The B2B Podcast Index
Index
All categories
MarketingSalesSaaSFinanceHROpsLeadershipCustomer SuccessAI & DataProductStartups & FoundersRevOpsEngineering & DevTools
MethodologySubmit
Best of:MarketingSalesSaaSFinanceHROpsLeadershipCustomer SuccessAI & DataProductStartups & FoundersRevOpsEngineering & DevTools
An independent project byFame
SearchBest episodesGuestsInsightsMethodologySubmit a podcast
Index/Sales/The Sales Evangelist
The Sales Evangelist artwork

Building Resilience In a Tough Sales World | Mark Divine - 2014

The Sales Evangelist · 2026-06-26 · 30 min

0:00--:--

Key moments - from our scoring

Substance score

44 / 100

Five dimensions, 20 points each

Insight Density9 / 20
Originality7 / 20
Guest Caliber12 / 20
Specificity & Evidence9 / 20
Conversational Craft7 / 20

Mark Divine, a Navy SEAL veteran who trained hundreds of thousands of SEALs, brings resilience frameworks directly applicable to sales professionals. Divine argues that sustainable high performance requires balance between effort and recovery, starting with a foundational practice of box breathing - a five-count inhale, hold, exhale, hold pattern that activates the parasympathetic nervous system and resets the default fight-or-flight state most salespeople live in. Beyond breathing, Divine emphasizes three pillars: optimizing the body through basic practices (eat better, sleep more, move daily), training the mind through daily meditation to develop attention control and witnessing (the ability to observe and filter thoughts rather than be controlled by them), and building adaptability. The episode targets sales professionals burning out from constant high-intensity effort, offering practical tools like 20-minute morning breathing sessions that simultaneously improve physical health, reduce stress, sharpen concentration, and rewire automatic breathing patterns. Divine challenges the assumption that training means consuming more content, positioning instead that real transformation requires daily practice over months and years to rewire how the mind operates.

Key takeaways

  • →Box breathing - inhaling and exhaling for five counts with five-count holds - is the master practice for building physical and mental resilience by activating the parasympathetic nervous system and naturally optimizing breathing from 16-20 times per minute down to 6 times per minute.
  • →The foundation for mental resilience starts with body health through three basic practices: eat better and less, sleep more, and move daily through exercise, not elaborate protocols or supplements.
  • →Witness training allows you to observe your thoughts and emotions in real time and consciously choose which ones to keep; roughly 80% of daily thoughts are repetitive garbage from yesterday that trap you in past patterns.
  • →Sales professionals must develop genuine positivity and cannot fake it because customers detect inauthenticity immediately, making daily mind training essential rather than episodic sales training.
  • →Consistent practice of box breathing for 20 minutes in the morning and evening rewires your automatic nervous system over 6-12 months so calm, alert breathing becomes your default state throughout the day.

In this episode

  1. 1Introduction to Mark Divine and Resilience in Sales
  2. 2Foundation of Resilience: Body, Mindset, and Adaptability
  3. 3Box Breathing Practice for Physical and Mental Health
  4. 4Benefits of Nostril Breathing and Parasympathetic Nervous System
  5. 5Daily Box Breathing Protocol and Long-term Brain Rewiring
  6. 6Training the Mind: From Content Learning to Transformation
  7. 7Witnessing Technique: Separating from Thoughts and Emotions
  8. 8Breaking Negative Thought Patterns and Default Mode Network

Mentioned

HubSpotLinkedIn Sales NavigatorBlue Mango StudiosAngel City Football ClubMark DivineDonald C. KellyThe Sales EvangelistTony Robbins

Guests

Mark Divine

Topics in this episode

Default Mode NetworkBox breathingNavy SEAL trainingParasympathetic nervous systemVagus nerveAttention controlMind witnessingSympathetic nervous systemZen concentration training

Questions this episode answers

What is box breathing and how does it help salespeople build resilience?

Box breathing is a practice of inhaling through the nose for a five-count, holding for five, exhaling for five, and holding again for five - creating three breaths per minute. It activates the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) rather than the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight), helping salespeople move from chronic stress to calm alertness while improving focus and concentration through daily 20-minute practice.

How much recovery time do you need to balance effort for resilience?

Effort and recovery don't need equal time; Mark Divine recommends that eight hours of sustained effort only requires about 40 minutes of dedicated recovery (like box breathing practice) to maintain balance and prevent burnout.

What percentage of daily thoughts are unproductive and how do you filter them?

Research cited suggests approximately 80% of the 60,000 to 100,000 daily thoughts are repetitive, memory-based, or negative. Divine teaches a witnessing practice developed through meditation that allows you to observe thoughts in real-time and consciously choose which to keep versus discard.

What are the three pillars of resilience that Navy SEALs develop?

Mark Divine identifies body (physical health through eating, sleeping, and moving), mindset (training the mind through practices like box breathing and meditation), and adaptability as the three core pillars that enable elite performance and resilience.

How long does it take to rewire your automatic breathing pattern through box breathing practice?

According to Mark Divine, it takes approximately six months to a year of daily box breathing practice to rewire your automatic breathing so that you naturally breathe through your nose at six breaths per minute throughout the day, which research shows is optimal for health and longevity.

What our scoring noted

Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.

Insight Density

9 / 20

There are a handful of usable specifics - the 40-minutes-of-recovery-per-8-hours-of-effort ratio, the box breathing mechanics at 3 breaths per minute, and the 6-to-12-month rewiring timeline - but they are interspersed with long stretches of motivational padding, host cheerleading, and ad reads that chew up roughly a third of the runtime. A B2B operator gets maybe four actionable ideas across 30 minutes.

you can have eight hours of sustained effort and as long as you have 40 minutes of dedicated recovery to balance it out, you're going to be awesome
it takes about depending on the individual, six months to a year of practice to where then you've rewired your automatic breathing process

Originality

7 / 20

Box breathing, positive self-talk, the OODA loop, and mindfulness-as-concentration-training are all well-circulated frameworks in the personal development and leadership space by 2014; the SEAL framing adds texture but not conceptual novelty. The 'effort vs. recovery don't need to be equal time' ratio is the one genuinely fresh framing in the episode.

failure is not an option. It wasn't because we couldn't fail. We just took the word out of our lexicon
I'm feeling good, I'm looking good, I ought to be in Hollywood

Guest Caliber

12 / 20

Mark Divine has genuine practitioner credibility - 20 years as a SEAL, firsthand training of candidates, and a specific 2006 origin story for box breathing - but by the time of this recording he is already operating primarily as a coach and author rather than as an active operator, which slightly dilutes the real-world signal for a B2B audience.

I was in, I was a seal for 20 years. And a good part of that time, I was training new seals
I introduced a. A practice called box breathing back in 2006. And I used it to train Navy SEALs

Specificity & Evidence

9 / 20

The breathing protocol is concretely specified (5-count in/hold/out/hold, 3 breaths per minute, 20-minute sessions) and the OODA loop is attributed to Colonel John Boyd, but evidence for the bolder health claims - weight loss through breathing, the optimal 6-breaths-per-minute finding - is vague ('research just came in') with no citations, and there is zero sales-specific data or case evidence.

inhaling through the nose, five Count, inhale, five count, exhale. And then you hold the breath after the inhale and the exhale for five counts
research just came in like two years ago that that is the, actually the optimal breathing pattern for ideal health and longevity

Conversational Craft

7 / 20

The host asks sequential follow-up questions that advance the three-part framework, which is competent structuring, but there is no pushback whatsoever on bold claims (breathing causing weight loss, 80% of thoughts being garbage), and affirmations like 'Oh man, it's a great combination' dominate the responses, leaving the guest entirely unchallenged.

Oh, Man, it's a great combination. And the great thing about this is not like you're telling us something that's going to take like, you know, 6,000, you know, all of our days of work
So go deeper. So we'll go into that right now, then, you know, optimizing your body for mental resilience

Conversation analysis

Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.

Share of words spoken

  • Mark Divineguest62%
  • Donald C. Kellyhost24%
  • Narrator14%

Most-used words

mind33training31breathing30practice27sales26body26positive20better17podcast17help14start14linkedin13mark12seal11five11count11

Full transcript

30 min

Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.

Mark Divine: Um.

Narrator: This episode is brought to you in part by the following TSC sponsors. You don't become the world's most valuable women's sports franchise by accident. Angel City Football Club did it with a little help from HubSpot. When it started, data was housed across multiple systems. HubSpot unified their website, email and fan experience in one platform. This allowed their small team of three to build an entire website in just three days. Three days.

Donald C. Kelly: The results?

Narrator: Nearly 350 new signups a week and 300% database growth in just two years. Visit HubSpot.com to hear how HubSpot can help your team grow better. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is just plain awesome. Think about everything you need help with in sales. Finding the right buyers, prioritizing the right accounts. Reaching out with the right message at the right time. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is built to help with AI powered recommendations and real time account insight. It helps you spend less time searching and more time selling with focus and confidence. All powered by LinkedIn's network of over 1.2 billion professionals. It is the most dynamic buyer network. Accelerate your sales with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try it free for 60 days at LinkedIn.com sell terms apply. This episode is brought to you in part by Blue Mango Studios. Imagine using a podcast as a lead generation source. Not only attracting your ideal customer, but entertaining them and getting qualified leads. To find out more, go To Blue Mango Studios.com.

Donald C. Kelly: Continuing with our conversation about elite performances, the other day we had Meredith on a podcast. Today we're talking with Mark Divine. And the piece that Mark brings is not about the physicalness of what we want to do to physically look good and to perform well. It starts with some mental components and some of these mental components go to some basic things that none of us consider that all of us, every last one of us do on a day to day basis. And if we master these little things, Mark believes you're going to be a top performer. Check it out and listen. Why? Hey, hey, hey everyone. Welcome to another great episode of the Sales Evangelist Podcast. I'm your host, Donald C. Kelly, the Sales Evangelist and I'm so excited for another great episode. I'm so excited to be here with you today. If this is your first time listening to our podcast, please subscribe. And if you've been listening for a minute but haven't done so, please subscribe. I want you to take that link. I don't want you to go tell somebody else about it and tell them that you found the Sales Evangelist podcast and that it's Been such a great help to you. I know many of you follow me on LinkedIn and I appreciate that. Please go ahead and do so. And I'm going to be continuing to do some shout outs to some of you as you connect with me, send me some connection requests or start following me. I appreciate that. I'm going to do that. I want you to know that I'm out here listening to you as always. This show is designed to be to help you not only build pipeline but to accelerate deals through the pipeline. And today we're going to be talking about something that not only help you to do both of these. Now this ties back not only to this idea of only a physical rejuvenation, but the idea of resiliency. And uh, today, Mark Devine, I want to just tell you a little bit about him. He's a former. He's not a former. Once you're a SEAL, you're always a SEAL, right? He is a uh, Navy SEAL. He's trained hundreds of thousands of Navy SEALs. And some of the things that Mark has seen is that there's patterns. Some of the ones that are there have built strong resilience and was able to be elite, did certain things that were different. And he points out three things today. One, it's around their body. Two, the mindset. And then three, adaptability. I won't give you any more details on uh, all of that but listen to what he says. When it comes to the very first one, you're not going to believe how you can help your body by doing something that we all do on a day to day basis. Let's dive in and listen to this. Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Divine: Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks.

Donald C. Kelly: Really looking forward to this conversation.

Mark Divine: Yeah, likewise.

Donald C. Kelly: I bragged about you a little bit in the teaser and I gave a little bit about your bio, a little bit of introduction to who you are and everyone is so excited to learn from you now. But there's one of the things that we had discussed is how important it is to, you know, when it comes to sales building. Resilience is so important now. Resilience in our mind, in our body and so forth. Because we're getting pulled in 6 million direction and as salespeople we tend to just go at it hard, 100% and then we end up falling apart, getting burned out and so forth.

Mark Divine: Right.

Donald C. Kelly: Why are you so passionate about this topic when it comes to this, you know, physically and mentally resilient?

Mark Divine: Well, you know, I was in, I was a seal for 20 years. And a good part of that time, I was training new seals. Right? Training, I guess you call them recruits, people who wanted to be SEALs. And, uh, if there's any environment or any system or any place. So you need to develop resilience, this Navy SEAL training, right? And so, um, when you think about the salespeople are kind of like the warriors of an organization, and so they may not have the physical, uh, strength and durability of a Navy seal, but you got to have the similar mindset because you're out there, you're on the edge. You're the operator that's out there pushing hard every day, like you said. And so with the SEAL candidates, the way we train them is completely applicable to a salesperson, except we're not trying to make you into a hardcore Navy seal. We're trying to make you resilient. And resilient, uh, essentially is just the ability to have sustainable, highly positive and motivated output over long periods of time. And the way you do that is not to just get harder and harder, harder, but to find a true balance between the yin and the young, uh, between effort and recovery. And the first step, by the way, even for salespeople, is to get your body freaking very as healthy as possible, right? For your body type, your age, you know, your conditions. Cause a healthy body is. Is essentially the foundation for any type of resilient mind.

Donald C. Kelly: So go deeper. So we'll go into that right now, then, you know, optimizing your body for mental resilience. You talk about, how do we do that, though? Uh, how do I start getting, you know, physically my body and mind, my body ready before I get to my mind?

Mark Divine: It's interesting. Like, most people would say, well, you know, you've got to eat better and you got to sleep better, and you got to move your body. And that's absolutely true. Eat, sleep, and move. You don't need elaborate protocols for eating, sleeping, and moving. You just need to eat better and eat less, you need to sleep more, and you need to move your body every day. And I don't mean like walking to the office or the car. You need to exercise and move. But what I always do is start with breathing and say, the very first thing to, um, put yourself on a path to optimal health, physically and mentally, is to start a daily practice of breathing. And I. I introduce a. A practice called box breathing back in 2006. And I used it to train Navy SEALs. And just this practice of box breathing, which is nostril breathing, inhaling through the nose, five Count, inhale, five count, exhale. And then you hold the breath after the inhale and the exhale for five counts. So it's, you know it's a box pattern, right? Or square.

Donald C. Kelly: Yeah.

Mark Divine: That is essentially 20 seconds for each breath cycle, which means you're breathing only three times per minute. And you're breathing, like I said, through your nostrils, your mouth is closed and you're getting a full on capacity and you're using your diaphragm and your muscles of your belly and your chest to get the breath in and all the way out by doing this. So many incredible benefits done. I'll uh, go through them real quick.

Donald C. Kelly: Yes, hello on this one.

Mark Divine: Yeah. So I mean it's extraordinary and they're just starting to study the positive benefits of a practice like this. First off, nostril breathing is. And ah, taking that lung, that breath deep down into your, through your diaphragm, with your diaphragm into your lungs, massages the vagus nerve and by massaging the vagus nerve, you're activating your parasympathetic nervous system which is rest and digest. Here in the west, Most people breathe 16 to 20 times per minute, most of the time through their mouths. When you breathe through your mouth in that rapid shallow manner, you do not activate the parasympathetic nervous system. You're actually stimulating the sympathetic nervous system which is fight or flight. And so you end up, most people in this culture especially, huh, fast paced salespeople are in a state of hyper arousal and yet that they're unaware of it because it becomes the new normal. So this box breathing practice will then get you back into homeostatic balance, activate or reactivate your atrophied parasympathetic nervous system activation channel and bleed off all that excess stress and get you in a state where every day, if you got up and did 20 minutes of this box breathing practice every morning, you're basically prepared to win the day in a state of calm, alert readiness without the stress. And you can also use it during the day to anytime you get triggered or you've got, you got an important sales call or meeting, you just do a few rounds of box breathing prior to and you go in calm and alert.

Narrator: Mistakes that Made Me, hosted by Iman Ismail, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Mistakes that Made Me is the podcast that ask extraordinary business owners to share their biggest business mistakes so you know what not to do on your road to success. Join Isman Ismail as she chats with some of the smartest minds in business about how to push through failure and accept it as an important and necessary part of building a business. Because it turns out your biggest business mistakes often lead to your biggest lessons and then your biggest blessings things. One of the latest episodes that just totally resonated was ignoring my cash flow almost cost me my business. And many of us can relate to that. If you run a business, sometimes you kind of not focus on the most important thing. The guest was Sandra Booker Isman has amazing insights and amazing guests and I highly recommend you check out the podcast listen to Mistakes that Made Me wherever you get your podcast.

Donald C. Kelly: So how you're saying do this at a wake up time period? Yeah, so and then throughout the day at different times.

Mark Divine: It's got to be done as a practice. Right. So my recommendation and prescription for my clients is first thing, when you wake up, use the restroom, drink a fresh, tall glass of water. You need to get hydrated as soon as you wake up. And then go back to your bed or go to, you know, if you got a chair that you like to sit on, just sit and use this as your meditation practice. 20 minutes, eyes close, inhale, five count. Hold your breath for a five count. Exhale, five count. Hold your Breath for five count, three breaths, three rounds per minute. Do 20 minutes. Or you can do, you can do rounds, you can count maybe 10 rounds or 20 rounds. If the five count is too much for you, start with four, that's fine. Ultimately, we want to get to the five count. And here's why. When you practice this every day, it takes about depending on the individual, six months to a year of practice to where then you've rewired your automatic breathing process so that during the day, instead of breathing that 16 to 20 times per minute with your M through your mouth, you're naturally breathing nostril through your nose. Five count in, five count out, which is six breaths per minute. And uh, research just came in like two years ago that that is the, actually the optimal breathing pattern for ideal health and longevity. I have seen clients literally lose weight simply through this box. Breathing practice.

Donald C. Kelly: Just breathing. Better.

Mark Divine: Just breathing. Yeah. Cause you actually exhale, you slow everything down. This is part of the recovery. See, effort and recovery don't have to be equal time. What I mean by that is you can have eight hours of sustained effort and as long as you have 40 minutes of dedicated recovery to balance it out, you're going to be awesome. Right? You're going to be, you're going to be great. You don't need eight hours of recovery, and box breathing is the foundation. Now here's what happens. Because your body's coming back into balance, you're bleeding off all this stress, your mind is getting clearer, you're starting to think better, you're starting to feel better, you've got more energy because you're, you're stimulating your energy body, you're bringing more energy, oxygen, life force in. Then suddenly you start sleeping better and you're drawn toward eating healthier food and eating less food. By the way, a lot of times we overeat simply because our body is out of balance and those cravings kick in or your moods are all out of whack, your biome starts to come back into balance, which affects your mood and your diet and your attitude. And then you're going to have more energy to start moving the body. And you can really kind of pick up your exercise routine from there. So I think box breathing is probably the, the master key to physical and mental stability and resilience.

Donald C. Kelly: You know, you never think about this when you start going into the mindset and when you start talking about a body, you must think about this idea of breathing like something so basic. Like the first part that you glossed over is again, where everybody spend all the time. I mean, you gotta eat, you gotta work out a lot, you gotta, you know, do all of this stuff, buy this expensive protein shake and do all of this other things. But from, uh, what you say, you know, obviously you need to be moving, need to get sleep, and you need to, you know, do some of those basic things. But the emphasis is on a fundamental piece that we all overlook and which is fascinating.

Mark Divine: Right. And the cool thing is that practice doesn't just bring enormous benefits to your body, but your mind. So you're beginning the training of your mind. And I was saying, if you're not training your mind, the world's training it for you. And the results will speak for itself. Especially sales professionals have to be very positive. They can't fake it. Yeah, right. That's why, you know, everyone in your industry is so into personal development and Tony Robbins. And you've got to actually be positive and motivated. You can't fake it because customers will know that right away. So the breathing practice helps you train the monkey mind because it doubles as an attention control and concentration practice. So for that 10 or 20 minutes that you're doing it in the morning, and Ideally you'd do 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening, they're like bookends for your day. So you're getting the arousal control and stress management benefits that I've talked about. But you're also training your mind to be less distractible. That's. We call that attention control. Controlling your attention, because now you're just following that one thing. You're just doing the box breathing, and you're watching it closely, and you're paying attention to it. And then you're noticing when your mind wanders and you bring it back. It sounds a lot like mindfulness practice. Right. Or concentration training, traditional Zen. So you're deepening your powers of concentration. You're becoming less distractible. And all of this is training your mind to be stronger, to make better decisions, to have more clarity and more focus.

Donald C. Kelly: Well, help me understand number two now, going into the mind. So training the mind. You talked about something about that. This has to be a lifetime practice. It can't be something that happens one time. But I'm breathing better now. Help me get on a better understanding about the mind.

Mark Divine: Sure. Well, I've already. I, uh, already delved into that.

Donald C. Kelly: Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Mark Divine: So most people think. Don't even think about training the mind. They think the mind is just who you are. Right. But it's not. It's a tool. And the tool obviously is affected by the brain. That's why the brain, which is part of your body, has to be very healthy. If you don't have a healthy body, you don't have a healthy brain. If you don't have a healthy brain, you're not going to be thinking clearly. So that's why it's all built on this box. Breathing, practice, and having a healthy body. So you're already starting to train the mind there.

Donald C. Kelly: Yeah.

Mark Divine: So training the mind, most of you think, well, I. I go to school or I go to. I went to sales training. Right. Or I do this certification here, or I do that, you know, event over there. And they're really just um, packing some more content in their head. And they're not actually doing any training. So I'm talking about not training to learn more things, but to lily transform how your mind works. Of course, I learned this before my SEAL training through, uh, concentration training in Zen. But in the SEAL training, the SEALs are all about training the mind to be able to take in more information, to be able to see things that other people don't see, to be able to be really calm and clear in the most chaotic and dangerous environments, and to be incredibly creative. Right. So the training the mind is a practice. Right. It can't be done episodically. It's not going to be done, uh, what we call horizontally by just trying to pack more information in, right? This is like the first level of learning is just downloading content and most people think they're done there, but then they don't really learn anything and they don't change themselves. So training the mind is a daily practice, is a, is a practice of total transformation for how the mind works. Box. Breathing is your first tool, right? Like I said, because first you're getting the arousal control benefits so you're calm and alert. And then with that calm and alert kind of posture, mental posture, then you're training your mind to be less distractible through attention control and to have more powers of concentration, literally more penetrating power of concentration, right. You can focus more, you can do more, you can get more done without fatigue. And then what the training will go into is what we'll call witnessing. So witnessing is essentially developing the capacity to be separate from your thoughts and emotions, to literally see them as they arise and to make real time choices about whether that thought or emotion is going to be supportive and useful or whether it's just garbage and you should let it go. And you will find when you, when you hit this stage of your training that most like 70 or 80% of thoughts that come to your emotions are, are kind of garbage and they need to go. So you just let them go. But it gives you enormous control over your life, creative control.

Narrator: Think about all the things you wish you had help with in sales. Finding the right buyers, Knowing which account to prioritize. Reaching out with the right message at the right time. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is built to help with exactly that. It uses AI powered recommendation to surface leads and accounts that match your goals so you spend less time searching and more time selling. You get real time account insights that help you grow your pipeline, personalize outreach and stay informed about buyer activities. It can't replace the work of, of selling, but it gives you the data and visibility to sell with more focus and confidence. That's what we need. All of this is powered by LinkedIn's network of over 1.2 billion professionals. The most dynamic buyer network working just for you. Accelerate your sales with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator now with a free 60 day trial at LinkedIn.com/sell. That's LinkedIn.com sell. Terms and condition apply. Since 2013, we launched this podcast. The goal of the podcast was to share a wealth of information and I feel that we've Successfully done. So as a natural byproduct, listeners like you would reach out and ask, could I coach them, could I train their team, could I come and speak in an sko, could I consult for them? And that is how we gain the majority of our business. And still to this day. So in 2019, one of our clients saw what we, we did and asked, could we do that for them? We experimented with it and we started a podcast production agency. Now we create podcasts for some of the biggest brands in the world. And it's amazing. I would love to show you and your team how we can create podcasts for you and use it as an entertaining source, but also educational and a lead generation. If you're interested, go to blue mango studios.com again blue mango studios.com and our team can show you exactly what we did. It's amazing.

Donald C. Kelly: One of my friends, uh, shared that with me. He shared a something similar to that where you're saying the, there was a study done and I'm like, who's counting them? But majority of the thoughts that we have on a day to day basis, like you said, you call it garb, you know, garbage, or, you know, not necessarily good. He said they were negative thoughts, like things that we're thinking about ourself, like I don't look good or my, you know, I don't stand right or whatever. Like things that we are diminishing ourself about. And like when you said that number, I was like 80%. Like, that's crazy.

Mark Divine: You have, you know, the average person has between 60,000, a hundred thousand thoughts every day and 80% of them are the same thoughts that they had yesterday. Because my thinking mind works based on memory retrieval. So it's either pulling something from memory that gets triggered. Either an emotion triggers it, or an incident triggers it, or a person triggers it. And then suddenly, you know, what was there yesterday pops back into your mind. And then you start ruminating on what was there yesterday, which contaminates the present moment and makes it almost guaranteed that the future is going to look exactly like the past. So people get stuck repeating the same patterns over and over. So we've got to get out of that brain living only on memory, you know, kind of rut that's called the default mode network. And the way to do that is through this meditative practice built on box breathing, where you develop the capacity. And this takes. Again, these are not quick fixes. That's why it has to be a daily practice. But it's still done in that same 20 minute period, that 20 minute period I, uh, talked about in the morning, the evening is training both the body and the mind, using the box breathing as the vehicle for getting to this place that I'm talking about right now, where you're able to witness your thoughts and emotions in real time. And then you have the creative capacity to curate them and say, no, not that. How about this instead? And one of the most. And you nailed it. One of the most powerful things you can notice right away, and this is practically for everybody, because it's just, it's trained in us from a very young age, is that the negative programming, right? It can be subtle. You find it in sarcasm, in humor. Anytime you turn on the tv, you're going to have negative programming, right? And then a lot of times it comes wrapped in a nice wrapper. The way different races are treated, you know, the way people talk to each other, the violence. If you turn in the news, forget it, you're just getting a massive dump of negativity, right? So you gotta, you start to see all that as input. And input is training. So you start turning that off. Like, I bet you a ton of sales professionals listen to this and figure this out long ago, but you cannot watch network news or listen to the news or consume the news and have a good day. You know, you can't be positive because it's infecting you. So you turn all that stuff off. You make sure that the inputs are only positive. And then you look at your own quality of your own inner dialogue and you make sure that your inner dialogue is positive. Now you say, well, what if, you know, I can't control the negative stuff? Um, you don't have to control it and you don't want to fight it. What you want to do is just develop the skill to override it with positive internal dialogue, positive self talk, and even positive external talk. And also a positive mantra that you can just play in the background when you're not, you know, if you're just driving your car. You know, when I was at SEAL training, anytime I was running or swimming, my mantra was, I'm feeling good, I'm looking good, I ought to be in Hollywood. I'm feeling good, I'm looking good. And it made me, it made me positive, right? Because I, I had a really negative upbringing, meaning my, my father was kind of negative person. A lot of sarcasm and anger and rage. And, you know, I had to train that out of me. And when you, when you grow up like that, you have to like, fake it till you make it, you know, you just keep doing, keep saying positive things to yourself until eventually you start believing it. And because you're feeding where, uh, where attention goes and energy flows, that grows. So because your attention is going to positive self talk over time, that positive self talk develops a positive self image and you, then you start believing it and the negative stuff dries up and blows away. So, you know.

Donald C. Kelly: Yeah, and I think this, all this, this is, we can go on for days on all of this here. But I want to tie that back into the, uh, adaptability concept. I know you started doing that a little bit, but you have a concept that you teach us. Talk about O. D. A loop. Can you try that into the how now that I have optimized my body.

Mark Divine: Let me, yeah, let me tie this into a bow. Resiliency, like I said, is the ability to have sustained positive motivation over long periods of times to include through all the challenges that you're going to face. And there's going to be many. So when you get a challenge, when you get knocked down, you don't look at it as a failure, don't even look at it as a disruption or a setback. You just get back up and say, that was really interesting. What did I learn? Right? And the seals we said failure is not an option. It wasn't because we couldn't fail. We just took the word out of our lexicon. And so there was just new ways to learn things, how to do things. Some were better than other. And one of the things we learned is that when you can move faster, become more adaptable and agile, then you always got better results because doubt is eliminated through action. And it's through action that you activate what we call the OODA loop, which was developed by a guy named Colonel John Boyd in the Air Force, and he developed it for aerial combat. The OODA stands for you observe. You orient yourself to what you observe based upon what you see in your new orientation. You make a decision. And that decision is going to be, think about this. In aerial combat, you might just flick your, you know, your joystick to the right to just slightly change the attitude of your aircraft in relation to your enemy. Right? It's not like you, you're deciding on an entire plan of attack in that moment. You're taking the smallest action that, uh, then you take that action. So you decide on the smallest action that's going to lead to positive results. You take that action and then you immediately observe how does that affect the situation with my enemy or my, you know, my situation, My client and then you orient yourself to that and then you make the, you know, decide what the next smallest action is and then you act on that. So by embracing this idea and starting to practice it, you want to basically take your OODA loop and make it very, very fast. Right. And so if you can move m much faster than, um, your competition because your OODA loop is much tighter, then you're going to win. You're going to, and you're going to win much more effortlessly because you're always taking the time to pause, breathe, observe what's happening, orient yourself to the new reality, make that decision which is the smallest good decision you can make, act on it and immediately pause, orient and observe again. So you're doing this effort, surrender, effort, surrender, and you're doing it really fast. And your body is staying nice and calm, your mind is calm. And if you put the, you know, all these principles together, like your body is healthy and resilient because your daily box breathing practice, which is then leading you to sleep better, eat better and move better, while simultaneously you're training your mind to be less distractible. You've cut out all the negative influences, network news, negative people. And then you've learned to train your mind to be creative instead of reactive, to be positive instead of negative. And then you put all of that mind, body, positive momentum, resilient energy toward being seriously agile and adaptable with the OODA loop.

Donald C. Kelly: Oh, man, it's a great combination. And the great thing about this is not like you're telling us something that's going to take like, you know, 6,000, you know, all of our days of work. Yeah. This is just little things that you could do over and over.

Mark Divine: It's just a daily practice. Everything I've just talked about, you can build into your 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the evening. The difference being the OODA loop really is something you want to bring into your, you know, the, basically whatever the battle rhythm is for a sales professional. Right. Planning your day, making outbound calls, sales meetings. You want to deploy the OODA loop, observe what's happening, orient yourself to it, make the smallest, best decision you can, act on it and just try to continue to practice that and you'll find that your speed of, uh, decisions go up and the quality of your decisions goes up.

Donald C. Kelly: Love it. I want to respect your time. Thanks, Mark, for coming on a show today. If folks want to get in touch with you, want to learn from you to get a better understanding how they can help themselves or their team, what's the best way they can go about doing so.

Mark Divine: Yeah, I appreciate that. Uh, so markdevine.com divine M.com D I V I N E.com is my personal website. You can send an email to me at info@markdevine.com and I've got coaching. All my books are there. My podcast, Mark Devine show. The training I'm talking about, you can access it through that website, but we call it unbeatable mind. And unbeatablemind.com is where we offer the mental toughness coach certification and some incredible training in a community around this type of work.

Donald C. Kelly: I love it. Yeah, we're going to put this in our show notes. Uh, it's very valuable. Mark, thanks for taking the time to come on the show today.

Mark Divine: Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it very much.

Donald C. Kelly: That was Mark Devine and that stuff was good. I'm telling you, if you haven't done so already, connect with Mark, tell him you found him here on the Sales Evangelist Podcast. And I would be so excited. I know he will be so excited. We're all going to be excited because the things that Mark shared, he brought are amazing insights and the breathing. I'm telling you, I need to practice that. You saw me in the episode practicing it, right? But it takes a habit. But it's a consistency. Day, oh day, day in, day out. But all of this gives you mastery of your body and also gives you this adaptability and this resiliency that we all need, especially in this career that we call this beloved career called sales. Listen, I want you to thrive. I absolutely want you to succeed. I want you to raise your level of thinking. But most importantly, I want you to go out, dominate and do big things. Take this episode link, share it with one other person. Tag me in it on LinkedIn. See you on the next one.

Narrator: The Sales Evangelist Podcast is created by the Sales Evangelist Sales training organization. It is produced by TSC Studios. Our podcast production manager is Nancy Paul. Our audio engineer is Gershon Obayo. Our video engineer is Dasan Cunardo. Guest management is done by Jill Vito and Christy Vertus. Our content writer is Carlisa Galbraith. Our graphic designer is Yurvish Savilea. And I'm your host and executive producer, Donald C. Kelly. Sales podcast network.

Related episodes across the Index

Other episodes covering the same guests and topics, from across The B2B Podcast Index.

  • Part 2: The Creativity Advantage with Steven PuriThe Talent Forge · on Default Mode Network88 / 100
  • "I Learn, Therefore I Evolve": Rethinking Human Learning in the Age of AI (ft. Dr. Barbara Oakley)2050 Investors · on Box breathing78 / 100
  • #114: Mindfulness, Medicine & the Biology of Stress - Dr. Craig HassedThe FitMind Podcast · on Default Mode Network70 / 100
  • Staying Calm Under Pressure ft. Povilas Sabaliauskas of Pulsetto | EYBElevate Your Brand · on Parasympathetic nervous system67 / 100
  • 077: How To Be Remarkable Under High Stress with Leigh AndersonThe Remarkable Project · on Parasympathetic nervous system65 / 100
  • Quiet Negative Self-Talk and Outwit RuminationBossed Up · on Default Mode Network62 / 100

More from The Sales Evangelist

All episodes →
  • Bad Mouthing Your Competitor | Donald C. Kelly - 201763 / 100
  • What Got You to President's Club Will Not Keep You There | Meredith Elliott Powell - 201357 / 100
  • Dream BIG: What Every Sellers Must Do To Shatter Their Dreams | Jason VanDevere - 201247 / 100
  • 7 Steps to Making 7 Figures in Enterprise SaaS Sales | Brandon Fluharty - 2016
  • How "The Practice" and Being Different Can Help Sellers Connect With More Prospects | Seth Godin - 2015
Explore the best B2B Sales podcasts →
All The Sales Evangelist episodes →