The WAY to WOW Shows
Commit to Your Goal
November 12, 2024
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[0:03] who are you and where are you going what do you [Music] want hello and welcome to business lessons from the military I'm your host Kevin bemel and we're here every Tuesday at 10: a.m. Pacific time to talk about military history Doctrine and the practices of great military leaders all by way of distilling from them lessons we can use

[0:38] in our business and professional lives so for those of you who have seen the show before you know that this is um a way for me to give back to my fellow citizens for the support that you gave not just me but but all of my military colleagues U during this the 16 years that I spent in the Navy both active duty and and Reserve time so much uh money frankly billions upon billions of dollars is spent uh training military personnel and so there's a lot of of

[1:15] lessons that I think will transfer uh to civilian life and so this is the Forum I use for doing that so today I I I'm gonna hit on it's not I well I was going to call it a lighter subject not really it's I'm going to be telling you uh what we what we call in the Navy a SE story an experience that I had um in the very beginning of my Navy career and it's it's one that I never I never lost and

[1:51] the memory of it at least has has always stuck with me and um perhaps it's because um it was one of the few things things that lived up to what I thought uh training was was going to be so the the the topic of the show is commit to your goal so as I was what's known as a a staff staff Corp officer I was a chaplain in the Navy uh there there are numerous staff cores um in the Navy including the Medical Corp which is

[2:26] doctors the Nurse Corp which is Nurses uh the medical services Corp which is pretty much everybody else who's connected with medicine be it pharmacists be it uh um psychologists or um um shoot uh physical therapists all all all the other uh areas of of of Health Care so that's kind of one group then there's the uh civil engineering Corp there is the Jag Corp which is lawyers in in the Navy and there there

[3:02] are several others and and and as I mentioned I I was in the chaplain Corp so uh staff Corps officers generally join the Navy through what's called direct accession meaning that we essentially already have our professional qualifications and so we're brought into the Navy before we go to training now what this means on a practical level is it's much harder to kick us out if we

[3:40] are not doing well or if we fail training so I can tell you of the 45 um um officers who were part of what at the time was called my officer indoctrination school class only one of them didn't make it through and the reason she didn't make it through was she literally had a nervous breakdown and could not continue and so they went through the process of separating her now that's different

[4:16] than uh officer candidate school where when you are in officer candidate School you are not yet a commissioned officer in the United States Navy and so getting getting rid of you basically is is easier to do so if you've ever seen the movie um An Officer and a Gentleman I know I'm going back a long ways but Richard Gear plays an an officer he plays a midshipman basically and throughout his training you know Lou

[4:52] goset Who is the um the basic training instructor the drill instructor it's no C kind of colloquially you know he he is he is really you know giving them rigorous rigorous training and part of the point of that training is to weed out those people who are not going to make it through not going to um re respond well under immense pressure so if you can imagine that someone coming out of O um OCS officer candidate School

[5:27] may be the command may become the commanding officer of a ship may become the commanding officer of a squadron of of of aircraft or of submarines for that matter and so they have literally life and death of the their sailor officers and sailors in their hands and so a person in that position needs to be able to deal well even under immense stress so and so uh you know that becomes part of the weeding out

[6:02] process for for staff core so we really don't exercise what's called command Authority command Authority in the sense of commanding a a combatant unit so uh you may have a medical core officer who's in charge of a medical Battalion but but that's really an administrative role he's responsible for overseeing the doctors and nurses and other medical personnel in the command but he he doesn't he has he's not going to be

[6:37] putting them In Harm's Way so if there if there is a a a group of doctors or a group let's just call medical personnel who are deployed into a combat zone the senior member of that team will have administrative Authority but command Authority will rest with the commander who is in charge of of that particular area whether it's whether it's a ship or whether it's some kind of ground operation so and I I you know I I don't know the

[7:13] historical antecedence of this but historically uh staff Corp officers therefore were brought in they were already commissioned before they went to training and and you'll hear the the derogatory term knife and fork school for what in my time was called o um um officer indoctrination school ois it has a different name now I think it's called like ODS or something like that and the reason it's called that is because they

[7:48] do things like teach you to salute and and and and teach you how the military hierarchy works and you know all of those aspects of military culture and behavior um but in terms of the training is not particularly rigorous uh now despite that a lot of of of my colleagues had had trouble with the the physical training because we did exercise every day we did push-ups and sit-ups and running and all that kind of stuff and unfortunately for many of them

[8:24] they didn't prepare for the physical training part of it and so it was a struggle for them some of them were overweight uh and and so they had to reduce their weight or they went on What's called the fat program it's an acronym that basically restricts the diet and and requires more exercise and that kind of thing uh and the reason I bring this up is and I and this was especially true for chaplain so we didn't do much that was physically

[9:00] taxing uh during both during ois and and during chaplain school so in chaplain school we had an exercise known as AMX it was basically a field exercise where we lived in this great big tent and you know at sort of like out in you know the Wilderness kind of thing I mean it was it was kind of a joke um and uh you know we we ate uh U MRIs meals ready to uh whatever that stands for um sort of you know prepacked meals and and that sort

[9:36] of thing um and and and pretended like we were in some sort of field exercise we we had to um use an entrenching Tool uh you know this this kind of thing but it was frankly very very silly so we got to go to what used to be called the obstacle course it's now called The Confidence course but they wouldn't let us do do hardly any of the exercises because uh several months before a chaplain who was going through them fell off something she she broke her back as I recall and so now the

[10:13] chaplain core was not going to allow that kind of rigorous training and and all of this I think is is a huge mistake because as chaplain we should be setting an example and it was it was embarrassing in in many cases because despite the lack of physical rigor in our initial training we did have to pass the physical Readiness test that was administered twice a year and in many cases the chaplain um especially among

[10:48] even among the uh even among the officers was you know the lowest scorer in those tests and and and oftentimes was you know really kind of the lagard and as as someone who has in his charge the the mental and spiritual welfare of the members of the unit uh chaplain needs to be especially physically fit uh because physical fitness translates into mental and spiritual Fitness quite

[11:24] directly so one of the few times we did anything that was physically challenging was when I was in ois and we had to do an exercise that we we had to crawl through it was it was a big big big huge sandbox essentially a sand pit whatever you want to call it and we had to crawl through at a certain distance I think the distance was about 20 or 30 yards now 20

[12:00] or 30 yards that's you know a fifth to a third of a the length of a football field may not sound very long and indeed it wasn't very long but when you're crawling through the sand um it it it it takes some work and the other thing is although it was not a live fire exercise the idea behind it was the reason we were crawling on the sand is if we ever had to hit a beach there would be people shooting at us and so you had to stay low to the ground so that it made it less likely that you'd get hit by incoming machine gun

[12:36] fire or rifle fire so we went in groups of I believe it was three and so it was kind of a race between the three people in your group now I was the second or third oldest person in in my class out of of 45 and but but you know candidly had had the good sense to do a lot of physical preparation before I went to ois and so we're out there um uh staff core training at least

[13:13] at at at the time I went through it was at Naval Station Newport in Newport Rhode Island you're right on the water there so I was there I arrived in um midt and it was a five-week program as I recall PA so September to October it's it was it was cold it was wet um the geese were flying south and they would stop on on the Naval Base they would poop and then they would fly off so most of the time we were doing physical training on the lawn we would be doing

[13:48] push-ups over goose poop and and it was you know pretty pretty nasty frankly but it is it you know it was what it was I mean the fact of the matter is doing you know push-ups over you know goose poop or situp whatever you know not particularly challenging when all is said and done uh but crawling through this sand was was difficult it was not hard packed wet sand it was dry sand for the most part and as I came to find out when I finished the exercise the sand had mixed in it broken

[14:27] glass and you know when I was doing the exercise all I cared about was winning because that's that's you know I thought that was what the point was was to get down there and do the move as fast as you can keeping as low as you can and getting over the Finish Line first right so when I got over the 20 or 30 yard course and and um I don't think I won by the way I think somebody else did somebody younger than me but when I stood up I saw that my both my arms were cut and

[15:03] bleeding and I and I looked at my legs especially around my knees because you were we were pushing with our knees and our feet again cut and bloody now they weren't real deep cuts um but they were you know clearly the sand hadn't made them they weren't the kind of abrasions you get from Sand they were definitely cuts and after the exercise was over I went back over the course just you know kind of looking at it and I saw there was indeed broken glass in the mixed in

[15:39] the sand now let me say that I don't know that that was done on purpose I think it may have been someone who broke a glass or a bottle or something and and it got mixed in there because you know even though they probably weren't supposed to people would go and drink a beer or whatever um during during Liberty and and and that's how it happened uh and and the fact of the matter is you know after the exercise was done seeing that many of us were were cut and bleeding you know we went in and we we you know washed ourselves off and uh you know put on Band-Aids as necessary

[16:15] Etc so why do I tell you this story well if you saw any of the social media posts that I did I think it's an important question to ask ourselves and that is why would you crawl through glass okay and in my case it was the answer at at at that time was quite clear I wanted I had chosen to join the Navy I wanted to be not just the best

[16:50] chaplain that I could be but the best officer that I could be and part of being a good officer is setting the example so when we went through o o o ois we didn't the only enlisted people around were the chief petty officers that were training us however notwithstanding that they were our trainers and that because of that position they had what's called positional Authority so they out ranked us it was entirely possible that later

[17:28] in our career we would be on a ship with those same Petty officers and we would literally outrank them so what would they think of us as officers if we just sort of nambi pambi through the sand and and didn't take the training seriously what what kind of influence and that and really when you're a staff Corps officer you don't have authority you have influence what kind of influence would we have over you know o with respect to these chief petty

[18:05] officers and the the enlisted Sailors that they managed if we weren't clear about what we were accomplishing in that sand pit if we weren't clear about why we were crawling through glass and so for me that was I think the seminal moment in in my officer training probably because it was really the only time I I experienced any kind of

[18:40] significant discomfort by being you know cut cut and ble cut and bleeding I mean I got some uh you know blisters on my heels from Marching In in Boots that weren't well enough broken in okay you know had that before in the Boy Scouts uh but to I you know because I I had this experience I I I could I got very very clear on what it meant by my joining the Navy becoming an officer and the kind of

[19:17] uh responsibility I was assuming as a result and so I've I've kept that in mind I I kept that in mind throughout my time in the Navy and even after the Navy and so now when I set a goal I get very clear about that goal if I'm not willing to crawl through glass in order to achieve that goal then I have not committed to that

[19:56] goal so I gave just a moment for that to sink in it's very easy to make goals but a a good goal a worth well let me change the phrase a worthwhile goal a goal that really is something to strive for inevitably means experiencing some pain it means taking on some kind of hardship it means means growing Beyond

[20:31] where where we are at the time we set the goal otherwise we haven't really we haven't really achieved anything we're still the same person we were and and and that's not a true achievement because in the end what matters is growth so for the most important goals in our life and and and they may be professional although they may be in other areas they may be in our personal lives they may be in our marriages they

[21:07] may be with respect to our children they may be with respect to a commitment we make to God or or even a commitment we make to ourselves maybe it's a commitment to live a healthier life we have to have the kind of commitment that would allow us to crawl through that sand pit with the glass mixed in as fast as we can trying to win that race now it's not necessarily important that we win the

[21:42] race okay hopefully hopefully you'll hear the distinction I'm making it's not necessary that we win the race but that we give it our all working to win the race okay so if after crawling through that sand pit mixed with glass we are exhausted we've given it our all and we stand up and our arms are bleeding and our our legs and knees are bleeding and we gave it everything and yet we still came in you know third out

[22:18] of three that's fine what's important is we really were committed to the goal we're not going to reach every goal that we make that's one of the things that you know that we learn in the military we're not going to reach every goal we don't win every battle we don't w win every war You Know M much to the I think disappointment of of Americans we have this idea that we've won every war that's clearly not the case the Korean war was a was a a tie

[22:55] basically we we withdrew from the Vietnam war and and North Vietnam took over South Vietnam okay um I I'm not even sure what the standard was for winning the the war on terrorism you know what what what what was Victory I think this I I did another show on this where I talked about um um you know what what it means to fight a war and and and one of the problems with how we fight Wars is we have no definition for what victory looks like and that's a problem we as individuals

[23:31] we need to have a clear picture of what victory looks like that's what a goal is it's a clear picture of victory at the same time we have to know that sometimes we're not going to reach our goals nonetheless we have to give it our all we have to be willing to crawl through glass and so that's a a a message that that I I came to give you today sharing from my my own time in the military of sea story uh you know over the last week and a half or so I was at

[24:09] my nephew's wedding uh the past weekend the weekend before that I was at a party up at a some friends house and and you know I was the only military guy there basically and and you know people really like to hear you know stories of of what happens in the military and and it's fun to tell them about some of the crazy stuff that happened to me but behind the stories are lessons and so I I thank you for tuning in to Today's show a little

[24:44] bit shorter than than usual but talking to hear me talk about this sea story that that was so important in the very early my very early days in the Navy and has stuck with me for now almost two decades afterwards and continues to be something that helps me in my daytoday life not just my business and professional life but my my life in general so this is this is what I want to leave you with kind of repeat myself

[25:20] one more time how do you know you've committed to your goal because you're willing to crawl through sand filled with glass you're willing to crawl through glass so why would you make that commitment when you figure that out you have a a goal worth pursuing a worthwhile goal so I thank you very much for joining me today on business lessons from the military since it's a little bit shorter uh show than normal few

[25:55] things uh first of all if you're not a subscriber to my YouTube channel I would really appreciate it if you would consider subscribing the way to wow shows there there's currently four of them uh there's uh on Tuesdays at 10: am business lessons from the military on Wednesdays at 10:00 a.m. there is people making money and on Monday at 10:00 a.m. there is trusts and Estates weekly and I think from the the titles you can tell what those shows are about and then every other Thursday at 5:00 pm. Pacific

[26:33] time is my show jigger's place and and that's a time to talk about things completely unrelated to Business and Professional matters and wealth building which is the topic of the other shows we sit back have a cocktail or two and talk about books and all the the things that make life worth living um presumably that are the reason we're pursuing our business and Prof professions so that we can uh you know be involved with these other things our families um learning um vacations that sort of thing so I I

[27:10] invite you to join me for all of those shows um this week tomorrow at 10: am is um my show people making money and um my guest is Aram afar so Aram has a very interesting service called concierge real estate it's something new I hadn't heard about it before I met Aram and so I think you will find it quite interesting so 10: am. Pacific time tomorrow people making money with my guest Aram afar and then next week at

[27:48] 10: am Pacific time trust and Estates weekly and then I'll be back seven days from today with the next edition of business lessons from the military so if you have any thoughts on Today's show if you have uh a a topic that you'd like to see a show done feel free to drop a comment in the social media all of the links will be in the show notes after this episode posts on YouTube you can also email me my email address will be there as well and always welcome your input good and bad always looking for

[28:23] ways to make the show better so one last time thank you so much for joining me today wishing you a wonderful rest of the day and signing off Marie darling you are my bell courage at all times my friends