Unbreakable: A Navy SEAL’s Way of Life (3 page)

Since we had a one-day delay, we have been put up in a military hotel here in Dover. We are all eager to get to the fight. I want to take this time to tell you more about what I think is important for you to know about my life and about your own. You all have so much to do in your lives. I may not be there to help and show you. So I want to tell you the key things you must learn to lead a full life and be able to face the good and bad times.

The first important discovery you must make in accessing, and thus mastering, your bodies is the discovery of your own Internal Dialogue as
the core of your physical performance. Since the world in general puts little emphasis on the body and health—only how it looks and feels—physical performance may not seem terribly important for kids. Overweight kids should be a sign that, without any understanding of our own Internal Dialogue and how it impacts our body and health, youth are left to satiate and act on what their Internal Dialogue is saying. I will go into more detail, but for now suffice to realize our actions are directed by our own Internal Dialogue. Yet, you kids have been born with incredible genetic gifts passed down through the Shea bloodlines.

I know of no other way to teach you about your bodies then to tell you about what I have gone through, and show you how you can access your marvelous physical potential. Fathers are supposed to demonstrate and be present to help their kids learn. In light of the situation we face, please take this as the only way left for me to impart to you …
me
. Me as athlete.

I have been an athlete all my life. From my earliest memories, I couldn’t get enough of being physical. I have always been amazed watching men and women do seemingly impossible things with their bodies. From the age of five until this moment, my thoughts and mind have been filled with dreams of physically doing the impossible. Even now, my thoughts are of running through a hail of bullets while shooting the impossibly long shot to save a trapped or dying teammate.

When I was five, living in Texas, I was the youngest boy on the street. In summertime, the older boys would play street tackle football. I watched them from the safety of my house and begged my father to let me play. He would say, “No way, son. Those boys are too big for you to play—fourteen-year-old boys are too old to play with.” I can still recall saying to myself, “When you leave for work I am going out to play. I want to show them I can run faster and harder than any of them.”

Of course, he would leave for work, and I would run out and play with the big boys all day long. I hated the fact so many of them were faster and stronger. I still hate it. When dad returned from work, I was bruised, and my lip was cut and still bleeding. He was furious I had disobeyed him. True to form, I was punished and grounded from playing street football. This went on for weeks. Finally, dad sat me down and said, “Son, why do you disobey me and risk getting hurt?”

I can recall, as if it were yesterday, what I yelled back at him: “Dad,
they need me to play with them ‘cause I love it, and I am fast and strong like you.”

This desire has followed me into my adult life. I won’t go into detail here, but I couldn’t get enough physical tests throughout high school and college. The need to be physical, to be forever fighting my way through something or back to something, like now, is always in me. I know the Internal Dialogue of
need
to
be
and
need
to be
needed
is inside everyone. In some, it gets killed off for some reason; it gets put in a box and hidden.

In high school, I lettered in track, wrestling, and football. I set school records in the 200-meter dash and the long jump. In college, I enjoyed football, track, and judo, though my academic performance lacked, well, everything resembling good grades. I became rooted in the physical.

My greatest physical achievement is the years I spent adventure racing. While I was a third-phase instructor, I had three years to prepare myself to go back to a SEAL platoon to be the man in charge, platoon Chief.

The war on terror had just started, and I knew war was on my horizon. I had to do something to make myself a better leader. I needed to be superior physically and mentally. War is truly one of the only experiences where things either work or do not, and the measure is in bodies. Don’t let the press and politicians distort that truth. Success in war is not measured in nation-building or people manipulated to your side. Success in war is measured in who won and who lost, who killed whom, and who survived … period. The wars since WWII have been left unresolved by uncommitted politicians. The war I am going to will never be resolved for the same uncommitted reasons, but my victory will be to survive, or kill as many as I can, so I live to see my family again.

I further understood the men would need me to be more than just a guy trying to make rank. I needed to go beyond what other SEALs could do physically, and I
needed
to learn “real” leadership—leadership not driven by having to follow orders. The men had to want to follow me, and I had to want to follow them. For me, wanting to follow was what made up a great team.

Here is the first point: I knew as long as I could control my own Internal Dialogue, I could achieve any physical goal. I did not know this key point until after my racing career. I learned it through hundreds of failures, pain and mistakes, and by continually transforming my Internal Dialogue, and thus, my physical performance. Please read this chapter and understand my failures; assimilate fully what my own Internal Dialogue did to me and my team.

A
DVENTURE
R
ACING
: W
INNING
…
AND
L
OSING

Initially, I faced daunting obstacles that would have stopped most people. I had never run over fourteen miles. I had never mountain biked. I had never climbed a wall over twenty feet, nor paddled a kayak over ten miles. When I looked at what an adventure race consisted of, my mind nearly stopped thinking. What I said to myself (my Internal Dialogue) was trying to destroy my efforts and tell me I could not do it. Always … until I learned to control that Internal Dialogue.

Adventure racing is everything to the extreme. Teams consist of four, one being the opposite sex. The first race I signed up for was 700 miles … yes, 700 miles, not 70. Those 700 miles were broken down to 350 miles on a mountain bike, 250 miles on foot, and 100 miles paddling. As I studied, I noticed they had thrown in a 1,100-foot climb and a 300-foot rappel for good measure. After reading the details, I closed my laptop, walked to my bed, and fell asleep—at noon on Saturday. When I finally awoke, it was Sunday noon. My mind was racing out of control with thoughts of
I have never done something like this, and, Jeez, Thom, you don’t even own a mountain bike.
Eventually, reality overwhelmed me when I realized I didn’t have a team or the money to pay for it. The cost of entrance—$8,500—is a lot for a man with, at that time, two kids. Needless to say, the cost in gear and training, after an initial calculation, would be much more—around $30,000.

All I could think of that Sunday night was how stupid I was, what a fool I was to even think about it, and how impossible a task it would be. I think this is what most people go through when they attempt something difficult; maybe it is what we all go through, even on the smallest things. We subconsciously talk ourselves out of everything new, and never realize we actually talked ourselves out of it in the first place. We become resigned and cynical and go to bed each night untransformed and unmoved by how great we all truly are.

Monday I went back to work, exhausted and angry at myself for dreaming big when the reality I lived in screamed so loudly. Yet, as I prepared to lead my class in an eight-mile rucksack run, my courage returned. I looked at those future SEALs and saw in their eyes one unmistakable thing: possibility. To be better than others, not to let obstacles obstruct their dreams and desires. My own Internal Dialogue shifted. What had seemed impossible was becoming possible. When my Internal Dialogue shifted, so did my attitude and the possibility of a new future.

Maybe the endorphins coursing through my veins in the middle of long runs or the hard physical events were affecting me, but I said to myself, “Thom, you need to do this adventure race.” When I got back home that night, I opened my computer, went to the website, and paid half the fees to secure my spot. Nothing transforms you more than laying down money toward your goal. A funny thing happened about a millisecond after I closed the computer. My hands started shaking; my own Internal Dialogue went from,
You need this
, to,
You are nuts!
Maybe that is what courage is: staking yourself out in the face of your enemy, as the Sioux Indians would do. They staked themselves in the ground because the urge of the Internal Dialogue to run in the face of the enemy is so powerful.

The first step is the hardest: to act, to commit, to sign on the line so all you have and all you need is engaged—at least that is what I have found in all great efforts in the history of man. A fully engaged Internal Dialogue, controlled by you, screaming into the void of the life you want but has no evidence to support it, serves to put the emotionally-uncommitted rollercoaster to rest for a time.

The next big step was to get a team together on short notice. Only three months remained until the beginning of the race. I had no team, no money, and no gear, yet every single day I said to myself, “I must get all of
us through this race, no matter what.” Within a week, I manipulated and cajoled three other SEALs to join me. I got a waiver from the race director to allow an all-male team to participate. But none of us had extra money to spend on this harebrained plan to push for ten days—the race duration—and endure unforeseeable mental and physical challenges.

Another great resource you will have to learn is the gift of gab—how to fearlessly engage everyone with your dream and passion. Learn how to ask for what you want and how to hear rejection as only a momentary setback. I must have sent out 200 Internet requests for money and gear, and received 205 no answers, if that is even possible. Hearing no as anything other than a momentary no breaks down your health, your drive, your ambition, everything. The problem is not with being told no, but your belief that the answer will always be no. I began to play with no as if it were a dance. Instead of blindly asking for what I wanted, I danced in the various conversations I had with people and engaged every potential sponsor as if they were already friends who wanted to be a part of the effort.

Within a month, I had secured four top-of-the-line mountain bikes and all the gear we needed. All my sponsors wanted in return was our committed effort to do the best we could to represent their products. Most people want connection to each other and want to feel needed. The excitement of everything coming together, and the exhilaration of being able to cold-call anyone pushed me to call two of the wealthiest men I knew. I was so confident I was not going to embarrass the team or the SEALs with our effort that during these two cold calls, I asked for a specific amount and explained where, how, and why I needed it. Both men said yes, and were happy to help. We were $20,000 on the way. The race fees were paid in full, and travel costs were easily met.

Three days before the start, we found two attractive women as support crew—trust me, pretty women make a man perform better. With the two vehicles packed, we headed out. Four hours into the road trip, we were on the side of the road with three flat tires. Everyone was ticked off and blaming each other—my first real-world leadership experience outside the military. My solution was to say, “We are all in this together. Keep working the problem until it is solved. I think we are in good shape. We have money for tires and time before the start. Two of us can stay here
and drink beer while the other four get the tires.” I am sure more words were exchanged, but I felt being in the moment and not making people mad was a better solution than pointing out who messed up and how this would affect the time line.

Finally, we came to race day. Everyone handles stress uniquely, and SEALs are already unique. Two of us studied maps and checked gear, one spent the entire night trying to more than engage our race crew, and one went to a bar and drank. My second key leadership lesson came on day one, two hours before the race started. With his two hours of sleep and the smell of booze permeating the air, it occurred to me to laugh and say aloud to my drunken teammate, “How can I help you? Can I carry your pack?” He politely said, “No, I am good. There ain’t no way I am going to let you tell everyone you carried me through this race. No way.”