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“He Fucking Shot Me!”

A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought forces upon the object that he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph.

—James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

—John F. Kennedy

Diyala Province, Iraq 2007

I stacked up on my shooting buddy who was on the right side of the doorway. His body language told me that he was ready for a leg squeeze, which was the green light to initiate clearance. He (I’ll just call him J) opened the door inward while standing on the hinge side. As the door opened, he slowly cleared the room only to see a woman run across from right to left. As the woman made her dash, the door opened more, so using the door as concealment, J bumped across to the other side so he could clear the dead space behind the door that he had not yet seen. As he moved across, I took up the side of the door where J had been and began my clearance. I swept around to the uncleared corner of the room but, before I got there, I noticed something wasn’t right.

The individual we were targeting was a known al Qaeda leader within Iraq’s Diyala province, which had become a recent hotbed of insurgency. Intelligence had driven our strike force to a small farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

Peering just over the muzzle of my rifle while scanning the room, I could make something out through the corner of my eye that was unlike anything on any of the other targets we had done. There was a man-like figure in the corner and…the more I swung my muzzle toward that area…the more I realized that it was not just a man…but an insurgent standing there with an AK-47. He was standing there with an AK on his hip pointed at us—me, rather—just waiting to fire. At that moment, I knew he had the drop on me.

“Oh, shit!”

It’s amazing how fast the brain processes context. The hundreds of thousands of hours that I had trained had ingrained in me not only habits but also judgment, and at that very instant of seeing this insurgent out of my peripheral vision, I knew that I could not swing my muzzle over to him, acquire, aim, fire, and kill him faster than he could kill me. My muscle memory knew its capabilities, and I knew that if I tried then I would lose and I would be dead.

As I tried to tuck back behind the doorframe, the unknown figure blasted off a short burst from his AK and I immediately felt the impacts both on my rifle and my chest. I remember thinking, incredulously, “He fucking shot me!” In fact, my teammates laugh now because apparently, I actually said it aloud. I was more insulted and pissed off than anything because it was difficult to comprehend the gall of this guy! Didn’t he know who we were? We were SEAL Team freakin’—! That was the arrogance—and ignorance—with which I operated at the time, because I lacked the experience to know better. I did not respect the enemy or his dwelling, and I took being at “the door” for granted.

The first round hit me in the lower left corner of the front plate of my body armor—about an inch high and an inch left from blowing out my left hip, and a few inches above the Boss Baby Maker. The second 7.62 round shot off the forward pistol grip of my HK 416 where I was gripping it—in that tiny, quarter-of-an-inch area where the grip attaches to the Picatinny rail system. The third round hit the rail of my rifle, followed by another. All in all there were three bullet impacts on the rail of my gun and one on me. Thank God for people smarter than me who can engineer this sort of protection, I later thought to myself. Four rounds, all from approximately eight feet away, were spat from an Iraqi insurgent shooting an AK-47 shooting from his hip.

In that moment, after getting shot, I knew instantly that I had become a member of a certain club—a club that nobody else wanted to join.

It’s the club of wounded soldiers.

But, unlike someone who falls down and chooses to stay down, I chose to get back up and keep going, to keep coming back for more, again and again, deployment after deployment, hardship after hardship. More importantly, so did my teammates. While I’ve been in some pretty nauseating circumstances, so have my brothers in arms, and they chose to return to the fight, too.

Meanwhile, my shooting buddy had a clear vantage point from his side of the door, where he engaged and killed the man who had just tried to kill me. I was more angry than traumatized that this guy had just tried to take my life, but I got over it pretty quickly—about twelve seconds to be exact—and continued prosecuting the target until it was secure. Once rendered safe, J and I began to tactically question the remaining inhabitants of the house in an effort to elicit any valuable information in the wake of such an assumingly traumatic event for them. It turned out that the woman who ran across the room at the beginning of our clearance was both the insurgent’s cousin and wife, and she had been instructed by him to run away from his position within the room to draw our attention away from the corner from which he was planning his ambush. When asked about how she felt that we had just killed him, she just shrugged her shoulders: “Eh, he was an asshole.”

◆◆◆

A number of instances in my life have driven home the fact that purpose is a primary motivator for success, and it’s because of the passion and fulfillment that it yields. If the meaning and satisfaction that I derived from the job were not clearly defined after the first time I was shot, then I would have put down my rifle and found a desk job, or hung up my parachute after my first parachute malfunction (more on that later). But I didn’t. Instead, I was pulled back toward the pack for another round. I had a purpose to serve and my thirst for more just wasn’t quenched yet.

When one’s job role increases in meaning, it becomes easier to endure amidst challenge and adversity for the simple fact that fear conquers fear.

Here’s what I mean.

To be purposeful and passionate about what you do does not mean you live a life full of rainbows and unicorns. There are challenges, letdowns, and tumultuous times. But when you’re passionate about your work, you become more committed and you proactively seek more ways to engage and find solutions—because if you don’t, then a heavy weight of guilt rests upon your shoulders until you do. Since you want to succeed, you’re more likely to leave your circle of comfort and face conflict with others and you fear that if you don’t, then that irresistible urge to quench your motivational thirst will never be fulfilled. But when you do, you discover that the harder that “thing” is the more you get out of it, and you get addicted to success. To try and fail at a task that frightens you overrides the fear of not trying at all.

Fear conquers fear.

◆◆◆

Purpose is that intangible force that summons people to move, and has been presented to me at multiple stages in my life across a wide range of scenarios as a means of questioning my desire and beliefs of what I held to be “right.” It’s based on what you value and choose to act upon, and as you gather meaning and value from those pursuits, passion forms. For any person or organization to be organizationally fit, employees must find meaning at work that warrants such a chase. People oftentimes join the military for an ideal because that ideal is hard to find otherwise. Companies are no different. They attract or repel talent based on the values and purposes they embody. This is one of the few times where the gray area of life dissipates and becomes black or white.

Without a direction, a mission, or a path to guide behavior, an unclear purpose leads to nowhere. Hell, just consider the types of meetings you attend in your company. How many meetings actually serve the purpose for which they’re called? Personally, I like to write the purpose of the meeting on a whiteboard for all to see so that when conversations go off topic, we can simply refer to the purpose that brought everybody together. Making purpose clear helps keep everybody aligned and able to make mini course adjustments along the way.

The bottom line is that for purpose to find fulfillment, it needs to lead to effective action. In special warfare, the ability to shoot, move, and communicate as one fluid unit is what turns uncertainty into something palpable—which also means that it’s manageable and measurable. Effectiveness comes from being grounded in what you do and why you do it; from creating a solution, rather than one day hoping to find the answer. There is a purpose for everything we do in specwar, and everything you do in your company. Every critical information node, meeting, job assignment, employee selection, mission set, sale, or training schedule serves a purpose. The question is: does that purpose create its intended value?

I am a firm believer in having a meaning for everything, a reason for why things happen—not framed in a spiritual or religious light, but instead understood rationally. Without a belief to point us toward “right,” the temptation to yield to inferior rationale grows stronger. If this snowball of temptation grows too large, it becomes easier to make decisions based upon emotion rather than reason. Without purpose, the drive to sustain superior performance dwindles away, because there is no significance for what you do or why you do it. You can only go so far on self-discipline or willpower alone because, at some point, you just get tired of pushing yourself. The metaphorical-emotional gas tank eventually runs empty. To be purpose-driven, however, is to be pulled in a direction that ignites the craving for even more discoveries, and is a theme that will be revisited often throughout this book.

For SOF, our purpose is to affect change. We do so by carrying out the strategy that allows us to constantly adapt our capabilities and win in uncertain environments. Dead bad guys just happen to be the result.

Purpose brings meaningfulness that fuels the fire for even greater intellectual curiosity and Sustained Superior Performance (SSP). I like to define SSP as steadfast execution amidst frequent uncertainty. People who can perform in the face of ambiguity—those who can conceptually build a mental and emotional bridge and safely maneuver across it without setback—are the ones who ultimately discover their high performance status.

The principles outlined in this book are what I believe lead to success whether on the battlefield or in the boardroom. Identifying a purpose and being passionate about what you do; possessing the character and competence to trust and be trusted; having a strong family or support network; and being humble enough to shut up, learn, and serve others all combine to create what I believe to be an indestructible human machine. A person who is highly motivated to learn and has the support network to do so is a dangerous adversary, because there is nothing over which the heart and mind cannot collectively triumph. Fighting with values and principles will always outweigh weapons and munitions. A rifle will run out of bullets, but the source that fuels an individual’s reason for being will never cease. Hell, look at Afghanistan. No single nation has ever conquered that godforsaken country despite technological and military advantages up the behind. I have seen the aforementioned sense of purpose firsthand by means of suicide bombers and barricaded shooters who knew they were going to die, but just didn’t care, because their sole mission in life was to take us with them. It is extremely difficult to defend against an enemy who only cares about one thing and will do anything to achieve it, including martyr himself.

The above elements are by no means the only components that contribute to sustained superior performance; they are simply what I have found to create meaningfulness, passion in life, and individual and team success.

High-demanding jobs demand high performance ideals, and to be considered tier one in any industry requires tier one people. Jobs that require you to constantly travel and be away from your family, to face danger more than the average Joe, or to deal with significant financial risk necessitate more than just a step-by-step process of how to do these things. Replicating “best practices” simply won’t cut it because what works for Company A may be a horrid idea for Company B.

Purpose was the guiding light that allowed me to persevere through uncommon challenges, as purpose offers clarity on what is to be expected and what is to be achieved. In no particular order, the other elements in this book helped me feel more obliged to carry on when the power of choice became a test against temptation.

Ohio State University, 1998

One of my first how-bad-do-you-want-to-be-a-SEAL? tests came my sophomore year in college. Every morning I would wake up at five o’clock to run four miles, then afterwards make a ridiculously oversized breakfast. My dad used to sarcastically joke that instead of opening the refrigerator door to eat, I should just stick the entire fridge between two slices of bread because it would save time. Breakfast was actually more a question of what I didn’t eat rather than what I did.

I would run to the gym to run on the treadmill, which makes absolutely no sense now that I see that sentence. On this particular morning in college, though, after doing the first mile on the treadmill, I started to see black spots.

Instead of ending the workout right then and there, like a normal human being, I decided to press on. But the harder and longer I ran, the more the dark spots would intensify and the greater my vision would constrict. Finally, I had to stop. I figured that if I stopped, then the blurriness would go away, and if the blurriness went away then I’d be able to finish the workout (I never claimed to be a genius). But as I walked away, the situation just worsened. In fact, my vision disappeared, as did my balance. I found a bench to lie down on outside when, coincidentally, a medical school student happened to be walking by and noticed that something was not right with me. She called an ambulance that took me to the hospital, only to discover my blood pressure at a “healthy” sixty over forty.

Not good.

At this point, there was still no clear indication as to why this event occurred because sports, exercise, and healthy eating had all been significant and consistent parts of my life through that point.

Like an idiot, I told my then–SEAL recruiter about the incident and he said it would preclude me from volunteering for the SEALs, but to let the situation develop a little more, talk with the doctors, and wait to see if anything changed. All I heard, though, was, “You’re fucked.”

I was devastated. I had envisioned becoming a SEAL since high school, and I was now being told that my dream was impossible. The search for doctors began—intensely—and after talking with multiple MDs who tried to identify the root cause of my adverse reaction, it came down to one final heart doctor, who also happened to shatter my dreams.

This cardiologist essentially said that I could never exercise and, therefore, could definitely never be a Navy SEAL since the incident was clearly a heart issue as it involved elevating my heart rate. I broke down in tears right there in his office with my dad right next to me. It was embarrassing, but I couldn’t control it because just a year earlier a skin irritation that prevented me from enlisting after high school had finally cleared up, and a letter from a dermatologist had cleared my entrance for the Navy. But now all those dreams were gone. In telling me “no,” this heart doctor had brought me down to a reality that I didn’t want to accept. He made me question my passion of how badly I wanted to go to BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training).

My mom, ever so supportive, always ingrained in me not to worry about things I could not control, and that “things will work out as they should.” Her patience and optimism have carried me through to this day and have helped shape my resiliency.

Meanwhile, over the same time period of my college career, my dad had been seeing a doctor friend of his own1, but not for medical reasons. Gwen was awesome, and incredibly supportive. She had been with me every step of the referrals, made new introductions, and she was there that day in the heart doctor’s office. More importantly, she didn’t believe the shit that the cardiologist was slinging.

“Listen, Jeff, I want to try one last thing. Do you remember what you ate for breakfast that day?” My eyebrows raised as the picture of a refrigerator in-between two pieces of bread passed through my mind.

“Yeah, I think so.” I replied. Any shot was better than no shot, I figured.

“Okay, let’s try a food allergy test and see if anything pops. I’ll get you scheduled for next week. Who knows; it may open up some doors for us.”

I was doubtful, but I agreed. Then, to everyone’s surprise the food allergy test revealed two foods that I was allergic to: parsley and celery. Moreover, the anaphylactic reaction that occurred that day on campus was exercise-induced which meant that I could eat parsley or celery anytime but if I exercised right afterwards, then my face would blow up again and I would look like one of the creatures from the bar in the movie Star Wars.

Why did this happen? Why did I have to waste time, effort, and money in discovering something that would never affect my entrance into the Navy? My belief is that it was to instill just how important a personal mission (i.e. purpose) was, to question my desire about how badly I wanted to become a SEAL, and the extent to which I would pursue this dream. In high school, I was denied military entrance due to a skin irritation that miraculously appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared right after trying to enlist. While there was certainly sadness and depression in high school about not being able to join, in college the disappointment was tenfold. My focus on purpose—on meaning—was so deeply ingrained in me by then that no other career field was even an option. I am forever indebted to not only my parents and their support during that time, but Gwen’s as well. Her support will never be forgotten.

Summary

Without a purpose to fuel your performance, success will be short-lived. Without purpose, an individual, company, or team bears no value and the superiority component of competition fizzles out.

More so, purpose comes from within. If you wait for some external force to cajole you along in the right direction, you’ll always be waiting.

The bottom line is this: purpose validates your beliefs and, therefore, your actions. It supersedes fear—even if fear is that element trying to rein you back from pursuing your purpose—because it affords opportunity, which is something that nobody else can offer you except you.

As this book will show, one’s ability to shoot, move, and communicate throughout business or life all starts with having purpose and passion for what you do. But, to sustain superior performance indefinitely, one must have purpose’s sibling, passion, to feel the fire, as the next chapter will show.

1 My parents were divorced