Navigating Chaos. Jeff Boss
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harder and longer I ran, the more the dark spots would intensify and the greater my vision would constrict. Finally, I had to stop. I figured that if I stopped, then the blurriness would go away, and if the blurriness went away then I’d be able to finish the workout (I never claimed to be a genius). But as I walked away, the situation just worsened. In fact, my vision disappeared, as did my balance. I found a bench to lie down on outside when, coincidentally, a medical school student happened to be walking by and noticed that something was not right with me. She called an ambulance that took me to the hospital, only to discover my blood pressure at a “healthy” sixty over forty.
Not good.
At this point, there was still no clear indication as to why this event occurred because sports, exercise, and healthy eating had all been significant and consistent parts of my life through that point.
Like an idiot, I told my then–SEAL recruiter about the incident and he said it would preclude me from volunteering for the SEALs, but to let the situation develop a little more, talk with the doctors, and wait to see if anything changed. All I heard, though, was, “You’re fucked.”
I was devastated. I had envisioned becoming a SEAL since high school, and I was now being told that my dream was impossible. The search for doctors began—intensely—and after talking with multiple MDs who tried to identify the root cause of my adverse reaction, it came down to one final heart doctor, who also happened to shatter my dreams.
This cardiologist essentially said that I could never exercise and, therefore, could definitely never be a Navy SEAL since the incident was clearly a heart issue as it involved elevating my heart rate. I broke down in tears right there in his office with my dad right next to me. It was embarrassing, but I couldn’t control it because just a year earlier a skin irritation that prevented me from enlisting after high school had finally cleared up, and a letter from a dermatologist had cleared my entrance for the Navy. But now all those dreams were gone. In telling me “no,” this heart doctor had brought me down to a reality that I didn’t want to accept. He made me question my passion of how badly I wanted to go to BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training).
My mom, ever so supportive, always ingrained in me not to worry about things I could not control, and that “things will work out as they should.” Her patience and optimism have carried me through to this day and have helped shape my resiliency.
Meanwhile, over the same time period of my college career, my dad had been seeing a doctor friend of his own1, but not for medical reasons. Gwen was awesome, and incredibly supportive. She had been with me every step of the referrals, made new introductions, and she was there that day in the heart doctor’s office. More importantly, she didn’t believe the shit that the cardiologist was slinging.
“Listen, 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