7 Jan 2025
Why toughing out is barely the answer
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What if everything was set against you from the beginning?
Hi, everyone-
Ever wonder if certain things are just dead-set against you from the start?
It certainly looks like it when we’re dealing with an impossible colleague, boss, coworker, partner, spouse, flawed system, medical system, and even government.
And when that happens, I’m always thinking:
* I guess I’ll just have to put on ‘a good attitude.’
* What was that manifestation system that that book said again?
* This system sucks. They should fix their problems. Not me.
* “Mind over matter,” “Mind over matter,” “Mind over matter,”
* Never mind. It’s over. It doesn’t matter. Now:
How do I get out of this hell?
This week, I’ve dug up an archival message from a Navy Seal and Admiral who deconstructs how one Navy cohort deals with the notoriously bone-breaking and soul-crushing Hell Week—the baseline physical test the US Navy uses to select the nation’s toughest.
According to some:
“Hell Week is considered to be the hardest military training in the world. It is a week of continuous military training during which most classes sleep for a total of two to five hours over the course of the entire week.” -Eric Greitens
“The instructors used our suffering to pick and peel away our layers, not to find the fittest athletes … That’s something the quitters didn’t understand until it was too late.” -David Goggins
“Hell Week involves waking soldiers up to gunfire on a Sunday and forcing them to exercise, jump in cold water, and go without sleep until Friday.” -David Goggins
“Lined up on the beach during suset, Hell Week students get to say goodnight to the sun and hello to the drop in temperature each night.” -Chris Sajnog
“A Navy Seal told me that most guys trying to be a Navy SEAL don’t make it through Hell week because they’re dreaming for it to be over.” -Jon Gordon
Sounds like a miserable time. But I don’t think you need to just be going through physical adversity to be going through Hell Week.
Hell Week is the on-and-on-ness of any thankless state. Hell Week is the visible invisibility of growing old. Hell Week is the unrecognized lump in your throat when your kids, grandkids, parents move away to places you’d be lucky to visit once every year or two. Hell Week is losing the job you don’t even love. Hell Week is wanting the freedom to call the shots so badly that even freedom refuses the call. Hell Week is being ridiculed for what you believe in by people you trusted.
Hell Week, if anything, is … human week.
This is why, in between wiping the kids’ milk off the floor and wondering when I’m going to hear back from my doctor this week, I put on the headphones and thumb through hours of research. And that’s when I learned that there is a different approach to going through ‘Hell Week,’ according to Admiral William McRaven’s message.
In this episode:
* “It is six days of no sleep … a muddy bog that tests …”
* “My training class [was] looking to weed out the weak of mind …”
* “The mud consumed each man until … “
* “The instructors told us that we could all leave the mud—if just five men quit.”
* “There were still eight hours to go before the sun rose … And then, …”
What I found from his account is that, to my surprise, toughing it out and a bunch of mindset stuff just isn’t going to do it.
There’s something else. Something else that makes the sunrise come sooner.
Scroll up to download and listen to this episode. Or,
Scroll down to read the transcript.
Thanks for being here,
-Thalia
PS: If you want to catch up on similar themes from the archives, here are a couple as a refresh.
SEASON 2, EPISODE 4
Toughing it out isn’t the answer, says Hell Week
(Music: Silhouettes by Tobias Voigt. License Code: 8IDBGGC5WXLDYLAU)
