Rehearsal: Act Out Your Plan
To take this a step further, you can actually practice and rehearse what you have visualized. This is essentially what fire drills accomplish in schools and why airline personnel try to show passengers emergency procedures at the beginning of every flight. In your home, you should rehearse and teach your children what to do in the event of a house fire. Most kids respond better when given explicit rules to follow, and doing so will not only give your kids specific things to do during such an event, it will also reduce their fear; they will be more confident in an emergency and their usefulness to the general safety of the family will be increased. For example, to prepare for a power failure, you could turn off the lights in your home to practice how to navigate in darkness or how to get to designated evacuation exits. Rehearse with your family how to respond to a variety of dangerous situations, such as a home invasion. Make sure everyone knows the plan for each scenario from start to finish. The more you practice, the easier it will be.
Obviously, there are limitations to how far you can take this rehearsal. Please do not light a fire in your kitchen to practice escaping your house, or run down the street yelling “Rape!”
This pre-emergency technique will not only enable you to implement your visualization but will also begin to train your muscles, allowing you to physically perform without forethought in a controlled environment. If in your “movie” you have yourself doing a backward somersault, the rehearsal nixes that idea as something unrealistic. Throughout the book, each scenario I discuss requires various rehearsal drills that can be practiced and used to improve muscle memory and response time.
Muscle Memory
By repeatedly practicing your emergency procedures, you are also creating muscle memory. Of course, the muscles do not literally have the ability to store memories, but your brain does. It knows (via a complex system of neurological circuitry) what you want the muscles to do the more you practice the same action time and again. After you learned to ride a bike as a kid, you never forgot how to do it. It’s the same if you learned how to swing a tennis racket or hit a baseball over the fence. The more you practiced those activities, the better you got, as if your muscles remembered on their own how to respond. Rehearsing various skills needed to survive helps improve muscle memory. If you really want to bring it up a notch, you need to repeat the same action 2,500 times before it becomes so ingrained that you can do it without even thinking about it. Athletes know this, as do those who practice fighting and forms of martial arts. The thousands of punches, kicks, and combinations they execute when in a fight happen automatically.
In SEAL team, muscle memory was in full effect when it came to using our weapons, be it the thousands of times we changed magazines in our rifles or drew our handguns from the holsters and fired them. There was never a need to look; my hands instinctively went there and did what they were supposed to do. It felt like I was born with the weapons.
You should practice the various self-defense techniques I will demonstrate in this book, such as the correct way to throw a punch to immobilize an assailant or use your elbows to ward off an attacker. Gaining that extra second could very well be what enables you to survive.
By practicing emergency conditioning, visualization, and rehearsal techniques, you essentially do the following:
• Minimize fear of the unknown by preconditioning your mind (emergency conditioning).
• Make unimaginable stressful scenarios more familiar (visualization).
• Increase your capability and gain confidence (rehearsal).
• Practice how to remain calm under pressure (rehearsal).
For a SEAL, one of the requirements is to go through SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape), or POW school. This training includes an extremely realistic imprisonment scenario following several days of trying to evade capture without food, water, or sleep. Mental and physical abuses, including the now-infamous waterboarding, were all part of the training. I gained a few bruises and lost over twenty-two pounds. My girlfriend didn’t even recognize me when I was done. It was challenging, but nowhere near as challenging as what actual POWs face.
SERE school is a classic example of fear of the unknown transforming into confidence. High-risk training performed in a controlled setting will give you the best chance at success when actually confronted with fear in an uncontrolled environment.
Create a Trigger
One of the last things you need to do as part of creating mental preparedness is develop what I call your trigger. In order to do this, you must dig deep and identify the single most important thing in the world to you and make a mental portrait, so to speak, of this image. This is what you will use to ignite many of the essential qualities needed to survive. This trigger is the thing that makes you want to live, no matter what comes your way. The most effective trigger will be different for everyone. For some, the trigger will be the image of their child, whom they want to be there for and whom they want to see grow into a man or woman. For others, the trigger image could be elderly parents who need them.
Your trigger image can change as priorities in your life change. When I was going through BUD/S, my trigger was seeing myself walking across the stage at graduation and looking out at family and friends as I was handed my certificate of completion—that image made me endure. But once I got to a SEAL team and took on the incredible responsibility of leading men into life-threatening situations, my trigger was the image of all my men returning from a mission unharmed. I was not going to attend any of my guys’ funerals—not on my watch—and that made me pull my trigger and do whatever needed to be done to keep my men alive.
Your trigger could be an aspirational one—i.e., thinking that nothing is going to rob you of your life before you achieve your goal. It’s as powerful as a protective trigger, such as saving the life of a loved one or protecting a member of your team. Both work, as long as you take the time to make this an extremely vivid visualization. Let it burn into the files of your mind. You must be able to say, “I will live and endure anything for this.”
This image or visualized goal is now your trigger. You will use this most important memory file as the ultimate motivation to get you through anything life throws at you. But to maintain the effectiveness of your trigger, you should save it for only the direst situations.
Life or death . . . Pull that trigger!
Violence of Action
In the SEALs, we use the phrase violence of action. It simply means that we apply complete and unrestricted use of speed, strength, surprise, and aggression to achieve total dominance against an enemy or an adversarial situation. When the trigger is pulled and violence of action is employed, you are telling your mind and body, “I am unstoppable.”
You don’t have to be a SEAL to implement violence of action. If your trigger is strong enough, tell yourself, “What I do in the next thirty seconds will determine whether I will live or die.” Then it will happen, and the violence of action will be an unexpected advantage for success in many situations.
I know it is difficult for many people to imagine their own death, so try to understand how important the concept of violence of action is by dissecting your trigger. What if even the slightest hesitation or that 1 percent less than total effort causes you to fail? What if the death of a loved one results from the one second that you paused or the less-than-full-strength tackle you made? Then imagine an hour later as you are contemplating what has happened and realize that you didn’t fully commit to the event. Make sure you never find yourself in this position. When the trigger is pulled, the full concentrated and coordinated effort of mind and body can transform a ninety-pound elderly woman into a tiger.
Situational Awareness
In military-speak, situational awareness is defined as the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical elements of information about what is happening to the team with regard to a mission. More simply, it’s being aware of what is going on around you.
Du
ring CQC (close-quarters combat), which is a technique used for hostage rescue and for raids, as team leader I had to be aware, for example, of multiple teams who were all moving in numerous directions in a building and all assigned to various floors. I had to make sure we were simultaneously engaging targets while being certain that no one was ever in an adjacent room in which a bullet could penetrate the wall, hitting one of us. In this extreme example of situational awareness, I had to know what was happening to the troops on the exterior of the target building, who could have been engaging enemy fire, while at the same time coordinating the use of our air assets and artillery to help suppress enemies advancing on our position.
Because I know the importance of situational awareness during battle, I must admit I get annoyed by the vast number of people who go about their lives without paying even the faintest attention to where they are or what’s happening around them. It puts them and the general security of society at risk. These are the very people who most often get victimized or end up on the casualty list. The next time you go to a crowded shopping mall or airport, you will be amazed to observe how many people seem to be oblivious to their environment, insulated in their own world. As we will see, airports and malls, in particular, are two places where you should be absolutely vigilant and aware of your surroundings.
Of course, there are environments that require different levels of situational awareness. If you’re at home or at a resort, you should fully enjoy the peace and relative security these places afford. As you will learn, these places can be made safe and allow us to relax and enjoy life. On the other hand, airports, the streets of a foreign country, or crowded stadium events, for example, are not the environments in which to take a mental vacation. You owe it to yourself to stay alert.
Just like visualization, situational awareness drills can be practiced anywhere. Make it a game you play using the following checklist:
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS CHECKLIST
Try to guess what individuals around you are thinking or doing.
Look for odd behavior or things that seem out of place.
Determine where you’d go if you had to seek immediate cover from an explosion or gunshots.
Find the two closest exits.
Determine whether someone is following you or taking an unusual interest in you.
Imagine this scenario: You see a guy at a shopping mall wearing a heavy coat, holding a cigarette with two inches of ash on the end of it, and he’s not inhaling. He continues to look over his right shoulder at another guy fifty feet away with a similar heavy coat. It is 90 degrees outside. If you practice even the slightest measure of situational awareness, this scene should set off alarms in your head. In terms of honing your situational awareness, you may find it helpful to think of yourself as trying to note variances against the baseline, or what is normal.
Composure Under Pressure
Medical experts tell us that daily stress should be minimized. They advise us to find ways to reduce it to achieve better health. However, the stress we experience when confronted with a serious and very real life-threatening situation is something entirely different. Physiologically, a part of the brain called the hypothalamus triggers the release of stress-response hormones, including adrenaline, into the bloodstream. Another stress-response hormone is the steroid-like cortisol, which is produced in the cortex of the adrenal glands. This hormone increases energy and metabolic efficiency and helps regulate blood pressure.
Simultaneously, blood is being diverted away from the brain and skin to the muscles to maximize the chances of survival. Your brain now virtually has “tunnel vision,” focusing on nothing but doing what it must to survive. You hear stories about people in desperate situations with superhuman strength. That is all attributable to the body’s stress response.
SEALs say: “The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.”
This is where all the physical and mental preparation pays off. The body is helping by releasing hormones, and if we know how to utilize this natural stress response, we can remain calm under pressure and rise to the occasion during any life-threatening situation. You will simply fall back to the level of preparation and training you have achieved.
In the SEALs we would go to great lengths to make training as realistic as possible, using live ammunition, extreme weather, and no sleep. At the end of a long day of training, when I felt like I was getting less than the maximum output from my guys, I decided to add a four-mile run in the sand and make everyone swim past the surf zone in the cold winter waters of the Pacific. The waves were huge, and we sat out there shivering our asses off until the last man joined the group. I made sure I was always the first one in the water and the last one out.
Although heightened stress levels are a natural reaction to emergency situations, it is very important to manage these levels. If they are allowed to elevate too rapidly, your body will quickly go from a ready-to-respond mode to a worthless state called “lockup.”
Combat Breathing
One of the best stress-managing skills is called combat breathing. This is simply a four-second inhalation followed by a four-second exhalation. In addition to properly regulating the body’s oxygen and CO 2 levels, it will also decrease the heart rate and help clear the mind. And because it is such a basic technique that requires only breathing and counting, it will reduce stress and sharpen focus.
Checklists
Another formula for training your mind to respond quickly is to reduce actions to a checklist. Under great stress the mind works best when it has a step-by-step plan for action. Checklists catch mistakes, and it’s easier to remember what to do when information is broken down into one-line ideas and organized in a way that’s conducive to immediate recall. Before missions, I used a series of checklists that I went over multiple times. Airline pilots do the same thing before each flight, even if it seems redundant. You will best survive all the scenarios discussed in this book when you remember to utilize this checklist format.
Here are the basics of a checklist for dealing with many of the survival topics I will discuss in this book, when time is something you don’t have the luxury of, but action must immediately be taken.
IMMEDIATE ACTIONS CHECKLIST
1. Remove yourself from immediate danger—get off the X.
2. Take a few seconds to assess the situation.
3. Make a self-assessment, including checking for your own injuries and what clothing, food, water, and equipment you have available.
4. Use the Rule of Three (see page 23). Formulate a game plan by making a decision. Foster group cohesion by assigning individuals responsibility.
5. Live or die. Pull the trigger! This is your mission!
On one particular mission, there were ten things that needed to happen in a very specific order or my men were going to die. I had a “play list” strapped to my forearm, like the ones most quarterbacks use. It was great, especially during the utter chaos that ensued, to look down at my forearm and go, “Snipers—check; doors breached—check; entry teams in—check; helos inbound—check; kiss my ass, Tom Brady—check.”
The Mechanics of Survival
Humans have three acute stress responses when confronted with a potentially life-threatening situation: fight, flight, and freeze. These survival tools are found in all species, from spiders and cockroaches to primates and human beings. The best response will depend on the situation. However, to freeze in a life-or-death moment is rarely a desirable reaction. A deer that stares at the headlights gets hit by the car.
You may react with fight or flight while others freeze. If so, be a leader, step up, and get them in gear. Simple verbal commands to someone who is in the freeze state, like “Move!” may save their life. Again, step up and be a leader in this situation.
From Freeze to Fight
I recently came upon an intersection where a pedestrian had just been run over by a car. A small crowd had formed by the time I approached the seemingly lifeless, bleeding body. Th
ey were all just staring—frozen. I immediately pointed at individuals and gave them very simple tasks: “You—call 911.” “You—stop that traffic.” “You—stop that traffic.” “You—get me a shirt to stop the bleeding.” They all set about doing their tasks as I worked on the injured pedestrian. He left the scene breathing and with a pulse. The onlookers rose to the occasion and transformed into action mode. We all have the ability to use our natural response hormones to do good and save lives. That day I was very proud of this group of strangers who all pulled together to help a man survive.
I mention this to show how to get people, and yourself, out of the “freeze” mode, which is the reaction many who have never practiced any of the survival methods explained above get locked into. Depending on the circumstances, flight is needed when you see that outrunning an attacker is possible. However, if you find yourself in a situation where the only appropriate response is to fight, make it count. Remember your trigger and pull it!
When you find yourself in a life-threatening situation, decisions are going to have to be made. Make the right decisions, and you live; make the wrong ones, and you die. Some must be made immediately—like whether to fight or flee. Others will provide the luxury of contemplation for a few minutes to several hours, given the situation. I will discuss various scenarios in this book and how best to respond with the mindset of a SEAL. By practicing the various techniques explained above, you will be given a great advantage. Your self-confidence, motivation, preparedness, and mindset will all come together, and you will do what is needed.
Seal Survival Guide Page 3