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Crucible Experiences – Commentary

Crucible experiences… One comes to mind…

I was watching a series of videos called ‘Hell Week’. The videos were about the Navy Seals.

The Navy Seals are a military group in the American Navy. They’re known as, perhaps, the toughest guys in the American military. But before they become official Navy Seals, before they can join the group, they have to survive Hell Week. During this week they get almost no sleep. So one full week, seven days, they get only 4-5 hours of sleep total.

They begin Hell Week with lots of screaming and yelling. They’re in a tent on the beach in California. They’re woken up with explosions and yelling and screaming, and they all run out of the tent and then the sergeants and trainers yell at them and tell them to get into the water. And they all have to run into the water.

And the water in California is not warm. The ocean is not warm it’s cold. Sometimes people watch television and watch Hollywood movies and think the California coast is really warm water, very tropical, but that’s not true. The water is actually quite chilly. It’s cold.

So all these men run into the water and they all get very cold. Then the instructors, for the next seven days, basically torture these guys. They don’t hit them, no. They don’t do anything that will cause permanent damage but they mentally torture them.

So first of all, they get no sleep. Second of all, for seven days they’re cold and shivering. Their bodies are shaking because they’re so cold. They’re almost always cold.

Because when they get out of the water it’s windy and they get really cold and then the instructors tell them to roll in the sand. So the sand gets into their clothes, into their pants, on their faces, in their hair and of course there are no showers.

So they’re super uncomfortable, covered in sand all the time and then they make them do really hard work. They have to do lots and lots and lots of push-ups. They have to do running races, obstacle courses.

They have to carry big boats on their heads and they have races as a team and if they lose the race, if their team is last then they have to get punished even more, more push-ups, more pull-ups or even worse, more time in the cold water.

At night back into the cold water. Sometimes they just have to sit in the water doing sit-ups while they freeze.

In addition to all of this, the instructors are constantly playing mind games with them. The instructors constantly tell them to quit. “You can quit. You can be warm, just quit. You can have some nice warm food, go home and sleep, just quit now.”

The instructors do this because they only want the toughest and the most committed. So anyone who will quit during Hell Week, they don’t want them to become a seal. If they quit, they’re out. They can never come back.

And, as a result, most of the people quit. Most of those guys quit before the end of one week.

That is a crucible experience. It’s an extreme example of a crucible experience. You can find this on YouTube, I believe: Seal Hell Week. As I was watching this, I thought, “Oh my God, I could not survive this. This is horrible.”

But here’s the interesting thing. At the end of that week, those who survived, those who remained were transformed. Something changed deep inside them.

Because you could see in follow up videos their confidence was much stronger, because they had overcome this incredibly tough experience. They had a deep level of confidence from doing that. It was a big transformation in a short time.

That’s what a crucible experience is all about and this is a nice example. It’s an extreme example, but it’s good because it shows what is necessary.

Massive discomfort… those guys suffered. They were freezing cold for seven straight days. They got almost no sleep. So by the end, they can’t think clearly.

They’re cold and covered in sand. They’re miserable and exhausted because they’re just running and doing push-ups and exercising, paddling their boats every single day for seven days and every night all night, all day. And during the whole time, guys are yelling at them and trying to make them quit.

So extreme discomfort, extreme exhaustion, physical and mental. When you get through something like that, you change, something happens. That’s a crucible experience.

Obviously, it’s not very pleasant and obviously this is not something you can do again and again and again every week. Even the instructors in the show talk about the fact that after Hell Week they have to let the guys rest.

They can’t keep doing this to them non-stop, because eventually everyone would break down, everyone would become injured. So that also shows this needs to be a concentrated period of time, in this case one week. It can’t go on forever.

This is not something we want to do to ourselves all the time, for the same reason. Because we’ll exhaust ourselves and stress ourselves out. We’ll actually harm ourselves rather than create a positive transformation.

But sometimes in life it’s useful or necessary to get a big jolt, a big difficult tough, short-term crucible experience. There are two general kinds.

1. The kinds that are unplanned.

That’s when life gives you a crisis. Life gives you a tragedy. Life gives you some very uncomfortable opportunity, something that’s an opportunity but it’s super tough and it requires you to be extremely uncomfortable for a while.

Those just happen on their own and you just have to have a good strong mindset. When they come, you have to welcome them, jump in and think, this is a crucible experience, it could be used for a positive transformation. You have to use those things.

Some people use a crisis or tragedy to become weaker. They say, “This is terrible, why me?” And they become weaker. But others see it as an opportunity, they still don’t like it, it’s still unpleasant and painful, but they see it as an opportunity.

They realize, “OK, I can use this as a crucible experience to make some very positive changes in my life in a short-term.” They use the pain.

1. The other kind of crucible experience is one that you choose, a chosen one. It’s a massive challenge that you choose.

The Seal Hell Week is an example. All of those guys volunteered for that program. They weren’t grabbed off the street and forced to do all that, they chose it. They wanted to become Navy Seals and to do that they knew they had to go through that. They had to go through that Hell Week.

They chose that crucible experience themselves. They chose that massive challenge. They knew it would be painful, but they did it because they wanted to be transformed into stronger, tougher, more confident guys.

Each of them probably had their own motivation, but they chose the crucible experience. I think those are more desirable. It’s more desirable when you choose that kind of experience.

Because you feel you have at least a measure of control, you’re deciding to do it. I think that leads to even better changes in your life, when you choose some massive uncomfortable, difficult thing to do in a short period of time, very intense.

So that’s what we’re gonna to talk about this month and in this commentary, are crucible experiences that you choose, something you choose to do yourself.

We’ve often talked about making small improvements over time. The idea of Kaizen, that’s a Japanese word, which means making small gradual improvements constantly.

In English we could say constant and never ending improvement. Constant little tiny improvements over a long time.

That’s a great way to make changes, however, sometimes we are in a rut. To be in a rut means to have a very deep habit. It means you’re just doing the same thing again and again every day. It’s a habitual pattern. A rut is a habit. A rut is a habitual pattern. So a deep rut is a very strong pattern, a very strong habit.

Sometimes, if we have a deep rut, a strong, negative habit or a habit that’s not useful anymore, sometimes it’s so strong that we cannot change it with small improvements. It’s too tough to change in a small gradual way.

A common example is cigarette smoking. Now some people can gradually quit smoking. If they’re strongly addicted to cigarettes there are some people who can, they smoke a little less and then a little less and a little less and each month they’re smoking fewer cigarettes, fewer cigarettes, fewer cigarettes, until finally zero.

But a lot of people can’t do that. A lot of people have such a strong addiction that if they smoke one, then they will naturally smoke two, three, four and they can’t control themselves after that.

So there are many people who need just a big tough crucible experience they must just suddenly quit and it’s usually quite unpleasant for a while to be smoking a lot and then suddenly stop and then they feel all these strong desires to smoke and they see other people smoking.

Maybe they feel irritable, hungry, grumpy and tired all the time. They can have all kinds of difficult experiences, uncomfortable experiences when they quit in a sudden way like that.

It’s more of a crucible experience, but sometimes that’s what you need. Sometimes that’s the only way to make a change, to break a bad habit or to make a big transformation.

Sometimes we need a shock to overcome a rut, to overcome some mental limiting belief. We need to shock ourselves out of our comfort.

I’ll let you decide when it’s best to improve gradually and when you need that shock of a crucible experience. You have to decide that, no one else can decide that for you.

Some areas of life and probably most, work best with gradual improvements, but you know that there’s probably some area of life or areas of life where you really need to shock yourself or you’ve had a bad habit for such a long time, that gradual change won’t do it. You’ve gotta shock yourself, and have that crucible experience and make that change suddenly.

Choose one now. Right now, choose what it is. You know in your life. There’s something you need to make a big change and you need to shock yourself out of some bad habit or shock yourself into a good habit.

You need a transformation in something, what is it for you, the most important, what is it? After you choose that one thing, you’re going to design or choose or find your crucible experience and let’s again review the principles.

1. It must be intensely emotional

It must be an emotional experience. This might be a very happy, positive emotion, but likely it will be a painful emotion. It will be discomfort, extreme discomfort.

Sometimes discomfort is very useful, because it shocks us emotionally and that makes it easier for us to make a change. So your experience needs to be intensely emotional.

1. It needs to be an extreme challenge, not a little challenge or something you think, “Oh I think that would be easy.”

An extreme challenge that should frighten you. There should be some feeling of fear about this extreme challenge, this crucible experience. That shows that it’s big. That shows that it’s extreme. That shows that it’s emotional.

This crucible experience that you choose or create must have…

1. Compressed time

It must be in a short time period. If you do it for too long then you’ll probably hurt yourself. You get stressed out. You become weaker, so you can only do this for a short time, so whatever it is you’re doing it needs to be short, probably a week or less. Seven days or less, so compressed time.

1. And finally, it needs to be all consuming

So during that compressed time, it’s all you do from morning to night. You’re only doing that thing.

Let’s think about a few examples and then you get out there and do it. Maybe you choose a physical crucible experience. Maybe you have let yourself get weaker and weaker physically.

Maybe you’ve gotten fat. Maybe you’ve gotten lazy. And it’s such a deep habit now that gradual steps are not helping, you need a shock. So choose maybe a one week crucible experience, something super tough. It might be something you need to train for.

For example, maybe you decide I will do a marathon. I will run a marathon. Now you’re not going to go run a marathon suddenly, just tomorrow if you’re not a runner or in good shape, especially if you’re over weight, you’ll need months and months to prepare.

But that’s a good crucible experience, because when you actually do the marathon, it will still be tough. And it’s even better because it combines gradual change, meaning you must train for it, you must prepare. And then you actually have that crucible experience of around four hours or something where you’re running and it’s quite tough.

Or maybe you’ll go to some boot camp, some physical boot camp like the Navy Seals where they yell at you and make you do push-ups, make you run all day, you’re exercising. They make you eat super healthy food, something like that, a boot camp experience might be good.

Maybe something non-physical. Let’s say you want to be a good public speaker, but it terrifies you, you’re afraid of it and whenever you try to do it, you feel terrible and you just can’t seem to improve.

So maybe you go and take some super intense public speaking training course over three days and during that three days, it’s just making lots and lots and lots of speeches.

Constantly making speeches to the group and the instructors help you get better and better. It’s very intense. It’s a crucible experience. In that weekend, you will overcome a lot of your fear.

You’ll make a big transformation.

It could be any area of life, you must choose. Choose it now. Choose the area of life and then choose the crucible experience, the intense experience and please, post this on our VIP site. I really want to read about what you choose. I’m curious, I want to read it and other members want to read it too. I’m looking forward to it.

See you there. Bye for now.