The Mental Frame & Specific Daily Actions to Succeed | Andy Stumpf

Andy Stumpf describes a simple but transformative weekly practice: draw a line down a sheet of paper, label one column «concern» and the other «influence». List everything occupying your waking hours on the left. On the right, write down what you can actually control. Most people discover the left column sprawls across the page while the right holds a single entry: yourself. This imbalance exposes the core truth: you have no control over what happens to you, but absolute control over how you respond.

Huberman adopted this exercise immediately and reports it has remapped his unhealthy tendencies, giving him far more agency in daily life. The practice is especially powerful when sticky thoughts wake you at 3 a.m. — invariably, those thoughts live on the concern side. Recognizing that being scared or concerned about something does not impact its outcome frees energy to focus on the right-hand column: your thought process, your speech, your time management, your daily plan.

The algorithm of social media and the noise of modern life are designed to bloat the concern column. The exercise helps identify an unhealthy attachment to things you cannot change. Over time, it trains you to cross back into the sphere of influence — the only place where effort yields results.

For Stumpf, wingsuit BASE jumping was never about danger for danger's sake. One minute before stepping off a cliff, every concern — bills, arguments, career worries — evaporates. For the next 90 seconds, only the immediate 3 seconds matter. That razor focus, that «beautiful place» of total presence, was something he first experienced on SEAL operations and unknowingly lost when he left the military. The static of everyday life became overwhelming.

What surprised him most was the long tail: a single two-week trip to Switzerland, jumping daily, would leave him mentally dialed for six months. He was a better father, a more patient husband, sharper in business. It wasn't the adrenaline high; it was a recalibration of time perception and mental clarity. Huberman notes that Rick Rubin and other creatives report a similar post-flow calm after intense creative work — a state for which neuroscience has no formal name.

Stumpf found other activities — jiu-jitsu, for instance — that could replicate some of that reset, though never quite as powerfully. He ultimately quit wingsuiting when the risk-reward calculus shifted: friends died, his access to drop zones dwindled in Montana, and he realized he could no longer maintain the currency and competency required. The lesson: the activity itself is less important than finding something that pulls you fully into the present and leaves you anchored for weeks afterward.

People assume being a SEAL is the hardest thing Stumpf has endured. It's not. His nearly two-year divorce was soul-crushing in a way combat and training never were. The military never forced him to question whether he was a good enough person to continue existing. The divorce did. He lost contact with his oldest son for 18 months — calls ignored, letters unanswered, parking-lot encounters met with his son burning out without acknowledgment.

Every tool in «Drown Proof» — the concern-versus-influence exercise, controlling self-talk, breaking time into the shortest possible chunks — became essential for survival. He withheld details out of respect for his ex-wife's privacy and because he has a platform and she does not. But he's open about the outcome: staying the course eventually restored his relationship with his son, now closer than ever. The takeaway is that the battles no one sees, the ones that gut your sense of self-worth, are often far harder than the ones that earn medals.

Huberman, who grew up in a high-conflict divorce, resonated deeply with this section of the book. He realized how hard it must have been for his own parents — a perspective that took decades to develop. Stumpf's candor about this chapter demolishes the myth that elite performers are immune to the struggles that break ordinary people. They're not. They just have tools — and sometimes those tools are barely enough.

Dave was the standard for what a SEAL should be. If you met his expectations, you earned silent approval; if you fell short, his tongue was a whip. He served at an elite JSOC command for a decade, often alone in adversarial countries, and later taught selection candidates. From the outside, he was the archetype. Behind closed doors, he was collapsing under the weight of his own expectations.

Stumpf read Dave's journals after his death. The gap between how Dave saw himself and how others saw him was staggering. Dave was isolated, battling alcohol addiction, and unable to share the depth of his struggle. He tried Ibogaine treatment multiple times — even facilitated it for others — but it didn't work for him. The journals revealed a man who couldn't reconcile his internal reality with the standard he demanded of himself. That dissonance, paired with isolation and alcohol, led to a gun in his mouth at his family home in Florida.

At the funeral, everyone asked the same haunting question: «What could we have done?» No one ever says they did enough. Stumpf doesn't know what more could have been done. Millions of dollars flow into veteran suicide prevention programs; peer networks rally around anyone showing signs of crisis. Yet the problem persists. He suspects that many operators bring a «full seabag of trauma» into service, and when you layer on operational stress without addressing the foundation, the structure eventually fails.

Stumpf owns a Black Rifle Coffee shop in Kalispell, Montana, hosts a podcast, travels the world with his wife as she coaches jiu-jitsu, and recently published his first book. None of these pursuits would have appeared on any list he could have made when leaving the SEALs. He's worked as a strength coach, a charter jet pilot, a professional skydiver and BASE jumper, and a public speaker. He has no idea what comes next — and he's more excited about that uncertainty than any specific target.

He's learned that white-knuckling a rigid plan is less effective than relaxing into readiness. His litmus test for new opportunities is simple: Do I naturally do this in my life? Would I enjoy this regardless of the paycheck? If either answer is no, it's an easy no. He's old enough now to know he has the tools to handle whatever comes, and that confidence has opened more doors than any amount of forcing ever did. For someone who spent years in crisis mode, wondering if he could pay the mortgage, this shift from survival to discernment represents a decade of hard-won growth.