, how you're going to look for opportunity inside uncertainty, how you're going to deal with anything that comes your way and knowing that you always have a choice when folks on my team or even myself start to lose my focus and start to realize that, "Ah, it's just, this isn't my fault. It just wasn't meant to be. It wasn't in the cards." That's a form of quitting. That's a form of giving up when in fact success could be just around the corner and every time I find myself doing that, I take a deep breath, I get my focus back and I start to think, "All right, what's the success going to look like? Time to pivot, time to look at it in a different light and press forward."

One of the other things I want to leave with people that I see so many people making mistake on is a term that I use when I climb a mountain. I try and climb a mountain once a year. One big mountain I climbed recently was Denali in Alaska. You don't even see the summit until about 45 minutes before you're finally up there. we've been on the mountain for 15 days at that point. If you were to take the first 14 days and all you would think about is like, "Oh, I have this much more time to go." You start focusing on the entire mountain instead of the moment, you have a fast way to starting to trick yourself into giving up. I call that focus on the moment, not the mountain. When you do that and break your idea, your goals down into little bite size chunks and just focus on the moment you can control, you'll find yourself climbing any mountain you put your mind to.

Erol Senel:

Even in really crappy situations, kind of like what’s going on now, there’s always choices that can be made to put yourself into a different position. 

And to the last part you were sharing, we all have goals. And to your point, I just wanted to say again that for the big ones, take time to make them smaller. Break them down into workable chunks and build some momentum as you accomplish the easier ones to help propel you as things get harder. 

One thing that I did want to add, because this is something that I’m a big proponent of, is that you’re going to get to some goals that really push you. And your persistence may waiver, I know mine has at time. And that’s when it’s really important to have a really strong WHY to tap into. Because for me…if you have persistence, which we all have it in us, and then you add in a really strong why for what you’re doing, to quote you, that’s UNSTOPABLE. 

And with that, we’re done with this episode of Success Shorts. Hopefully you found today’s topic useful. And remember, have fun, stay curious, and keep it short.