Here are seven Navy SEAL sayings to keep in mind while moving toward achieving your personal and professional goals as a mobile DJ.
1. The only easy day was yesterday.
This is one of the more well-known sayings of the SEALs. When constantly pushing yourself to excel, there will be challenges that make every day a battle.
2. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.
One exercise in SEAL training is “surf torture.” You link arms with your classmates and stand, sit, or lie in the frigid Pacific Ocean until your body reaches the early stages of hypothermia. During the initial phases of training, you do this daily. Then you cover yourself from head to toe in sand and stay that way for the rest of the day. You might follow this with running the obstacle course, weapons training, or classroom time, but you are expected to push the discomfort aside and stay focused on the task at hand.
3. Don’t run to your death.
In SEAL teams, this is not a metaphor. When conducting raids that put you in close-quarters combat scenarios, restraint is often the best approach. Once you breach and gain entry to the target, being slow and methodical often wins the race. Hence the phrase, “Don’t run to your death.”
4. Have a shared sense of purpose.
A shared sense of purpose is hard to continually communicate. The economy changes. New technologies emerge. Employees come and go. There are many moving parts, which is why it’s critical for the leadership to always be communicating the reality of the situation and what the “win” will look like when you get there. And, most important, what everyone’s role is in helping the team achieve that goal.
5. Move, shoot, communicate.
As a SEAL, you must be able to perfectly execute these three functions to ensure mission success. Move: You have to be able to work as one well-maintained mechanism with the ability to have constant fluid motion. Shoot: That’s self-explanatory. Communicate: All good teams have frequent, open, transparent communication. When the bullets start flying, everyone needs to know what the next move is.
6. No plan survives first contact with the enemy.
This is from Helmuth von Moltke, a German field marshal from World War I. Similar is this sentiment from Mike Tyson: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” That is why preparation and training are even more critical than planning.
7. All in, all the time.
I wanted to close with another one of the more well-known SEAL sayings. Just being a good performer won’t cut it to make it into the SEAL teams. You have to give everything you have just to make it to the next day. Just like managing stress, you have to focus on one piece at a time. So don’t worry about the test you have in the afternoon. Your goal is to make it to breakfast. Then lunch, and so on.
