Judd Lienhard doesn’t do motivational fluff. Ask him about mental toughness and he won’t start talking about affirmations or morning routines, he’ll tell you your mind is the enemy.

A former collegiate athlete turned Army Ranger turned performance coach, Lienhard has lived at the extremes, pushing through battlefield fatigue and training room burnout. But his real skill isn’t in deadlifting or firefights. It’s in making sense of the mental battles we all face, and refusing to sugar-coat them. 

In this conversation, he breaks down why most people fail under pressure, not because they’re weak, but because they think too far ahead. He shares the practical power of stoicism: why suffering in your head before you suffer in real life is pointless, how small daily disciplines compound, and why true excellence starts with how you brush your teeth. He even questions the modern obsession with “mental health” advice that avoids the harder truth: sometimes, accountability is the only way forward. 

He doesn’t pretend to have it all figured out. But he’s figured out just enough to know this: if you want to be free, start by taking responsibility. Not as punishment but as power. 

As a former elite soldier, what’s the secret to dealing with a challenge under great stress?  

Yeah — it’s just — your mind is not your friend. People think “mentally tough,” but usually your mind is your enemy. Because your mind isn’t trying to get you to be self-actualised. It’s just trying to help you survive. So it’s always seeking comfort and trying to avoid hard situations and seek safety. 

A lot of times, the more we think, the worse we do. Our mind will stack things on top of each other until they seem impossible. But in the moment — is what you’re doing right now impossible? 

And sometimes people say, “Yes.” But no — I mean the actual moment. Not, “I have to run five miles.” That’s not the moment. I mean: make it to the next corner. Just make it to the next corner. Then you can reassess the situation. But your mind’s like, “Well, I’ve got to make it to this corner, that corner, and that one.” That stacks things in your brain. So I think people overthink. 

You don’t necessarily have to avoid suffering. Just accept it. OK — it’s suffering. I’m here. Am I still dedicated to the cause? Is it still worth it? When people think about what they have to do, they mentally suffer before they actually suffer. And it just compounds the suffering, rather than just being in the moment. 

Yes — look ahead and plan ahead. Be prepared. Look back to see what you did wrong so you can improve. But at some point — unless it’s productive — just be in the moment. 

And yeah, I think the story you’re talking about: we were sitting there — I’ll never forget it — there was a nice breeze, it was comfortable, we were eating, which was rare. We had our boots off — also rare. And this dude starts talking about how much we’re going to have to walk. And I was like, “Dude, shut up. I don’t want to think about that.” 

He was like, “We’ve got to walk, and then the patrols we’ll have to do…” and I saw him mentally stacking tasks in his brain until they became insurmountable. He didn’t really quit, but he kind of “soft quit.” He stopped trying on the patrols. You just knew he was ready to be done. 

And that’s when I saw it. I was like, “Man — we’re not doing anything right now. Just eat your meal. Enjoy the breeze. And when they get up and say walk — you get up and walk. When they say stop — you stop.” 

So you have to acknowledge what you’re going to have to do. You’ve got to write it down, make a plan. You can’t be naive about it. But once you write it down, it’s actually a mental alleviation. It’s written down — I don’t have to think about it. I’ve got a plan. Even if that plan seems impossible at the time — come up with a plan. And then just take the next thing when it comes. 

It’s such a good practical illustration of stoic philosophy type stuff. Don’t suffer twice.

Exactly. And I feel like when you start to do that — you practise it — and you get better at it. You get better at breaking things down and not overthinking, and only worrying about what you can affect in that moment. 

You just practise it. Like anything else, you get better and better.It’s always like, “All right, what’s next?” You know? “What’s next?” And I always tell people — they say they want to be great. But you don’t even know what great is, really. Great starts with being great at small things. 

If you want to be an Olympic swimmer — brush your teeth well in the morning. Anybody can be excellent at brushing their teeth. But how are you going to be excellent at a daunting task like playing the violin if you’re not excellent at brushing your teeth? 

So I always tell people: be in the moment. Focus on being excellent in small ways. Focus on the thing you’re doing at the time. It seems weird, but you train yourself to be excellent — to do things the right way, to be focused and in the moment and structured — doing mundane things around the house, or at your job. And pretty soon, you just get good at it. And it carries forward. 

Start by being good at one thing, and then it builds momentum. I want to say — it sounds like Aristotle. Excellence is a virtue, and a habit, right? 

I mean, if you read what those dudes wrote, a lot of it is just practical, everyday advice that we can still use. Humans are the same — we haven’t changed. They weren’t fundamentally different. 

If you read Roman history — the things those guys did and said — they were buffoons, they were complicated, they loved their dogs, you know, like the rest of us. They were people. And people haven’t changed. 

You put up a post recently about several different walks of life — how to improve the complete human. I was wondering if you could run us through it?  

So first of all, I want to be clear about something. Just because I put this stuff out there doesn’t mean I always embody everything that I say. 

I always say: pure things can flow from impure vessels. So when I write something, I don’t want that to be taken as me trying to seem like I’ve got all this squared away — that I don’t suffer the same flaws as everyone else. I suffer from discipline problems. Sometimes I struggle compartmentalising things too. 

But I feel like — without digressing too much — sometimes just realising how to live life the right way, and acknowledging that, almost frees you. Because then you get accountability. 

People don’t realise that having accountability is actually a freedom. Because then you take control of your own life. And when you hold yourself accountable, all of a sudden, every time you fail, you don’t feel like you’re being victimised. You say: well, I failed because I didn’t do these things. 

Just knowing the right way to live — even if we’re not always implementing it — is a freeing feeling. Because then it’s like: well, I’ve got a plan now. And I know that if I’d done this and this differently, I would’ve had different results. 

Then I can forgive myself — and, this is important — not blame other people. And then move forward in life just a little bit better, if that makes sense. 

Changing the locus of control, right? It’s changing it — it’s within your control, rather than things happening to you.

So people think accountability is like a sentence. Like it’s like, okay, I accept responsibility, I’m the bad guy. No, accountability is acknowledging that I have the power to change my circumstance. And that’s a freedom. Accountability is freedom. You know what I mean? And it just has a negative kind of, you know, like take some accountability. You know, it’s like, no, take it. Take the accountability and then free yourself. You know what I mean? Because if you blame other people, then you’re their victim and that’s not a freedom.