Enduring

I listened to an interesting podcast recently (thanks, OB) where a BUDs (Navy Seal training pipeline) instructor talked about BUDs as a laboratory for failure. Instantly had my attention.

Every single BUDs candidate believes strongly on day 1 that they’ll make it to the end and that nothing could deter them from this singular life goal. Famously, most of them don’t make it – BUDs is designed to relentlessly grind them down and weed them out. So what was the difference between the ones that made it or didn’t? According to this instructor, the ones that bowed out put their focus on how much suffering was still to go.

The instructors job is to do anything in his power to make them quit. The biggest tool in his tool kit? Pushing them to expand their time focus and think in bigger chunks of time – to get future focused. What are you feeling and thinking right now now and where’s the end of this suffering? And then he’d keep their focus on the space between right now and the end. Think about how long you’ll be cold, tired, hungry, miserable. How many more days and weeks of this misery can you endure? The more the candidates focused on that future space, the less likely they were to endure. The more a candidate kept a myopic focus on the now, on the next step, on staying present and doing the next thing…the more likely they were to succeed.

Where do you put your focus in the midst of suffering? Do you focus on how long the suffering might last? What the future will hold? Or do you stay focused on the next step, the task right in front of you? Prepare now – you’re either in a hard time or one is coming. True for all of us. Prepare to endure.