There are many definitions of what it means to be ready for battle because there are various contexts and metaphors for warfare. However, what I aim to accomplish over the next few posts is to clearly outline (to the best of my ability) what it means to be mentally, physically, and spiritually prepared for whatever battle/endeavor you are presented with in life.
Regardless of your chosen profession, sport, or lifestyle, being mentally sharp, physically conditioned, and spiritually strong will enable you to perform at the highest levels possible!
In this first installment of the "Battle Ready" series, I will break down how to effectively train the mind based on my past experiences.
Sharpening The Wword
In military special operations, we often referred to preparation for combat as “sharpening the sword”. This brief phrase can be distilled down into the translation of honing our operational skillsets.
If I expand this translation, it encompasses training the mind to be good at what we do and smarter than our enemy, conditioning the body for the arduous work of special operations, and strengthening our fighting spirit to never give up.
A large part of this mental and spiritual training is preparing ourselves to lay down our lives for our teammates if necessary. Scripture tells us in John 15: 13, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Sharpening the sword ultimately involves a mind, body, and spiritual approach to preparing for the known and unknown challenges of warfighting.
I understand that most people reading this post are not warfighters in the traditional sense. However, going back to my opening statement, regardless of what you do in life, figuring out how to translate mental, physical, and spiritual preparation to enhance your current endeavor is critical to performing at your best.
True health and fitness aren't one dimensional
All three preparation components (mind, body, and spirit) are integral aspects of readiness and performance. Each has a negative or positive effect on the other. The more fit you are in the physical sense, the better you can recover from stress, and the more cognitively efficient you can be in performing your duties and responsibilities.
Your spiritual fitness, on the other hand, is necessary for tapping into your inner sources of strength. Being spiritually deficient negatively impacts your physical and mental resiliency over the long haul.
Effectively Training The Mind
In special operations, we prepare the mind through the dedicated study and perfection of the skills associated with our craft along with our duties and responsibilities as members of a high-performing team.
Get good at what you do. For the operator, this includes honing the skills needed to be subject matter experts on the job. This encompasses the study of tactics, the development, and implementation of new tactics, techniques, and procedures, and ultimately honing these skill sets through high-risk training evolutions for adaptive performance.
This same principle applies to everyone no matter the role or responsibility. To do this effectively, we first need to broaden our awareness and understanding of our role and responsibility as it relates to what we are doing.
The next step is to acquire as much knowledge as possible associated with our specific tactics, techniques, and procedures.
Learn from your mistakes and continue to refine the process of becoming better at... (fill in the blank). Take the time to identify ways in which you can be better at your current job. What specific attributes or skillsets do you need to learn or perfect to be the best that you can be at your chosen profession?
Become a Subject Matter Expert (SME) by mastering the fundamentals of your required skill sets. You do not have a solid foundation to build upon until you become brilliant at the basics. Iteration training is the purposeful practice of skills and is step one of developing confidence and competence as an SME. This requires purposeful and quality repetition training to ensure efficiency/economy of motion.
For those of us familiar with shooting, what is a better option for improving our level of competence at this skill? Is it better to quickly shoot through 500 rounds of ammunition one time at the range, or is it more beneficial to take the time required to intentionally shoot one round five hundred times across multiple range days?
The answer is to purposefully execute the proper fundamentals needed to shoot each round with accuracy five hundred times. This is what I am talking about in terms of being smart and intentional with your training.
As more time is spent applying the basics (regardless of the skill), you're able to adjust to mistakes made in performance, your speed of execution gradually increases because the nuanced steps associated with executing the skill become second nature, your movements smooth out, and your ability to mentally and physically process everything becomes faster.
Once these fundamentals become second nature, you increase your mental capacity to effectively learn more advanced skills and protocols. This is why, in the operational SEAL Teams, we always revisited the basics before moving on to the sexier and more complex skill sets (regardless of your ability level or time in the Teams).
Train how you intend to fight. In special operations, we frequently engage in realistic, scenario-based training to be inoculated to stress to learn valuable lessons from mistakes made. This is where you put the skills you have been honing throughout your iteration training to the test in a controlled environment where the stress and intensity are increased at the appropriate intensity levels over time.
This concept was conducted in the SEAL Teams through graded full mission profile training scenarios against a dynamic and fully equipped opposition force. We worked through stressful contingencies or worst-case scenarios and were thrust into uncomfortable situations and environments while under physical and mental duress. Due to the stressful nature of this training, mistakes were made and lessons were learned that prepared us for what could have been a reality downrange.
We reset, reflect upon the lessons learned, and then figure out how to prevent these same mistakes from happening in a similar future situation or scenario. Next, we then implement updated techniques, tactics, and procedures into our preparation to enhance our performance. This is a continuous cycle of what adequate preparation looks like in perfecting and applying your skillsets.
Effectively leverage performance psychology to increase performance. Another tool used to strengthen the mind is the proper application of mental skills. These skills include Self-Talk, Mental Rehearsal, Goal Setting, and Energy Management (ability to control your physiological response to stress and emotions).
These skills are designed to enable optimal performance in stressful situations and environments where we must control both our physiological and psychological responses to these stressors. However, these are not to be viewed as tools to solve all of our problems.
These mental skills will help you to perform at your best or to your true potential. They are not the substitution for a lack of preparation!
Conclusion
To be as effective as possible, we must take the time to train and engage our minds every day. You can do this through problem-solving, acquiring knowledge through reading, studying, brain-training games, puzzles, training your memory, and the dedicated practice of reflection and introspection after learning new concepts and ideas. This is a critical component to growing and becoming better each day.
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