Navy SEALs and SWCC possess a high degree of mental toughness. You can too. Find out how from a Navy SEAL Force Master Chief. For more on this visit www.SEALSWCC.com
Full Transcript


00:00:02:05
The only easy day was yesterday. (Intro)

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I’m Daniel Fletcher, and today I’m speaking with a retired Navy SEAL Force Master Chief about the mental aspects of Naval Special Warfare. Let’s get started…
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DF: We’ve carved out a little time to talk mental toughness with a decorated Navy SEAL, ...We all know that physical exertion is a big part of the training process, but we hear a lot about the mental aspects of the challenges, whether it’s in training or after graduation, even through deployments, whether it’s separation from family or just facing general adversities, stressors, all this kind of stuff...if you could tell us, from your perspective, after having a career as a SEAL, what aspects of the, we’ll call it a job, in your mind required the most mental toughness.
00:01:11:00
M: Absolutely, Daniel. Thank you for the time here, and I’m very interested in setting our future generation of SOF operators up for success, so I’m glad to be here today talking to you. I would say anecdotally, any SOF selection course is roughly 80% mental, 20% physical. In fact, I just came from talking to 20 students that DOR’d today, and nine out of ten students that dis-enroll from this program are for lack of mental fortitude. So, what we’re attempting to do today is to take things that most of our operators have utilized unwittingly their entire careers and present these mental tools as a process up front to our students coming in the pipeline now so that they can start to cultivate these mental skills early on in their training in the hopes that they will be more mentally resilient than we were and stick around and do 30 years in SOF with their families intact, living purposeful, meaningful lives and able to handle, readily handle stress and crisis.
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DF: So, where do you think that kind of starts? Is this something you think, ideally, starts before recruitment process How do you see this process starting from a blank slate if you had the opportunity to kind of sculpt a 13-year-old to come into NSW kind of program? Where do you think that kind of starts in, in early adulthood or late childhood?
00:02:41:00M: Absolutely, Daniel, fantastic question. So, I would say in reference to developing mental toughness in adversity in your life, the key is to constantly challenge yourself, do things that you’re uncomfortable doing every day. It could be something as simple as taking a cold shower in the morning, where you’re subjecting yourself to being uncomfortable and getting comfortable being uncomfortable. And the more adversity you face prior to showing up for the pipeline, the stronger your mental toughness baseline will be.
00:03:14:00DF: What are the ways you think that young people can kind of start incorporate some mental training into their lifestyle?
00:03:20:00
M: Yeah, sports is a big part of it definitely. You know, when you’re out there playing football in the summertime, and you’re doing double sessions where you’re working out all morning and over lunch, you’re so sore you can’t even move, and you have a whole afternoon session, that’s probably the closest experience I could equate that, that could crossover to BUD/S, is working yourself to that degree and at a minimum. You know, I know our wrestlers and our football players and water polo players have a higher probability of success in the training because they, they’ve had some upstream stress inoculation from playing competitive sports
00:03:57:00
DF: I’ve heard mentioned a few times endurance athletes tend to do very well, and I think that does kind of tie into the mental aspects involved, and you kind of see that a lot with professional endurance athletes...they develop a lot of mental fortitude through their life, and they’re able to push themselves, what d