Joining the military can be a daunting experience. Hundreds of  Forms and paperwork, sign here, sign there. Drug tests, blood tests, fitness tests. Eye check, doctors exams, psychological evaluation, criminal background check. Depending on what job you signed up for, they might even send out private investigators to speak with and interview your family and friends… Not your everyday career Onboarding.

But all the while you are just focused on the task in front of you. What ever it takes, you tell yourself.  "Im guna be a pilot”, “Im guna be an officer” “Im guna be a Navy SEAL”. You are so focused on getting there, nothing can slow you down…until you get there… and its not what you thought.

BUD/s, short for Basic Underwater Demolitions, the first 6 months of the SEAL training pipeline, is unbelievably brutal with an extreme purpose. Anyone without supreme fortitude is wiped from training very quickly. Some of the most grueling training on the planet. You can train and train until you run the rubber off your shoes and your blue in the face from breath hold practice, but you can’t ever be fully prepared. You just show up and find out if you have what it takes.

Eventually, you survive enough physical beatings and punishment and you see the checkered flag, graduation day!
“Ahh, achievement at last” I can put this crap behind me… At that point you have been a “student” for 14-18 months. Being a student there is not what you would think. Basically, being a student in the SEAL program just means you are subject to “training” (read: pain and suffering) at any time.

You would assume that once you become a SEAL that “student” life isn’t over. That is an incorrect assumption.
Graduation day was not the checkered flag, it was the starting line. In fact, in some ways, the pain and suffering only got worse. Of course there were days that felt rewarding, but there were many more days that didn’t.

Sometimes the training was harder and more painful than BUD/s. Sometimes we got the crap kicked out of us for no reason. Other times I stayed up through the night manually putting encryption into radios. Or everyones favorite, range cleanup. Shooting a millions rounds is really cool, until you train in the deserts of California and the environmental hippies complain, so you have to go an back up a million rounds of brass over a square mile in the desert, on your hands and knees. Honestly, I could go and on.

Im not complaining. Quite the opposite. I’m telling you to stop complaining.
On those days where we were doing the most ridiculous activities, we would often look at each other and say “this wasn’t in the brochure”. I never imagined myself crawling on my hands and knees through the desert picking up brass, but you know what, at least I got a tan (or a sunburn). Yes, its stupid, and yes, its easy to say I shouldn’t have to do this. But you do! So you got two options, do the crappy work or quit.

Every job has it. I don’t care if you are a SEAL or a grocery store clerk. A pastor or the president, every job has things that aren’t in the brochure. Whatever your job is, shut up and stop complaining about all the stuff you shouldn’t have to do… or quit.

One ounce of advice. Focus on the why. I didn’t pick up brass for the hippies, I picked up to be a part of the most elite fighting force on the planet.
Stop thinking the activities and how long until the finish line.
Focus on who you are supposed to be and why nothing can stop from you being that.