In this powerful and insightful episode of Epic Begins With One Step Forward, Zander sits down with Michael Ostrolenk, a psychotherapist-turned-human optimization coach whose 30-year career spans transpersonal psychology, somatic therapy, and elite Navy SEAL training programs. Michael shares lessons from decades of studying self-mastery, martial arts, and mental toughness—revealing how true strength begins with discipline, compassion, and character. Together, they explore emotional resilience, why grit is fading in modern culture, and the keys to thriving relationships through communication and appreciation. From the battlefield of the mind to the art of self-awareness, Michael’s journey offers practical wisdom for anyone seeking to elevate their performance and purpose. This episode is a deep dive into what it really means to live an EPIC, optimized life.
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From Therapy To Toughness: Lessons From Navy SEAL Training With Michael Ostrolenk
I am honored to welcome Michael Ostrolenk onto the show. Michael, tell us who you are and what you do.
Michael’s Professional Background
First of all, Zander, thank you for having me on. It is an honor to be here. I love your work. This is awesome. I am almost 30 years into being a psychotherapist, a marriage and family therapist, and a licensed therapist in the state of California. In the year 2000, I actually stopped working under my license. I became a coach. I have been coaching for about 25 years. My graduate degree is in transpersonal counseling psychology. I did postgraduate work in somatic or body psychology. I was very fortunate. I got to do tutelage under Commander Mark Divine at SEALFIT.
I was a master coach for him for about a decade. I can get into that too, but it allowed me to do a lot of really cool training with and for and by people from Special Warfare SEALs. That opened the door for a whole bunch of other opportunities in the human optimization space, working with other people from special operations communities, including spending about four years working for Dr. Stickler in Austin, Texas. I lived for about a year in a precision medical clinic. I also got to do a lot of work in human optimization on the mind-body front, not just a little toughness and emotional resiliency front.
You had an AI or something coming in. It does not matter. That is really cool. I have known Michael for a couple of years now. The work he is doing with special warfare is really cool. I want to touch on that for a moment. For you, what is it about human optimization that really jazzes you?
The Foundation Of Michael’s Interest In Human Optimization
Man, this began when I was a little kid. I can give you a lot of the details in the story, but I will just say that I was fortunate to have a really good therapist when I was nine. She taught me biofeedback, guided imagery, and meditation. Got me into the martial arts. The martial arts, this is 1979, so it was Bruce Lee. I loved watching all the Bruce Lee movies.
I literally would spend every time I could in my basement watching Bruce Lee do my workouts. I was meditating. I was reading anything I could on the martial arts broadly speaking, but also opened the doors for Zen and meditation, Daoism, Buddhism, and even the yogic traditions. If you do a deep dive into those things outside the spiritual dimensions of them, which is a key part of those things. A lot of it is around self-regulation, self-mastery, self-management from the higher order, not necessarily just from the martial arts to fight to beat people up, although that is a useful skill to have to defend yourself.
I was always attracted to the higher-order aspects of the martial arts, which are about character cultivation, self-mastery, living for something higher than oneself, for an ethos that drives one to do good in the world, basically. Since I was literally nine, probably not before, but at least around that time, that whole world opened up for me.
That is really cool. I get that. I did some martial arts in college. You have the physical, the self-defense aspect. A big part of what I was being trained in was, as you said, that higher thing, living more for yourself and being aware that it is not something that you use when you have to, but you do not. You do not go looking to use it, but it is a nice tool or tools to have available to you. Try and avoid conflict at all costs.
I 100% agree. It is also an ethical code like the Bushido code. If you are thinking about the Japanese, all the different martial arts have various codes of conduct. It is about character development, being honorable, compassionate, actually, being caring for fellow human beings, disciplined, and being courageous. All those character traits you cultivate in the martial arts, where you can. Those are always of interest to me.
How Michael Began Working With The SEAL Community
How did you get to work with the Navy SEALs? That seemed to me like it might be a hard thing to break into, but maybe I am wrong.
I was 39 years old at this time. I have been licensed as a marriage and family therapist. I have been practicing as a coach for a long time. My wife at the time asked me, “What do you want to do for your 40th birthday?” It is a milestone. She is thinking, “Let us go to the Caribbean and do stupid s*** in the islands,” all that kind of stuff. From other work I was doing, I was very aware of very special operations communities.
I became aware of Commander Mark Divine at SEALFIT. I am like, “I want to go do that.” That was what Mark called this time, the three-week soft Academy, which was a pre-BUD/S training program. It is for young men who want to go Navy Special Warfare. Train them up for three weeks. It was really a month. You finish it off with what is called Kokoro camp. Kokoro is a Japanese word, means indomitable spirit. Modeled after Hell Week, but it is a civilian version.
Instead of five days, it is two days, no sleep. You just go from one evolution to the other. Mountains, beach, ocean, grinder. I did that. That is what I was like, “I want to do that.” I was 39, 40. I was not going into the military. Five of the guys I trained with all got their Tridents. One just retired from the SEAL community, literally a couple of months ago. I got to train with some amazing young men who became SEALs. Trained by some amazing men who were SEALs. It just opened up a whole new world for me. I eventually ended up working for Mark for a decade after that.
Any endurance challenge you take on is honestly less about the physical and far more about the mental.
You talk about an epic adventure. I certainly have seen lots and lots of videos and stuff documenting what BUD/S training is and stuff. I am just curious. You are Bushido. Is it as hard as it looks?
I can only speak from the civilian version that I went on.
I get that. For you, what you experienced, yes, not five days, but still, I imagine it was really hard.
Let me talk through the three-week soft Academy, which actually was four weeks of days. We were up at 5:20 every morning, started meditating by 5:30. We finished training by 7:30 that night. It was like 12 to 14 hours a day of complete training. It was an awesome experience. I could not ask for a better day than just like train 12, 14 hours a day. It is hard training. Do not get me wrong. It was not light. It was really hard training. On occasion, he might wake us up to go do fun things in the ocean around 1:00 in the morning. You’ve got to throw those things in there. They are the Cocoa camp itself.
We put fun in quotes there, Michael, because I got to say the ocean at 1:00 in the morning, probably not so much fun.
Here is the funny story behind that. It was a Thursday night. I remember the first time we had to do that. We had been training for a couple of weeks. Mark is like, “You guys have been training really hard. We have been eating really healthy.” Mark has been feeding us paleo-type food. He is like, “Let us take a break from training tonight. Let us go out for pizza and beer.” Everyone is like, “We get it at night off. Cool. We are going to have pizza and beer.”
I do not drink, so I did not drink the beer, but I ate a lot of pizza. I did not drink the beer, but I ate a lot of pizza. They are drinking beers, having pizza. We all get home. Everyone is just stuffed, ready for bed. I take melatonin because I take melatonin and knock myself out. Literally like 1:00 in the morning, bullhorns go off. We have got to get up. We have two minutes to get ourselves dressed on the grinder, ready to head off to the ocean. Either you are somewhat semi-fucked up from the alcohol. I was not, but I was still the melatonin.
The Value Of Enduring Hardship & “Smiling At Adversity”
You are trying to get all your stuff together. You have got to get on the grinder. You literally have two minutes to get all your stuff together. They send us to the ocean for a couple of hours of fun. Is it fun? Yes and no. I have a great picture that I put out on social media sometimes. It is a friend of mine, Heather. She is wearing what we wear for these activities, like when we are field training. She has a smile on her face. I love that because I am like, “Smile at adversity.” I chose to be here. I am choosing to go through this hell. It is hell, but I am loving every second of it.
I remember that it is the same, but talking about the smile is when I was doing marathon training. My coach said, “When you hit a mile or when you are running your marathon. It gets really hard, and it will.” He goes, “When it does smile.” He is like, “You cannot believe what a difference when you have it.” You have got part of your brain going, “Do not do this. Smile.” I have to say that on the training runs, I practice that. I am like, “No, it really does make a difference.” It is like laughing releases endorphins.
I train up for the 50-mile Goruck. Part of my travels around the country, being a nomad, I ended up in Ecuador, not our country. Obviously, Ecuador is a different country. I was in Ecuador. I was literally rocking 4 to 6 hours a day, beach mountains. It was 98 degrees, with 100% humidity. It is hard, but great training environment. I remember one time I was like 12 miles into a 17-mile ruck.
I was doing exactly what I could imagine you were doing in your own head. “This s***. What am I doing this for? This is so dumb.” Full of relaxation. “Why am I out there doing this stuff?” What I did was like, “I am going to do a Jedi mind trick.” I started running hills, which is even a thousand times worse. I come back to the regular ruck. I am like, “That s***. This is easy.” I am smiling. That made it worse for me to make myself smile to realize how easy this is compared to what I was just doing.
Mental Toughness Over Physicality In Endurance Challenges
There are a lot of these endurance challenges you put yourself in. It is honestly less about the physical part and so much more about the mental part. I know in all of my half marathons, marathons, and stuff, all the endurance sport events I have done, and the training I have done. It is always, “I want to finish.” If I cannot, it is because something bad happened, not that I just gave up.
I can imagine that serves you in all areas of your life, not just training up and running a marathon.
Look, people in the show are like, “He is going to talk about marathons again.” I talk about the marathon a lot because it is a good thing. I am trying to find other aspects, but it is really very symbolic of as an entrepreneur, you have days where it is really hard. Sometimes the hard is that you just do not feel like. You just do not feel like doing the work that you have to do. More importantly, it is stuff that you have to do that is just not in your strength. It is not one of your strengths. You are like, “I, got to make cold calls. I really hate doing cold calls. I have got to get through this.”
The Loss Of “Grit” & Mental Toughness In Modern Culture
Let me make a cultural comment. We are here in the States, at least. We are losing a lot of that grit.
There is no doubt. Those of us in Gen X know not to be ages. There was stuff, and I looked at it and went, “There was stuff I was doing.” I was riding my bike at 7:00, three miles over to my best friend’s house. My parents did not really know where I was. I grew up in the country. We had woods that backed up to a town forest of 400 acres. My friends and I were all over the place. The fact that I am here, my oldest and best friend has been my best friend my entire life.
Often when we get together, we do lament the fact that we are actually here, A, alive and B, not somehow maimed or paralyzed. There was just crazy stuff that we were doing. As we got older, we went back and looked at it. We are like, “I cannot believe that we thought we could climb up this rock face.” He grew up on a farm, so he likes baling twine. We are using that, tying it around like a sapling, and climbing up this tree. I look below. There are all these sharp rocks. I am like, “If we had fallen, we would have fallen onto the rocks. It could have been horrible.”
It is pretty crazy what we were doing. I am one of the populations I work with are young men. I have a lot of parents come to me saying, “My son is a really sensitive young man. He is a really nice young man. He is a really smart young man. All those things are great, but no mental toughness, no emotional resiliency, not a lot of grit. He needs some discipline. He needs those kinds of things to balance him out.” That seems to be consistent with a lot of people I talked to who have kids, young adults, like in their teens and early twenties, who seem to be missing from our culture.
I agree with you. Again, not to sound like the old men sitting going, “We were young.” However, there were winners, and there were losers. I was not the most athletic person, but there were like field days and stuff where you were doing like a 50-yard dash, a 100-yard dash. You got a ribbon if you came in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, and nothing if you didn’t. You might have been sad and disappointed, but we learned all this stuff. I am all about. Praise is good. People need to hear what they are doing well. All too often, I am a parent.
I did work hard with my girls who are growing up, but I still work to make sure that I am recognizing the stuff that they are doing right. Along with when I am like, “I do not think this was your best choice. That behavior. If all you hear is all the things that you do wrong, it is like when we turn on the news, it is fire, flood, and blood.” There is nothing but negative news. If you believed all of that, no matter where you get your news, you might think that the whole world is about to implode.
I know this about me. I do not really talk a lot about it, but I spent twenty years doing public policy, mostly in the national security space. I retired in 2020. I have not really watched the news since. There are certain things that are interesting to me just because they are personally interesting to me that I will follow. I was actually at a doctor’s office a couple of weeks ago. They have the local news on. The first time I have seen local news in like 4 or 5 years? I was like, “Holy God, my neighborhood is dangerous.”
You would believe, and that is part of my epic quest here is to say, “I want to highlight the good that is out there.” I want to counter that a little and go, “Yes, there is good to highlight the people who are doing the things that are tough because it is fun.”
I 100% agree. I work with couples. I do adore our co-leader men’s group, my friend, J.C. Glick. I work with couples. I do executive corporate work, but with my couples, one of the things I highlight with them is to remind them to be grateful and appreciative of anything that your partner does for you that you now take for granted because you have been together for a year or 5 or 10 or 15, 20 years. You do not even think about it. The smallest appreciations can go a long way to improve everything outcome of the relationship.
You get used to, “Here is what I am doing, here is what you are doing.” There is nothing wrong with that division of labor within a relationship. That is how a relationship works. However, occasionally, “I really appreciate that you make sure that the bills get paid on time.” Who does not like to have acknowledgement of what they are doing?
What I will tell him, Mike, this is a sexist thing to say, but I will have a lot of my females say, “He does not do X, Y, and Z.” The nagging thing. I will point out to her in this case, heterosexual couples like, “Yes, if he agrees to do something, then he should follow through and do it. If he does not, he should clean that up.” What would go a long way is to recognize what he does do, even if he should be doing it, because it is part of the relationship and vice versa. Recognize your wife. It is 8 to 1. Point out eight things you like about him that he is doing positively, to the one thing you point out that he is shitty at.
Praise, upgrade, praise. If you lead off with praise, you are likely to have a more positive outcome. That person will actually hear what you are saying. It is like I talk in the book about the 97/3 rule, that 97% of our day is actually really good. Up to three percent is not so good. Now look, some days obviously, you just have a really bad day.
In general, but in a relationship people are in relationship of long term. Let us say they make it past a year or two. There is probably a lot that is really good. If all you do is focus on that 3% that is not so good. You could say, “I really wish you would do this,” but also understand what someone is capable of. In terms of who they are. If my girlfriend said, “Zander, I would like you to talk less.” I may really want to do it, but I am not going to be successful.
You make an amazing point about all relationships, but also the primary romantic ones. I have a couple that I am recently working with. She processes really quickly. He processes very slowly. Until we made both those really conscious and discussed, she thought he did not care because he takes his time. “He is ignoring this whole thing.” No, he is actually thinking about it. He is not as quick as you. Give him grace for how he does it. Let him give you grace for how you do it. Find a way to acknowledge that in each other. It actually reduces the tension.
Look, relationships are challenging. I talk with my clients all the time about how I am only doing individual therapy, but I talk about when they are frustrated, or their partner is frustrated. I am like, “It sounds to me like there are some expectations that are not being met.” The problem with expectations is that if we do not share them, then the other person gets in a huge fight because I had an expectation. Now I am upset. My partner is like, “I do not understand why you are upset, but okay. If you are coming with this energy, I am coming with this energy.”
If you say, “I expect you to wash the dishes after I cook.” That person can then say, “Yes, I can do that. I am not capable of that.” A lot of times, it is more in the middle. “Here is what I can do. I hear the request. Here is how I can do that.” When I get upset, at least they have an understanding. “You expected that I was going to.” Again, sometimes it is little things like, “Just drop me a text that says that you were thinking about me or something during the day.”
The Importance Of Specific Communication In Relationships
Let me speak to the dishes thing, because it is fascinating. I have an annoying thing that I say to my clients, my couples, all the time, from abstract to concrete. Now saying, “Would you actually clean the dishes after I make the dinner?” is very concrete. A lot of people just say, “I need your help in the kitchen,” or even more abstract, “I need your help.” The other person is, “I do not know what that means.” I really cannot follow through on it. I cannot mind-read you that whole. The more concrete you can be, the better.
I like telling this story that just about makes sure that you are specific when you ask for help. The short of it is, you will not get it if you do not ask. The story is that Tip O’Neill, who was the Speaker of the House for 30 years. For those of you who are younger and do not know, he was Speaker of the House in Congress for 30 years. He was from Massachusetts. He was back in Boston. This woman came up and said, “I did not vote for you in the last election.” He said, “Why not?” She goes, “You did not ask me.” I love that story because it is so simple. “Vote for me.” That’s concrete. Make sure that someone understands, and then they can answer, “Yes, I can do that.”
The answer is to make sure to be clear on that request.
Again, sometimes getting most of what you want, you can be happy. You are like, “I understand who my person is. I see that they are trying to do this, but I also realized this is outside of the wheelhouse.” There is stuff that is just natural to us. It is our strength. We are like, “I guess I could definitely do that.”
I want to highlight that. That is so important. I remember a couple that I work with. She got sick. Not a chronic, not a major illness, but she was sick for a couple of weeks. She was really pissed at her boyfriend because he was not taking care of her like she would have wanted to. I said, “Does he know what you prefer when you are sick, to how to be taken care of?” She is like, “No, he should just know those things.” That is typical of a lot of people. They had just this belief system.
“If you do not know what you said, I am not going to tell you.” I had that one time in a relationship. I am like, “No, absolutely not. I am not playing this game.”
It is like, “No, relationships are really about learning.” She is like, “He should just want to naturally do these things without me asking.” I said, “Maybe he would if he knew you wanted to have them done for you. You do not know that. Maybe he just does not even know how to try. If it is not, and he still does them. That is a sign of love.”
Relationships are really about learning.
He is trying to do something. Again, and to sort of dovetail on that. It is also, if you are asking someone to do something, allow them to do it the way that they want to do it. Otherwise, because nothing is worse than trying to make your partner happy, do something you think is going to make your partner happy. They go, “No, you did it all wrong.”
We will go back to the dishes. “No, you are not washing the dishes. If they are clean, it does not matter how I get the task done. Let me do it my way.” Versus either that or do them yourself, but “You cannot complain because I am not doing it exactly the way you would do it. I will ask how you want me to do it.” I may go, “That is not how I am going to do. I am not going to wash them with Clorox every single time. Sorry.”
That is funny. I like that.
Many things to talk about. I love the concept of “not yet” that there are things in our lives that are not yet. We think of them, we want to do them, but we have not done them yet. For you, what are 1 or 2 of your not-yet?
Michael’s “Not Yet” Bucket List Of Martial Arts & Global Studies
I can throw this into a bucket list of things that I have yet to do, but I would like to add to my 30, my list of things to do. Ever since I was a little kid, I have always wanted to study Shaolin Kung Fu in China. I want to study ninjitsu, not teenage meeting ninjas, hurdle ninjutsu, but the real ninjutsu, the lineage that comes from the Masaaki-hatsumi in Japan. I want to go to Dharamsala, the Tibetan Buddhist government in exile. I would love to study Tibetan medicine there. Study Krav Maga in Israel.
It sounds like if you want to see Michael, you might have to get on an airplane because he will be in China, Japan, India, and Tibet. Those are some great not yet. I hope that at least some of those you can go out and achieve. The not yet is so important. There is so much optimism in it. Have you studied Shaolin? Not yet versus no, which is such a hard, like it will never happen. Not yet.
I have actually studied Shaolin and Kempo, which is a different derivative. Integration of Shaolin, Kung Fu, and Japanese karate. As you said, I have not studied the Shaolin in itself and its prime form in China. I have circled around it, but I have not gone there yet.
Michael, how can people get a hold of you if they are like, “I like what Michael is putting out. I want more?”
MichaelDOstrolenk.com is my website. You can find a blog. My blogs go there. If you want to read what I think and what I write, go there. You can find my work with individuals, my couples, my men’s group, and my work with the executives. If you just want to follow me, I am also on Instagram and Twitter, @M.Ostrolenk. I am on the way too much. I also post on Facebook and LinkedIn, Michael David Ostrolenk.
I will make sure to have those in the show notes. Michael, I want to thank you so much. I have been trying to get you on my show for a while, but I am so happy that we made it happen. Thank you for coming in. I want to remind everyone that if you are ready to begin your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com. As always, epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
Important Links
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- Michael Ostrolenk on LinkedIn
About Michael Ostrolenk
Over the course of my career, I’ve worked across multiple disciplines, integrating health optimization, human development, and tactical training to support high performers in optimizing every aspect of their lives.
I served on the Board of Directors for the Health Medicine Forum and directed their Health Panel Program under Dr. Len Saputo’s mentorship. The Forum brought together practitioners from various fields to explore and advance patient-centered integrated medicine.
In the early 2000s, I joined Ken Wilber as a founding member of the Integral Institute and became certified in Spiral Dynamics with Don Beck Ph.D. and Wade Mindsets with Jenny Wade Ph.D. I am a Master Coach with SEALFIT Unbeatable Mind Academy, where I worked closely with CDR Mark Divine (Ret- SEAL) to develop the Unbeatable Mind Online Accelerated Learning Program in 2010.
I co-created and led the Unbeatable Mind’s Inner Circle Master Mind group (2015-2019) and helped co-create the Unbeatable Mind Coach in Training Program in 2018 with Sean Hargans Ph.D., where I currently serve as faculty. I also helped organize SEALFIT’s annual training summits from 2015 to 2019.