Failure at Special Warfare Selection
EPISODE 20
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WELCOME TO ANOTHER PERSONALLY UNCOMFORTABLE ONES READY PODCAST. ON THIS EPISODE THE GUYS SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCES SURROUNDING FAILURE. BUCKLE UP AND ENJOY A BIG BAG OF HUMILITY!
INTRO
Intro (00:00:03):
You're listening to the ones ready podcast. If team of Air Force special operators forged in combat with over 70 years of combined operational experience as well as the decade of selection instructor experience. If you're tired of settling and you want to do something, you truly believe in, you are in the right place. Now here's your host, PJ team leader, former INDOC instructor supervisor, entrepreneur, and physician assistant student Brian Silva.
Brian (00:00:28):
Welcome statement.
Stay healthy during these super weird times.
Let’s talk about FAILURE.
The AF apparently decided to promote a couple dudes.
Listen, subscribe, support our friends. Eberlestock, Alphabrew Coffee, and Strikeforce Energy.
Life is full of tests and setbacks.
Selection and training for an AF Special Warfare career field is hard. It brings grown folks to tears.
When confronted with failure how will you deal with it? How will you think about it?
What does it mean to fail?
Peaches, how should we view failure?
FAILING FORWARD
Peaches (00:04:20):
Fail forward, fail fast.
Failing forward is being able to look at failure objectively and not emotionally.
Learn from failure. Could it have been prevented? What steps need to be taken to ensure future success?
Operation Eagle Claw was an objective failure that led to great things.
Aaron (00:06:07):
Well, yeah, but that failure led to JSOC
Peaches (00:06:11):
It lead to all of SOCOM. So in the end we failed forward as a force, as a nation because without that failure we wouldn't be where we're at today without a doubt.
Brian (00:06:25):
Mogadishu led to a lot of innovation in tactics and equipment.
Dwelling on failure leads to bad decision making.
Failure is a better teacher than success.
If you’re only experiencing success you may need to re-evaluate your goals.
Aaron, what’s worse, failure or unearned success for growth?
FAILURE OR UNEARNED SUCCESS
Aaron (00:08:33):
Unearned success is worse. Failure is objective.
Sports stories…
Failure is something we can look at and achieve growth through its’ lessons. Unearned success is like having the imposter syndrome.
Aaron would rather fail than have things he didn’t earn.
Brian (00:09:47):
Failure leads to lessons learned and creates a stable platform for future success. Unearned success is built on an unstable foundation.
Peaches (00:10:13):
You see people resting on their laurels and they just, they're like, Hey, that was a, that was a good run I had or a good deployment and I'm allowed to ride that train for a while.
Trent (00:10:27):
The ability to view your failures objectively is a skillset you need to develop.
Peaches (00:10:56):
And it takes failing a lot.
Brian (00:11:01):
You need to be able to be honest about your failures.
Examples of folks not being 100% honest about why they failed or who was responsible.
Trent, sometimes we give students impossible tasks in the pipeline. What do you think about the fear of failure?
FEAR OF FAILURE
Trent (00:12:55):
Make sure your fear of failure isn’t so high that it leads to a meltdown when you do fail.
Adopt the growth mindset.
A certain amount of fearing failure can be positive.
No one makes it through their career without experiencing failure to some degree.
Peaches (00:14:19):
I think that fear of failing helps keep you sharp though. I mean it just, it, it's just because you don't want to mess up. You don't want to embarrass yourself. You don't want to let yourself and your team down. So that fear helps keep you sharp. At least for me anyway.
Trent (00:14:39):
Trent remembers every time he failed in his career.
Aaron (00:15:18):
The fear of failure is present during real world situations. It keeps you sharp and prepared.
You never want to get the call and have doubts because you aren’t ready.
Brian (00:16:16):
The fear of not succeeding leads to good habits like making sure your kit is always ready to go.
Don’t let it become debilitating though.
Peaches (00:16:46):
Yeah. You definitely got to make sure that fear of failure is not something that keeps you from doing something and you're like, Oh, I'm not going to do X or Y because I'm scared that I may fail. Nah, man, get in there and get after it.
Brian (00:17:10):
People at the end of their lives don't always think about the things that they did. It's always the things that they didn't get to do if they held back. I talked to a lot of guys who are in selection previously they quit or whatever and it was just always kind of lingers in their head. Or if they didn't ever try, we get comments every once in a while about people that are fifties or whatever and they're like, man, I really wish I would have gone for this thing because it sounds really awesome and these are the kinds of dudes that I want to be around super motivated and all that stuff. So definitely go out there. Fail. Peach, this one's for you. So you think a person can get used to failure, build up that toughened like callous as a get through and get used to failures or should they let it affect them that much?
GETTING USED TO FAILING
Peaches (00:18:26):
All of us are living proof that you can get used to failing. It still stings though.
You build up a callous of sorts that allows perspective to seep through.
Peaches tells a story about public speaking and what happens if you use finger guns without a license.
Brian (00:20:48):
When Brian was younger his failures would keep him up at night. He internalized his own feedback and learned from it.
Brian doesn’t enjoy public speaking but continues to put himself out there and commit to getting better.
Over time you learn to get over things quicker and implement the lessons learned.
The quicker you get past failure the more bandwidth you have to take on new challenges.
Peaches (00:22:02):
I still think about my failures though. Some of my big ones, I still think about him. It's not like it haunts me or anything like that, but it's still like, okay, if I see this again or this situation happens again, like I know what to do better now.
Trent (00:22:18):
Trent goes a little hippie and advises y’all to live in the moment. You know what he means.
Brian (00:23:02):
In the pipeline don’t try to predict what’s coming. Deal with every situation as it comes to you.
Learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of your Team and move forward.
Aaron (00:23:33):
From the Instructor standpoint: he doesn’t remember the thing you jacked up 3 hours ago.
The Instructors aren’t dwelling on all of your tiny mistakes. Neither should you.
The thing that is haunting you has been forgotten by everyone except you. Don’t give your failures more attention than they deserve.
WHAT CONSTITUTES A FAILURE
Brian (00:24:32):
Yeah, I was actually, that's the next topic I was going to ask you, Aaron specifically was who, who really decides what constitutes a failure?
Aaron (00:24:42):
Oh yeah. I mean you do like when you decided to quit, failure is when you just quit trying at all.
Brian (00:25:39):
If you’re still moving towards you goal you haven’t failed.
Let’s talk about what we’ve seen during training and on team with regards to failure.
Trent (00:27:36):
Everyone has their day when they are going to mess up. Keep moving forward. Don’t come down too hard on your teammates when they have their day.
Brian (00:28:42):
The “pain cave” is a dangerous place to be. Be a good teammate but know what you can and cannot do.
Peaches (00:30:32):
Peaches tried to be a good teammate and learned that standards are for everyone.
DON’T FOCUS ON FAILURE
Brian (00:31:37):
Don’t dwell on your failures. It leads to more failure. Reset, refocus, learn, try again.
Peaches (00:32:26):
Target fixation under canopy.
Aaron (00:32:43):
Don’t hug a cactus…they hug back.
Aaron (00:33:51):
Aaron, Peaches and Brian take stroll down a poop covered memory lane. Avoid cows on the DZ.
Brian (00:35:08):
Cadre will push you into failure to see how you react.
Peach. You also did instructor things. I'm sure you saw tons of people fail at Weapons School.
Peaches (00:36:40):
I mean that's the name of the game and the Weapons School. Everything is built to test your absolute limit and with the expectation that you are probably going to fail, you are definitely going to fail it. Some of the desired learning objectives because each scenario was built to ensure that you learn certain objectives. But I think it's, doing this is kind of a morality thing as well, but doing the right thing when no one's looking right and how does that translate into failure? It's, yeah. Okay. I failed. Now what? Get it going again. That’s just my 2 cents on it.
Brian (00:37:27):
Aaron, you got anything on that?
Aaron (00:37:30):
Favorite cadre impressions were watching a team come together. It allows the Cadre to give a motivated squared away team a wider lane. That’s the good stuff.
Trent (00:40:29):
The most rewarding cadre experience is seeing someone struggle to success.
The worst is watching a legitimate failure.
Brian (00:42:47):
Your composure and integrity are being evaluated by the cadre. It could make the difference between a setback and elimination.
Everything you do is being tracked and recorded.
Selection is not the place to not worry about how others perceive you.
How you perceive yourself after a failure will ultimately determine your level of success.
PERSONAL FAILURES
Aaron (00:47:10):
Aaron got a little confident during an eval day at INDOC.
Ditch and dons…
Don’t get complacent.
Brian (00:49:05):
Ditch and Don tutorial.
Aaron (00:49:38):
Aaron didn’t dwell on his failure. Realized it was just a bad day and passed the rehack.
Trent (00:50:28):
Trent almost failed out of Military Free Fall. Took every single jump allowed to pass.
Kicked his feet on all of his exits until his instructor gave up correcting him. Dwelling on a failure point doesn’t lead to success.
Peaches (00:52:15):
Peaches failed the final fin at INDOC by 2 seconds and had to re-eval.
Brian (00:53:39):
Did they tell you that you were going to fail? Like when you were 3000 meters in or whatever. They're like this guy is really cutting it close. Like hurry up or we did, we did claps or just something to tell you.
Peaches (00:53:48):
I had been cutting it close the entire time when it came to finning. Like listen, I'm living that life man. This is par for the course when it came to finning. Yeah that was, that was just like, Oh well he'll, he'll squeak it through, he always has before. Not so much that day.
Brian (00:54:08):
Brian failed his first attempt at drown proofing in dive school.
Was willing to wake up with water in his lungs when he re-took the test.
Sometimes you just have to gut it out.
HAVING A BAD DAY?
Trent (00:57:48):
The first step to being able to learn from failure os being honest with yourself.
Trent goes on to tell an incredibly embarrassing CQB story. Kinda wish it would have been edited out of the podcast.
Brian (01:00:15):
You have to own your successes and failures.
Being honest promotes trust in the team which is crucial for team success.
IS FAILURE AN OPTION?
Peaches (01:01:54):
Failure is an option, but it doesn’t have to be a decision point.
Aaron (01:02:46):
You’re going to fail. We all have. You shouldn’t try to fail though.
Factor it into your planning. Know what you’re going to do. Don’t quit right out the gate.
Peaches (01:03:41):
Within the community it’s understood that a lot of the prestigious medals come from situations that went horribly wrong. There just happened to be at least one guy who was able to salvage the wreckage.
Trent (01:04:22):
Well and no plan survives first contact. Adapt and overcome. First failure doesn’t mean forever failure.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Brian (01:04:47):
Yeah. And I think it's important also to just kind of point out you react to the things that you are aware of at the time. So there are a lot of people that can armchair quarterback and be like you read a book or whatever. You're like, Oh Whoa, why did they just do this or whatever after the fact. And the reality is if you're the dude on the ground, you see what you see and you hear what you hear, whether the radio contact didn't come in later on you'll like, Oh that's what they said. Oh buddy of yours will tell you like, Oh crap, I totally didn't even hear that on coms. Like there are of times when I was doing, the team leader thing, you have a couple of radios, you're trying to talk to another person that's here in real life and you're the airplane, the other team, and you're just like trying to figure out what's what you miss, things that are going on and other people catch it. So once you get that full story and it's in a book or whatever, it's easy to be like, Oh they should've just went this way instead of this way. Yeah. It's easy to say, but that dude, maybe he missed something. Maybe he wasn't able to see you. It was dark whatever the, the fact is. So just saying that, because we're not trying to like armchair quarterback or sharp shoot anybody that did anything, but you will fail and you have to definitely think about what you're going to do in that moment. And that's why it's important to just talk about this thing like we're talking about right now. Failing because you're going to continue to fail. And if you're in a deployed situation and things are on like lives are on the line stuff, then you have to continue to move forward and you can't be like, Oh man, I totally screwed up that, that calm with the aircraft or whatever. I sounded like an idiot. You don't have time to like think about that stuff. You have to keep on moving forward. Let me just end it pretty much on that note right there, I was going to talk about a little bit success and that kind of stuff. But let's leave it at failure and we won't talk about success. We'll say it for a future episode. Failure. Next up. Next up. Success. So you guys got anything else? Final parting words here. If you don't try then you automatically fail. But if you at least try and fail, then that you've at least tried to do something and it doesn't matter what the armchair quarterbacks going to say. At the end of the day, the people are going to say what they're going to say. But overall, what matters is how you internalize that failure. And if you make yourself better from the failure, so continue to learn from it. Don't dwell on those little failures that you may have had in the past just learn, push on and over time you'll develop a, you'll develop like Peaches saying you get over a lot quicker. You start learning a lot quicker. You don't beat yourself up as much. If it was something that was kind of smaller and you kind of rationalize it wasn't that big of a deal but you keep those really big things that you mess up with you for the rest of your life and you're always going to use those in reach back whenever things go. And you're like, this, I need to make sure this happens because I don't want another repeat of this failure that I had in the past. And you're going to continue to do that throughout the rest of your life. And whether it's an academic test or a physical test or if a social test like selection, they're testing the kind of person that you are, you're going to screw up. But what you need to do, especially in selection, is bounce back and continue moving forward. Be that guy that motivates. Don't be the person that's in their pain cave, constantly thinking of failure because you're going to go straight towards a failure. Whenever that happens. You have to be that person that moves there. Adjust your target, stop looking at that fear that happened and then adjust back onto the goal and where you're headed. And that is overall success and pursuit of whatever kind of goals you have in mind. So keep that in mind. We appreciate you guys listening to the podcast. You can hit us up anytime via email, IG, YouTube, throw some comments down below. Let us know, some of your successes or failures and ways that you could never come to them. Share with each other and go out there and keep on training. I know things are crazy right now in the world, but you can still get your run on and get your ruck on, be outside, just do what you got to do for the meantime. Hopefully this all goes over soon and life continues back to normal. So thanks again for listening and we will catch you guys on the next episode.
SPECIAL THANKS TO FAILURE FOR MAKING THIS EPISODE POSSIBLE.
TLDR: If you plan on becoming part of the AF Spec Warfare Team be prepared to face failure. Adopt the right mindset. Learn from your mistakes. Take responsibility. Don’t be a terd.
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