The Special Forces Fail a Lot.

A special forces operator is trained to be put in increasingly stressful situations. So invariably they fail a lot, but they fail in training so that they can succeed in combat.  Over and over and over again with gradually increasing stress and pressure the operators are trained using a method called stress inoculation.

The general premise is like the development of many skills, you start fairly closed then begin to open up (increase the variables) of the skill, and then add increasing demands. The major difference between what I have witnessed for my entire career in elite sports and with these groups is the consistency in the method and the outcomes they achieve.

They are incredibly methodical about the process.  Each step is deliberate and intentional and has 3 stages (Waller, C. 2013)

Stage 1: Conceptual education

Stage 2: Skills acquisition and consolidation

Stage 3: Application and follow-through

Let me translate that using stress as an example.

Stage 1: Understand what stress is and how they respond and react to stressful situations.

Stage 2: Learn to respond differently. The learning process entails specific strategies such as the 3R’s (article coming tomorrow) of stress management. Upon mastery, there is a gradual increase in challenge and difficulty (stress inoculation).

Stage 3: Increase the pressure, collaboration, complexity and challenge. Fail fast and often, iterate. Automation.

To be clear, they aren’t set up to fail, they are armed with everything required to succeed, but invariably failure happens as fatigue sets in, stress outweighs the coping strategies and degrades thinking and responding.  So, guess what. The coping strategies are given time to adapt, adjust and raise to the required standard.

Skills and drills are practised religiously in the military.  The two key components are repetition and stress inoculation, the interesting thought about what we can learn from these elite individuals is that we aren’t overly good at creating these situations for ourselves in our daily lives/jobs. 

As soon as the stress and pressure come on we start to look for an out, instead of turning into our coping strategies. Your results in a stressful situation can only ever be equal to your coping strategies, and your coping strategies will only ever stand up to the stresses and pressure they are placed under.

Think of it like a crash test for a car, at certain speeds, given similar variables, the outcomes can be predicted. But when the variables alter, speeds change then all bets are off. It is the same with how you cope with stress and pressure.

Do hard things, practice that sales pitch in front of your friends, boss, and biggest critics, take on a challenge far in advance of your current capability-then learn fast. Expose yourself to failure often and perhaps most importantly, find yourself an accountability partner/group.