Transcriber: Anna Sobota Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
It is an understatement to say that we are living in uncertain times,
be it politically, environmentally, economically and now, even pandemically.
In the US military, there is a term VUCA,
which stands for “Volatile, Uncertain, Chaotic and Ambiguous”.
Does it sound familiar?
The fact is that this word is being increasingly used outside the military,
from the modern-day boardroom to even the mainstream media.
[It indicates] that the world we live in
base semblance more and more of a modern-day battlefield.
From your study room in your leafy suburb
to the air-conditioned office, you once frequented daily,
you are living in a battlefield.
If you need any convincing, just jump on social media
before any major election.
And you’ll soon discover that your idealized view
of your house with a white picket fence,
with children playing in the paddling pond of life,
it’s long gone.
The battlefield requires soldiers, trained soldiers, warriors.
This battle results in victory for some,
and defeat for others.
The U.S. Navy Seal, Richard ‘Mack’ Machowicz
describes being a warrior as
believing and being prepared for the cause, refusing to quit,
rather than the actual act of fighting.
The very word comes from the French word ‘werreier’,
which is associated with fighting spirit.
The times you live in, require only one thing,
that you become a warrior,
to rise to the occasion,
to be victorious,
even if the victory is only an internal one.
Now, to become a warrior may sound a little bit daunting.
But actually, it’s not that complicated.
I’d like to share with you three secrets.
The practice of which will give you
the mental toughness,
the mental strength,
and determination of a modern-day warrior.
A secret number one,
you need to have a mind of a warrior.
You’ve already got it.
Secret number two,
a great little word to inspire: determination.
And secret number three, know thyself.
Now you're probably thinking,
how can I be talking to you about becoming a warrior?
How is that even possible?
Well, let’s go back to the beginning.
And I mean, the very beginning.
We would go back to the days of the Hunter-Gatherer,
characterized by the bow, the arrow and the spear.
Every day, the warrior spirit, the fighting spirit,
would need to be evoked at the crack of dawn,
for the Hunter-Gatherer to guide for the hunt.
And this is in a context of an environment filled with dangerous, wild beasts.
No matter how the Hunter-Gatherer felt.
Would he be tired, cold, illl --
They would need to rise at the crack of dawn
to ensure supremacy in the hunt.
Even if they could only find wild edible berries.
If not, there would be no food, no catch,
which would lead to starvation and eventual extinction of the tribe.
Similarly, in lockdown, many of us found ourselves
feeling like we were back in the days of the Hunter-Gatherer,
looking for those wild edible berries.
The mere fact that you all exist today
means our forefathers prevailed.
They were able to survive.
The warrior is in your DNA.
Now, there are two ways to tap into the warrior that lies within you.
This can be internally or externally.
For externally, this goes along the belief,
the age-old argument: Are leaders born or are they made?
In the context of a leader being made,
a Harvard professor talks about a twice-born leader.
First time, through the natural birth.
The second time,
when undergoing a major life disappointment
such as a job loss or a career setback,
where this leads to separatedness from the life we once knew,
and literally a case of do or die.
You are no longer afraid to stand up.
And for leaders that are made, this is an essential condition
to find the ability to lead.
In the midst of times such as these,
these external challenges provide the conditions
to develop the fighting spirit that we associate with the warrior.
This can also be, in turn, evoked internally,
such as practicing of daily habits to increase mental toughness thresholds.
Now you may not like the idea,
but a useful technique is a cold water shower.
There is evidence that this increases resilience
and even improves mental health.
It may not be everyone’s choice to join the armed forces
and live a life of such discipline, but I did.
And it taught me an enormous number of ways to approach life.
One of them is starting the day with a cold water shower.
This is a sure way to discover alertness and reinvigoration.
Research shows that it actually activates the sympathetic nervous system,
releasing endorphins and norepinephrine.
As we used to say in the Navy --
“You’ll go into the shower a lamb and you’ll come out a lion.”
It gets you out of your comfort zone.
Personally, this helps me ensure I don´t lose my edge.
No matter, how comfortable I might be getting in life.
A proponent of this is Wim Hof, The Iceman,
holder of 26 Guinness Book of World Records.
He says that it takes a strong mind to endure the cold,
and this increases willpower,
which filters through to other aspects of your life.
This leads to secret number two.
I don’t know if you’ve heard the word,
if you were ever in the South African military or ever exposured to it,
you will probably know the word.
Here comes the word: Vasbyt,
which literally means to bite hard, [to have] grit.
This is an act of determination.
Other words to describe it could be: keep punching,
do whatever it takes.
When the going gets tough, the tough keep going.
You get the idea.
And whilst I was in the military,
I was always seeking to take on challenges, to be more,
and to focus on my weaknesses and, in my mind, to eliminate them.
Until one day I discovered that sheer willpower is not enough.
Upon leaving school, I analyzed myself and said, what is my weakness?
I’m going to challenge myself to be more.
Now after years of overcoming these challenges, slaying these dragons,
until one day I hit a brick wall,
where even getting out of bed and getting through the day
took a lot of vasbyt.
If you do entirely on willpower, you will burn out.
Now, let me tell you about the Pacific salmon.
The Pacific salmon takes part in the annual salmon run,
and has to go upstream sometimes 4000 kilometers,
the whole way going against the odds.
Where it even has to go up waterfalls, airborne about two metres,
where it has to dodge, fish trying to catch it,
bears trying to catch it.
However,
the really important thing is
that even the salmon knows when to stop.
After depositing the eggs,
it then returns to the ocean, going in flow, going with the current.
You see, being in flow, being in your flow
is a key tenet for peak performance.
Now I’m calling you out all to be warriors.
But you are also human.
In this battlefield of life, there needs to be a balance.
If not, we’ll be zombies.
And being a zombie may bear some semblance
of having that thousand-yard stare
or being hardcore.
But the risk is that your light would be extinguished.
You’ll end up a zombie.
You see, the iron control is sometimes essential.
However, we are also human beings.
For mental toughness to endure, to be sustainable,
there needs to be enhanced performance in these times.
So, it’s a combination of mental toughness and strategies
which lead to the best possible outcome.
So let's talk about strategies.
How do you get that warrior persona?
That persona to survive the battlefield,
to be mentally ready for whatever may come your way,
to build that mental fortress?
Well, this starts at the very beginning of your day.
What’s the first thing you do in the morning?
You wake up.
What’s the next most important thing to deal with?
Your state,
for which a morning ritual is essential.
An example being the well-known [unintelligible].
Now there are three components to a morning ritual.
First, body movement.
Second, mental movement.
Third, inner dialogue.
For body movement,
this is about getting the body going, doing some exercise,
some cardio, breath work.
A friend of mine had depression for three years.
But what really made a difference, was the exercise,
where endorphins are released,
it reduces pain and increases positive feeling.
Now, the second is mental movement, getting your mind going.
What are you focusing on?
The same friend said to me that in the morning,
focusing on gratitude has been powerful.
He just focuses on three things in the morning that he is grateful for:
thankful for this new day,
thankful for being alive
and for the warm cappuccino he is about to have.
Research proves that people with gratitude live happier lives.
This leads to my third secret: inner dialogue.
This is your self-talk.
This can be either positive or negative.
Psychologists believe that we have 70,000 thoughts a day.
How do you interpret failures?
Is it a failure or is it a feedback?
The most important of these three,
for me, it is inner dialogue.
A useful technique is reframing
where the silver lining is found.
This reframes your past and current experience
to empowering experiences, ones that serve you.
However, do you remember the salmon?
Things are not always what they appear to be.
They are circumstances where finding the silver lining
could actually fool you.
Just as a ship in a storm faces wild winds and thrashing seas.
Even finding a silver lining,
there is no denying that the ship is in the storm,
and will need to stabilize,
perhaps calling upon an anchor.
In human terms, this could be criticism, judgments, self-doubt.
And although, a silver lining could be sought,
there’s no denying the reality.
The reality is that you may be in trouble.
During which time, you need to stabilize
and call upon your own metaphorical anchors.
And evoke emotions linked to your past successes
to stabilize your state.
However, the really important thing is,
if you focus on the storm, you will lose perspective.
If you focus only on the silver lining, you may be fooling yourself
into a blissful state of ignorance.
If you focus on anchor, you will find a perspective.
We’ve been talking about strategies to avoid burnout.
If we look at many of the great heroes, what do they have in common?
Grit.
This is associated with determination.
It is derived from the act of clenching one´s teeth,
to vasbyt.
We talked about the warrior attributes
and three secrets
to obtain the mental toughness of a warrior.
Number one, you’ve already got it.
You have the attributes of a warrior.
Secret number two, we said it was the vasbyt,
which brings us to the final one, to know thyself.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
Yes, Socrates refers to the ridiculous nature of humankind,
whereby we try to understand complicated formulas
and complicated issues without even understanding ourselves.
Any army general will tell you: know the enemy.
Well, in this case, you are the enemy
because we all trip up in our own garbage.
Knowing who you are raises awareness and changes the way of thinking
because we know that a problem cannot be solved,
with the same level of thinking which created it.
To know thyself means to know all three of yourself,
The Three Selves.
Your Ideal Self, this is who you’d like to be.
Your Actual Self,
who you are when somebody is watching you, your persona.
This serves to protect you.
It's littered with blind spots, which everyone can see.
And it’s obvious to everyone, except you.
And then there’s the True Self, who you are when no one’s watching.
This is where your values and beliefs sit.
This is central to your being.
Now, alignment of these three selves leads to this congruency.
The starting point, though, is to know these three selves.
We spoke about the morning ritual.
As you leave the house, you have your body armor
and your mental fortress built, where you control your emotions
and have management over them
being disassociated rather than disconnected,
so you’re still connected with your True Self.
It is taking on these challenges, which are congruent with your True Self
which is inner motivation,
but for sustainable mental toughness,
a life which will endure?
You see, the warrior is not about a man or a woman
running around with a spear and a shield.
Rather, it is what it represents.
Although technology may have brought us
a measure of convenience and safety,
we have seen the disruptions in the age of VUCA.
We can no longer hide behind it.
We need to tap into the warrior spirit of our forebears.
So let me quickly remind you.
In today’s world, you need to have the mental toughness of a warrior.
You’ve already got it.
It needs to lead to a vasbyt,
but not so hard that your teeth fall out.
And you also need to know thyself, more than you know anything else.
Learning from the great military strategist Sun Tzu,
we are reminded that the warrior wins in his or her mind first,
before entering the battlefield or going on the hunt.
Thank you.