Unbreakable: A Navy SEAL’s Way of Life

by Thom Shea

  It’s sort of analogous to buying a better car, clothes, and getting on another diet or workout routine. We must realize our own Internal Dialogue didn’t shift, so the same results continue to happen again, again, and again.

  Mastering the five pyramids of human performance and grasping your Internal Dialogue actually bridges the gap between who you were to your goals. That bridge will make all the difference. Ultimately, the only thing that makes any significant difference is what we all actually DO—our results and our performance. The only way to alter our performance is to expose and then master our Internal Dialogue.

  I began to look at each SEAL’s Internal Dialogue—what he was saying to himself about himself or his environment, whether he quit or succeeded. The biggest point is that they all had an Internal Dialogue. Your Internal Dialogue is running twenty-four hours a day, can you believe it?

  Take a second now, stop, and either close your eyes or keep them open: I want you to get the first taste of your Internal Dialogue. Ready … go.

  First notice if you are saying anything to yourself. Notice that you may even say, “No, I don’t have an Internal Dialogue.” Well, that is still an Internal Dialogue.

  Here is what I found: Internal Dialogue runs the show—It runs the show. You dress the way you do because of it. You go to school because of it. You stay up late studying because of it; well, some of you do. And those who don’t, don’t because of it. And you didn’t even know it was there!

  More importantly, you didn’t think you had any control over it. Let me tell you, you do; it is yours, and it is actually the only thing you do have control of in this life. And, it controls everything.

  I want you to go back and remember you have these five pyramids of the human performance in your Unbreakable Life. In the beginning, you took notice of your body, wealth, intellect, spirituality, and relationships. That noticing is the surface of your Internal Dialogue. The manifestation of that is how you look, your grades, your boyfriend, your religion, and how much money you have either in your pocket or in someone else’s.

  In the process of moving through Adamantine Lesson One, you will have pushed through the most subtle human performance test known to man. The experience is not to get in shape, although it is a great by-product to be sure. The lesson is to get you truly in touch with your Internal Dialogue. Without knowing you had one in the first place, you will have experienced how subversive and counterproductive self-talk is. Internal Dialogue is not self-talk. Self-talk is what is on the surface to protect you from exposing your Internal Dialogue. My first gift to you is keeping your word by mastering your Internal Dialogue.

  In Adamantine Lesson Two, I wanted you to encounter fear. Fear is nothing more than an Internal Dialogue that stops you from acting. The second gift of an Unbreakable Life is owning fear and adjusting your Internal Dialogue to take action.

  With Adamantine Lesson Three, you master the body, your physical abilities. I wanted you to experience true exhaustion, pain, and maybe being sick in the effort. In facing exhaustion, pain, and sickness, you may have had to start over in order to meet the goal. I want you to experience what your Internal Dialogue was and said about it all, and what you did when your Internal Dialogue was yelling at you to stop. The third gift of an Unbreakable Life is to have experienced being broken, rebuilding, and doing it again, reshaping your Internal Dialogue to do it until it is complete no matter the cost to your body.

  While in Adamantine Lesson Four, you will master not only relationships, but you will also notice and feel what your Internal Dialogue has to say about it all. A distinct difference exists between urgent attraction that comes on you like a freight train and the relationship you create using your Internal Dialogue. Relationships need to be created anew every second of every day for the rest of your life. If you don’t create it using Internal Dialogue, it dies. The pivotal point in the path of an Unbreakable Life is to create love using your Internal Dialogue.

  Adamantine Lesson Five is my discussion about mastering spirituality. Hope and faith are not spirituality. As you looked into and experienced those words and when they are used, you will have noticed how desperately not in action you were when you used them. If your Internal Dialogue is not mastered in some way prior to Adamantine Lesson Five, you will have gotten disillusioned. I suggest spiritual people do not use hope and faith because true spiritual people don’t need faith—they know. They will not have hope because they are relentlessly pursuing their convictions. An Adamantine life is Unbreakable because mastering your own Internal Dialogue and reshaping it away from hope and faith enables you to know and relentlessly act on that connection to a divine power.

  Tackling Adamantine Lesson Six may have felt absurd. Yet, your point of view regarding everything is shaped by you, and you alone. And that reshaping only comes from mastering your Internal Dialogue. Your performance in everything is relative to your points of view. That point of view can, and will, change, and so must your Internal Dialogue. Battles are immediately shifted as your point of view shifts. Don’t let the environment dictate your point of view; instead, shape your point of view with the masterful stroke of your Internal Dialogue. You will have an Unbreakable Life.

  Adamantine Lesson Seven is partly a relationship idea, yet mastering connecting your efforts to the efforts of others is key to the human performance. While working with others, you will have noticed how you affect them, and them, you. That connection effect is filtered through your Internal Dialogue and theirs. If you notice another’s effort is not working, don’t look to change them. Instead, look to reshape your Internal Dialogue preventing you from connecting to them. This is a great gift, but I have to admit, it is fucking hard as hell. I have to work on it all the time. I suck at it, to be honest, and I know it is all in my own Internal Dialogue, not in their actions. Because my actions come from my Internal Dialogue.

  The Mentors and Masters Adamantine Lesson may come early or later in life. You will not notice it until you have mastered your Internal Dialogue. Once you master it, you will see everyone around you is very willing to help. It took me forty-four years. OK, I am a slow learner.

  Adamantine Lesson Nine for me comes easy. My Internal Dialogue is always to never give up. It is the loudest thing in my head. I thought for the longest time I was born with it. Yet, as I have learned how Internal Dialogue really works, I know that is a crutch to think you are born with something. In reality, you shape and evolve. However, learn to listen to your own Internal Dialogue and learn to be relentless. The ninth gift of an Unbreakable Life is to tell yourself to NEVER give up. Never.

  Adamantine Lesson Ten is a game, and by the time you get to mastering your Internal Dialogue, you will be ready for this game. Most people are terribly affected by their environments—weather, people, and everything external to them. We all are, yet cold is cold. Cold is neither bad nor good. What most people don’t realize is they are giving meaning to their environment, thus living a life that is totally shaped by their outside world. Here is how you will know you have mastered your own Internal Dialogue: when it is raining outside and you’re tired and want to stay inside because you hate the cold and hate being wet, I want you to say to yourself, “God I so love the rain; it makes me feel energetic, and I love the way the coldness seeps into my bones. I feel so alive.” Then, go out and take action on that new Internal Dialogue.

  Adamantine Lesson Eleven is a tough nut to crack, so to speak. It is encountering death. It is seeing what death does to your Internal Dialogue, yet not letting it shape it in any lasting way. Death will scream for a lasting Internal Dialogue. You will have to master not death itself, but master your Internal Dialogue about death. Allow yourself to pass through both the sadness and the anger, and the way it makes you perform. At the end, see death merely as a passing, then move on. It is not calloused, nor unfeeling. One of the greatest gifts is to feel and to move on. Holding on is a disease of the weak mind.

  Adamantine Lesson Twelve is something for later in life,
I think. Being a contribution and being contributed to are two distinctly different actions that have two very unique Internal Dialogues. I have personally had the hardest time with others contributing anything to me. Rather, my Internal Dialogue here is very hard for me to get a grip on and reshape. Praise in the form of a contribution screams loudly in my ears, when I say to myself, “I did nothing to deserve this praise. I was merely keeping myself from dying and keeping my teammates alive.” When I received the Silver Star and the Bronze Star for stuff I did in “hell,” I struggled. When Jerry and Tammy put on the SEAL Gala in South Carolina because they wanted to contribute to the SEAL Teams and to Bravo platoon, I felt awkward. I am working on this, and I pray my family can help me work on it, too.

  Finally, Adamantine Lesson Thirteen is the masterful stroke of genius. I recognize I have yet to talk about this particular one until now.

  ADAMANTINE LESSON THIRTEEN

  Moving on in the midst of hanging on

  The past and all the things that happened to you, and even the past of others, is only carried forward in Internal Dialogue. It only lives there. Deal with it when it comes up and affects your and other people’s actions. But, recognize it as an impostor. You are not your past achievements or failings, nor are other people. Clean that shit up fast and create an Internal Dialogue that gives you access to this moment. Remember, each moment is always being shaped and reshaped by Internal Dialogue. Be cautious, because if you are not shaping this moment, someone else may be.

  An Adamantine, Unbreakable Life sounds like: I AM … fill in the blank, and hold on for the ride of your life. It is your life, you know!

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Writing down the thoughts of war and love and family in a meaningful way is equally as hard as making it through BUD/S and combat. The experience is real, is frustrating, and is time consuming. I literally quit 100 times and got back up and started over due to the support and advice and love from a great many people.

  This whole project started out like most successful things over a beer with a friend at a shooting resort called The Site in Chicago. Jerry Barber and I had talked about writing a “collective efforts” of the things we had learned in our lives. Without Jerry there would never have been the deep NEED to go back and share. Oddly enough the first effort started out with the title of Spartan Wife. I leave that for Stacy to write.

  Without Stacy Unbreakable would have broken and died and quite simply never even started. In Stacy’s Internal Dialogue Unbreakable was born. Autumn, Garrett, and Chance did not even know what I was doing because the writing of Unbreakable happened at night, and in the daytime watching them live, I was inspired once again to continue.

  My close friend Bret Anderson read a section and connected me to my publisher, Larry Carpenter at Carpenter’s Son Publishing, and my editor, Lorraine Bossé-Smith. They either took pity on me or “got it” and converted a manuscript written in crayon and blood. I don’t know how they made sense of it all with every other word being a curse word.

  There is an old saying, “if you build it, he will come.” Well that saying is not true in any sense of any word. No one came—there was no market, no platform, nothing—until Meg McAllister read the edited book and literally risked her perfect reputation on Unbreakable.

  To my close friends: John Arnold, who demands authenticity; Doug Kim, who was hard to convince; and finally, Stecker, who, like me, is insatiable.

  Finally, to every Navy SEAL that ever was, is, or will be; and to Bravo platoon and SEAL Team Seven.

  You all are Unbreakable.