SAR_8_along_the_way

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Above: FPS Sunday 9K SAR with Jesse today (2002). "Most [people], when experiencing fear or anxiety, tend to magnify the unknown. Training, including knowledge and experience gained in simulated situations, has the power to reduce the unknown and contribute to the control of fear." From: The Air Force Survival Training Manual.

"I expected it to be heavy."

Jesse van Broekhoven, member AV Haarlem

"Our practice cannot be perfect, but without being discouraged by this, we should continue it. This is the secret of practice."

Shunryu Suzuki in 'Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind' (page 73)

"Many of us have come to consider comfort as our greatest need. Comfort is not essential, and we often value it much too highly when the alternative is survival. You must value your life more than your comfort and be willing to tolerate heat, hunger, dirt, itching, pain and almost any discomfort. If you expose yourself to capture because you have a blister and think you can't walk another mile, you have not thought the situation trough. Reason is the key to this change of attitude; reason which identifies discomfort as a temporary problem in comparison with the much more serous problems you will be faced with if you are captured." '

From:'Survival Training Edition' , first published in 1962 by Air Training Command/Department of the air Force, reprinted in 1978 (chapter 1, page 8: 'The Will and Ability to Survive')
 
"The Tibetan tradition maintains that contemplation on suffering is much more effective when it is done on the basis of one's own personal experience, and when it is focussed on oneself, because, generally, we tend to be better able to relate to our own suffering than to that of others. This is why two of the principal elements of the Buddhist path, compassion and renunciation, are seen as two sides of the same coin. True renunciation arises when one has a genuine insight into the nature of suffering, focused upon oneself, and true compassion aries when that focus shifts to others; so the difference lies simply in the object of focus."

The Dalai Lama: 'The Dalai Lama's book of Transformation', first published in India in 2003, page 89-90.
 
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." 

Charles Darwin as quoted by Don Mann in the introduction to 'The US Navy Seal Survival Handbook' (2012)

Flow in the Dark

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Above: Flow in the Dark. Training is making the most of the least amount of time. 

"Stimulate trust. Discipline is not just doing what the boss says. Every player has to take care that his fellow team players know they can count on him. Johan Cruijff: "I am not interested in the player with the ball. I am interested in what happens at the other sides of the field, how they play there, how they take care of the execution of their tasks. The man with the ball has an easy job, but the real battle is happening at the other sides of the field, where the match is made." The key-element in discipline is trust. Johan Cruijff: "[ teamplayers] need to be able to trust upon each other." With everyone of us trust begins with family, neighbourhood, a couple of good friends. As time progresses the world enlarges. Building on that foundation, what follows is a three step ladder. It is the leaders task to see to it that fellow players will get up those stairs successfully. [...] The second step on the ladder of trust is a shift of focus towards stimulation of team-unity, with emphasis on shared operations. The third step is about Identification with other people. Leaders in their role as mentor for developing talent. Role models. Marco van Basten: "I am always curious for certain psychological aspects. How is it possible a player like me, a week later can experience such a fall-back? How is it that a footballplayer later in life knows how to keep a grip on his shape? Why is it that especially a Striker goes trough such a lot of ups and downs? Top-politicians and top-bussinespeople got to also acknowledge their lesser periods. I want to find out what is going on with these people. [trough meeting them, reading biographies, learning from them]" Johan Cruijff: 'I have been very lucky to have met many good people. [Horst Dassler] said: cognitive-intelligence is not the most important thing. He says: the most important thing is knowledge. I am sitting here in a tower with access to almost all information, than you do not make mistakes. But if you have somebody who is very intelligent but has only little information, he is off a lot worse. You do not have to be very intelligent. You need to look after having the maximum amount of knowledge, making you almost unbeatable.""

Pieter Winsemius in 'Je gaat het pas zien als je het doorhebt. Over Cruijff en leiderschap', first published in The Netherlands by Uitgeverij Balans, 2004: http://www.uitgeverijbalans.nl/web/Auteurs/Auteur/Pieter-Winsemius.htm

Johan Cruijff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Cruyff

Marco van Basten: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_van_Basten

SAR_act_3.2

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Above: FP 30K SAR BLT. SAR training: confidence [ready to lead, ready to follow].

"Herrschen darf man nur wenn man dienen kann." - Rainer Werner Fassbinder

"When you let someone else handle a mission critical task, then you had better understand the ramifications of what happens if they mess up. It is certainly important to delegate and trust, but you must also have the wisdom to verify that the task they performed will lead to mission success. The only way that you can verify at that level is if you know how to do it perfectly yourself." - Mark Divine

Read more: http://sealfit.com/sealfit-blog/sealfit-blog-divines-10-ways-to-be-a-kokoro-leader-part-2/

"The human spirit craves freedom to express itself and when that freedom is cut off externally, the spirit turns within to find it. But not many have learned how to turn within. [ Victor Frankl ] made a choice to not let his mind be captured by [...] dire circumstances and [...] brutal people [...]. This choice to turn for freedom within led to great liberation, and he felt free in spite of his physical incarceration. He then chose to deepen his spiritual strength by serving his fellow prisoners by teaching them to be truly free. Those who learn freedom at this level will never experience, nor tolerate, tyranny or loss of mental freedom again."

Mark Divine about Victor Frankl in his last 'Seal Fit Blog: Freedom': http://sealfit.com/sealfit-blog/sealfit-blog-musing-on-freedom/

SAR_sarsential™_toolbox_9/14

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Above: PGIA SAR 30K BLMTT. Sarsential 9: "Don't mention the war." [ adapt, improvise and improve efficiency ] (click on image for excellent clip on BBCWorldwide's Youtube-channel; with John Cleese, talking about 'Fawlty Towers' episode with the Germans and the hotel on fire).

"I dislike humour I can't believe in. No matter how daft something becomes, it's got to be credible at the level it's offered and real to the characters involved in it." John Cleese on Fawlty Towers in a Radio Times interview, quoted in 'Fawlty Towers, fully booked', first published in 2001 by BBC Worldwide Ltd., London.

And now for something completely different: 

"An optimist might counter that nuclear weapons will never be used, even in a crisis situation, because states have such a strong incentive, namely national survival, to ensure that nuclear weapons are not used. But, this objection ignores the fact that leaders operate under competing pressures. Leaders in nuclear-armed states also have very strong incentives to convince their adversaries that nuclear weapons could very well be used. Historically, we have seen that leaders take actions in crises, such as placing nuclear weapons on high alert and delegating nuclear launch authority to low level commanders, to increase purposely the risk of accidental nuclear war in an attempt to force less resolved opponents to back down."

Matthew Kroenig in 'MOVING BEYOND PRETENSE: NUCLEAR POWER AND NONPROLIFERATION', CHAPTER 3 'THE HISTORY OF PROLIFERATION OPTIMISM: DOES IT HAVE A FUTURE?', first published June 2014 by Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press

"[ ... ] Modern man ascended from the apes when the brain suddenly sprouted a neocortex and frontal lobe, commonly called the forebrain. This relatively recent addition to the brain system of humans caused a dramatic shift in our development over other mammals. In essence it allowed for us to take control of time and to develop intricate, clever ways to plan and organize. We were soon formulating elaborate plans for the future allowing us to dominate other beings – including humans – and to manipulate nature. We also developed an obsession for dwelling on the past, which helped us learn from mistakes. These handy skills were absent in our mammalian-brained ancestors. [...] It appears to me that our infatuation with the frontal lobe caused us to throw the baby out with the bathwater by denying the power and value of the midbrain. Research has shown that that forebrain utilizes words and symbols to process and communicate information. However the language of the midbrain (or mammalian brain) is imagery and sensations. Thus modern humans have over-developed the verbal language based forebrain and allowed the midbrain to languish. To be fair, the imagery and sensations are still there, but they are largely drowned out by the noise of the frontal lobe, and [i]gnored. What we get is fantasy and uncontrolled emotions. The result is that we have ignored and denied our visual acuity and sensory awareness – and the complimentary skills of remote viewing, healing, manifestation, pre-cognition and intuition – relegating them to the category of “special” and to the fringes of weird science. [...] Personally I doubt that we humans were gifted the powerful frontal lobe so that we could ignore or ditch that pesky, emotional and visual mammalian brain. We were meant to operate as whole, complete beings, using each aspect of our brain-mind system to it’s fullest."

Mark Divine in 'Sealfit Blog: Let's Get Visual', published August 2nd, 2014: http://sealfit.com/sealfit-blog/sealfit-blog-lets-get-visual/?utm_source=SEALFIT&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=blog