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The Hard Way w/ Joe De Sena

023: Mark Owen | How He Learned “Tough”

The Hard Way w/ Joe De Sena

Spartan Races

Fitness, Alternative Health, Health & Fitness, 792700

4.7870 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2015

⏱️ 34 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mark Owen was one of the SEALSs on the mission that killed Osama Bin Laden. He revels in the gritty life. He prefers not the sugar cookies taken with tea, but the variety Navy SEALs dole out--soldiers moistened and rolled in beach sand and made to tolerate it the rest of the day. This is the kind of discomfort Owen loves, that forges men. Find out what molded him through his rugged childhood in the extremes of Alaska. He's mastered getting through tough times and his secret is surprisingly simple. Find it in this episode and get on the fast track to grit.

Watch the video episode at http://spartanuppodcast.com


Lessons:
1. The only easy day is yesterday.
2. Break difficult tasks to one bite at a time and prioritize. The greater the pressure, the smaller the bites.
3. Be all in all the time. Do what you're doing in the moment the best you can.
4. Put everything in perspective. If you've done it before, you can do it again.


Panel Notes:
Joe Desena: Who jumps into ice cold water in third grade in Alaska and then starts his own fire to make sure he can handle himself? Mark Owen, that's who- one of the men who took out Bin Laden. Obviously there's lots of controversy around the book he authored, but even with those questions looming, it's always very interesting to learn about someone who accomplished such a massive task in front of the entire world.


Sefra Alexandra: I recently met Kevin Maurer co-author of "No Easy Day," while working at the Global SOF Foundation Symposium for Col. Nye. The attendees were the elite of the Special Operations community and viscerally familiar with the adage that, "the only easy day was yesterday." Matt hails from the great state of Alaska, where he was raised being comfortable with being uncomfortable. His tactics to accomplish any goal: "break it down into one bite at a time!"


Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to SpartanUp Podcast.com where we study success and everything required to create it.

0:05.7

We interview people from all over the world that are successful, no matter how they define it. Well, hello out there, Spartans, see, I can't even do that.

0:20.0

Yeah, you got it.

0:22.0

Going it so far.

0:23.0

All right, good evening everybody.

0:25.0

I'm Colonel Tim Nye, for those who don't know me.

0:27.0

We're here tonight in Pittsfield on the Spartan Up

0:31.0

podcast.

0:32.0

I've got standing to my right my right is Joe

0:34.7

Descenta. To the standing to my left is Sefra the re-wilding expert and to my far left is

0:42.1

Johnny Waite the doctor to fix all the ills all your ills anyway

0:49.6

fix something yeah you can fix something out there all right right, on this podcast, Joe went out and he interviewed Mark Owen.

0:58.0

Mark Owen, the author of No Easy Day.

1:01.0

That's the book about the raid to take out Osama bin Laden.

1:05.0

Mark Owen is actually his pseudonym, a pseudonym, he has another name,

1:10.0

obviously, we're not using that name.

1:13.2

So anyway.

1:15.4

My student was interesting.

1:16.8

What was interesting about this podcast, which

1:19.1

was unlike any of the others, was I was put in a black car. I was blindfolded and driven to an undisclosed location and then released on the beach. I didn't even know where I was.

1:31.0

And I'm out there just pacing back and forth. I decided to do some

1:34.2

pull-ups and lo and behold next to me doing pull-ups is our guy and it ensues

...

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