What are two DANGER signs that affect special ops candidate's success?

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Nearly 80% of candidates get this wrong!

Some Special Ops instructors claim they can tell who will make it or not in the first week.  How do they know this? Experience and observation skills:  Both personal experience as a student as well as experience as an instructor.  They also a keen understanding of what it means to be physically capable and that can be observed quickly after a long day of spec ops testing and evaluation.  However, watching how students get along with their classmates is also a sign.  Are they good team players? Are they stressed out or having fun and laughing when the day is done?

Not surprisingly, the two biggest danger signs
that lead to failure are: 
Over-Confidence and Under-Confidence. 

Where are you on the confidence spectrum?

Having a healthy dose of confidence is critical and is 100% a product of your preparation, attitude, and your WHY and WILL. Being mature and humble enough to admit weaknesses along your journey and the ability and time investment to properly address them is a start to this healthy confidence that you need to succeed.  Assess Yourself With This Tool To Get To and Through Selection. 

Over-Confidence - Call it arrogance, cocky, self-assured, often it is anything but self-confidence. They are quite often insecure and tend to cover up these insecurities by bragging, putting others down, and actually do not make good team mates - especially when things get tough and uncomfortable. At the first sign of negative feedback from instructors, they like the under-confident tend to be the first to break. Often these are very capable human performers and probably have never really failed anything in their lives. Failing something or not being the best at something can be the straw to break the camel's back for the over-confident individual as training starts to become more difficult.  Usually the only way to deal with over-confidence is pain and failure and that dose of reality will either make you better or break you completely. 

NOTE:  We all have had some form of this during our journey. Think of the time when you were a freshman in high school / college and the change you had by the time you were a senior (a bit on the over-confident side?). Or from the pre-hellweek student to the 3rd phase student at BUDS - we all pushed the confidence / over-confidence border a bit, but soon realized at SQT, then at the SEAL Teams, you were just another new guy again and it all starts over for you and it is time to be humble, stay in receive mode, and learn your job from the veterans you now serve with.  Stay humble - always be the new guy wanting to learn something every day and teach what you know to those coming after you. 

Confidence is a great thing. It allows us to get past our doubts and take action. So why is slightly too much of it so bad? Weakness of Over-Confidence (article from www.jesusgilhernandez.com/)

Under-Confidence - Call it unsure, anxious, or undecided, under-confidence is crushing to any goal.  If you add maturity and time to under-confidence, you can assess yourself honestly and realize you have things to work on during your journey toward your future aspirations.  But under-confidence is purely a product of your mindset, preparation, and to be honest your lack of life experiences (aka immaturity). Under-confidence makes you constantly challenge your WHY to the point of lack of self-worth to be part of the group you strive to become.

My Personal Experience with the Confidence Spectrum 

The good news is that under-confidence can be built into confidence by persistently working on your weaknesses and turning them into new strengths.  This takes a strong WHY you want to do  (blank) and a time investment that is consistent in order to achieve the results you seek. 

One of my favorite stories is the young man who could not swim.  After some coaching, lots of practice, he got across a swimming pool (25m) once for the first time. Was swimming a weakness? Yes?  Water confidence a weakness - yes! But you know what? Two years later that guy became a Navy SEAL. True Story because I was his coach! 

My over-confident story is my own:  I showed up to Naval Academy at 18 years old "ready to crush it".  My over-confidence led to a year of pain and misery until I figured out how to get THROUGH the place and it required me to up my game to a level that I had never even considered just in order to graduate. To get a BUDS billet after graduation was also three years of pain and failure. Being last on runs with other candidates and not meeting the standard of officer candidates from the Naval Academy - until one day I did. Let's just say I was never over-confident again, but found a healthy dose of confidence by hard work, dedication to a goal, and being surrounded by good teammates - and working hard to be a good teammate to them. 

That is how you avoid the two ends of the spectrum that lead to failure. 

 Which Program is Right For Me?
It Depends...
- Special Ops Candidates -