Three Simple Things. Thom Shea

dealing with every loss or failure. The undeniable fact remains: “How you do one thing, is how you do everything.”

      The second choice to be made, the one which most people make, seems the most obvious and least risky. I call it the backup plan. The numerous people who actually pick the backup plan clearly pushes the prevalence as you can find hundreds of books on backup plans and mitigating risk. Millions of dollars can be made mitigating risk of a bad decision and having solid backup plans that keep people from feeling the gravity of failure and loss.

      I surely saw both options during my time of feeling the weight of loss once again. Going home to the safety of my father and mother and a small town was rather enticing. Quitting is the sailor’s siren song. Leaving the storm for the perceived safety of a cove is really hard to push away. But sailors and boats are meant to be at sea. I had chosen to be a SEAL; that was my sea.

      The backup plan principle will seem to take the weight of loss from you. In hindsight, the backup plan model itself causes loss. The time wasted while you are engaged in securing the backup plan robs the primary plan of any potential to succeed. Most people who have a backup plan will eventually move to it, because the reality of a primary plan is simply that primary plans never work out the first time. I find it tragic to push two plans and always move to the backup plan when the primary plan falters the first time. Maybe I would have taken the backup plan had I had one. I did not have plan B; I had no way out, thank God!

      What occurred to me during those months after being kicked out of BUD/S training was the gravity of giving very little measurable value to my word, my original word. I had to ask myself what I had actually lost. I had lost nothing because I didn’t have anything. I had to ask myself what I had failed at doing. I had not failed; I had been kicked out. The longer I let myself feel the weight and not immediately move to plan B or to quit, the clearer my situation became.

      If I quit now, I was only quitting on the value of my word. I would be dishonoring my ability to say I was going to do something, anything, and then go and do it, no matter what.

      Had I selected something else, I would also have lost all the value of my word holding any power in the world. The longer I carried that weight of loss, the more I began to see the power of honoring your word. I saw that to honor my word meant I had to stay committed. I had to finally admit I had quit on myself at West Point. I had to admit I did let the circumstances dictate the outcome instead of honoring my word and pushing through the circumstances.

      Two months after being kicked out of BUD/S training, I committed all of myself to honoring my word to become a SEAL. At that exact moment in time, all the perceived weight, all the drama and depression, all the lack of direction ceased. I got back on point with my job. I had clear direction and wrote out a special request to present to my admiral with exactly what I wanted. I saw in his office for my entire lunch period, every single day, for six months. Each day, he repeated the same answer: No. I was written up. I was punished by my chain of command but I would not give up; for me, there was no other way. The last time I submitted it, the admiral finally relented and signed it despite all the no’s he had given up to that day.

      Class 207

      We started with 111 students. We graduated 11 of those students. At the end of Hell Week, Mahrer spoke to the class. We were beaten, tired, and didn’t care about circumstances, but we would have kept going had they asked us to. He said these 13 words: “You did what you said you would do! Now you are of value!”

      The Process and Method to Honor Your Word

      Stories from real people drive the point home when dealing with principles of success. The topics and chapters that follow incorporate the wise old learning method: define the topic, tell a real-life story, and show the detailed process to produce your own results using the same method. My real intent is that when I die, all that I have learned and overcome will not be lost in my passing. Human life must always be shared in its raw, visceral form so those who come after don’t waste their lives treading water, making the exact same mistakes we did.

      The American military as a whole learned the value of passing on both the good or bad, in stories and real experiences. Listen and watch the senior leaders, learn skills that have adapted over the past 200 plus years, and evolve. If their examples were not valuable, we would be riding horses and shooting muzzle loaders and lining up in front of our enemy and dying. We no longer use those methods in the military, nor should we rub rocks together and live in caves as clans. Raw stories make us evolve.

      The first step in the process to master a six-hour baseline of your life is to learn the three methods of honoring your word and never giving up. The story is merely the context for the visceral learning you must go through yourself. Once mastered, these three methods will transform you. Literally the moment you pass through, you will be different than you are right now.

      The entire book is a process. Each step-by-step method is transformative. Each method is simple to engage, yet not easy to overcome. And trust me when I say, “not easy.” You have to pass through each by doing it from beginning until complete. You cannot hack the system. You cannot get someone else to do it for you. You can instead just get to it and do it. Simple, but not easy!

      Each method in the process has to be completed prior to moving on. Be patient, it will take as long as it takes. If you are willing to engage, anyone can achieve a six-hour baseline. That baseline will put you at a level of performance you cannot yet comprehend. The baseline is nonnegotiable.

      The first method has three parts: 21 days of overcoming your excuses, facing your fear, and the 24-hour challenge. Oddly enough, over the past six years of training leaders, athletes, and entrepreneurs, I have witnessed many people attempt the three methods to honor your word and never give up. Few quit in the first seven days. Some completed the three in 30 days. The rest have taken from one month to six months to make it through.

      The first method is the simplest and was not intended to be so difficult. However, most people are so ego driven they refuse to kill off their excuse engine. To truly honor your word, you will have to overcome all your reasons and excuses and do what you said you would do. Sadly, we all have excuses that keep us from our own greatness. Honor your word or honor your excuse, the choice is yours! You must see for yourself how you use excuses to get out of doing your life. And, you must honor your word for 21 days straight, without interruption.

      My experience in training men and women, SEALS and snipers alike, validates the notion of a 21-day cycle of learning new skills. Twenty-one days of simple activity to carve out a new way of doing anything.

      With the acquisition of the most primal skill known to man, honoring your word and never giving up, you must do all 21 days. You must force yourself to do the simple activities to expose your own particular excuses. The real intent of this experience is to expose your excuses and reasons and then, in the face of those believable excuses, do what you promised.

      These various excuses are nothing if not believable. There are books written about your excuses to convince you not to do what you said. Often the experience is rather comical watching people deal with excuses. You will find them to be subtle, seductive, and believable. If you let them run your life like they currently do, you are stuffed into a rut. You will find you have constructed a world around you to prove your excuses are more powerful than just saying you are going to do something and executing on that thing.

      It takes 21 days to kill off your excuses and reasons and change the environment around you that supports your excuses. Stop excusing yourself from being the person you want to be and just go do what you said you would do. Honoring your word is more effective and much easier as it entails much less drama.

      The First 21-Day Evolution

      We perform really well when our system is turned on and in motion during the day and is shut down properly every evening. What I didn’t realize is that the skill isn’t being taught unless you are on a high-performance team or your parents are on point and accountable. In order to show the value of honoring your word and not giving up, I want you to learn the skill of turning