The Morning Formation Podcast
Hosted by KP Phillips—a U.S. Army combat veteran, former law enforcement officer, and seasoned instructor in tactics, firearms, and combatives—The Formation Podcast is built on the core pillars of Survivability, Situational Awareness, and the mindset to Adapt & Overcome.
Drawing from over two decades of real-world experience in combat zones and high-risk environments, KP leads authentic conversations with warriors, protectors, and everyday individuals who’ve faced adversity head-on. This podcast is more than content—it's a movement for those who understand that the fight begins before the event.
Through storytelling, lived experience, and expert insight, The Formation Podcast equips its listeners with the mindset, tools, and awareness to remain vigilant and prepared—whether on the battlefield, in the streets, or in everyday life.
The Morning Formation Podcast
Ambitious AF: Where Mental Toughness Meets Neuroscience with Erin Whitehead
Erin Whitehead, a brain health expert and CEO of Ambitious AF, shares her journey from surviving a traumatic car accident to coaching Navy SEALs on mastering attention through neurobiology.
• Survived a car crash in 2007 where another driver attempted suicide, leaving Erin with a traumatic brain injury
• Made a spiritual promise after her near-death experience that took a decade to fulfill
• Left traditional employment after being fired from every job and launched her own coaching business
• Now teaches Navy SEALs and other high performers the neurobiology of decision-making
• Works specifically with selective attention in the parietal lobe of the brain
• Believes mental toughness is not offensive and not optional
• Advocates for a "zero deviation" mindset - treating every day as Day One regardless of past success
• Rigorously vets clients for her coaching program to maintain high standards
• Recommends four daily critical tasks: one-word foods, physical activity, supplements, and quality sleep
• Recently discovered Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and finds it empowering for situational awareness
• Emphasizes the connection between physical health and brain function
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Episode Powered By Act Now Education
Warriors fall in. It's time for formation. Today, I'm joined with Erin Whitehead, who's a multifaceted professional with expertise in brain health, neurobiology and cognitive coaching. She holds credentials from Harvard and King's College in London and she serves as the CEO of Ambitious AF, which stands for about face right, right, nod, nod, wink, wink. Erin, thank you for joining me on the podcast today. I really appreciate you giving me the time and effort. I followed you on Instagram for quite a while and I like a lot of your material, but I'm interested to learn a lot more about you during this conversation, so thank you for giving me this opportunity.
Speaker 2:Great, let's do it.
Speaker 1:So, erin, I just want to start off with talking about your journey into the field of neurobiology and brain health. What inspired you to pursue this path?
Speaker 2:So, for those of you who do not internet stalk me, you would have no idea about the story. And for those of you who do know the story, when I tell it, people are not really expecting this. So on April 19, 2007, I was the front seat passenger in a car with a driver who suddenly decided to die by suicide. I have no memory of the impact and when I woke up, I was being braced to see a caller thrown into the back of an ambulance, lights and sirens to the hospital, spine twisted in the wrong direction, thinking, holy hell, this is going to be it. I'm either going to die tonight or I'm probably going to be paralyzed right, because that's just my luck. And, yes, I was left with my own traumatic brain injury. But that night I prayed so hard like Lord Jesus if you give me one more chance, one more chance at this life, I promise that I will help everyone who crosses my path. I will change my life around. I will do everything possible to be the child of God that you have created me to be. And I made it through the night long, story short, and that's really where the journey began. And, to be honest with you, I was still egotistical, so I wasn't acting so much as an asshole like I was before. So I was doing a little bit better, but I really wasn't doing what I needed to be doing, and it would be a decade until I would actually fulfill that promise. So, if you don't already know, I've been fired from every job that I've ever held. I just don't fit into those boxes. It just is what it is, which is why I signed the front of the check now instead of the back, and so I really needed to come to terms with my life. And what are you doing? I didn't feel fulfilled. I didn't know what my purpose was. If somebody had asked me what my core values are, I really couldn't rattle off any words. I really hadn't done that inner journey and inner work that people talk so much about, and so that's what I did. And I went on this inner journey and it got really dark. There were a lot of tears, and then it got even darker and then there were more tears, and when I sort of surfaced, if you will, I didn't have that epiphany that so many people talk about. They're like oh my gosh, like I finally saw the light. No, I knew exactly what the hell was going on with me. I knew exactly what I needed to change and I had been trading my dream of being an entrepreneur for the day job, for the safety of the paycheck, for the health insurance, for the 401k.
Speaker 2:For the middle-class families like myself who, when we grew up, it was like this is what you do you go to high school, you graduate, you go to college and then you find a job and you work at it for the next 40 years until you retire and hopefully you'll get married, you'll pop out a few kids, you'll live happily ever after. And I was like that just didn't feel right. So I did a cannonball off the high dive and I was like I'm going to start my own business. It's going to be like it's start my own business, it's going to be real this time. I'm actually going to do it. And that's what I did.
Speaker 2:And in that journey also came divorce, which was better for the both of us, to be quite frank with you. And now I'm sort of able to spread my wings in a way that I didn't feel like I was able to before, and because I signed the front of the check, I feel like I don't have to walk around with a muzzle. I don't have the HR department internet stalking me and fear mongering. Be like. You can't say this about politics, you can't say this about religion. And that is how I found human performance. And I just thought to myself how can I marry my love for genuinely wanting to help people better their lives with this kind of psychology-esque passion that I have? And that's how I found human performance and that is how I found neurobiology and I married them together and now I teach people, including Naval Special Warfare, how to master their attention attention so you can continue becoming an uncommon force for good in the world. And I do it all through the power of neurobiology.
Speaker 1:That is a that is a crazy journey. I wasn't expecting that. I wasn't expecting, you know, an accident where another driver was death um, death by, you know, by accident, by suicide, um, you know how that affected you. So when did that accident happen?
Speaker 2:April 19th 2007.
Speaker 1:Okay, and.
Speaker 2:I have. No, I have no memory of the impact, god, um, it's called retrograde amnesia and um, there is a story in between the impact and when I woke up, best saved for another time, perhaps a potential future podcast episode um, where I did experience the afterlife and and so that's cool.
Speaker 2:And so, um, people ask me all the time like I, I wish I could be more like you. I wish that I could dust off my courage and find my fire. I wish I had as much confidence as you. I wish that I could speak up out loud and I'm like you can. This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time. That's fight club reference, right, but it is, and I strongly suggest that you act like it, because this life will end for you. It will end, it will be done, and you don't want to be left with any type of regret.
Speaker 1:I was just asking, promised I was just asking yeah, that's definitely underlying and and bold faced right there, that's for sure tomorrow. I actually recently had a co-worker, um check into the doctors on a monday and by friday he was no longer with us. Um, so tomorrow is never promised for sure, um, I just asked when that happened, because I I know some people think that you know they get too old to pivot, to change, to take a different course, and it sounds like that hit you kind of like mid-range in your life maybe, and some people are too afraid to take that leap by then. So that's absolutely fascinating. And as far as your studies, so then you started to pursue your studies at Harvard and King's College. How did that shape your approach to the cognitive coaching overall?
Speaker 2:I think coaching gets a bad rap generally speaking, for a number of reasons, and I actually agree with it. The coaching is not a licensed profession. Like law, like medicine, like real estate, like finance, anybody can call themselves a coach, throw up a website, print a business card and charge you money. And 99% of the coaches out there either don't know what they're doing or they're what I like to call framework coaches. So it's like pay me some money and we'll turn to page four, and then you'll look at this sentence, you'll fill in the blank like you're a little third grader, and you might see some 5% marginal gains, right, but that's transactional, it's not transformative. And I wanted to learn how can, how can I learn how to dive underneath the surface of what's going on in the human body, specifically in the brain, our head brain, so that I can help others help themselves? And that's where it started. And I thought what is this whole neuroscience thing Like? What is it like now? It's like the sexiest term on Instagram, right. It's like you can't go through your feed without hearing the words neuroscience or dopamine. It's like these are the sexy terms, most of the time used incorrectly. But I thought, well, if I have a brain injury and I can learn how to heal myself through my own studies and my own actions and how I'm living my life, then maybe I can help others do the same, whether they have a brain injury or not. But, like you said, a lot of people are stuck in paralysis, in their 50s, for example, and they're like I really wish that I could make all of these major changes in my life, but, but, but and they're doing math Okay, so if you're in America, you can retire, you know, say officially by the age of, say, 65 or 67 or whatever it is for you. And they're thinking, okay, well, if I just hang out another decade, then I'll actually be able to do whatever it is that I love. And then you know, their values just don't match with their life. They wake up, they feel like a fraud. They so wish that they could make changes.
Speaker 2:You know the number one reason why people who try to start their own business because that's one of the things that people want to do they want to start their own business. And the reason why they fail is because of an unsupportive spouse. Your spouse is not supportive. Why? Because when you do a cannonball at the high dive, it does not provide certainty, and the human brain is a prediction engine and it looks for a lookalike scenario that is preferably not cloaked in failure. And so if certainty cannot be predicted, then uncertainty is predicted, and people get real antsy about traveling into uncharted waters. And I can certainly understand that. You know very much so.
Speaker 2:But again, this is your life and you have to make choices and decisions for yourself. And, yes, it matters who is in close proximity to you, but, at the end of the day, your talents matter, and if you're not putting those talents into the world that could make the world a better place, then you're doing the rest of us a disservice. Quite frankly, we want you to put your talents into the world. We want you to put your skillset into the world. And it's not that people don't have the passion and the drive. They know what they want to do, but they don't know how to do it.
Speaker 2:And that's where the paralysis comes. It's like okay, well, so how do I build a business model from scratch and launch it into the market and land my first paying client in 12 weeks or less? How on earth did I do that? I don't know how to do that. I'm an attorney, I'm an accountant, I'm an actor. They think they have to have an MBA. You don't. You don't even have to have a business card. Spoiler alert you don't even have to have a website.
Speaker 2:I sent everyone to LinkedIn for four years because I didn't have money for a website. I was like if you want to learn about me, go on LinkedIn. What is a better way to learn about somebody than whatever it is that they post on social media? And that in particular, platform allows you to illustrate your education, for example, or any certificates that you have in about section and things like this, and it dives in a little bit more on the professional stuff. And that's where I sent everybody. I was like go there and if you like it, let me know and we'll talk. Like that's all I have.
Speaker 1:That's all I have to offer, yeah that's actually a great place to learn, uh, someone's background and and resume and linkedin. I don't spend as much time on there as far as posting stuff, but I do spend time on there when I'm doing research on folks and man. Aaron, you have as much tenacity and fire as the name brand of your company. I love it, though I think that out of a bad situation came a lot of fire. It sounds like and what better coach than a coach that's actually been through it before that actually has the battle scars to show other folks to say this is what happened to me. And here I am today. Folks to say this is what happened to me and here I am today. So talk to me about how you connected everything with special warfare. How did that come about and how did you get connected with that? And talk to me a little bit about the connection there.
Speaker 2:So my father served our country in the United States Navy two tours in Vietnam. So that is my tie to the military, specifically my tie to the Navy. I am what you would call a whole life citizen. So I've never been a military spouse, I've never served in the military. I don't know what it's like when my husband is deployed. I don't know what it's like giving birth in a hospital while my husband is not with me. I don't have that perspective, but I do have the whole life citizen perspective. And so I continue to post online.
Speaker 2:And this one gentleman reached out to me and he said hey, I saw what you're doing. I really love it. I see that you're in human performance. I am in naval special warfare and I was wondering if we could have a conversation. Sure, long story short. We get on the phone, right, he is a SEAL and he's like I've got all these coaches in my life. I've got like psych, I've got career coach, I've got life coach. I have, like you know, all these people Right.
Speaker 2:And then I I pushed back really hard. I was like you don't have coaches in your life. It's like that's some fucking bullshit. You don't have coaches in your life. He said like. What are you talking about? I'm like you have glorified consultants and what people don't understand is that coaching is not telling. Consulting is telling. So if I'm telling you, hey, kp, this is what I think that you should do, this is how you should adjust your resume, this is how you should conduct an interview, this is how you should work for a job and I'm consulting with you or these are the risks that you're going to take if you make these types of business decisions. You're a consultant. That's not coaching.
Speaker 2:People derive coaching from when they played t-ball when they were a child, or they played on the soccer team or the football team. And what does your coach do? What does your tennis coach do? Your tennis coach tells you here's how you hold your racket, here's how you have to hit it to get some topspin, here's what your footwork looks like. Like a lot of telling, but traditional coaching is actually asking high empowered questions that dive under the surface. That gets your client to come up with their own answers that live within, and you have what's called an aha moment, which is a chemical reaction in the brain, and then the coaching right Applying laws of constraint, so holding you accountable and getting you to take action against whatever it is a decision that you just made right. That is actual coaching.
Speaker 2:And so I was giving him all this pushback right. I was like you don't have coaches, you don't have coach, right. And so we end up partying away and like two months later he reaches out and he's like you know what? You're right, I don't have anybody like you in my life. Would you please consider coaching me in your style as I transition out of the Navy, which was like another nine or 10 months. At that time I said absolutely so he's meeting with me, we're coaching like once a week. You know we're moving through this and just a change it really quick.
Speaker 2:I was 100%, absolutely not prepared for what was about to happen. I had never had a very close front row seat, like with an eagle's eye transition out of the military. It was the biggest bullshit I've ever seen, but story for another time. So it was extremely volatile and I have told him today that had he met me four years ago, five years ago, six years ago as a coach, I would not even have been prepared. So everything that I had done in neurobiology, in human performance, all of the education, all of the excess reading, everything that I was doing on the back end came to fruition and because of him I became smarter, sharper and stronger in my skillset.
Speaker 2:So four months goes by, right, and DevGrew invites me to be part of this fundraising event in downtown Nashville. And we're there and I say just so casually over dinner hey how long have you guys been SEAL Team 8?. And they looked at me and they're like what? Who told you we're Team 8? I'm like, oh, I'm like I've just landed in a pile of shit. What's going on? And I gestured to one of them like didn't you tell me you're teammate? It's like, well, I was team two, then I was team eight and now we're team six. And then I said it in my brain seal team six.
Speaker 2:And that was four months into it that I didn't even realize the level of caliber who were in my coaching practice, because it was never about development group, it wasn't really about Naval Special Warfare, it was about helping those who were in the Special Operations Forces community transition out successfully.
Speaker 2:And that's how I ended up in Naval Special Warfare. And so you wouldn't know this unless I told you because it's not advertised, and so yeah, and so that individual led me to other individuals and it's, like you know, just like good old-fashioned American values should be. If you like what you see, if you like what you hear, if things are working for you, go tell your friends and in the SEAL community it's extremely tight, and so for them to raise their hand and say, hey Joe, you need to talk to Erin Marie like she can help you, it means the world to me, yeah. So I've had several of them come through my human performance trading firm and I walk them through the neurobiology of decision-making and teach them the skill sets that they need to know as they transition out and to be out successfully to continue becoming an uncommon force for good in the world.
Speaker 1:Because that's what we need them to do.
Speaker 1:That's a very cool story. Very cool story and it's just kind of that wasn't your target client. It just so happened that they found you, more or less, and what better client to have than Special Warfare and Navy SEALs? Very great folks, um, and God bless you for helping them with the transition out of the military. I know that as a former uh army guy myself.
Speaker 1:Like getting out is not an easy thing to do and I think a lot of times for us, uh, it can be a little bit of a sucker punch when you come out into the civilian side and you realize that a lot of the things that you did in the military don't really translate uh easily across the table from a recruiter. And then also, too, you have to figure that out. How do I draw those lines? I personally do volunteer work and I'm a board member with Act Now Education, which we help folks make that transition out of the military. So I'm glad there's coaches like you that actually help people execute, because that is a huge thing, like executing and taking action.
Speaker 1:We can talk about it all day. I could talk about making a podcast all day, but until I go buy the actual microphone and join Toastmasters to learn how to talk and speak and present and then actually do a few episodes to get better, than what's the point of even talking about it that. So, um, that sounds like my type of coaching and it's interesting because, let's face it, like you're a woman and, at the end of the day, for you to break into that side, um, especially being a woman like um, that must've been real difficult for you. Have you reached any kind of like resistance or pushback because of that? Or is that something that people have kind of, at this point, guarded your respect because of the clients that you've had?
Speaker 2:So what I know about Naval Special Warfare is that whatever happened yesterday doesn't mean shit today. I know that I have to continually sharpen my iron, to be continually invited into the community, and the day that I think, oh, I've made it, oh, I'm here, look at me, look at me is the day that they're going to kick me to the curb and they'll never let me back in, and I appreciate that very much. So it I don't want to be. I don't want to be part of a community where there's anything lackadaisical that's happening, that there's any, put your feet up, kick back, we'll deal with it whenever it comes. No, like I am, I am reading, I am studying, I am learning, I am diving into clinical literature, I am applying the knowledge, I am asking them how I can get better, et cetera. So the pushback that I get in the Naval Special Warfare community never comes from the SEALs, never it comes from the females.
Speaker 1:That's actually, I mean, that's just a very difficult group to break into for anybody in general. So it's amazing that you got through and and you're doing great things for them. Um, and I want to talk about, uh, ambitious AF, all right, ambitious about face right or you know, we all know what AF stands for. So you're the CEO of of ambitious AF and, um, so what are the core core objectives of? So what are the core objectives of?
Speaker 2:your business To build a coalition of mentally tough individuals that are inspired to eradicate mediocrity from the planet, because the fate of the next generation depends on it. Period. Oh boy, that's what we are myopic about no-transcript, showing up and holding extremely high standards for ourselves and high standards of others. We are not afraid to disturb people. It is sense that we are out making our lives purposefully harder. We're not making our lives harder, we're making them purposefully harder, and in doing so, we are able to change the narrative. And the narrative is that mental toughness is offensive. It's not. It's not offensive and it's not optional.
Speaker 2:And by making our lives purposefully harder through nutrition, through sleep hygiene, through physical fitness, through hydration, through personal development, literature, through right, what it is that we ingest into our brain, through shedding interpersonal toxic relationships that are no longer functional, right All of these things that we're doing, other people can see, and what people want more than anything is to give themselves permission to be who they really want to be.
Speaker 2:They want to give themselves permission to chase their most ambitious desires in life, whatever that looks like for you. Not only that, to give themselves permission, but the second thing is that they want validation. That, okay, if I do start my own business, if I do go on the journey to try and lose the weight for good again, if I do try to increase my wealth, if I do want to become more spiritually sound, if I want to double down on my marriage, if I want to double down as a parent, am I going to fail? Am I going to be a big fat failure once again? Right, and so we're out there showing people. If you make your life purposefully harder and you operate with a zero deviation mindset and you run over anybody who tries to get in your way, like a freight train, we show others what's possible and in doing so, it gives other people the silent permission to do the same in their life.
Speaker 1:You know we've done, we've done ourselves a real disservice in this country I don't know about the rest of the world in this country not raising our kids to be tougher and and right now we are seeing, we're seeing the results of that and we've had. I mean, I can tell you right now I can't, I can't even count how many 20 something year old boys, men, whatever, that can't do a pull up, can't do a push up, that just don't have any grit, any fight. And I feel like it's my generation's fault. I'm 45 years old. I feel like it's our fault, because I know too many kids that are still living at home, who are like 25, 30 years old, have never really experienced in life, have never paid, paid a bill, have never got left their own county.
Speaker 1:Um, so is it difficult for folks later on in life to find that that grind, that grit, that fire, that that you found after your accident is that, is that frustrating for you at times to try to put, because I know for me, like I've tried to do that to folks and I've lost friends and family over it, like whenever I try to mentor their young kids, their young adults, it's like, oh, you know you're pushing them too hard. And who do you think you are? And and I get, I get a lot of shit for it. But like, at the end of the day, like I'm a person who cares, that's who, who I think I am and I'm a person that knows, because when I was 19, 20, 22 years old, I was physically strong and mentally strong and I went to war at 24, was gone for the entire year. What's it like for you? How do you not get frustrated?
Speaker 2:The way that somebody chooses to live their life has nothing to do with me. So if I choose to focus on what everybody else is not doing or what I think they should be doing, that I'm not focused on myself. And so, just like branding, just like marketing, just like right, people have to have X amount of touches and familiarity with what it is that you're doing that's working, and then they're trying to figure I think that they're trying to figure out, okay, how do I figure out how to pull that and embody it into my life if I've never known that before? Right? So, like, this is how do I put it? It's like there's a lot of codependence. That's taught specifically in American culture and that's really what you're referring to is codependence. Everything that we do at Ambitious AF, right, the critical tasks that we put together and the parameters. One of them is that your critical tasks cannot be codependent. They cannot be. You cannot rely on someone or something else in order to execute that task. You can only rely on yourself.
Speaker 2:Now, you and I were raised by a different generation. We were raised by the Vietnam generation, for example, right, okay? So totally different mindset. Now we have our generation, who's having children, and so that is the participation trophy generation and participation trophy generations now are finding each other and they're getting married and they're having participation trophy babies. So the answer to your question is certainly it's frustrating, but understanding that it is going to take multiple generations to course correct what has happened.
Speaker 2:Right is one thing, and so how can you be part of the solution? You focus on yourself. You focus on becoming better today than you were yesterday, not as good as tomorrow, right? Zero deviation mindset. You pull in nutrition. Specifically one word foods. It's not that hard and that's not donuts, wings, alcohol, cheetos right? Actual one word foods. You know what I'm talking about, like cauliflower and lettuce and potatoes and salmon, things like this. You focus on physical activity. Do you want to be able to be on the floor at the age of 65 and be able to stand up without a considerable amount of help? Right? That starts today with how you're building skeletal muscle, getting sleep hygiene in and getting your sleep under your belt and making sure that you're getting actual rest so that your brain can function during sleep the way that it needs to and is required so that you can think clearly. And when you can think clearly, you can make better decisions right. And the more that you utilize all of those neural pathways, the more that you move into effective ways of thinking, the more your central nervous system becomes familiar with what that feels like and what that looks like. And we need it to become not just familiar, we need to become dominant.
Speaker 2:So those of you who are listening who are like well, I want to start new habits, I want to do something different or I want to lose the weight for good. Whatever it is for you, right, you have to stop entering into your own start-stop patterns. You have to treat every day as day one. That's your problem. That's what you're not doing. You're not treating every day as day one.
Speaker 2:You're like, oh, I have six or seven consecutive days. Oh, I have 10.5 consecutive days, yeah me. It's like, no, what'd you do today? Nothing you did yesterday matters, right, it doesn't. It's just, it's put you on a path and most people will say, oh, I've been doing so good for you know 10.5 days. I think I will take a breathe. I don't need to work out today. I've been working out for 10.5 days. I've been doing so good. I'm going to pat myself on the back and I'm going to just put my feet up and take a breather, and I can promise you there are people out there who are dominating their nights, weekends, holidays, vacations and you're not.
Speaker 2:And so, by default, you are taking 10 steps backwards, and that's why you wake up and you're spinning in your same tired circles, because you're making the same poor, tired decisions. So if you want to do better, you got to know better. If you don't know better, it's because you don't have the knowledge and in that sense, it's perspective. So you don't have the perspective of actually pushing through, through the end, so that you experience a breakthrough. That's what you're missing, and you don't have that, and so you think that you can't do it. And you can. You're dead wrong. You absolutely can. You just haven't pushed hard enough, long enough, whatever that looks like, whatever that looks like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know I grew up yeah, you know I grew up watching rocky. I grew up watching, like, those types of heroes that like literally came from nothing and fought their way to the top, and I feel like today we just don't have that. And, um, I love the amount of accountability that you're talking about, um, for your coaching program. Um, well, going back to also, I learned, I learned for myself when it comes to mentoring, I will not take anybody's kid on as a friend unless they show me some type of willingness to do so.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of times I wanted more for people than they wanted for themselves and I learned the hard way that you can't do that. You can't push for things that people don't want for themselves, especially these young adults. Today, you know, if they don't show me anything, no work, then I don't even waste my time to have that conversation. It is what it is Go smoke your marijuana and hang out and play video games all day until you figure it out. Do you, do you prescreen any of the clients and folks that you decide to take on for coaching? Do you? Do you do that just to see if they're like there?
Speaker 2:There is a very high vetting process. In fact, my program is not even advertised, so I have a paid program that I don't even advertise. So if you hear about it, it's probably from somebody who's in the program or you hear about it directly from me. And there's a very high vetting process. Why Not just for you, but for the participants who are already in the program, who deserve other people, who want to be sharper and smarter, who want to be spiritually awake, who want to double down on their most ambitious desires. We just don't take anybody. That's not the way it works. Otherwise I would be doing a disservice to the people who are part of the program and it would be immediately diluted and we're not diluting at all. And to be a private client, that's a whole other level. The answer is probably no for you. So, um, yeah, you know everybody, everybody wants to know, like you know, what do you teach the navy seal? We want to know what you teach the navy seal like first of all. I'm not even sure if you're on that level. So I mean, I can teach you all day whether you go and implement what I'm teaching you and how you pull that into your life. You're probably going to do it for a little while until you don't, just like 98% of the masses right, they're doing the backstroke in an emotional dumpster fire, they're doing a backstroke in the cesspool that they call life, but yet they'll scream at the top of their lungs and get blue in the face and tell you that they're not. No, but I'm not. It's like we look at you and we can see your miserable life just by the way that you look, or we can see it from a distance and you think that we can't and we don't want that for you. We know that you don't want that for you, so you've got to get your ego out of the way, first of all. And also, you know people have to fall on their face, so I'll tell people like you know private clients who raise their hand. I think I want to be. I want to come into your, your trading firm, and like okay, and I'll say have you ever paid out of pocket for any other coaching? Oh, yes, I have. Okay, did you complete the program in its entirety? Almost always the answer is no.
Speaker 2:How come Time? That's the first thing they say Okay, so it's not the program, it's you. So it's just like if I were a health coach. I say this all the time, right? If you come to me and I was a health coach, I'm not I. If I were a health coach I say this all the time, right? If you, if you come to me and I was a health coach, I'm not. I'm not a fitness coach, I'm not a nutritionist, I'm not a health coach.
Speaker 2:But if I were and you were 300 pounds and you're like, okay, I want to lose the weight for good, I swear, I want to lose the weight for good. I'm going to do it this time, right? Why is this time any different than any of the other times that you've tried? Why is this? You know what? You know why? Because you're not sitting in front of a doctor and your doctor's not telling you, if you don't make a change, you're going to die, and because you haven't been presented with a health scare. It's the reason why you continue to spend in your same tired circles. Because you think tomorrow's going to come for you, you think that you're going to be at dinner tonight, you think that you have more time and I tell those people go, gain 50 more pounds. You're not fat enough. It doesn't pinch hard enough for you to actually make the change. What's it going to take for you to finally abandon the pieces of your life that you claim you hate you?
Speaker 2:claim you hate pieces of your life. You might have to hit it twice, three times, right? Like I say, all the time, you got to be inside this performance domain, right? So that's what I call it with the seals. You got to be inside this performance domain, like this trading ground. There's an on-ramp to it and then you have to perform and then you get through it and then there's an off-ramp. You know what? You got another shit storm coming, so you enough to be able to learn the lesson and not just learn it, apply it. Why? Because you got people out there who are going around and they're giving advice. They're like oh, here's what you should do, here's what you should do. And you're like why aren't you doing, stop running your mouth and go do the work that nobody sees or claps for behind closed doors. Maybe then you can give advice. You need to become the person who can go into the gates of hell. Shine the light, show the path and say follow me, I can show you the way out. But I'll give you an example People who are trying to lose weight.
Speaker 2:Right, your training grounds is the grocery store candy aisle, or it's like the potato chip aisle. If you travel down that aisle and you're like I'll just get the 50% less salt potato chips today. You know it's like you haven't been in your training grounds long enough. That's your hell. You don't know how to get through that aisle to get to the milk and the meat and the eggs, and then travel back through that aisle without picking something up that you know damn well that you shouldn't be picking up. Those aren't your one word foods, right. So if you haven't been in that training grounds long enough to deprive yourself of all of that, to literally change your neurobiology, then you have no business telling other people what they need to be doing in their life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well said, well said. And I could tell you from a gym perspective how many times have I seen a fitness coach at a gym that's not fit and I'm like, why? Why would I hire you when you don't even look fit yourself? Um, that, no, it's well said. And the discipline part is is the most difficult part.
Speaker 1:And you know, I think, going back to what you said earlier, I think our last generation, we were brought up by the Vietnam War era veterans and, like my dad, was drafted in 71, did 20 years and being raised by him, you know he's an Army Ranger drill sergeant for five years. There's a significant difference between me and my half siblings and it matters difference between me and my half siblings and, and it matters like growing over time and learning that discipline over time. It's a huge. It's a huge cliff for someone to climb to instill discipline in their life and making sure that they're ready to be coached. Um, so I can imagine that there's some misconceptions about, you know, brain health. Um, are some of the misconceptions about brain health that you encounter in your practice?
Speaker 2:So I will rarely use the term mental health. I'll do it because that's the pop psychology term, but it's really brain health. So what you feed your body, you feed your brain. How you treat your body, you treat your brain. And people don't think about this because it's not the primary narrative.
Speaker 2:In not focused on mental strength training or mental endurance, or feeding yourself the right type of nutritious food so that your brain can operate optimally, you're going to decline. It's like dementia, it's like divorce. It happens slowly until one day it happens suddenly, and that's what people don't understand. It's that things are happening right now to you that you likely are not even aware of because it's happening slowly. So one of the best things that you can do for yourself is just ingest foods that are good for you. Literally eat Good for you. Literally eat, eat properly and get your sleep. Sleep hygiene is huge, huge, right. We've got to flush out the toxic stuff and we've got to flush in the good stuff, and we do that. A lot of that happens during sleep. Sometimes it takes seven to nine hours, right. So we need our sleep.
Speaker 1:We need our rest, shit, um, and. But it's just trying to say, hey, look at me, look at me, look at me constantly, and that involves your sleep as well, and it causes us to stay up late. Uh, tries to grab our attention, tries to get us sucked in emotionally and get our you know, our feelings all up in our. Our feelings, you know, and and uh, scrolling. That's a big thing too. Sleep is huge, um, and I think for a lot veterans that has been a major problem is getting to sleep and staying asleep. And finding that REM cycle is huge too, and I'm sure you talk a lot about that when you do your cognitive coaching. But can you share a success story where your cognitive coaching has significantly impacted an individual and personal and professional life?
Speaker 2:So what I do is I work in a special place in the brain. So if we take your brain and we just divide it into four parts, just very, very, very simple right, and you put one hand on your forehead and you put one hand right behind it, right, this is what we call your frontal lobe and then you have this little zigzag like zig, zig, zig, zig, zig, zig, right here, right, it's called your sulcus, and then right behind it, if you put one hand here and one hand here both sides right and left side this is called your parietal lobe. This is where I work specifically in a space called selective attention. So in a space called selective attention. So your parietal lobe is responsible for a number of things like memory, learning, language, spatial recognition. It's how I know the door is over there, it's not up here right in my face. It's how I know you're a male, I'm a female, things like this where we are in proximity. But most importantly, it's responsible for perception and the way in which we see the world.
Speaker 2:So neurodegenerative diseases that affect or are affected by the parietal lobe that you've heard of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, body dysmorphia, ADHD, right, these all have to do with a distortion of reality. So, to answer your question, the majority of people, if not all of the people that I work with, are either officially diagnosed or self-diagnosed as ADHD right. So I work in the space of selective attention. That's where I work. You can look it up. It's a thing in neuroscience and basically our ability to focus on the goal-oriented environment is critically dependent on our ability to inhibit or ignore distracting information. So, since a lot of your audience are in the military now or have transitioned right, it's very distracting to transition out of the right. It's very distracting to transition out of the military. It's very distracting to wake up and just turn your phone over. We live in a distracted world, but you have to have the ability to inhibit what is not necessary or what is pulling your focus.
Speaker 2:So, to answer your question, a success story would be teaching someone what to do in those critical moments where they feel like they can't raise their hand and say I need help. So how do you teach somebody how to be independent in those moments when they feel like they can't reach out to somebody and say I need help? They feel cloaked with shame. They're like if somebody knows that I need this kind of help, what's going to happen to me? Am I going to get Baker acted? Am I going to be put into some sort of you know rehab facility? Am I going to lose my job? What's my wife going to think? How am I going to be able to support my family?
Speaker 2:So, again, it's very important that you focus on how you need to perform inside those domains. What do you need to pull on inside those moments? Right? Some people would say gratitude, Some people would say prayer, OK. Some people would say what, what? But what are those things? What is gratitude? What is prayer? This is a focal point of your attention. That's what it is. So all of the success stories are people who have touch points with ambitious AF and understand where is the focal point that I need to draw on? Where's the skill set that I need to draw on in this moment that matters the most, especially when you have a monkey wrench that's thrown into your day.
Speaker 2:And then some of the bigger things that happen in our lives, like we have to file for bankruptcy or we are evicted, or a car gets repossessed, or we're served with divorce paperwork or something you know, or we lose our jobs, and like very, very major things that don't happen every day. You know there's a death in the family, right Aside trauma and grief, because that's something a little bit different, right, we don't deal with these things on a daily basis and when they happen to us, we don't know what to do with ourselves. We don't know what to do with ourselves. So what do we do? We press pause, press pause on life, press pause on goals. We're trying to figure it out. We're like, oh my gosh, what am I going to? What am I going to do now that my car's repossessed? How am I going to? You know, I just lost my job. How am I going to pay my bills? Like all of bankruptcy, if you've lost your job, all of that is, in the past, already happened. What are you doing right now, in this moment, to take steps forward?
Speaker 2:And if you don't know what to do, what you need to go do is go lace up your sneakers and take it out on some of the iron at the gym. That's one of the first things that you can do. You can go running, you can go walking, you can hydrate. You have more control over your life than you think in those moments. You have control over whether you groom yourself when you leave the house, how you're dressed. You have control over what you ingest and put into your brain. With respect to personal development literature, you have control over how you treat people. How about that? You have so much control over your life than you think. That's the focal point. So, as this is being recorded right now, every single Navy SEAL who has had touch points with ambitious day up has not been found next to an empty bullet casing because they have been taught the neurobiology of decision-making and what to do in those critical moments where they feel like, oh my God, I can't raise my hand. The ambitious day of narrative saves lives 110 percent. Come closer to it.
Speaker 1:I love it, man, I love it. I'll tell you, overall, I love how you created, how you create a community. I love how you create a community of and you create a community and you have folks surround themselves with folks that are highly accountable. And you mentioned that you do the pre-screening for folks before they join your coaching program, which can be rigorous. But I want to touch on you a little bit and what you do.
Speaker 2:But I want to touch dealing with kids or whatever these critical tasks get done, zero deviation. One is nutrition, so it is always one word foods. And people will ask me all the time well, what diet should I do? Should I do the carnivore diet, should I do the vegan diet, should I do the paleo diet? And I always say, like the one that you're going to stick to. So go figure it out and then stick to that one.
Speaker 2:Two, fitness, so physical activity. So I do a minimum 45 to 60 minutes. So it's quantified that I have to reach at least a zone two, so I don't flip into a downward dog for 45 seconds and call it a workout. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So I'm actually working out, I'm breaking a sweat, and this is for like a significant amount of time.
Speaker 2:Vitamins and supplements and, if you notice, I keep it vague. So, for example, resveratrol, which is sort of an extract of red wine, so it's got all the good stuff instead of, like any of the bad effects of alcohol wasn't added to my regimen until two years ago. So vitamins and supplements that help me stay optimal cognitively and then sleep. So I go dark at 2100. Like you won't get a text message back from me. You won't hear from me. My phone doesn't ring or ding after 2100, right, I am like in bed like Fridays and Saturdays too, like I'm like boring. I have like the most boring life, but it's like the best life ever because I try and get seven hours of sleep every night. Now, whether I sleep a full seven hours is another story, but that that's the goal, every, every. So those are the four critical tasks that I put in place and I also sorry, personal development literature. So 10 pages of 10 minutes every day and it's the exact same book. It's not on audio, because audio books, or like listening to podcasts, allow you to multitask, and the point of putting critical tasks together in your life is to actually carve time and to have the discipline to do it during that carved time. And you have until midnight. So you get your critical tasks done every single day until midnight.
Speaker 2:And I tell you something when people put critical tasks together and we give you the parameters for this right and you actually do this, you learn what is positive in your life versus what is not so positive in your life. So if you're making time for critical tasks, it means you're saying no to some of the other things that you have been doing or have been engaging in that may not have been so great for you. You also learn how to say no to people, which is extremely hard for people to do. It's an extremely hard thing. A lot of guilt gets associated with having to tell somebody no, even if it's like I'm sorry, I can't go to dinner tonight. People say yes more often than they want to. Yeah, they don't know how to tell people no, but where's your focus? If your focus is on vitamins and supplements and getting good sleep and exercising and eating one word, foods like then your focus isn't everywhere else. So, again, critically dependent on your ability to inhibit or ignore distracting information. So you learn how to not be distracted in a world that's full of distraction.
Speaker 2:And when you can cut through all of that chaos and you can cut through all of that nonsense, right, you start to see more clearly. And you start to see other people who are like oh my gosh, I can't believe I used to associate with that person. They're so toxic. Or that person just loves to gossip and drama Like all these. Like I can't believe I used to associate with that person. They're so toxic, or that person just loves to gossip and drama Like all these, like I can't believe I was part of any of that stuff. You begin to level up, you begin to believe in yourself, you begin to chase ambition in a whole different way. You begin to stop caring about what everybody else thinks because you're reaping all of these really good benefits.
Speaker 2:So if it's one piece of advice that I could leave for the audience today, it's that you need to go chase the boring, all the boring stuff that people are like. But you're in bed at nine o'clock on Fridays and Saturday. Yeah, it's boring and it's awesome. It's so awesome. It's awesome to wake up and feel refreshed, right. It's awesome to be able to be spiritually awake at church on Sunday morning. It's awesome to be present with my children, to be able to look them in the eye and not feel so cognitively taxed Like your brain is going to look for reasons to give you, you know, excuses to.
Speaker 2:I don't want to say cut corners, but look for an easier path, because it doesn't want to be cognitively taxed. You have only so much brain glycogen, right? The brain does not store glycogen the way the rest of the body does, because you're constantly utilizing it, right. So it tries to store as much as possible so that if it needs to be used for something major, it has access to it. And so it tries to give you reasons throughout the day to be like no, no, no, don't work out no complex strategic thinking for you today. Let's just take it easy, right, let's just take it easy. No, you can't. You have to force your discipline until it becomes trained discipline.
Speaker 1:Wow yeah. And for folks to see the other side of themselves and look back on themselves, that must be a huge transformation for them. And during this whole interview you've gone back to the connection between mind and body and physical fitness related to your brain health. I also noticed too and I have to touch on this because it's a passion of mine I noticed you've been in doing some Brazilian jiu-jitsu, right.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 2:I can't believe it's taken this long to get into this most awesome community. Oh my gosh, I'm having the time of my life and I tell you I haven't been training that long maybe Six months around. At this time I feel so much more empowered than I have ever felt in my entire life. I feel on top of the world. I have a trainer who Is a black belt and it's not from one of the studios who just is like if you've been here this long, then we're going to award you with the next level. Or you do X, y and Z and you sort of do it okay and we're going to award you with the next level.
Speaker 2:These are people who have been in this discipline for over a decade, two decades, right. These. These are people who have trained under other schools of thought and have come to this and they're like we were trained wrong and we didn't even know it. Yep, so I have a private trainer and then I have another one who works with me in like a group setting. But I train three times a week and I'm like I feel like this little secret weapon, like nobody sees coming right. I just I feel, I feel like I can handle my body and I feel like I can handle. I feel like I can detect a situation before it happens, so that I can remove myself from the environment, and that's really the majority of what I'm learning from jujitsu is to be ultra aware of my surroundings so that I can detect if something might happen and, if so, I can remove myself before something does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's weird. It's weird because I just gave a course on situational awareness and, just based off my law enforcement background and military background, um, I thought it was pulling from. I thought that I was pulling from that, but there's a lot of things that I learned in Brazilian, brazilian Jiu-Jitsu things that I don't think about, that I naturally do to try to avoid situations. And um, back when I started training in 2008, it was still black magic for a lot of the law enforcement community and I remember one time during a class I mentioned to the entire class, I said hey, you know, if you encounter someone that has like cauliflower ear and it's all knotted up, like you know, they have a wrestling background.
Speaker 1:And I got laughed at and I'm like you guys are stupid. Like, at the end of the day, now we know in in 2025, like that is a thing, like you have to have telltale signs.
Speaker 1:It's not just about the, the tight t shirt that somebody's wearing, but if you look, if you look at the person and you see that they have a knotted up ear and, like you know that they have wrestling, judo or jujitsu in their background and you need to be aware of who your adversary might be, and that and I've always told that it just cracks me up now that I look back 2008 and how I got laughed at by some. Uh, it was a prison warden, a former prison warden that and I'm like, look, if you don't know, like today's mma, so many folks out there are so infatuated with it, they're playing it on Xbox, they're training it in a gym and they're watching it on TV. So it's, it's interesting that you found it and I'm glad that you did, and it's it's a real passion of mine, uh, to to do that Kind of, as I show I'm headed to this evening. I'm going to go to open mass and um nice.
Speaker 2:And just one thing, really quick too, that that ties in with ambitious AF is that I take a real harsh stance against women's self-defense classes. I think the majority of them do a very, very large disservice to women because they are, or they teach a hyper-reliance on a weapon, for example, or like mace, for example. And you know, and I can tell you from a neurobiology standpoint, if you have not been in a situation where your adrenaline is pumping immediately, and if you even have that mace pulled out and someone knocks it out of your hand, what then? Right, stop being so dependent and reliant on anything other than two hands and two feet right In your brain.
Speaker 1:I just yeah.
Speaker 2:Be careful who you train under ladies.
Speaker 1:I just got skewered on Instagram because I was watching a reel and it this lady was showing a move of what happens when someone grabs your ponytail and my whole point was that, look, that's great that you watch an Instagram reel, but here's the thing If I grab your ponytail and you do that to me, I'm gonna slam you on the ground and it's it's. It's, that's just the reality of it. All folks think that they can take the, the self-defense thing or watch it on tv or watch it on their phone, and then they're gonna do it under stress and anxiety. That's not realistic at all. So you gotta to train.
Speaker 1:You got to know what it's like to have a sore neck. You got to know what it's like to have your limbs bent and different. You got to know what it's like to be smashed. That's the only way to get better, not watch Instagram reels. And I got skewered by all these replies because on this Instagram account, I know what I'm talking about at the end of the day, so I think a lot of folks and also your central nervous system is going to respond and go back to what it knows best.
Speaker 2:And if it doesn't know anything, that's exactly when you can freeze up. That's a very dangerous situation to be in if there is an imminent threat.
Speaker 1:I train men and women.
Speaker 2:Train, train often.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've trained men and women in law enforcement, so it's like these people on Instagram aren't going to tell me how it is and what it smells like. That's for sure, right, erin? This has been such an awesome conversation. Thank you for having me. I have so much more to ask you, but before we log off here, I just want to ask how can our listeners out there cultivate ambition while also ensuring their mental well-being?
Speaker 2:So if you do cultivate your ambition, you are ensuring your mental well out into the world in a way in which you actually want to. So if you really want to do that, give yourself permission to do so. Give yourself permission to go be ambitious. Yeah right.
Speaker 1:You know I this whole conversation has been all about that tie between physical and mental health. Right and everything. Or brain health, I should say, not mental health but, brain health and I think it's a great message. I love how you focus on getting folks to execute and take action. Yeah, and for folks out there, a store. Down to the bottom of the podcast description you can find Aaron's social media. As far as like Instagram. What else are you on? You're on TikTok, no.
Speaker 2:I'm on LinkedIn. That's where you'll find me primarily.
Speaker 1:LinkedIn and Instagram. Okay, I'll make sure that those links are down there at the bottom. If you're listening to this on a podcast, scroll down to the show notes If you're watching this on YouTube. Thank you for joining us. And you can find those down in the description as well If you want to click on those links and follow. Aaron, it's been fantastic talking to you today. I hope I get another opportunity to interview you down the stretch.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely Just name the time of day.
Speaker 1:All right, sounds like a plan. And for everyone else out there, as always, I want you to stay tuned, stay focused and stay motivated. Warriors fall out.