It was my recent honor to speak with Richard “Mack” Machowicz about his Navy career, his amazing book (Unleash The Warrior Within), his website (NDCQ.com), and his new radio show. Mack is a Navy SEAL who spent 10 years with SEAL Teams One and Two. He also served as a Naval Special Warfare Scout and Sniper, as well as a Naval Special Warfare Combat Fighting Instructor. He has a wealth of knowledge in martial arts training including several black belts. This has enabled Mack to create a hybrid self-protection system he calls Bukido. Mack is possibly most well known as a familiar face as the Host and Producer of Discovery Channel’s show, Future Weapons, and Spike TV’s, Deadliest Warrior. And, Mack’s newest venture is his very popular radio show, “The Mack Show“, which airs from 6:00-9:00am daily on AM 700 KSEV The Voice of Texas.
GUARANTEE THE WIN
If you want to make sure you’re going to win, you have to do your homework. People who are “lucky” are generally the hardest workers. Mack says “The truth is, that the best “luck” often follows the hardest work”. If you want to succeed at anything you’re doing, you will have to put in the time and effort. You can stack the advantages in your favor by putting in the work required to properly prepare.
Mack says being “lucky” involves taking a good look at your intentions. For example, his main goals are to connect, serve, and make friends. When you make friends, you tend to develop relationships. Good relationships in business and in your personal life lead to good things. However, Mack’s main intention is to build friendships. Your intentions are what direct your actions and your actions are what produce your ultimate results. Your hard work, combined with a strong intention, is what makes you “lucky”.
Find out how Mack “got lucky” with his book, Unleash The Warrior Within, which has become a highly acclaimed cult classic and best seller.
INTENTION & CHOICES
What is “intention” exactly? Intention isn’t just having a thought. Intention is directly linked to your outcome. How do you know what your intention is? You look at your results. If you aren’t getting the results you want, it’s time to step back and take a good look at your true intentions. Did you really intend to be on time for your meeting? If you showed up on time, then yes. If you didn’t show up on time, then what was your real intention? Obviously, other things got in the way of your goal to be on time because that goal just wasn’t that important to you. It’s crucial to focus on the thing that matters right now. Work in the present and knock down the targets that need to be knocked down right at this moment.
You’ll be shocked and amazed at the results you produce when your intentions line up with your actions. You will feel a sense of “luck” if you put in the time, effort, energy to produce the results you want. If you are clear on your intention, and you bring your intensity to the moment, you will actually produce the intent (desired result).
NEVER GROW COMPLACENT
Mack says it’s important to live by example. Instead of getting frustrated by negative people and people who don’t share your passion and intensity, focus instead on setting a good example. You can’t make other people do something or understand something if they don’t want to. All you can do is lead by what you do. Not everyone will get you or understand the things you’re trying to accomplish. That’s okay. There are billions of people on the earth so some of them will get you and some won’t.
Don’t waste your time worrying about everybody else and what they’re doing. Instead, put your focus on the things that make a big difference for you. Focus on how you’re connecting in the relationships you do have. Think about how you can better serve those people, and how you show up for them. Being focused on what you can do for other people is the way in which your life grows. Keep your vision on the important tasks.
Again, not everyone will be as intense or as focused as you are. Unfortunately, those people who pander to their own weaknesses are missing the whole point of their existence. The take-home point is that you get to choose your life; choose your existence. We have free will and we are able to choose who we want to be and how we want to live. Don’t just go with the flow. Decide for yourself where you want to go and who you want to be.
Mack says it doesn’t matter where you start the game. What matters is that you face the challenges in the game and overcome them. Life is not fair. People expect life to be fair and it just isn’t. You have to show up for yourself and others in spite of fairness or unfairness. Do your best to stack all the advantages in your favor, but realize that it may be a more challenging game for you in certain aspects. That’s okay. Train and perform, seek out the things you can do to make yourself better. Your life will become what you make of it. Keep setting targets for yourself so you can move forward. If you don’t set targets, you’ll just end up going around in circles chasing your tail.
Mack says it’s important not to grow complacent about where you are in your life or what you’re doing. Take stock of your situation and make intelligent choices that will propel you forward toward your most important goals.
BUKIDO
Throughout “Unleash The Warrior Within”, Mack mentions his self-protection training system called Bukido. He says Bukido is the warrior mindset brought into the mental and physical realm.
He started out thinking that self defense was all about being physical. His thinking completely changed into finding a way to help men and women get the mental performance needed to show up under pressure. He thought, how do I get you to show up when your life actually matters; when it matters most? He began creating a simplified system to get the mental performance as well as the physical performance to show up when needed.
Mack says that he’s not actually teaching you new techniques, he’s helping you realize that you already know what to do. He says it’s the mental baggage and the thoughts and chaos going on in our heads that don’t allow us to act appropriately when needed. We are waiting for someone to give us permission to be who we really are. Mack teaches you to put all that stuff aside so that you can show up in the moment and be ready mentally and physically when the knife is at your throat or the gun is at your head. What tends to happen for most people is they just don’t “show up” to see the thing that has to be done in that moment. They have too much chaos going on in their heads because they live a life of reaction and get surprised instead of being prepared for the moment.
It’s imperative that you learn to focus on the thing that matters at that moment instead of fixating on the things that can go wrong. It’s the same process when you are trying to attain a goal. You don’t automatically arrive at the destination, there are small goal points along the way. By comparing war with real life and stressful situations, Mack was able to develop principles that are equally effective in war and are relevant to the daily challenges you face. We all face stress, pressure, doubts, second-guessing, hesitation. What happens in those moments, because they’re so spread out and the internal dialogue is so dense, is you can barely even hear your internal voice. The panic, the threats, the self doubt, the fear of it going wrong, all of those things get in the way of just focusing on the thing that matters versus fixating on all the things that don’t. Unleash The Warrior Within is an articulation of that – taking a Navy SEAL’s mental approach to accomplishing what you want in life.
Mack’s goal in writing the book and developing the Bukido program was to get these principles down to something that’s really simple. You have to learn to see the thing that must be done in that moment. Understand that if you just trust you’re clearly seeing the target, and you’re understanding it, weapons will show up automatically and movement will happen without a thought. When you are clear and focused, it’s amazing how you can perform. Success is about doing less, better, rather than doing more, halfway.
Bukido and the Warrior Mentality are basically about preparing you to deal with everyday life, focusing on the things that are most important to you, and getting your values straight.
WHAT’S NEXT & WHERE TO PURCHASE
Check out Richard “Mack” Machowicz, and his website Not Dead Can’t Quit. He is the author of the book “Unleash The Warrior Within” which is available for sale on Amazon.com and on his “Not Dead Can’t Quit” site. You can also interact with Mack in his Forum on NDCQ.com, via Twitter, and, of course, on his very active Facebook page.