Honor: The Power of Focusing on Others

It was pitch black, and the roar of the ocean was menacing.  I was slowly shuffling toward that ocean with just one sock and a pair of compression shorts on in the 45 degree night.  

For the first time in over five months of BUDs (Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL ) training, and with less than 2.5 weeks of training left, I had a strange thought creep into my mind…

“I do not want to do this anymore.”

I can honestly say that even through some of the most miserable events in BUD/s, including Hell Week (5.5 days of constant abuse and misery with no sleep), these thoughts had never crossed my mind...until now.

I am not saying that I never wanted the torture to stop...that desire occurred on an almost hourly basis...but I had never thought of quitting.

To me quitting is defined as believing that you are mentally or physically insufficient, therefore you have no choice but to quit.

There were many times when the particular activity or evolution we were doing was so bad that I willed with every cell in my body for my heart to explode so that I could die and be rescued from the hell that I was in.

Take a minute to think about that concept.  

In many moments of SEAL training, I thought that death was the only exit available.   That really speaks to the level of dedication needed to survive SEAL training.

But something was different this time.

For the first time I really didn’t want to be there.  In every other evolution I could honestly say that there was nowhere else in the world I would have rather been.

My journey to the SEALs started when I was in grade school and followed me through the Naval Academy and now into BUD/s.  Just about every decision I made for many years was weighed against my goal.

This particular night was a bad one. We had been working all day on San Clemente Island, 75 miles off the coast of California.  This SEAL base was the last phase of training and one of the most difficult because there were no senior officers or others to observe our training. This meant that our instructors had free reign.

Earlier that evening we had been tasked to prepare for a major long distance open water swim the next morning.  

At some point in the evening, our instructors found one of my classmates in the chow hall stealing a late night snack.

So we were immediately mustered as a class to head out into the frigid night air on the concrete grinder where we did physical training.  

I knew we were in for a bad time when I saw two fire hoses staged at either end of the grinder.

We were told to strip naked and pile all of our clothes in a pile in the center of the grinder.

Then we were instructed to lay on the freezing concrete head to toe with our arms and legs spread wide like we were trying to make snow angels.

While we lay there, the instructors sprayed us with the fire hoses for what seemed to be an eternity.  

Then, we were instructed to get up to find our socks and put them on from the huge pile of clothes scattered in the center, then lay back down in our spots as snow angels.

“2 minutes, GO!!!”

We got back to our spots just in time.  

More fire hoses, then the next item of clothing would be called out.

Inevitably someone would not get a piece of clothing on in time, which meant that the dreaded call of “Hit the surf!!!” would ring out.

“Hit the surf!” would start our 1/4 mile jog down a rocky dirt path to the crashing surf.

A quick drop into the icy ocean and a roll in the sand later, and we would be back on the concrete getting hosed off.

This evolution continued for close to two hours.  

We finally managed to get the class completely clothed when at last we were secured from this torture and told to return to our swim prep.  

At this point, it was well after 1 am, so if we worked quickly we might be able to get a little sleep before the early morning swim.

No more than an hour later, the call came out to muster on the grinder again.

This time there was only one instructor, Instructor Ramirez and he looked pissed...not a good sign.

He went on to say in a monotone voice that even after our education during the last session on the grinder, someone in our class had not learned and had been found in the chow hall yet again stealing a snack.

He said that he was especially pissed because our inability to follow simple instructions meant that he was now required to be awake.

We were again told to strip so that the frigid games could begin all over again.

About an hour into it, I was exhausted, freezing, and angry.  

It seemed like we were falling apart as a team.  

We were yelling at each other each time we came to the pile of clothes.

It seemed like every time we got close to being dressed, someone would be short a pair of pants or a sock.

(Little did I know at the time that not only had no one been caught in the chow hall either time, but the instructors would pull items of clothing out of the pile to ensure we could never win.)

So it was on our 20th or 30th trip down that sharp rock road to the beach at 0430 in the morning that I had even came close to thinking about quitting...the first time ever in BUD/S.

Then something magic happened.  

As I staggered down the road towards the beach in my underwear and one sock, Seaman Andrews from my boat crew was coming up from the beach.

He was buckass naked except for one sock that was obviously way too small for his size 12 feet.

Spit was hanging out of his mouth and you could see bloody footprints being left behind him as he moved.

As I watched him, I realized he looked significantly more miserable than I felt.

So I called out his name and gave him a big “HooYah!!”

I made him give me a high five.

I saw a bit of fire go back into his eyes and I felt that same fire spark in my own.

Suddenly, I found it just a bit easier to get down to the surf.

Now every time I ran down that path I was sure to try to lift the spirits of one of my classmates.

When I was at the pile of clothes I would first hand out items to my teammates before I would take one for myself and guess what?

The remaining hour of torture went by easily.

I had learned a critical lesson.

All feelings of defeat, quitting, and failure come from being focused on oneself.  Feeling sorry and lamenting your situation leads to these feelings.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to have a feeling of defeat and quitting while being focused on someone else.

So the next time you are struggling to continue fighting forward, shift your attention from yourself and put it into helping someone else.

When you focus your attention on helping others, two things happen:

- You can’t continue to pay attention to your own suffering

- You get energy from being “help” to someone else

This principle works at home or on the job.

That is why teams that have a strong culture of Honor are such high performers.

Honor is living to a code of behavior where the good of the whole comes before the good of an individual.

The concept of honor runs deep in organizations focused on service such as the military, law enforcement, first responders, and in the medical fields.

Honor is not the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of corporate America.  

Now that you know the benefits to helping others when you are struggling and the definition of Honor, I challenge you to bring these concepts to your organization, to your homes, and to the teams you work with every day.

How? Happy to brainstorm with you. Connect with me and we can catch up together.