Navigating Chaos. Jeff Boss
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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 of unpleasantness. If there was one thing I learned from hell week, it was that nothing lasts forever. If you can focus on an alternate, temporary reward, then the short-term pain of now will dissipate, and you’ll ultimately reach your long-term goal, whatever that may be. What you focus on is what you get, and I chose to focus on short-term, temporary wins that garnered long-term success. I did this by separating each training evolution over the course of a day into its own individual routine with its own focus, as if it were the last task to do for that day and nothing else mattered. Short-term goals act as a mental bridge toward a far-away destination (long-term goals), allowing you to not only align yourself toward your end state but also to give your mental and emotional faculties relief. Put another way, it was easier to aim toward the next meal that was just four hours away than to imagine being awake for five days straight. Plus, the thought of spending the rest of my enlistment on a ship was enough to keep myself in check. Conversely, quitters only focused on the immediate pain of what was currently in front of them.
Monday came and I wasn’t feeling too tired. Then Monday night. Then Tuesday morning. By the time Tuesday afternoon rolled around, I was in Zombieland. I mentally checked out. My mind had accepted the current level of discomfort that we were enduring, and there was no way I was going anywhere except into Wednesday. Everywhere you run in hell week is with your BUD/S class, which consists of boat crews that yield five to seven individuals each. Each boat crew carries a small inflatable boat on the head of each member, anywhere and everywhere the class travels. I remember running back from chow one day with that damn boat on my head and falling asleep while running, only to wake up about forty yards ahead of the last place I remembered. The power of the human mind is truly amazing.
And then, that night, it happened.
Every few hours, students received medical checks to ensure they’re not doing any grave harm to their bodies. Of course, “grave” is a subjective term. At this point, though, having made it this far into hell week, students were more inclined to hide their injuries for fear of being “rolled back” to another class, and having to start over after their injuries healed.
Well, I pulled the short straw this particular med check.
On Tuesday night of hell week I was rolled out of the class for a femoral stress fracture, and all hopes and dreams of becoming a SEAL were lost.
You gotta be fucking kidding me! I thought to myself. I was devastated. It was absolute emotional turmoil thinking that my life’s purpose was not going to be realized. I will never forget sitting in the chow hall on Wednesday morning, just hours after being rolled back, and seeing my class—and even worse, my boat crew—filter through the chow line like a pack of wild dogs scavenging the only food left. They looked like zombies. I had just slept for the first time since Sunday, which helped settle my mind, but they had not. I could see the difference in how I felt and how the class looked even after just a few hours of sleep. The thought that my career, life objective, and personal being were out of my control was incredibly challenging to face. For a long time after being rolled back I always wondered, “Why?”
Why did this happen? I know I can make it through BUD/S.
What am I supposed to learn or gain from this setback?
It was not until years later—after a few more incidents—that the answer was revealed, as the upcoming chapters will show.
Lessons Learned
Serving others who believe in service is important to me, as it is what has compelled me to pursue the achievements in life, and to write this damn book. But the next sequence of events turned out to be a little more stressful.
Everything that occurs in life, both good and bad, forces you to learn and shapes who you are. My dad once told me that the difference between you now and you twenty years from now is the places you’ll go and the people you’ll meet. Boy, was he right.
The guys I met in my new BUD/S class were incredible, and are still my closest friends and the best people I will ever know. Hell, one became my brother-in-law, which is a whole other story. Another close friend (and his unfortunate death) set me on my path to where I am now—writing about purpose and service because that is why I believe he existed and why our friendship was so tight.
To be passionate about something is to believe in the meaning that you anticipate it to deliver—whatever that meaning is—and to possess an intense desire to continue into the fray. Purpose and passion are two opposing forces that seem to work synergistically or individually, either on your behalf or against your best interest. Passion drives you, whereas purpose pulls you. Purpose can tug you along in its direction when passion subsides and thus allow you to endure amidst uncertainty, conflict, or fear. Purpose and passion can both be your friends and your fatal enemies.
To be passionate about something is to wake up everyday with the intention of living life to the fullest because your passion drives you; it offers constant and immediate feedback that you are on the right path—your path—toward attaining your objective, until you finally get there and your potential is realized.
When you’re passionate about your job, your life, and your relationships, you become more committed and proactively seek more ways to learn, engage, and find solutions. Because your purpose fuels you, you are more willing to face conflict or potential failure—again—because you value the learning opportunities that evolve either way.
Currituck, NC 2008: “Damnit, not again!”
Currituck is about a forty-five minute drive from Dam Neck, Virginia, where I was based, so oftentimes we would rent a plane and schedule a few days to go down to the airfield and practice high altitude, low opening (HALO) and high altitude, high opening (HAHO) parachute jumps. We would go through the jumpmaster brief that covered the sequence of events for the day, identify the roles and responsibilities for all personnel involved, and review the mishap procedures for parachute malfunctions—something that I always paid attention to because I never considered myself a stellar jumper.
After the brief, we all donned our parachutes, crammed into the plane, and sat