Dear {{ first name | Legend}},
have you ever felt really tense and frustrated? Or felt a sense of unease or doubt? Or even panicked when things weren’t going well?
Of course you have. We are human after all.
These are all feelings that prevent us from performing at our best.
You see, even though most of us aren’t on a battlefield or constantly in danger, the truth is if we are pursuing growth, we are putting ourselves in new (and uncomfortable) situations and these feelings can sabotage our performance and progress.
Not speaking up. Not negotiating. Not launching.
So the real question we need to ask is: what do we do about it?
This is where Rich Diviney comes in.
Rich is a retired Navy SEAL Commander who spent over 20 years leading and selecting the most elite special operations teams on the planet, including running the selection program for SEAL Team Six. He’s the bestselling author of The Attributes and Masters of Uncertainty, and has trained Fortune 500 leaders, pro athletes, and high-performance organizations on how to excel under pressure (watch a trailer of our conversation.)
In our conversation, Rich shares how we can all overcome fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.
❤️ Heartset: Avoiding danger means avoiding the life you want
Every dream you’ve ever had sits behind a door labeled “danger.”
Not real danger, perceived danger. The threat of uncertainty. The discomfort of being seen. The possibility you might fail.
What if I screw this up?
What if I look stupid?
What if I’m not enough?
And in those moments, you stop. You freeze.
Or you blow up emotionally because the threat state feels too big.
But here’s what we don’t like to admit:
Every time you walk away because of that perceived danger, you choose a smaller version of yourself.
A safer story. A smaller life.
I’m not saying you should ignore real danger or leap into traffic. I’m saying that avoiding the things that feel dangerous: conversations, decisions, risks, opportunities, keeps you from reaching the other side. The side where rewards live.
Are you ready to stop running from “threats” and start running toward the life that belongs to you?
🧠 Mindset: The “threat” isn’t the problem, not understanding it is
We tend to assume that when we feel threatened, something is wrong. But most of the time, the “threat” you feel isn’t real danger, it’s just your brain reacting to stress and not knowing what comes next.
Fear = Anxiety + Uncertainty
This is the equation directly from Rich. This is how Navy SEALs deal with real and perceived threats.
Ready to overcome it once and for all? 👇🏽
🧰 Skillset: The Threat Response Playbook
A step-by-step system to neutralize fear, anxiety, and/or uncertainty and turn it into power. Download a one pager of the playbook.
STEP 1: Identify Your Feelings
Am I feeling anxious? (chest tightness, elevated heart rate, feeling flushed)
Am I feeling uncertain? (unease, dread, doubt, hesitation)
Am I feeling fear? (a combination of anxiety AND uncertainty)
Label them. Say I’m feeling [BLANK]. You cannot neutralize the perception of threat until you know what you are feeling and up against.
STEP 2a: If It’s ANXIETY, Regulate Your Physiology
When anxiety spikes, the frontal lobe (your decision-making brain) goes offline.
You can’t think your way out of it, you must regulate your body first.
✅ Breath: Physiological Sigh (3 Parts)
The fastest way to calm your body is through the physiological sigh, validated by Stanford’s Huberman Lab. It works because it offloads CO₂ and directly lowers autonomic arousal.
How to do it (3 steps):
Inhale deeply through your nose
Take a second, smaller inhale on top of it
Long, extended exhale through your mouth
Repeat 1–3 cycles.
Video demo from the official Huberman Lab.
✅ Vision: Widen Your Field
Under stress, your eyes automatically narrow into tunnel vision. It’s your brain’s way of scanning for danger.
To tell your nervous system you’re not in real threat:
Relax your gaze
Soften the eyes
Let your peripheral vision widen
This panoramic view shifts your system out of the threat response and potentially back into control. Studies have shown that tunnel vision is real (Rogers et. al 2003)
✅ Movement: Go Slow
“Rushing is your body’s false signal to flee. If you slow down and move deliberately, accuracy goes up. Slow becomes smooth, and smooth becomes fast.”
Movement sets the tone for your entire nervous system.
Slowing down isn’t hesitation, it restores control, brings precision back online, and stops anxiety from snowballing.
🎁 BONUS: Use Humor
“Laughing gives you dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin. It tells your body: this is good, keep going.”
Humor isn’t just entertainment, it’s neurological reset. A quick laugh breaks fear’s grip immediately. Can you think of any reason that the situation you are in is funny?
STEP 2b: If It’s UNCERTAINTY, Engage “Moving Horizons”
Your brain panics when it loses any of these three anchors:
Duration: How long will this last?
Pathway: What’s my next step?
Outcome: What am I trying to achieve?
“Our brains are constantly trying to figure out three primary factors in any environment: duration, pathway, and outcome… If we are in absence of one or more of those, our autonomic arousal goes up. Uncertainty, anxiety, all that stuff starts to bubble in our system”
The Moving Horizons Method: Create Your DPO
Duration
Define the next short horizon (5 minutes, one email, one call).Pathway
What’s the very next executable action?
Not the whole plan, just one step.Outcome
What does “done” look like for this horizon?
You do this again and again, keep moving the horizon.
Rich explains: “I picked a horizon, moved toward it, then picked another.
Each horizon gave me a dopamine reward.”
You’re manufacturing micro-moments of certainty inside uncertainty.
STEP 3: Keep going, REPEAT
Once you’ve addressed your anxiety and/or uncertainty, keep your senses open and continue to assess how you’re feeling, continue to take action.
This is how we move through the perceived or real threat.
What’s more, everytime you step into the threat, the fear, it’s an opportunity to build your courage. That’s what Rich calls an attribute.
An attribute is an innate quality that drives how you perform under stress and uncertainty.
And understanding our attributes matters because they reveal who we are at our most raw. That’s what we fall back to when times are tough. Something that cannot be taught, it can only be practiced. It’s how he recruited the best to SEAL Team Six.
What Rich Wants Everyone to Know: Attributes ≠ Skills
“A person can have elite skills… but without the right attributes, they collapse under pressure.”
Skills = learned.
Attributes = revealed.
Skills = what you can do.
Attributes = who you are under stress.
If you want to know your attributes (a total of 41), Rich has a free assessment.
Want to see my top 3 and bottom 3 attributes? Click HERE!
If you like this issue about how to influence your own behavior, you’ll love:
How to Feel Fulfilled, Fully You, and Consistently High (Without Drugs)
How to Turn Your Pain into Your Advantage (4 types of pain to lean into)
Change behavior, change lives 🤘🏽
Howie Chan
Creator of Influence Anyone
Don’t miss:
The Influence Anyone Podcast
In this conversation, retired Navy SEAL Commander Rich Diviney pulls back the curtain on how elite performers stay calm, decisive, and effective when everything goes sideways.
He shares the story of the recruit who showed up to SEAL training without knowing how to swim, the brutal surf torture moment where a joke kept a team from quitting, and the life-or-death missions that taught Rich the difference between fear and panic, and why mastering uncertainty is the real superpower.
You’ll hear the exact brain science Rich learned from Stanford’s fear lab that explains why most people freeze (and how to flip the switch back on).