Special Operations

Indoc Lesson: Timeliness

            During one of the most memorable drop sessions I had ever received we had learned a valuable lesson in timeliness.  This lesson was further compounded after becoming operational.  Below is a quick breakdown of the task that led to our drop, the explanation of an instructor and then further analysis of why it is important.

The Task

            “You have five minutes to run back to the dorms, get into your blues, and be formed up on this pad!” (Sgt. H. 2013).  This was from what was once called the BATTLE gym. ...

A short series of lessons learned during indoc that were expanded upon by my operational career. This lesson in trust is always evolving as I gained rank and skill.  Now that I am a civilian the lessons are still ever present.

Everyone sets goals in life.  The majority of us have set a goal that we were never going to accomplish.  For the large majority of us it is because we simply lack the knowledge for creating a good goal in the first place.  For the rest of us who fail at accomplishing our goal its because we were not ready for the internal struggle we will face when we set out to do hard things.  Lets work together to fix that!

            Most of the time when you hear this terminology it applies to personal finances.  In this case I am talking about your worth to a team.  Make no mistake, once you graduate the pipeline, you are still a liability to your team.  You haven’t accomplished anything.  You have earned yourself a cool hat and a shiny piece of metal for your forehead as well as the right to blouse your boots in blues.  When your team gets a call for Civil SAR at three in the morning on a Saturday, odds are your element leader or team leader will...

     This post is not to diminish any of the experiences our nations warfighters have had while downrange.  It is to highlight that when we go to fight a war, a separate war is being waged at home, against our loved ones. 

     I was fortunate to be raised a military brat.  My father served in the army for 21 years and spent several of them away from home while I was young.  I watched as my mother picked up the inevitable slack that was created simply from him being away.  I remember my old man telling...