SEAL Survival Guide (5 page)
Read SEAL Survival Guide Online
Authors: Cade Courtley
SEAL training has remained largely unchanged for more than forty years because it simply works. It continues to produce some of the finest future warriors of any school in the military by using a very basic blueprint:
1. Break (beat) the individual down.
2. Build them back up, achieving a both physically and mentally tougher trainee.
3. Repeat . . . repeat . . . repeat.
As a senior SEAL instructor, I used to tell my students, “SEALs are formed like a sword is forged from a piece of steel—by constantly heating, hammering, and cooling by submergence in water. In the end, both weapons are ready for battle.”
Attack Your Fear List
Physical toughness and mental toughness are branches of the same tree. By pushing yourself physically, you will be pushing yourself mentally, but as I said earlier, the brain is the strongest muscle in the body, and it requires an expanded workout program. Here is the quickest and most effective way to “exercise” your mental toughness, something that I call the Fear List.
Start by making a list of five things that make you nervous or scared. It could be heights, fighting, small spaces, or the water. Let’s take public speaking, for example. I’ve seen some of the toughest guys in the world become Gummi bears when required to speak in front of a group of people. Next, create a five-minute presentation based on something you are very familiar with. Practice this several times by yourself, speaking out loud. Finally, you
must
organize a group of people, be it coworkers or an assemblage at a public event, and give your presentation. It may not be perfect, but you have just conquered
a fear and in doing so made yourself mentally tougher. Continue down your Fear List, and you will see how quickly you can remove other fear-induced limits. This will give you more confidence in all other areas of your life. Remember that living in fear is not really living.
When confronting each of your fears, remember how SEALs train: Break down, build back up, and repeat. When you repeat these actions, even if you don’t succeed completely the first time, the next attempt will make you mentally tougher. There are also some other simple tools for acquiring mental toughness. First off, I absolutely forbid whining or blaming others—both are completely antithetical to achieving mental toughness. For example, the next time you go into a store and there is a long checkout line, don’t moan. Instead, monitor how you can control your mind and force yourself to be patient. In fact, if impatience is your weakness, then that is your personal impediment to mental toughness. Instead, let the person standing behind you get ahead of you, until your impatience has no power over you. Break, build back, and repeat. If you get a flat tire, get out of the car and fix it. If you run out of gas while driving because you didn’t check your gauges or equipment, blame no one. Learn as you walk to the nearest gas station and back with a gas can in your hand, doing so without saying a word. If you get caught in the rain, remind yourself it’s only water and endure it until you have an opportunity to change into dry clothes. This is how you achieve mental toughness on a daily basis.
SEALs say: “The only easy day—was yesterday.”
(Because yesterday is over.)
MENTAL TOUGHNESS CHECKLIST
(all answers need to be yes):
Did I identify a fear?
Did I make preparations to conquer this fear?
Did I conquer this fear?
Did I move on to my next fear?
Hell Week occurs during the first of several weeks of BUD/S training. It consists of six nonstop, hypothermia-filled, sleepless days and nights and is the time when most of the DORs (drop on request), or quitters, ask to go home. This training is the ultimate test of mental and physical toughness. We were trained to suffer in silence—we may have been cold, tired, and hurting, but nobody wanted to hear it. I will never forget when a nationally ranked triathlete in our class, who had barely broken a sweat in the previous weeks of training, quit on the third night of Hell Week. He decided he just didn’t want to go back into the water. As naturally gifted as he was athletically, he had never truly been mentally pushed like he was during Hell Week. But I also remember another member of my class, a 135-pound, skin-and-bones-looking guy who was one of the slowest runners and barely said a word. He continued on the rest of the week determined and made no sign that he was enduring hardship. I later learned that he had lived his entire life being put down for his size. Hell Week was just another week for him. That’s mental toughness.
