Chapter 6 – Discipline Tactics of Navy SEALs and the Spartans
A lot of soldiers and former service members have written entire books on how the Navy SEALs, the Spartans, or other figures that enforce discipline among their numbers. Examples of such authors include Mark Grant, former SEAL Jocko Willink, and Jason Lopez. This chapter goes over ideas and insights that these authors and others like them have shared.
Success = Discipline
Discipline is a necessity, especially when your life is on the line. Self-discipline is on the same level of importance as mental toughness, resilience, and hard work when the safety and fate of a nation is in your hands.
Well, you don’t have to enter into military service in order to learn about their methods. You can learn from these authors themselves and pick up lessons from their personal experiences.
When you’re a soldier, you embrace pain and hardship as if they were your life and joy. You try to excel and do your best because you know that if you fail hundreds, if not thousands, of lives are at stake.
Military Secrets
Here are some of the rules of thumb and guiding principles that the Navy SEALs and other military service members live by in order to maintain self-control, willpower, and self-discipline.
Don’t Quit
Don’t quit? Easier said than done, right? This is more of a motto for service members. When faced with challenges, they don’t quit. They look at the challenge and act as if they have no other choice but to go forward.
Next time you are faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, think back on the SEALs and how they sacrifice and push forward despite difficulty and pain. Sometimes it takes sheer persistence and determination to see things through.
Always Make Every Goal and Objective a Serious Thing
If you go into the field half-cocked or if you try something and the will is half-baked, then you’re bound to fail. According to former Navy SEAL Casey Imafidon, SEALs emphasize only three things when it comes to missions:
  1. The objective
  2. How to execute it
  3. What happens after you have reached that objective
He says that sometimes your success is measured by the level of commitment you give to a specific goal or objective.
Wake Up Early and Win the Morning
We have discussed waking up early in an earlier chapter of this book. There is a reason why military service members are made to wake up early as a matter of routine. Waking up early doesn’t only instill a feeling of discipline; it also gives you a lot of opportunities such as:
Jocko Willink also created what he called the 4 AM Club. This is support and a collaboration of a group of people who wake up at 4 in the morning, plan their day well ahead of everyone else, and be better at achieving their goals.
Other than waking up early in the morning, another accompanying or complementing principle that Navy Seals have is called winning the morning.
For military service members, the choice you make every morning is only a simple matter. When the alarm goes off, you have a critical decision to make—do you get up and get your day started, or do you succumb to the comfort of your bed and go back to sleep?
Those who choose to snooze eventually lose, but those who choose to get up win. This simple exercise allows you to overcome a moment of weakness. Overcoming weaknesses eventually become a powerful habit.
Pay Attention to Every Lesson That You Learn
Both the successes and failures that you experience will become your mentors. In many instances, your failures tend to become your biggest and loudest teachers. Navy SEALs are taught leadership principles, and that includes making course corrections quickly.
A quick lesson here is that you shouldn’t dwell too much on your failures because it will do nothing for you. Adapt quickly and make adjustments as fast as you can when failure strikes. When there’s a lot at stake, there’s no time to mull over spilled milk.
Exercise
All soldiers are forced to exercise daily. We all know that there are numerous studies on the benefits of exercise, so there is no need to enumerate every single one of them. One of the most notable benefits of pushing yourself to exercise is that, according to studies, it can increase your emotional and mental resilience [62].
Embrace the Suck
This is military slang that was coined during Operation Iraqi Freedom. So what does it mean? The lesson is powerful here. It implies that you’re not the first one to ever experience difficulty and pain, so deal with it. But remember you’re not doing it alone.
To embrace the suck means to embrace the situation—to accept that you are really in the current situation you’re in. However, that is not a defeatist notion. Sure, you accept the reality of the conditions you’re living in now, but you have the power to do something about it.
As soldiers, the Navy Seals have no choice but to go where they are told to go. They do not deny the challenges that they face. This reduces any feelings of discontent among service members.
So, why does the military, including the Spartans, “embrace the suck?” The answer is simple—they do it because it is now a matter of habit. When you rewire your mind and take a more accepting point of view, you will become more aware of your situation and thus will be more likely to spot opportunities to come out victorious.
Mastering the Art of Simplicity
Navy Seals and other military personnel often get told to “cut the crap.” It’s more than just another military slang or wisecrack. Mark Divine, a former Navy Seal, explains that this principle refers to the art of simplicity.
He says that in order to live with more grit and discipline, we need to learn to live and embrace the art of simplicity. It is quite a liberating concept. We often clutter our lives with lots of gadgets, commitments, unhealthy relationships, and way too many material possessions.
These are things that weigh us down and take away our focus on the things that matter. In effect, the “crap” in our lives distracts us and reduces our effectiveness. We become less disciplined in everything we do because we think of and pay attention to too many things.
In the military, service members live and breathe simplicity. They are given an objective and then they set out to complete the mission and attain the aforementioned objective.
To a soldier, war is nothing but chaos. And so, an objective, a mission, and cutting out the unnecessary things that are in the way help to get rid of the chaos.
Do you want to be more disciplined? Here’s what you can do:
  1. Decide today to live a simpler life—try a minimalist lifestyle.
  2. If you have too many clothes and many of which you never even wear anymore, then get rid of those or give them away to charity.
  3. Make an inventory of each room in the house.
  4. Start with your bedroom. Find things in there that are just gathering dust, things that you haven’t used in the last six to twelve months.
  5. Get rid of those or give them away to charity (another option is to collect these items and have a garage sale so you can make some money on the side).
  6. Next, go to the living room. Do the same inventory.
  7. Make an inventory of every place in your house—especially the garage and your attic. You might be surprised to find that you have been hoarding a lot of stuff that you don’t need or use.
  8. Clean up these living spaces and put the unused items on sale or give them away to charity (at least you know you’re helping other people in the process).
  9. Check the emails that you receive. Cancel subscriptions that you don’t read or use.
  10. Are there people in your life who are nuisances or distractions to you? You have the choice to either put them on your ignore list or just cut ties with them completely. How you do that is all up to you.
  11. Are there gym memberships and other subscriptions that you’re paying for that you don’t really need or rarely use? Get rid of those as well.
  12. Is social media taking up too much of your time? You should try uninstalling some of your phone’s social media apps.
If you do these things, you live simply and will be adopting a minimalist lifestyle. You will then notice a sense of freedom and clarity, especially after you have removed all the clutter in your home and in your life.
It will be as if you have been renewed. You can now approach your days with better focus and renewed commitment to the things that really matter to you.
In Mark Divine’s own words—in the eyes of the Navy Seals, less means more.
You’re Never Really Alone
Admiral William McRaven once said that no one wins wars alone. The same is true when we want to win the war against the lack of focus and self-discipline. To have mental toughness, you need to realize that you’re not the only one trying to achieve that character trait.
This lesson is usually driven home hard into every Navy Seal. Remember, they are called Navy Seal Teams—there is no room for a one-person army like Rambo or some other fictional war character.
All you need to do is to observe their physical trainings. You will notice that a lot of these trainings involve a degree of strategic teamwork. It’s not just teamwork—you’re part of a greater whole, and you need to contribute to the strategy that your team will implement to ensure that the mission is a success.
When one person makes a mistake, the entire class gets the brunt of it. However, they’re not just on a mission to weed out the weak. The goal is to teach new recruits a lesson. And that lesson is that teamwork is essential to success.
Navy Seals understand this lesson early in training. They understand that they must act as an entire unit and not just individually. That works in military life as well as in life outside of the service.
Here’s what you can do:
  1. Find support in every endeavor. You can find support groups, clubs, and other organizations. Share your own experiences and be immersed in the experiences of others.
  2. The goal is to find likeminded individuals who are willing to encourage you.
  3. Find someone, a spouse, a dear friend, a life coach, a therapist, etc. with whom you can confide in. Have regular performance evaluations with that person, whether it is about being more disciplined, gaining more self-control, earning more money, anger management, etc. The goal is to have someone to whom you can report your progress to. Remember that when effort is measured, then progress increases, and when it is reported and evaluated, then progress multiplies.
  4. Reach out to someone and do some good in that person’s life. You can volunteer in a soup kitchen or some other cause. This also gets reported back to your friend or confidant. Remember that when people join an endeavor that is something bigger than themselves, their performance tends to increase.
Marianna Pogosyan, a consultant that specializes in cross-cultural transition psychology, and author of the book Between Cultures, explains that when people get involved in helping others, they eventually help themselves.
Being in the service of others produces altruistic feelings, but it is more than just that. Studies show that when we go out of our way to help others, it improves our emotional well-being. It improves our ability to empathize with others and increases our capacity to cope with stress.
Our performance and self-control also increase when we focus on tasks that benefit others. Why are Navy Seals more dedicated and more disciplined compared to a lot of people? It is because they understand that what they are doing benefits others.
When the lives of others are at stake, you push yourself to greater heights. Sometimes you find that you can do things better because of this. It eventually gives you a sense of purpose and satisfaction that you can’t get anywhere else. It is an act that naturally cycles back to benefit you in the end.
You Need to Challenge Yourself Constantly
Former Navy Seal Cade Courtley explains that you should expect that “you’re going to get your ass kicked once in a while” and that is why you should make it a point to constantly challenge yourself.
He says that there is a common factor that is shared by all who succeed at BUDs training. BUDs is short for Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL training. It is a physical and mental training that all candidates go through before they ultimately become part of the Navy Seals.
Courtley explains that this single factor is finding a reason to continue to grow and improve. Challenge yourself constantly and learn to live with true adversity. He observes that the candidates who survive BUDs are those who have lived and survived against adversity their entire lives.
He then makes an interesting analogy. He asks, “Who will you be more prone to trust—someone who inherited millions of dollars or someone who built his financial empire of 10 million dollars at age 45 after going through several bankruptcies to get there?
The more resilient and more disciplined person whom you should emulate is the person who has made all the mistakes and has thrived in adversity. Find a way to challenge yourself, and you will learn to thrive in the same manner.
Did you get promoted a couple of years ago? Did you stop there, and did the drive and ambition die out after you got your pay raise? Challenge yourself to perform better and you will find yourself in a lot of adversity, but that challenge will drive you forward and give you the mental toughness to face even greater difficulties ahead.
Were you able to lose ten pounds in the last two months? But are you at your target weight? If not, then challenge yourself to lose ten more pounds. This will help you become even more disciplined with your workout and stick with your diet plan.
The greater the challenge, the more self-control, grit, and discipline will be required. Beat that, and you will achieve greater levels of self-mastery.