It is almost impossible to know someone’s mental toughness without truly pushing them through their comfort zone and then way beyond where they want to be.  In SEAL training, the instructors use soft sand runs, the frigid Pacific Ocean, and many other creative physical activities to push us well past where we were comfortable to see who had mental toughness and who did not.  Who was going to quit when their world just raged out of control and who was willing to fail to become better.  Failure isn’t quitting…Quitting is quitting.

I was often surprised that many of the “elite athletic performers” in my BUD/s class, who made all the physical activities look easy, were some of the first to quit.  As it turns out, they were used to always winning.  They were the star athletes in their sports in high school or college.  I looked up to them and was amazed how “easy” BUD/s was for them, because it wasn’t for me.  As the days turned to weeks, I looked around and many of those “elite performers” were gone…  Some of them were just not going to get back into the ocean again.  Some of them couldn’t take being told they were being punished and told they were a failure because one of their class mates fell behind on a run or swim. Some may have had a scary experience in some big surf or not willing to put that rubber boat back on their head and run the sand dunes.                       

Every Navy SEAL I know and have served with has experienced failures.We have all learned from those failures and gone on to become better because of the mental toughness we cultivated and the lessons we learned in those failures.If you have mental toughness and are not afraid to fail, you can turn those failures into wins. Don’t quit to avoid failure and rob yourself of the opportunity to cultivate the toughness that only failure can teach.

Authored By: William Branum, Retired Navy SEAL

Click Here to View William’s Bio.

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