What is a Navy SEAL?

A Navy Seal is someone who is a member of the United States' finest commando unit.

How does One Become a Navy SEAL?

The process of transitioning from an ordinary sailor to a Navy SEAL takes six months and is designed to prepare someone for engaging in extraordinary missions as a matter of routine. The people who complete the Basic SEAL Training are not necessarily the most physically fit, or the best athletes, at the outset of this process.

This training is considered the most arduous in the Armed Forces. To successfully complete the training, a man must repeatedly demonstrate BEING indomitable in the face of his own repeated failures and unrelenting pressure by the instructors. The SEAL instructors take committed and highly qualified (i.e., physically, medically and academically) volunteers and run them through physical and mental exercises designed to press them beyond anything they have ever experienced. No matter what reason a person has for wanting to be a Navy SEAL, it is completely insufficient to survive this training process.

A SEAL is always choosing to accomplish the mission he is given with the quality of a committed, highly trained volunteer who knows he is at risk, often with no backup or support. (Sometimes he represents only himself, with his existence/affiliation denied by his country.)

For those who succeed over their excuses, their reasonableness, their self-limiting beliefs, and their stories of what they are and are not capable of achieving, they experience the ultimate triumph over Self. Successful graduates demonstrate to themselves and their classmates, over six months, day after day, night after night, that they are bigger than their self-limiting beliefs. The instructors do everything they can to cause the candidate to "ring the bell," a public event denoting quitting. People are rarely thrown out; they are pressed until they quit. Consequently, a typical class will have an attrition rate of between 66-90%!

When the SEAL emerges from this training, he knows his limits and also knows he can take on anything with the men who accomplished this journey with him. He also can reflect back and see the instructors in a new light, i.e., not as people committed to their quitting, but rather as people committed to produce Navy SEALs. They are men who demonstrate standing fast to their commitment, no matter what the world throws at them or what they throw at themselves. Commitment is not wanting something badly. Commitment is not saying "I am committed". Commitment is also not trying REALLY hard, doing your best or merely saying, "I'll do it". Commitment is rather being able to stay in the training beyond any reason to do so. Making a choice in each and every moment is what keeps the SEAL from quitting. It is operating by keeping your word at the most basic level. (A common internal statement among people who complete this training is some form of "the only way they will get me out of here is to kill me!")

When a new SEAL graduates from the six months BUD/S training, he enters the "Teams", an organization of existing SEALs. He starts all over again demonstrating for another six months that, now that he has what it takes, he will display it reliably, at any time, under any circumstance, anywhere in the world. As part of this, the new SEAL quickly learns that while he can do anything, because he has done the impossible for an unreasonably long enough period and has been indomitable, he also cannot survive and thrive alone in war. So, a team is called for. The new SEAL becomes a member of an operational SEAL team of people who can each stand on their own, is dependable without question, and can contribute those qualities to the team's success.

Because officers and enlisted men train together, there is an extraordinary level of communication. During the planning phase of a mission, each SEAL regardless of rank, is told everything about the mission and invited to participate in its design and preparation. Since SEALs have trained so thoroughly and repeatedly, they know missions rarely go exactly as planned. So, SEALs consider the Big Picture: their reliance on forces, units, and organizations around them from the boats/planes/ships that deliver/extract them to the civilian authority for whom they ultimately work. There are many paradoxes in a SEAL's world, not the least of which is being independent and dependent at the same time.

All SEAL training is done with the deck stacked against them, so combat is less demanding than their training, leaving no alternative but excelling in the success of their mission. So no matter what the situation, under the worst circumstances the SEALs have a core knowing that they can find a way to survive, succeed and excel through being detached, improvisational, unconventional, doing the unexpected, delivering the results of a mission with overwhelming and lightening fast impact and then getting out unscathed and moving on to the next mission. If he was to get in trouble and separated from his team, the SEAL knows that as long as he is alive, he will survive. There is always a way out.

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