flight but realized this level of fear of flying was something I would want to overcome to fully experience this life and our world. So, when I had an opportunity to go to Airborne School and “learn” to jump out of airplanes, I leaned into that fear and volunteered. It was a profound experience to be totally consumed by fear in my body and thoughts, still jump (fall!) out of that plane, and be okay on the other side of the experience. When you learn you can feel high levels of fear and still consistently move forward despite it, no goal is out of reach.
The second skill—being aware of unhelpful inner dialogue/self-talk and not allowing it to dissuade me or negatively impact on outcomes—came to the fore when I was considering reenlisting in the Army as my first term was coming to a close. Of the jobs available, one jumped out at me as interesting: linguist. The Army had a significant need for speakers of a number of languages, including Russian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Arabic, Korean, and a few more. It was the Chinese linguist position that caught my eye.
Now, if you think the guy who graduated in what was probably the bottom third of his high school class had some negative self-talk about his intellectual capabilities, you'd be right. There were thoughts that arose saying, “You never did well in Spanish!” and “Don't you remember you FAILED high school English, your native language, and had to retake it in order to graduate; do you really think you can learn one of the hardest languages on the planet?!” Yet in that moment I was able to Catch and Release those unhelpful thoughts and attempt to do the thing I wanted to do.
The next step in the process was to take a test to gauge my aptitude, which objectively reported that I had an aptitude for learning difficult languages, such as Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, and so on. However, similar to the staggered start situation, this was another instance when I had objective information saying one thing but internally I still felt the opposite. My mind was still saying, “I can't learn Chinese; I couldn't even learn Spanish.” So, what did I do? I chose to try to learn Chinese. If I could learn this language despite the incessant whining and fear-based thinking that was automatically coming up, I could do anything!
I soon arrived at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, California, the military's premier school for turning out fluent linguists. Fortunately, I was blissfully unaware of the 50% to 70% attrition rate, which would have only reinforced all the unhelpful internal dialogue I was already experiencing.
The Chinese Mandarin Basic Course was actually 63 weeks of intense training and was anything but “basic.” I was in a class of 30 people, and we were broken down into individual groups of 10 for our direct instruction; there's no sitting in the back of the room hiding your way through this type of training.
I started this course with a determination and drive I'd never felt previously in my life. I spent the entire first third of the course busting my tail, studying for 2 to 3 hours after an 8-hour day of classroom instruction. It was a challenging schedule but I wasn't going to fail due to not trying hard enough. When I got my grades the first trimester, I was crestfallen. All my hard work, the 10- to 11-hour days, the intense studying in my room without distraction, the hundreds of flashcards I made by hand (there were no phone apps back in 1997) and practiced with for hours on the weekends, had yielded only B pluses across all evaluated areas.
Yes, you read that correctly. Let that sink in for a moment. I tried the hardest I'd ever tried to do anything in my life to learn one of the most difficult languages on Earth. I got B pluses on my first report card, and I was—crestfallen? Wouldn't a better automatic reaction have been an inner thought that said something like, “OMG you failed high school English like four years ago and you just got B pluses in the Chinese course at one of the most premier language schools on the planet!!!” I think that would have been better, but what did my brain do? What all brains do; it looked for and highlighted the negative—I didn't earn a B plus, I missed an A. We'll talk more about focusing on what we are missing versus what we have and its impact later, but at this point, I had become quite wary of the inner critic; it was as if he was primarily operating from a place of fear and worry.
I had a choice to make in that moment. I'd busted my tail and received B pluses and had not really socialized much outside of Friday and Saturday evenings. I had made some awesome friends, who are still some of my best friends today—Eric,3 Chris, and Heidi—but I wasn't really spending much time with them. So, I Caught and Released the self-criticism about being a failure and not trying hard enough, and I decided maybe I was trying too hard.
The analogy I came up with, when trying to understand why my extreme effort wasn't enough, was related to driving. When learning to drive, it was much harder when I was younger and had a death grip on the steering wheel because of the strong sense it would help me be more in control of the situation. It wasn't until I learned to loosen the grip a bit that the ride and my driving became much smoother. Maybe the way I was going about learning Chinese was all wrong? So, I lifted my foot off the throttle a bit and began spending some time with my friends during the week, adding some balance to my life. I still studied each night but my decision not only brought more balance to my life but also resulted in a major shift in how I treated myself while studying.
Of my three closest friends at DLI, Heidi was a student in the Chinese class a few weeks behind mine. Meaning, when I was on Lesson 10, she was on Lesson 7. We began to study together to get through the homework and learn more effectively.
One of the dreaded homework assignments our teachers inflicted on us regularly was dubbed “rapid-fire.” We had to translate sentences recorded in Chinese on cassette tapes (yes, they were still in use then), but the recordings were not what you might expect in your average Spanish or French class: crystal clear audio and perfect pronunciation. No, these were garbled commands seemingly shouted across a crowded fish market toward another human facing in the opposite direction. It also seemed to be sped up to 150% normal speed. It was brutal. No one liked doing rapid-fire. It's like doing squats; you know it's helpful but it burns like hell and sometimes you throw up. I learned, though, it wasn't so bad doing the rapid-fire homework the second time around with Heidi.
I would do my rapid-fire homework then help Heidi work through her sentences, which I had completed 3 weeks prior. Listening to those sentences the second time around, I wasn't so rigid with stress and striving to make sure I got every single word. I relaxed, let go, and just listened. I soon realized I could capture more of the sentences with less effort, which began to improve my confidence and trust in my abilities. But the real kicker, the powerful insight that changed my life, was I began to notice what I said to Heidi if she made a mistake versus what I said to myself when I made a mistake.
My comments to her were filled with understanding and kindness. They were tinged with encouragement and care. The entire communication from me to her was enveloped in patience, empathy, and warmth, with a dash of humor. In contrast to my communications style toward Heidi, my inner critic treated my mistakes, missteps, and failures as proof I wasn't cut out for learning Chinese, that I'd fail, and was an idiot for making certain “simple” mistakes. I decided to do something different.
After Catching and Releasing unhelpful thoughts that would automatically arise after a mistake or when facing a challenging situation, I decided to follow up with a question. I would ask myself, “How would I respond to this mistake if I were teaching someone else this subject?” The response was never, “Hey, idiot, you're going to fail at this!” It was always a much more compassionate and supportive response. I wasn't trying to delude myself; I still needed to learn the language and graduate from the course. Empty platitudes weren't going to help. However, this approach enabled me to shift from self-attack to self-compassion.
After 63 weeks of people speaking Mandarin Chinese to me for 8-plus hours a day, and a great deal of studying with some of the best friends I've ever had, I graduated from DLI with honors, held the highest GPA of my cohort at 3.7, and scored the highest reading grade on our final test, prompting one of our native Chinese teachers to comment, “I couldn't score that high on a Chinese reading test.”
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