Jeff, I want to try one last thing. Do you remember what you ate for breakfast that day?” My eyebrows raised as the picture of a refrigerator in-between two pieces of bread passed through my mind.
“Yeah, I think so.” I replied. Any shot was better than no shot, I figured.
“Okay, let’s try a food allergy test and see if anything pops. I’ll get you scheduled for next week. Who knows; it may open up some doors for us.”
I was doubtful, but I agreed. Then, to everyone’s surprise the food allergy test revealed two foods that I was allergic to: parsley and celery. Moreover, the anaphylactic reaction that occurred that day on campus was exercise-induced which meant that I could eat parsley or celery anytime but if I exercised right afterwards, then my face would blow up again and I would look like one of the creatures from the bar in the movie Star Wars.
Why did this happen? Why did I have to waste time, effort, and money in discovering something that would never affect my entrance into the Navy? My belief is that it was to instill just how important a personal mission (i.e. purpose) was, to question my desire about how badly I wanted to become a SEAL, and the extent to which I would pursue this dream. In high school, I was denied military entrance due to a skin irritation that miraculously appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared right after trying to enlist. While there was certainly sadness and depression in high school about not being able to join, in college the disappointment was tenfold. My focus on purpose—on meaning—was so deeply ingrained in me by then that no other career field was even an option. I am forever indebted to not only my parents and their support during that time, but Gwen’s as well. Her support will never be forgotten.
Summary
Without a purpose to fuel your performance, success will be short-lived. Without purpose, an individual, company, or team bears no value and the superiority component of competition fizzles out.
More so, purpose comes from within. If you wait for some external force to cajole you along in the right direction, you’ll always be waiting.
The bottom line is this: purpose validates your beliefs and, therefore, your actions. It supersedes fear—even if fear is that element trying to rein you back from pursuing your purpose—because it affords opportunity, which is something that nobody else can offer you except you.
As this book will show, one’s ability to shoot, move, and communicate throughout business or life all starts with having purpose and passion for what you do. But, to sustain superior performance indefinitely, one must have purpose’s sibling, passion, to feel the fire, as the next chapter will show.
1 My parents were divorced
Passion Presents Itself
Circumstance does not make the man, it reveals him.
—James Allen
Anybody can perform a task that he or she already knows and understands. It’s when obscurity, doubt, and stress are interjected into the equation against the backdrop of survival that the creature of the unknown exposes us for who we are, not just what we know how to do.
The circumstances that tested me appeared on a number of different occasions, and each one seemed to question how badly I wanted to press on. Each episode created yet another façade of disbelief that deeply tested my resolve, to which I bluntly answered the call every time—at least I like to think so—and that’s a question that passion answers.
Coronado, CA, April 2000: Hell Week
Despite kicking and screaming from my parents, I finally enlisted in the Navy on April 19, 2000—with a BUD/S contract. I am not going to rattle off another story from SEAL training, as there are plenty of books out there that will do just that. However, certain milestones within my BUD/S experience are important to highlight because they underline the value of passion in one’s life endeavor.
The third week of BUD/S was hell week—a significant milestone in the SEAL training pipeline that separates the weak-minded from the purpose-driven. It is a tool used to select the right people. In hell week, students are cold, wet, tired, and miserable for five and a half days with a maximum of four hours of sleep the whole week. Scientists say that anything greater than 120 hours of sleeplessness causes permanent brain damage. Hell week is up to 120 hours—that’s how far we like to push the envelope.
Hell week is daunting, to say the least. But it is also an incredible experience that shapes SEAL wannabes into knowing—not just believing—that the human mind is the most powerful weapon that anybody can possess. You learn that the only human limitations are those that you place on yourself, and that failure is only determined by where you choose to stop.
However, hell week was only the third week of training, and it didn’t seem like the instructor staff had given us the secret thought-recipe to making it through yet (they weren’t particularly friendly at that point in time). My question back then was, If hell week is the third week, what the hell comes after that?
On Saturday, or hell week eve, you sleep as much as possible, which really ends up being no more than normal. You eat and rest because come five o’clock Sunday evening, your new day begins, and it’s going to be a looooong 120-hour day. At five o’clock Sunday evening, our class shuffled over to the BUD/S compound where we lay in tents, awaiting an unknown time at which hell week would begin. There were a few things that ran through my mind while I lay in wait for the M60 machine gun bursts to start, which was the signal from the instructors that hell week has begun, such as: How have they (the instructor staff) prepared me for this? This week was more difficult than the first, my legs feel like anchors, and I feel like I just played a football game with no pads. How am I supposed to feel fresh? Does anyone else feel fresh? What mental tools do they have? God, this is really gonna suck.
My mental position at the time was one of entitlement in that I expected them (the instructors) to give me something cognitive that would ensure success. Obviously, that wasn’t the case for a number of reasons, the most important one being that nobody gives you anything you don’t already have; they just offer you opportunities to unlock it from its dusty, never-been-used-before mental warchest.
Ka-booom!
Bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap…! Explosions and automatic weapons fire sounded off.
“Get the hell outta the tents!”
“Wake up! Move your asses!” screamed the instructor staff. “Move! Move! Move!”
It was game time.
The explosions and heavy put-put-puttering of the M60 machine guns officially commenced the beginning of hell week. At that point, it was pure chaos.
All the trainees ran out of their calm, quiet tents right into pandemonium—an instantaneous shift from something so simple into something extremely complex. Instructors were yelling and throwing grenade simulators that were going off all around us; smoke, explosions, and, worst of all, water hoses were everywhere. From the moment you exited the tent until you finished five and half days later (if you made it), you were cold, wet, miserable, and tired. The whole time.
It was miserable. To this day, I do not get in cold water and I hate swimming. No joke.
But, as time slowly idled by that week and more and more classmates quit—guys who I thought would make it through—I began to realize that their mental weakness was a choice derived from a temporary state
