I wrote this to help people have a bright future. If you’re going to win in life, you need to anticipate. In order to anticipate, you have to ask the right questions. 

One of the questions I get asked the most about SEAL training is : “How hard is it?” or “Is it really that hard?”

Call me crazy, but I have a problem with this question. What I don’t like about this question is not that I’m offended people would ask or anything like that. I have no problem indulging people's curiosities, what I do have a problem with is the way of thinking behind the question.

Also, I should have prefaced with this, I get asked this the most by future SEAL candidates, young people who dream of being a SEAL, but I also get asked this question by people who just admire or appreciate the SEAL culture. It bothers me all the same. And let me clarify, you don’t do anything wrong by asking this question. It is just that the answers to these questions provide you the least amount of value.

The way of thinking behind anyone asking the question “How hard is it?” stems from a thought of “would I be able to do it?”

There’s nothing wrong with asking that question, but the problem with this way of asking is that the answer to the how-hard question subconsciously determines the “yes” or “no” for the internal “can I do it?”

Let me reframe it into different terms that might make more sense.

Let us say that I had completed a really long, revered race call the Death Race. And one of the special things about the Death Race is that the distance of the race is always unknown to the audience and racers. You step up to the starting line without knowing if it’s 30 miles or 200 miles.

Then after having completed this revered race the question people want to ask you the most was “how long was the race?”

Of course, that is the most curious question, but it is also the least beneficial.

I’m not saying this to complain about answering people’s questions. I love answering them. My deepest desire is to help people learn from my experiences and I am simply highlighting that you learn very little from the question in the analogy “how long was the race?” or in reality “How hard was it?”

Even if you have never asked me any questions the take away here is that you are asking the right questions of whatever challenge is in front of you. 

In the analogy, If I had never run the race before and got the chance to talk with someone who had, here are the questions I would ask.

• “How did you know you would finish the race?” 

• “What did you do to prepare?”

• “What were some things you wish you had done before the race?”

Asking the distance or the difficulty is the cheap question. It is asking the price. What you really need to know is the cost.

Robert Kiyosaki, a financial guru, talks about a similar philosophy with his students. He says it is a poor man mindset to look at, for example, the price of a Ferrari, and say, ”I can’t afford that”. The rich man looks at the price of Ferrari and says, "how do I afford that?" "What do I have to do to be able to pay for that?"

This is the real question, not “Can I do it?” But “What will it take?”

In whatever you aspire to do, don’t ask the price, determine what it will cost you. Then you can decide your future and know how to prepare.