Being Invincible in the face of Covid-19

Jordan Peterson in his book 12 Rules for Life, says that life is suffering, but that is OK because part of the condition of being human and being alive is that we are equipped to deal with and capable of being invincible in the face of suffering.

As we are thrust into this unfamiliar world disrupted by Covid-19 it is essential that we as families, friends and work teams continue to create and re-create our understanding of the changes that are happening around us. Over more than 20 years I have found the model below to be very useful for us to collectively work on building new understanding of what is important and what is valued in our current situation.

The model helps us identify and work on the things that first enable us to understand our environment and each other. Over time this understanding becomes trust and clarity.

The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book : Safety Leadership, How Leaders Create Sustainable Safety Performance which highlights the role we can play as leaders...

 Every year the SAS runs a selection process where soldiers who think they have what it takes to earn the coveted sandy beret test their ability, commitment and resolve to complete the selection course and get selected it into the SAS. The selection course lasts several weeks and is the first part of the selection process which is designed to identify those candidates that have the physical and mental robustness to make it. The first few days of the course are incredibly physically hard and are designed to weed out those soldiers that are there for the wrong reasons.

I remember when I did SAS selection that parts of the course were very disorienting. You were led to believe and expect that one thing was going to happen and then you’d get thrown off balance by something completely out of left field. Some people handled this well, but others were thrown into disarray by the lack of clarity and certainty. 

Some people seem to naturally have the ability to reason through the confusion and identify fact from fiction. They can deal with the contradictions and missing information and achieve a level of clarity. They have the ability to carry several possible realities in their mind and to constantly filter out or add more information to confirm in their mind what something means. But I believe we all have the ability to develop these traits, we just have to be willing to learn and develop ourselves. The best leaders do this better than the average person and that ability allows them to make better judgement calls.

The human mind is a meaning making machine. No one else sees the world as you do. No one else has exactly the same paradigms as you do. They don’t know what you know, they have not had the same experiences that you’ve had, or have exactly the same beliefs and values as you. And while many of beliefs and values come from our family, our community and spiritual beliefs they will at best be similar, but won’t be exactly the same.

You are ultimately responsible for your paradigms and what you make things mean, unfortunately a significant percentage of people don’t take responsibility for critically assessing and evaluating what they make things mean. Instead of applying self-leadership, they act like sheeple and simply follow the flock. Strong leaders can have a big influence on how people perceive things and the choices they make; whether it’s in your own life our for your team.

As part of the directing staff on the SAS selection course you get to see this decision-making process playing out hour by hour for each candidate as the first few days leave them physically exhausted, sleep deprived and aching to the bone. There are several different factors that affect performance that we look for in the activities and tests that candidates are put through. A key attribute is the ability to deal with uncertainty and lack of clarity as the goals and deadlines are changed, and the information you get is incomplete or contradictory. This is about how the individual responds to external factors. How people will respond can be difficult to predict, evaluate and assess; people react differently to events, we don’t all have the “same buttons”.   Another factor has to do with internal motivation, their commitment—intent and purpose as compared to physical preparation which is simpler and can be tested more readily. 

The extremely arduous nature of the first few days of the selection course cause candidates who have not physically prepared well enough or are not there for the right reasons start to question why they are there, whether they’ll last—or if it’s worth it. 

On one course I had a conversation on day one with a soldier who was physically very strong and looked good. He had previously been posted to Perth, where the SAS has its home, but was now posted to Sydney. â€œWhy do you want to join the SAS?” I asked. He answered with a pretty canned response of “I reckon I’ve got what it takes” and then he added “My girlfriend lives in Perth, so it will get me back here. Also, my mate tried for selection last year and got in and I’m faster and stronger than him.” 

On day three he ‘pulled the pin’ and withdrew himself from the course part way through an activity. While other candidates looked totally spent and were finding depths of endurance and endeavour that they didn’t know they had, he pulled the pin looking like he still had reserves in the tank. â€œWhat happened” I asked him. â€œI reckon I can find another girlfriend” was his reply.

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." Friedrich Nietzsche

What something means to you determines your level of commitment. It’s your relationship with the goal or the ideal, it’s how much value you place on achieving that outcome; it’s your WHY. It’s your reason and purpose for doing what you do. If that why is not strong enough, you’ll struggle to go the distance and do what it takes to achieve your goal.

If life is not working out for you, if you’re not achieving the goals you set for yourself—you can change that. The solution lies in understanding the power of commitment and the 3-steps of: Meaning, Focus and Action. 

Viktor Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, talks about how maintaining a purpose and meaning was what enabled him to survive in the NAZI concentration camp. He observed that many of the prisoners lost their hold on life and that everything in a way became meaningless and pointless. Frankl noted that once life for a prisoner became meaningless, they did not survive long.

Keep up the fight - this too shall pass.