How to Build Resilient, Mentally Strong Teens—Lessons from a Navy SEAL

May 28, 2024

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Raising teens who can handle setbacks, stay confident, and push through challenges isn’t easy.

In this episode, Dr. Cam sits down with Chad Metcalf, former Navy SEAL, entrepreneur, and author, to share powerful, real-world strategies for helping teens develop grit, confidence, and resilience. Chad knows what it takes to stay mentally tough—and he’s here to help parents pass those lessons on to their kids. From handling failure the right way to fostering a strong growth mindset, this episode is packed with practical, no-fluff advice that will empower you to raise a teen who can take on life’s toughest challenges.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE

The #1 mistake parents make when trying to build their teen’s confidence
How to help your teen turn failure into fuel for success
Why letting kids struggle (the right way) is key to mental toughness
How to model resilience—even when you feel like giving up

5 KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR PARENTS OF TEENS

Resilience starts with failure. Let your teen struggle, but provide guardrails to help them learn from it.
Competence builds confidence. Encourage skill-building activities that help teens discover their strengths.
Your reaction to failure matters. Recognize and celebrate effort and persistence, not just results.
Model mental toughness. Show your teen how to push through challenges with resilience and determination.
Teach smart goal-setting. The urgent-important matrix can help teens manage priorities and stress.

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RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

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EPISODE CHAPTERS:

00:00 Introduction: Building Resilience in Teens
02:55 The Importance of Allowing Kids to Fail and Learn
06:03 Modeling Resilience: The Role of Parents
10:00 Discovering Strengths Through Skill-Based Pursuits
14:24 Supportive Responses to Failure: Building Resilience
23:42 The Failure Hack: Embracing Failure as a Learning Opportunity
28:13 Acton Academy: Encouraging Self-Discovery and Mastery-Based Learning
36:31 The Urgent-Important Matrix: Prioritizing Tasks and Goals

CONNECT WITH OUR GUEST: Chad Metcalf

Instagram: @chad__metcalf
Facebook: @chadmetcalf251
LinkedIn: @chadmetcalf251

CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST: Dr. Cam Caswell

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Cam (00:01.662)
Hello, parents. You've likely heard that building resilience in your teen is crucial. It's not just about protecting them from mental health challenges but also setting them up for success and happiness. In this episode, we have a special guest joining us, Chad Metcalf. Chad is not only an entrepreneur and author but also a former Navy SEAL who understands the essence of mental toughness. He's going to give us parents some practical strategies to nurture our teens' resilience, confidence, and other skills essential for navigating life's challenges.
Chad, welcome to the show. Before we dive in, can you share your backstory? How did you start focusing on mental toughness and resilience?

Chad Metcalf (00:33.757)
Thanks for having me. For me, one of the reasons I got out of the Navy was my three young boys. I wanted to be around to see them grow up. I had done 12 and a half years, so I was at that point where I had to decide—do I do another 10 or 15 years, or do I get out and do something else? It was a hard decision. I'd spent my entire adult life in the Navy, and as crazy as it sounds, that felt like the safe thing to do. The thing we know is what feels safe to us.

Dr. Cam (01:12.542)
Exactly.

Chad Metcalf (01:12.947)
I wanted to see my kids grow up. I wanted to coach baseball and flag football and do all the dad stuff. I was going to play college golf, but 9/11 happened, and I joined the Navy instead. After getting out, I had this idea that I could make the PGA Tour and somehow convinced my wife it was a good idea. I went for it, but after three years, I realized it wasn’t working out. I was really good in the last six months, but after running out of money for the third time, I knew I had to do something else.

During that time, I coached my kids in judo, jiu-jitsu, baseball, and football. I've coached all my kids in at least one sport. Right now, I’m coaching my 10-year-old’s Little League baseball team. I've been around people with extreme resilience, mental toughness, discipline, and focus my entire life. To me, that’s just normal. But I realized that not all kids and parents get it.

For example, a 10-year-old kid comes to practice and says, "Coach, I want to pitch." I give him a shot in the game, and he expects to be perfect his first time. But that’s not how it works. He gets nervous, and his parents don’t understand why. I tell them, "He’s nervous because he cares." When I started SEAL training, I was nervous. When I played golf, I was on the first tee, palms sweating, hands shaking. I thought, "This is ridiculous—I’ve been in combat, but I’m nervous at a golf tournament?"

Dr. Cam (03:18.906)
Right. Hitting that ball is probably harder than some of the things you did as a SEAL—at least when I play.

Chad Metcalf (03:29.761)
Anytime you step into a new environment, you’ll be nervous. Excitement, anxiety, and fear are all about perception. When a kid is on the mound, I tell him, "Of course, you’re nervous. Everyone is watching you. Why wouldn’t you be?" Then I say, "Just throw one 10 feet over the catcher." He’s surprised, but I tell him, "Who cares? Just throw it as hard as you can and see what happens." Then I ask, "If you walk the batter, what happens to your life tomorrow?" He realizes it’ll be exactly the same. "So just have fun and work on getting better."

Parents often try to help their kids too much, especially in sports. A kid steps up to pitch, and their parents start coaching mechanics—release points, positioning—right there in the game. But game day isn’t for fixing things; it’s for doing what you already know. One of my golf coaches told me, "Competence breeds confidence, and confidence sets the stage for performance." You get confident by putting in the work and building your skills. Once you’ve done something a thousand times, you know you can do it. But then, you have to put yourself under pressure and practice with real stakes—whether it’s running a lap, doing push-ups, or some other consequence for failure. That’s how you learn to thrive under pressure.

With my book, I teach five steps to build mental toughness. It works for anything. I used it for grad school, launching my book, and even monetizing my YouTube channel—which less than 1% of YouTubers do. But it wasn’t instant success. I made 100 videos in 100 days, and they all sucked. That’s part of the process. You put in the work, fail, assess why you’re failing, and then refine your approach.

Dr. Cam (06:49.278)
Let’s talk about how parents can do that. Most parents want to build resilience in their kids, but the approach often backfires. Some try to protect their kids from pain and step in too much. Others take the opposite approach and pile on difficulties, thinking it will toughen them up. Neither of those extremes work. Can you explain why? How do we find the middle ground where we build resilience while also supporting our kids?

Chad Metcalf (08:07.201)
Great question. I was actually talking about this the other day with a friend who runs Acton Academy Dripping Springs, where my youngest goes to school. The magic of that school is that it’s learner-driven. It’s about using systems to help kids find their own intrinsic motivation.

I tell people this story: After high school, I tried to join the Navy but was disqualified because of a titanium plate in my arm. I was crushed. I tried college but couldn’t even get up for an 8 AM math class—my best subject! A year later, I made it through SEAL training. People ask, "How does someone who couldn’t wake up for a class become a Navy SEAL?" The answer: I wanted it.

You have to struggle a little to figure out who you are and what you want. At a recent Acton Academy parent meeting, they showed a video of a baby learning to crawl. He was struggling to reach a toy, and everyone’s instinct was to help. But if you give the baby the toy, he doesn’t learn to crawl. He has to struggle, and after 45 minutes, he got it. That’s how kids learn.

It’s often the kids who fail early and fast that go the furthest—if they learn from it. Kids who are naturally gifted but never struggle don’t develop resilience. I saw this in SEAL training. Some Olympic-level athletes quit in the second week. They were physically gifted, but they had never learned to fail and keep going.

I don’t think we have to add negativity. I try not to. I have three kids—18, 15, and 10—and I’m a different parent now than I was with my oldest. You learn. You adjust. We try to give them freedom within guardrails—enough to let them fail in a way that’s safe but still teaches them valuable lessons.

For example, one of my teenagers recently fell for a scam—someone promised him $200 to deposit a check. I had talked to him about this before, but he still did it. Now, he’s mowing yards to cover the loss. It’s not the end of the world, but if he learns the lesson, it’s worth it. That’s why I read, seek advice, and learn from others. I got tired of learning the hard way. As parents, we have to let our kids struggle enough to grow, but not so much that it destroys them.

Dr. Cam (13:27.326)
I think the big difference too is when that happens. First of all, we're so scared of having them. I think I use the term "guardrails" too, so I love that you use that. I think we set those so narrow because we're so worried and have this fear that the bumps and bruises are going to have a much bigger impact than they actually do. The narrow guardrails are actually what cause them to not be resilient because they don't trust themselves or believe we trust them.

I think the other thing is when we give them that breadth to make a mistake, and they do make a mistake, a big piece of this is how we respond to that mistake and failure. Do we say, "I told you so. You should have worn your shoes. Look at that." Or how do we respond to those failures so that kids don't develop a sense of shame and fear of failure, but instead learn to embrace failure and grow from it?

Chad Metcalf (14:29.313)
Yeah, I'd say it depends on the circumstance, right? I try not to do the "I told you so," although sometimes I do, and then my wife's like, "Stop doing that." But if it's something like, "Hey, I told you to put on your shoes, and now you're complaining to me that your foot is scraped up," I'm like, "Dude, I literally told you that." So that's more of a decision, like I gave you the solution.

Dr. Cam (14:38.846)
It's very tempting. It's so tempting.

Chad Metcalf (14:56.577)
You didn't listen, and now you're suffering the consequences, right? I think that's a life lesson. But when they're going after something—whether it's learning an instrument, a sport, coding, or any skill-based pursuit—that's where I'm encouraging failure. Go push yourself and figure it out. That's where you learn and start figuring out your strengths.

I firmly believe we can't just be whatever we want to be—we can be a lot more of who we are. The sooner we figure out who we are and what our strengths are, and we go and build those strengths, the better we’ll be able to attack life. And the more fulfillment we'll have. I figured that out at 35, and I was like, "That makes a lot of sense." In business, for example, there are certain things that aren't my thing. But my wife is really good at those parts. So when kids explore, they start figuring out what they're good at, which is what’s really missing in traditional education.

In school, it's, "Sit there, listen, and regurgitate what you're told." Then people say, "Well, they told me I wasn't a good writer, so that must not be my thing." But were you interested in it at that time? That makes a big impact. So, figure out what your kid is interested in and let them go do it, fail, and grow. Another misconception I hear is, "We’re going to try this out and see if they're good at it." Well, you're not going to be good at anything when you start. You have to put in the work and develop competency before you can figure out if it's your thing.

People talk about hitting flow. "How do I hit flow? I'll do breathing exercises." That can help if you're already good at something. But if you're starting out, that's not going to help. You hit flow when you have a high skill level and the challenge level is high. If you're hitting anxiety, it means the challenge level is higher than your skill level, so you need to build your skills. As parents, if we understand this, we can give our kids actionable steps. But first, we need to let them get out there and fail so they’re actually ready to listen to a coach and be coachable.

Dr. Cam (18:06.206)
I agree completely. Sometimes having somebody else… And I'm thinking here, Chad, about that step where we get to anxiety mode. We're not comfortable with being uncomfortable. How do we as parents help our kids through that stage where they’re so terrified of failure that they don’t even get close to that point? How do we help them push through without making it about us and while fostering intrinsic motivation? Because us pushing isn’t intrinsic—it’s external.

Chad Metcalf (18:47.841)
Yeah, I think it all comes back to that old saying, "Do as I say, not as I do." When our kids are little, we're in the protect phase—"Don't run in the street. Don't do these things." But slowly, we have to move from that to modeling behavior. If we're not pushing out of our comfort zones, taking risks, and overcoming failure, then how do we expect them to?

I tell my kids, "I'm terrified of heights, but I didn't let that stop me from jumping out of airplanes." Every time I did it, I hated it. But I didn’t hesitate—I just jumped. My first thought was, "Parachute, don't die, don't die… Okay, parachute, please open… Alright, it's open… Now don’t break your legs… Okay, I'm on the ground. I survived another one."

Dr. Cam (19:45.118)
Right. Survived another one. Yay.

Chad Metcalf (19:54.273)
The fear never really goes away. The more you face it, the better you get at handling it. People think fear disappears—it doesn't. You just get better at facing it. At Acton Academy, everyone is on their own hero's journey. If you're a parent, instead of telling your kid, "Where are you on your journey? Are you building your core skills?" it's more powerful to say, "What are you working on in core skills today?"

Dr. Cam (20:46.622)
I think that's so important—being transparent about when we fail or make mistakes, and even sharing that feeling of embarrassment or nervousness. As parents, we sometimes want to appear like we have it all figured out, but that’s a disservice to our kids. They need to see that every day we’re pushing through, and that’s the expectation. Recognizing when our kids push through—whether they succeed or not—is what really matters. It's the pushing through that should be celebrated. Like, "You did it anyway. Wow." Right? Do you agree?

Chad Metcalf (21:32.097)
Yeah, for sure. That’s what I tell the kids when I coach. If you make a mistake in a game or practice, I’m not going to be mad or yell at you. I don’t yell at kids at all. It’s rec baseball—my goal is for everyone to want to play baseball again. That’s the goal.

In my book, Young Athletes' Ultimate Guide to Mental Toughness, I wrote it in a way that kids I coach could understand. But a buddy of mine read it and said, "Dude, I'm using this with my entire sales team at work." And I was like, "I know, because sports are a metaphor for life." Most of our kids won’t be college or professional athletes. No one’s going to remember who won 10U Little League. But they’ll remember the life lessons. They’ll remember how their coaches treated them.

Dr. Cam (22:15.614)
It's amazing.

Chad Metcalf (22:34.657)
I remember coaches who made an impact on my life. I learned about work ethic, putting in effort, and failing—but learning from it. It’s fine to fail, but let’s learn why and try not to fail the same way twice. If you keep making the same mistake over and over again, that’s the definition of insanity—expecting a different outcome.

Dr. Cam (22:58.494)
Expecting a different outcome, right? Yeah.

Chad Metcalf (23:03.841)
If you're not trying, I’ll call that out. "Hey, you're not putting forth your effort. You're not paying attention. Let's focus." But if they’re showing up, putting in the work, and improving—that’s all you can really ask for.

Dr. Cam (23:19.582):
That takes time. If our kids are resistant to that, we can't just tell them to do it. We’ve got to keep building them up because I think if we just keep telling our kids to be more resilient, just push through without helping them learn how to do that, I think that's the tricky part. How do we learn? I wanted to hear a little bit more about what you mean by the fail hack.

Chad Metcalf (23:42.721):
So, the failure hack, and I think it’s like a quote in business school, right? It’s like, as an entrepreneur, you want to fail as fast and cheaply as possible. One of the things they made us do a couple of times was go out and sell stuff door-to-door. It was terrible. I don’t like doing it. The first thing they did was give us this cold brew coffee machine and no sales training. They said, “Alright, y’all go out and try to sell it.”
So, of course, I show up, and I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got this cold brew,” but you can’t say, “It’s for business school,” blah, blah. You have to pretend this is your job, right? No cheating. I go out there and I research this coffee maker. I’m like, okay, it does cold brew, and you know, you put it in there overnight and now you have cold brew coffee, and it’s BPA-free, blah, blah, blah, right? Features and benefits.
I get up, open the door, and I say, “Hi, sir, ma’am. I’ve got this cold brew coffee maker. It’s BPA-free,” and blah, blah, blah. And they’re like, “No thanks.” 200 doors slammed in my face, right? I’m like, wow, that was awful.
So, like, two weeks before we graduate, they say, “Hey, we’re doing another sales challenge. You’re selling children’s dictionaries for $50. By the way, you can buy it on Amazon used for $6. You can’t say it’s for business school, and you have to sell at least one or you’re kicked out of school.”

Dr. Cam (25:10.11):
Dang.

Chad Metcalf (25:10.945):
But they said, “We’re going to give you sales training.” I was like, okay. So, the first thing they told us was, “A quick no is as good as a quick yes. You want a fast answer. You don’t want to sit there for 20 minutes and then hear, ‘I’m not interested.’” So, first, you need a pattern interrupt, right? What’s going to get them so you can have your setup to figure out if they’re even a potential customer?
I thought about this, but because I’d failed so many times, I already knew what they were going to say. “It’s not a good time. I’m busy. I’m not interested.” I thought, well, that’s what they all say. So, I knocked on the door and said, “Hi, sir, ma’am. I know it’s probably not a good time. You’re busy, but if you give me 30 seconds and you’re not interested, I’ll just go away.” No one slammed the door in my face. Anyway, I sold it on the 11th door.
I found their pain point. They had kids. I got the book in the kid’s hand, and they loved the book. It’s more about connection. But if I hadn’t failed those 200 times, I wouldn’t have been able to see what needed to be done.
So, whatever it is, whenever you go out and fail, you become ready to learn the lessons. There’s this triangle of knowledge. There are things we know we know, things we know we don’t know, and things we don’t know we don’t know. We have to fail and get feedback from others to actually get those things. Now, we have new information, and we go start training that. Then guess what? We fail again. You restart the system again. Why did I do that? Is there something obvious to me? To a friend? A mentor? Can I read about it? Get this knowledge online? Then with the new information, we go back and deliberately practice it again.
Whatever the skill is—I literally use this to pass the swims in BUD/S, finish top of my class in business school, launch an Amazon bestseller, crack YouTube, teach golf, and teach kids in sports. It works for anything. But you have to have a clear goal for it to work.

Dr. Cam (27:28.51):
The other thing that kind of stuck out about what you just said too is most teens don’t know what they don’t know. I think that’s why they always think they know everything. It’s not because they really think they know everything. They just don’t know what they don’t know yet. And they’re not going to learn if we just keep telling them what they don’t know. They’ll just shut that out.
But what you said is, when they learn on their own what they don’t know, they’ll be open to learning how to fill that void, right? How to learn that. And I think that might be a big, aha moment for me right now. When we get kids to have that opportunity to figure out for themselves what they don’t know, then they’re going to be open to learning it.

Chad Metcalf (28:13.089):
Yeah. That’s kind of the act in the Academy model. There are no teachers, only guides, and the guides are forbidden from making declarative statements. They can only answer questions with more questions. The kids have to figure it out themselves, and there are no grades. It’s mastery-based—so you move on to the next level of math when you reach 100% mastery of that subject, not when you get 70% and pass. Once you master the subject, you move on. They can ask a friend, use a resource, or first use their brain. After that, they can ask a guide, who will ask a Socratic question to guide them in the right direction. They're forced to struggle to figure things out.

It’s in that struggle that we really start learning. Some of the kids coming out of this after 20 years are incredible. These kids are not just two to three times more effective than kids from traditional education—they’re 100 times more effective. These kids are coming out at 16 years old, after going through this program, more capable than I was after business school.

Dr. Cam (29:48.926):
Because you didn’t know what you didn’t know, right? You thought you knew everything, but when you hit 30, you realized how much you didn’t know.

Chad Metcalf (29:58.529):
Exactly.

Dr. Cam (30:31.777):
The cool thing is we can create that environment at home. The school model is amazing, but not everyone can do that. As parents, we’re around our kids for years. We can create the same environment where we let them learn by doing and guide them with questions, not by stepping in and doing it for them. That helps them build self-belief because they feel that we believe in their ability to figure things out.

Chad Metcalf (30:48.001):
Yeah. It all comes down to asking good questions. If you ask your kid, “How was school today?” and they say, “Fine,” you ask, “What did you do?” and they say, “Nothing,” that’s not a good question. But if you ask, “What was the weirdest thing that happened today?” or “Who annoyed you the most and why?” you start digging deeper.

Also, with hobbies, like when I talked to my youngest about YouTube. I asked, “How many hours a day do you spend on YouTube?” He said, “I don’t know.” I kept asking, “More or less than one? More or less than two?” Finally, he said, “Two and a half hours.” Then I asked, “What skills do you want to have by 15 that you don’t have now?” He said, “I want to be able to do this and that.” I asked, “If you spent that time on those skills, where would you be?” It became his idea.

Dr. Cam (31:44.158):
Exactly. That’s so much more impactful than just saying, “Don’t waste your time on the computer, do something productive.” Now, they understand it’s about their goals and it’s their idea.

Chad Metcalf (32:02.529):
Yeah, it’s like video games, right? I have a love-hate relationship with them. They can be a giant waste of time, but kids are actually learning how to learn by playing Fortnite. If you’ve never played, you’re going to be terrible at first, just like anything else. So, they practice with friends, watch YouTube videos, and keep repeating to get better.

I was coaching a football team and asked, “How many of you play Fortnite?” Everyone said yes. I asked, “How many of you watch videos to get better?” They all said yes. I asked, “How many of you practice with your friends in private mode?” They said yes. Then I asked, “Have you thought about doing the same thing with football?” They said, “Okay.” After that, we won every game.

Dr. Cam (33:22.11):
That’s powerful. When we embrace what they’re already doing and enjoying, like Fortnite, and use that as a model, instead of saying, “Stop playing Fortnite, do something else,” we’re showing them they already know how to learn and improve. They just need to apply it to other areas. They’ll think, “You get me.”

Chad Metcalf (34:16.769):
Exactly. And that’s what we need to model for our kids—change our perspective on failure. I sent over a resource for parents and teens to use. Parents should try it first, and their kids will be curious about it instead of feeling forced.

Dr. Cam (34:45.566):
Yeah, it doesn’t work well when we force things. It usually pushes them away.

Chad Metcalf (34:48.001):
Right. The resource is the Urgent-Important Matrix, developed by Dwight D. Eisenhower. He had limited time and a lot to get done, so he created a system to prioritize. It has four quadrants: urgent and important, not urgent but important, urgent but not important, and not urgent and not important. For a teenager, going to a football game may feel urgent but isn’t necessarily important. But if you’re on the football team, it’s both urgent and important.

This matrix helps you evaluate how you're spending your week. Are your actions moving you toward your goals? If you're spending too much time on things that are urgent but not important, or not urgent and not important, it’s time to re-evaluate. If you spend five minutes on this each week, it can change your entire year.

Dr. Cam (36:31.166):
I love that. And I think it can help parents understand why things that feel unimportant to them may be urgent and important to their kids. It’s not about agreeing on everything, but understanding their perspective.

Chad Metcalf (36:58.625):
I’ve done this with my 18-year-old. I asked him to show me his urgent-important matrix. He realized he spent all his time on things that were urgent but not important or not urgent and not important. No surprise that he wasn’t moving toward his goals.

Dr. Cam (37:36.318):
There’s a balance, right? Some things in the “urgent but not important” quadrant, like chilling, are good too, but we want to make sure we focus on the urgent and important things. This tool really helps bring clarity to how we spend our time.

Chad Metcalf (38:03.681):
If you grab the Urgent-Important Matrix, you’ll get on my newsletter. I’ll share my story—from being broke and depressed to going to business school and turning my life around. I’ll show you how to use the matrix and also talk about the three monsters that will get in your way: distraction, resistance, and victimhood. There’s a mini-course on that, which is part of a larger course called “The Next Great Adventure.” I’ve had teens and even Google and YouTube executives go through it. The first quest is “Who am I?”—and they’re fired up after that.

You can find out more by visiting my site and signing up. I try to respond to emails, but it’s getting harder as I get more, so we’re building a community to help people find their calling and change the world—because it’s not just kids who need that, we all do.

Dr. Cam (39:31.742):
Absolutely. Chad, thank you so much for being here today.

Chad Metcalf (39:36.865):
Thanks for having me.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Parenting Teens with Dr. Cam Podcast is your go-to resource for tackling the real-life struggles of raising teenagers. Hosted by Dr. Cam Caswell, an adolescent psychologist and certified parenting coach, this podcast delivers practical strategies, expert insights, and real-world advice to help you strengthen your relationship with your teen and support their emotional well-being. If you're navigating teen attitudes, anxiety, or confidence struggles, this show gives you the tools to parent with more ease and impact.

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