Today Chase speaks with Chief Special Warfare Operator Thomas Shea, who discusses his new book Three Simple Things: Leading During Chaos. He draws a parallel between success as an author to success in the military—or, really, success in any endeavor. He refers to this common thread as the monotony of “doing a lot of stupid, simple things that nobody else is willing to do” each and every day "The road to success", he says, is “boring”; otherwise, it would not be so elusive to most.

Chase and Thom break the lessons of the book down to the five pillars of health, wealth, relationships, learning, and spirituality. A particular emphasis is put on the spiritual only because it is a rare thing to hear someone in the military discuss this often overlooked dimension of life. In fact, he notes that life begins and ends with the spiritual and refers to our very being as our vessel for making anything that we want to happen, happen.

Thom also spends a considerable amount of time speaking on the paramount importance of relationships and how everything simply falls apart without them. Your physical health, your ability to learn, and your financial situation will suffer when your relationship with someone close to you such as your spouse is in dire straits. Thom mentions that he would even kick out members of his SEAL team if he found out that their spouse was cheating on them. “They would get us killed,” he says about those SEALS experiencing the mental and emotional pitfalls of a damaged relationship.

The theme of the monotony of success continues to run through Thom’s best practices for maximizing your health, wealth, and learning capacities. Progress in these areas requires a commitment from you to do the smallest of action steps every single day; nothing more, nothing less. “If you realize it’s stale,” says Thom, “you’re gonna win.”

Key Highlights

• Chase and Thom share their thoughts on the “monotony of success” and how anyone can discipline themselves (if they decide to) to endure the day-by-day tasks that will eventually bring their goals to fruition.
• Thom says that spirituality is “your ability to make ripples across time, space, and distance.” He explains how to use your five senses to activate your spiritual awareness, as well as why he advocates that everyone brush their skin every morning and evening.
• Thom goes into why the physical, intellectual, and wealth factors of life cannot exist together without relationships.
• The three ways to learn
• Learn something new
• Get better at something that you’ve already learned
• Let yourself dream - Thom dives deep into these three ways and why he describes dreaming as “strategic learning”.
• Asked about the final pillar, wealth, Thom goes into how the other four columns play a role into how much (or how little) compensation you receive in the pursuit of what you value.
• Thom hearkens back to the SEALs’ saying that “the only easy day was yesterday” as he explains how he lives a life ever forward.

Follow Thom @frogmanout

Follow Chase @chase_chewning