Entry 25.31

The Combat Water Survival Assessment is completed at Camp Rogers on Fort Benning, Georgia during the Ranger Assessment Phase (RAP) of Ranger School. Week one of Ranger School is often known as RAP week. RAP week is responsible for more than 60% of failures from Ranger School. It is not something to take lightly. As a young Specialist in the 75th Ranger Regiment, completing Ranger School and earning your Ranger Tab is an important part of your journey. I was ready for the Ranger Physical Fitness Test, the 5-mile run in under 40 minutes, day and night land navigation (land nav), Malvesti, (a 2.1-mile buddy run into an obstacle course where you and your buddy’s fates are tied together. You fail an obstacle and while you do it again, your buddy gets some additional physical exercise while he waits for you to catch up. And any backups at obstacles means additional exercise for everyone in line) and the 12-mile forced road march. My platoon sergeant, squad leader and team leader had made sure of that.

But the Water Obstacle Course as we called it? Nope. One of the events we did in the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RASP). But it was the easy one. So on a blistering summer day while we were running down to Victory Pond, I was sweating. Not just because it was hot but because two of the events include heights. The Ranger Instructors (RI) started splitting us up into thirds, sending groups to each of the three events. Yours truly was put in line for the log walk. Climb a ladder to a beam suspended 35 feet above the water and walk across including a short step up and down in the middle followed by transitioning to a rope crawl out to the Ranger Tab where you hang, waiting for the command to drop into the water below. From my place in line, I could see all the events going on. The equipment ditch didn’t worry me. I’m very comfortable in the water. So, jumping in and ditching my equipment while underwater and then swimming a short distance was no big deal. The seventy-foot tower loomed off to my right. You climb a ladder up the tower where you then hold onto a handle attached to a pulley and fly down the cable until you are told to drop. Hold on a split second too long and you hit the stop on the cable. You don’t stop; the handle does though. And it stops quick. Hesitate and unceremoniously you are sent sprawling forward crashing into the water. Let go too early and the drop can result in some serious uncomfortable sensations to your backside that last for a while as well as some corrective exercise upon exiting the pond by an RI. From my place in line, I watched both happen. I also watched students in front of me fall off the beam or freeze and, despite the RI’s yelling at them to continue, exit the beam early to be immediately dropped from the course.

I’ll be honest, the more I watched. The more I got scared. Not of the water and not of the impending heights I would have to face. Why? Not because I couldn’t do it. I had no doubt I could do it. By this time, I had jumped successfully from airplanes, fast roped and done multiple obstacles courses. I was afraid because if I failed, I could be Released For Standards, or RFS’d, from the Regiment. All the hard work I had done thus far could be wasted. That anxiety resulted in me putting a ton of pressure on myself to succeed. I didn’t want to be a failure. I hate to fail. In my mind, failure had never been an option. I don’t remember how many people were in front of me when I heard a nearby RI’s radio chirp. “Storm incoming, you’ve got about 20 minutes.” Suddenly, we were rushed. I guess you are required to complete at least one event to be allowed to continue the course. And with the cramped timeline, there would be no time to come back. By shear luck, I did not have to complete either event with heights. Every student who hadn’t completed an event did the equipment ditch as fast as the RI’s could shove us through. I graduated going straight through, never having to repeat a phase. But I also never had to face my fear. Sometimes that still bothers me. I never actually completed everything in Ranger School. But I completed enough to satisfy the requirements of the school. Sometimes I wonder what could’ve been.

Let’s go back to that beam, hanging 35 feet above the water of Victory Pond. Why did some students succeed easily, while others only got in a few steps before freezing at the beam rocked beneath them? My guess is that my fear was their fear as well. It wasn’t the water and it wasn’t the heights. It was what would happen if they failed. What would their peers think of them? What would their family and friends think? What happened to their standing at their units if they failed? So, for the sake of the argument, if we all had the same fear, what was different? It was how they reacted to it. We’ve probably all walked across a suspended beam at some point in our lives. The last time I did was at a local trampoline park with my daughter. Only a couple feet above a foam pit and no more than twenty feet long, I had no issues crossing it. But I watched people who did. Most of them got started, felt slightly off balance and stopped to gain control. I think we all know what happens when you stop to gain control. Small wobbles that quickly intensify until you completely lose your balance and fall or you bail out into the pit. There’s a huge lesson to be learned here. Not about facing your fear. Maybe it’s just me but I think the idea that you have to face your fear is asinine. I mean what does that mean? Face your fear? Do I just look at it? Do whatever task makes me afraid? I don’t know, never made sense to me. In my mind, I have to decide how to respond to my fear.

There used to be two choices: fight or flight. Then they added freeze. I’ve tried to find a word that starts with “F” to add my own word, but I can’t find a good one. I just don’t think “fulcrum” tells you immediately what the described response is. The best word I’ve found is “leverage”. What do I mean by that? I can allow my fear to overwhelm me and take control of my actions. That’s the fight, flight or freeze response. I’m just going to fight as hard as I can. I probably don’t even realize what I am doing. Or I’m going to run, and I’ve screamed and gone six miles like the wind before I realize I’m safe. Or I’m going to completely shut down and just stop and let things happen. When most people are afraid, they feel out of control. Like the examples I just gave. They have no idea what is going on because the fear is in control. Their response to the fear is to let fear have it’s way. Or the opposite happens. They claw and scrape to regain control. I think that’s what people mean when they tell you to face your fear. Get control back (but again I have no idea). The “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul” mentality (the last two lines of Invictus by William Ernest Henley and not entirely applied as the author intended in this circumstance). But what tends to happen when you stop to get back control on the balance beam? Off you go! The thing you were afraid of still wins. So, did gaining control really help you accomplish anything? Nope. What is the best solution? Just keep moving forward. It’s like a bicycle. You keep moving forward and you stay upright. Stopping when you wobble a tiny bit spells doom. Ok, that might be a bit dramatic. But feeling like you regained control doesn’t do what you thought it was going to do. It did the exact opposite. You still failed. What is the correct answer? How can you give up control and succeed? That probably doesn’t really make any sense to you at all. It didn’t make any sense to me at all either. But then I read a book. I know. Shocker.

The Gift of Fear: And Other Survival Signals that Protect Us From Violence by Gavin De Becker helped me understand fear better. I don’t remember when I read it the first time. Sometime in the last decade that much I know. I remember very little from it besides what the title tells you. But I do remember the concept that I am about to share with you, and it starts with the title. Fear is a gift. It doesn’t have to be a problem. In fact, if you learn how to leverage it, it makes you better than you have ever thought possible. If you let it, fear can heighten your senses. Let you feel every muscle fiber fire. Help you see things you might miss otherwise. React faster. Move faster. The list goes on. Basically, fear can make you Superman. Well, a super version of you. But that requires you to be friends with fear. Instead of trying to hold onto control as tight as you can when you get afraid, realize that you having total control is not possible. It just isn’t. There is no way that you can be in control of every variable. Lynne Forrest starts an article with “Control is a defensive form of responding to our world. It comes out of fear.” Later she says, “Control is rampant in our world because there are so many low frequency stories we run that say we’re not safe…that tell us that we will not get our needs met if we don’t make it happen.” (https://www.lynneforrest.com) I mean how spot on is that?! Control is a response to fear. Control is possible when we suppress fear and try to make it go away. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs tells us that we have certain needs that have to be met. When we feel like one of those needs isn’t going to be met, we get afraid and respond by trying to take control to make sure our needs are met. The choices seem to be fear or control, but not both. So which one do you really want? Control? Or fear?

I’m going to tell you the one you want is fear. But until you make that decision for yourself, you probably won’t believe me. Please let me know when you are in control of all the variables. Coming from a guy who has tried that approach, let me tell you it’ll never happen. Let’s finally get to golf. How many variables are in play for each shot? The list is endless. But when we start to play poorly, we tend to try going into full control mode. Ever been told you are trying to steer the ball? That’s a physical manifestation of you trying to get control. What tends to happen to your ball flight when you try this approach? The first time I was told I was trying to steer the ball I had just hit the ball so far right the ball probably landed in the next state (and I was in Texas!). Where was I trying to get the ball to go? Yeah, left. Trying to be in control wasn’t working. It took me a long time to learn this lesson: You are not in control so you might as well stop trying. The other option is to be afraid and that is not a natural response. It is a decision. I don’t remember which attempt at passing the PAT it was for me but my warmup went poorly. That’s putting it light. I couldn’t keep the ball on the range with driver. The tee shot on number one has Out of Bounds left and penalty area right. I decided just to “let go”. I don’t think I can actually still feel that first drive, but sometimes I feel like it is the “high” that I am still chasing with driver. Syrupy smooth and powerful. Like I was in total control of everything. The result didn’t just shock me. It shocked everyone on the tee box. They all knew me. They knew my weaknesses, the driver being one. So, when the ball exploded off the face, straight down the middle and almost went through the fairway, we were all a little dumbfounded. That was my first personal experience with leveraging my fear. But I didn’t realize it. I would decide to grab control on the very next shot. I was well within go range into the green on a par five and decided to lay up. Four holes later and four or five strokes over par (maybe more), I would make the decision to stop playing defensively aka taking control. I would fail that PAT by one stroke.

Fear is your friend, not your enemy. Your enemy is trying to be in total control. The exact opposite of what you naturally think. I tell my students they get control over a maximum of three things. Two of those should be your mental state and the club face. The other one you get to decide. Other than that, you let go. Trust me, you can’t handle being in control of more than three things. Three could be pushing it for some people. Don’t try to suppress the fear. Use it. Tune into it. Figure out what the gift of fear gives you. I think people who are swinging free have grabbed onto their fear and made it work for them. Just a guess. I haven’t conducted any research on this. I’m not even sure how to. They may look like they are in total control, but I think they have given up control and embraced the fear. Fear comes in many forms. On the golf course, our fear is connected to one thing: score. That’s the thing that matters. Especially when we are playing competitive golf. Because all of a sudden, you think score matters more. But it doesn’t. Shooting 80 in a friendly round versus a competitive round is no different. The score is the same. The difference is the pressure that we put on ourselves. We allow the scenario to change our perspective. That scares us. So, we try to get a little more control to allay our fear. That normally doesn’t go well for us. Then we get upset with ourselves for failing to perform. Then the next time we compete; we ramp the pressure up on ourselves even more. That becomes a cycle and that cycle sucks. The only way to break it is to give up control. When you realize you are not in control, that means all the bad results are not entirely your fault. When the bad results aren’t all on you, you take some pressure off yourself because there is something else to blame. So, you give up trying to control everything. And you start a new cycle. A better cycle. But that decision is completely on you. Mr. Henley was right. You are the master of your fate. But not because you are in control rather because you are friends with fear.