Navy SEAL Mindset

Mastering Resilience: The Secret Weapon of High Performers

• William Branum • Episode 30

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Welcome back to The Navy SEAL Mindset Podcast. In this episode, we’re talking about real resilience, bouncing back when you’ve burned out, and how to lead like a high performer—even when you’re off your game. I’m your host, William Branum, retired Navy SEAL sniper instructor, and today, I’m pulling back the curtain on why 2024 didn’t go the way I planned—and what I’m doing about it.

I’m also sharing powerful insights from one of my elite coaching clients, a high performer in the finance world, who hit a major wall at the end of the year. This episode is for anyone who pushes hard all year, then crashes when the momentum runs out. If that sounds like you… lean in.

Key Takeaways:

  • Stop Waiting to Start: You don’t need January 1st to change your life. Start the day you decide you're done playing small.


  • What Real Resilience Looks Like: Resilience isn’t about never falling—it’s about how quickly you bounce back when life knocks you down.


  • Be Present on Purpose: Learn why taking time off the gas isn't lazy—it's strategic. Sometimes doing nothing is exactly what you need.


  • Overcome Inertia: Whether it’s a podcast, workout, or life goal—getting started is the hardest part. But once you’re rolling, momentum becomes your best friend.


  • Protect Your Inner Circle: High performers don’t have time for energy vampires. Keep your circle small and filled with growth-minded, resilient people.


  • Collaboration Over Isolation: Even the most driven individuals need connection. Success thrives in environments where you give and receive support.


Join me as we unpack the mindset it takes to sustain high performance without crashing, and how you can shift your energy, not stall it, when it’s time to rest and reset.



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Welcome to the Navy SEAL Mindset. I am your host, William Branham, and this is episode 030. this is 30 episodes of the Navy SEAL Mindset, and I'm going to be honest with you, I'm a little disappointed in myself. I'm not a little disappointed in myself. I'm very disappointed in myself that we're only 30 episodes in, and I started this in 2023. So basically what that means is all of 2024. I put very little to minimal effort into this show and that sucks. That sucks for me. That sucks for you. I've been on over 600 of other people's podcasts and I've only done, this is number 30 of my very own podcast. So I, obviously my, priorities were in the wrong place. And, it's, this also is going to talk about something that. but I was also planning on talking about on this episode of the Navy SEAL Mindset, and that is something about resilience. And, one of my, one of my coaching clients brought this subject up to me, this week. so let's dive in. I was talking to one of my, one of my coaching clients and extreme high performer, he's in the finance industry and that's pretty much all I can tell you about him because there's a, a client confidentiality, agreement that goes on there because I wouldn't want anything that we talked about. About him specifically to get out into the world, but I'm going to share some things, generically because the things that he struggles with are things that I have and still could occasionally struggle with. So I was talking to my client and, he. He shared with me back in December that the way he operates is he runs 100 miles an hour from January to the 1st of December and then he pretty much crashes the entire 12th month of the year and potentially that's the way a lot of people do new year's resolutions where they go january 1st and they go for 12 whole days where they're just going 100 miles an hour and then they crash I personally think new year's resolutions are stupid but they're not completely stupid don't get me wrong. I don't think they're completely stupid I think it's a fine day to reset and read, kind of recalibrate and start over but you know if You come up with an idea and you have, something that you want to accomplish, you want to achieve, a goal that you want to just get after. Don't wait till January 1st to get after it. If it's March 30, 13th, start on March 14th. And then go and, and destroy whatever that thing is that you want to do. You want to get after you want to go and accomplish business, that you want to start weight that you want to lose in the kind of shape that you want to get in. I don't care what it is, whatever most people do their new year's resolutions about, if you decide on March 13th or October 12th, that, I want to. Achieve this goal then start that day or start the next day. Don't wait till january 1st to start anything So anyway a little bit of a little side note there about new year's resolutions I think they're great if you use them to as just a hard reset But I don't think you should ever wait till january 1st to do that. I think it's a great day on the calendar Makes it easy to measure your progress as long as you keep going most people 99 percent of people don't Keep anything that they, any sort of resolution that they start on January 1st. very few people, 99 percent of the people, they start it and they don't even make it till the end of January. if that's you, stop doing that and when you have a goal that you want to achieve, start today. Whatever day that is for you. So today, right now that I'm recording, this is, January 22nd and it's 3 0 3 PM in the afternoon. So here we go. so like I said, I'm a little bit disgusted with myself or a lot disgusted with myself because, 2024, I did not. Keep my word to myself or to you, which was to record one podcast a week. And here we are. I've only recorded, this is the 30th podcast of the Navy SEAL mindset, and that's just not okay. I believe I said it in the last episode that I will be delivering one episode a week for pretty much the end of time for at least 2025. so I can catch up to that other number that I have out there of over 600 podcasts of other people's shows. Let's just, let's promote my show. and other people's shows that I get on. anyway, so let's talk about my client where he's just he's in like overdrive and he's just crushing life from like January through the end of November to the first of December and then he gets tired, he gets sick. I think he said he was sick like three different times in December. He had zero motivation to do any work, zero motivation to work out or do anything else. And he, like I said, he's an extremely high performer and, he's well, He's looked up to by his peers, his subordinates and his superiors are all looking up to him because of all the things that he does inside and outside of the finance industry. so he and I are working on right now, we're working on resilience and oftentimes resilience is not exactly what you think. What you think it is. Resilience, I wanted to make sure that I got a good definition before I came on here and just pulled a definition out of my butt. resilience is the ability to recover quickly from setbacks and persist through challenges. Again, resilience is the ability to quickly recover from setbacks and persist through challenges. So he was not able to easily come back from those setbacks. He wasn't able to quickly recover. He was, it took him a month. So one of the things that I've talked to him about is rather than just going, balls to the wall as hard as you possibly can from January to the end of the year, once a quarter, take one week. Take one week and just be present with yourself. And I know when I told him to be present, he was like, I don't even know what that means. And I have certainly struggled, for a long time about being present. Because many of the things that he struggles with are many of the things that I'll struggle with, that I struggle with. And I'll, and I wrote down a handful of things that, are true for me. And they're true for him and they're true for most high performers. I only know a handful of guys and girls that work at this very high level that can just turn it off and decompress and just be alone with themselves and not feel like they're running behind. But most people that are in this world of high performance, we all feel this way. And we always feel I, and I'm just going to talk about me right now. I always feel Like there's more work to be done. Always. No matter how much work I did today, there's always more work to be done. Unless I just finish the day absolutely exhausted, and I just don't think about what else needs to be done, I'm generally thinking about what else needs to be done. I feel like taking down time is a waste of time. Because I should be doing something productive. And this is what I talked about to my client about. Sometimes it's, you, it's important to just do nothing. And be alone with yourself. I tried to get him to meditate once upon a time, and he was like, what the hell are we doing here? what kind of, you're wasting my time. And I was like, yep, I got it. I had to throw it out there just to see where you were when we were talking, but like for meditation to, and to see if he could just get out of his own way. And he's not wired that way. I'm barely wired that way. It takes a lot of effort for me to sit down, be still with myself, be present, and meditate. It takes a lot of effort. I have to use, different apps, different guided meditations in order to really achieve that state. But I have, but I found that meditation is hugely important and helps actually improve my performance when I was You know, working when I was still in the military, I was still in the SEAL teams, I was actually working in the headquarters of the SEAL teams and I was on the road probably 200 plus days out of the year while taking college classes and, and getting my bachelor's and my master's in three years. And, and I would get to points where. I'm doing my homework or I'm writing a paper or writing a report or something and I just didn't feel like doing it. And what I would do is I would open up one of those meditation apps and I would just do a five or seven or 10 minute meditation, it would completely reset my brain and I was able to get back in and attack whatever that thing is that I didn't want to do. so oftentimes, almost always, I feel like if I'm taking time off. I'm not being productive or, I guess one of the last things is if I am taking time off for a vacation or whatever, then I should be focusing on my non work priorities, like I should be, getting after it in the gym, okay? I, work out this amount of time during the day. When I'm working, I'm not working right now, so I should be putting in two or three X that amount of time in the gym. That is not the purpose for being present. now there is definitely something to be said about doing really hard challenges like I like to do Kilimanjaro, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, whatever the thing is, the train up for those events is And doing those events helps me be more present with myself, but they also break me down physically and oftentimes emotionally. So you need to have another downtime where you're just alone with yourself, with your thoughts, or the people that you love. and there's this inertia that I believe happens. The inertia oftentimes for me is okay, I haven't done that for a while or, I'll just use, maybe like working out, maybe I've taken some time off and, or I haven't run for a while cause I hate running. I hate swimming and for me to get back into that mode of doing those. Types of exercises. It's a lot of effort. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of, I just, it's just a lot of like energy that has to go into it just to get the ball rolling, just to start moving me down the road, just to get in the water to start swimming, just to put my freaking running shoes on to walk outside to go for a run, a very short run. There's a lot of inertia. That is, it's there. It takes a lot of effort to start moving forward. Once I start going and I start getting into the groove of whatever it is, it doesn't matter if it's something at work, if it's a speech I haven't given for a long time, then I'm like, ah, I have to go back and relearn this and figure out all the places where I need to deliver it. if it's a podcast I have not recorded for a super long time. If it's running, I haven't run for, I was averaging for a long time, for a couple of years, my, I would say a three mile run was my long run and it was my workout. And then when I started training for the Grand Canyon, five miles was my average, was my, really my short run. So I didn't do anything less than five miles. So that was my average. And I would do other workouts in addition to that. But I have not run for several months on purpose. Number one, because I'm here in Connecticut and it's cold as it is. I'm looking at a lake that is frozen over right now. No, I'm not in Wisconsin or anywhere. I'm in Connecticut, like just outside of New York. Cold. unnecessarily cold. And so I'm not in a hot hurry to get outside and go for a run. Especially it's little country roads around here. I don't want to go out and get run over, on an icy road. And, or anything like that. So I find other ways to work out that have nothing to do with running. But when it's time for me to start running again, it's going to take a lot of effort, a lot of inertia. to get that ball rolling for me to start actually running again, or when I start training for the swim across the Hudson river, I'm going to have to, get back in the water, put my fins on and start being uncomfortable swimming. I know people are like, what you're a Navy SEAL, you hate swimming, you're uncomfortable swimming. I hate swimming. Yes, I do. But I do it anyway. I do it because it's hard because it sucks because it's, there's a very rewarding thing at the end. But the train up for it is just absolutely terrible and I hate doing it. but it also keeps me uncomfortable. It keeps putting me in those places where I have to find the inner strength to propel myself forward. That inner strength to, to initiate the inertia. To initiate the energy to start moving this big heavy rock down the road. Once I start going, it's awesome. And so this is the other thing that I also struggle with in, building that momentum. and so does my coaching client. This one particular, almost all of my coaching clients have some form of this, but we're just talking about him and he. he has this momentum and he doesn't want to slow it down throughout the year, but then he crashes at the end of the year. And oftentimes when I find myself moving forward and I have that inertia and I have that momentum and I'm like, let's go, let's get it, I don't ever want to take any breaks. Because I know if I slow it down too much, it's going to be a lot of work to speed it back up. So I just don't want to slow it down too much. And so there's a happy balance in there. how far do I slow it down? Do I take a couple of days off? Do I take a week off? Do I take two weeks off? Probably not. Probably not going to take that long off. If I take that long off, it's so much more work to get started. So maybe I slow it down and focus on a few other things. Focus on things that are not quite as important. Put my energy in the people that are around me, rather than in the business that I'm trying to run and grow. Find other people to do the menial tasks that aren't important to me, that I don't need to do, that maybe they should be doing. But, rather than stopping the momentum of things that I'm working on, just shift that momentum and put it somewhere else. But shift it back. don't leave it alone too long because once upon a time when I was desperate for gas money and at any time the car was going downhill, I would put it in neutral. I still catch myself putting my, especially when I was living in Hawaii, going the. Up and through the mountains and back down literally through their tunnels, through the mountains that we would drive through. And so when I would get to the top of the mountain through the tunnel, coming down the other side, I still catch myself putting my vehicle into neutral just to save, 3 cents of gas on the downside of the long road down. but I don't want to leave my, myself. In neutral for too long because, even though I've got a lot of momentum going down, it's going to level out and I need to put the car back in gear. I need to put myself back in gear before the ground gets to level so I can maintain some of that momentum that I had where I slowed down, but I'm not coming to a full slop. So it doesn't take as much effort to start back up again. I don't know if that made sense to anyone other than me while I was rambling through that whole thing, but, anyway, that's just the way that, that I work. That's the way a lot of the way my, my coaching clients work in all of which are high performers and something else that we also struggle with. I don't know if it's a struggle thing or if it's a by design thing. We don't like to have people in our life. That are going to waste our time because our time is valuable. And so we have a very small inner circle. My inner circle is tiny. I can name, I don't even have two hands for my inner circle. The number of people that are in my inner circle, people who are in my inner circle. they're all high performing individuals. Now they may not be millionaires or billionaires, but they're high performing in lots of different ways. And just to give you some ideas of some attributes, of high performance individuals is their growth mindset. They're always looking to grow. They're always trying to improve. They're always trying to get better. They have resilience. They have the ability to recover very quickly from setbacks. they have confidence, they believe in themselves, they believe in the people that are around them, they're optimistic, sometimes people that don't know me, think that I'm not optimistic because I speak to myself out loud very harshly, and they're like, you shouldn't talk to yourself like that, you shouldn't do this, or you shouldn't say that, you're reprogramming yourself, I'm like, actually, I don't believe a single word that I'm saying to myself if I'm being very harsh. To myself, the things that I'm saying them on purpose because sometimes someone needs to put a boot in my butt to get me moving forward. And that someone is always has to be me like, what are you doing? stop being an idiot and start doing the right thing. And those are things I say to myself out loud. And people are like, why are you talking to yourself like that? That's not cool. It's fine. I don't actually believe that I'm an idiot. I'm a super fricking smart dude. and I can prove it. Um, people who have. Discipline people who hold themselves accountable. They have strong work ethic, their goal oriented, their decisiveness, oftentimes, you know, it doesn't mean that we don't get paralysis analysis because we absolutely do, but we can snap out of it and make a decision immediately. we lead with curiosity. We have the ability to adapt. We have, a lot of, problem solving skills. emotionally intelligent. we like to collaborate. one of the things that I've discovered over many, many years of not even realizing that I was a high performer and being an introvert, incredible introvert, is that, high performers, we don't excel in isolation. We need people around us. We need people that we can leverage and we can ask questions and that can support us and we can support them. We need to, we have to. produce or create an environment, we have to produce or create relationships that give us the resources to sustain and amplify, our achievements and other achievements so that we can continue to perform it at a higher level, the higher performing people I have around me, the higher I perform and it's like oftentimes I'm looking for people, I'm selfishly looking for people Who are going to perform better than me in areas that I want to perform well in because I'm going to be elevated up to their level and it's not just me taking, but I also when I find those people, I find the people that I know I can give them something to make them better. I know what I want to take from them, but I also know what I want to give them because I've already studied them. I've already found out what they're lacking and I have the ability. I don't partner with someone or bring them into my circle because of something that they can do for me. That's all. That's very selfish. That's only half of the reason that I do it. I make sure that I'm able to bring something even more powerful to them so I can give more than I receive. That's really how I like to operate. If I can't find someone Who I'm going to be able to give a gift of whatever I have, internally to me, if I can't give them more than what I'm going to receive, then oftentimes I will potentially hire them as a coach so that I can, give them a financial, contribution for the things that I'm getting from them. And so I've spent well in the six figures on coaching because that's how important it is to be able to go and find someone who's really good at what you want to do, or can elevate you at a high level to collapse time for you. I've gone and spent. over six figures on coaches to make me better so that I can be the best version of me So that can be the best version for you and for all of my coaching clients. So Again, you know starting back from the top, high performers Resiliency is a huge thing that we have to have instilled in us. Resiliency is gigantic and, it is the thing that separates us from, the mediocre crowd. most of society is mediocre and if you, Look around. Most people don't want to be held to a higher standard. they enjoy being mediocre. they're happy to just scroll their phones and social media and doom scrolling. I've heard it called doom scrolling. I hate doom scrolling. if I scroll more than five or six times, I already feel like I'm wasting my time. So I'll look for things that are impactful to me. And if I don't see it very quickly. I'm off the phone, I'm off the app, I'm off to something else. going to creating content. So anyway, hope you guys enjoyed this episode of the Navy SEAL Mindset. Really talking about, being a high performer, having resilience, keeping a small circle. And, and again, this is episode zero three zero. I have an event called the SEAL Leadership Challenge. If you go to SEALLeadershipchallenge. com. you can sign up for it. It's for individuals. It's for high performers. It's there for medium performers. It's for businesses. It's for anyone who wants to improve their lives and get the most out of what they're actually doing. So I encourage you to go check out the SEAL leadership challenge. It will change your life. I promise you. And one of the things that you get with that is a. Month of free coaching with me. So again, seal leadership challenge. com. And, look forward to seeing you in Temecula, California on February 18th. And if, if that one, once that one is sold out, or you're listening to this podcast later than, February. My next event will be on the calendar. As soon as I plan it and schedule it out, then it'll be, it'll be on the website, SEAL, S E A L, SEALleadershipchallenge. com. Hope you guys have an awesome week. Don't forget to get naked and I'll talk to you soon.