Success starts with a single decision [NQM033]

“Failure is something I strive for daily and usually I am successful. You can use physical training as a vehicle to learn how to use failure in all other aspects of life. It is pretty easy to reach failure through physical training, you can always push yourself harder and faster, pick up more weight and run a faster time. It is a small failure, certainly not the end of the world, but it gets you conditioned and accustomed to failure. We want to live at the edge of our capability and to know where that line is you have to cross it and get knocked on your ass and get back up. You can then use that trained mindset in the rest of your life. Failure is where all the lessons are and where the wisdom is. Going into failure repeatedly teaches you how to get back up, Extract that knowledge from that failure and ram it back into your system to improve, both at the micro and macro level. If we are constantly living within our safe little bubble we will not make any big strides.” - Nick Lavery

It has been a while since I have written an NQM entry. Since my last post, I have worked on some other interests and projects, but hearing Nick Lavery’s story for the first time reminded me why I started this small blog in the first place: to share stories worth sharing. Nick’s story of recovery and grit is truly remarkable, and leaves you with absolutely zero excuses not to make the decision to choose the harder path and build a better version of yourself brick by brick, each and every day.

Nick Lavery is an active duty US Army Green Beret who lost his leg above the knee after an insider attack while deployed to Afghanistan in 2013. Over the next two years, Nick would make the most unbelievable recovery I have ever heard off to make his way back on an operational ODA (Operational Detachment Alpha) Team as fully qualified and operational Green Beret. He documented the methods used and lessons learned during his recovery in his field guide, Objective Secure. This is one of those books that will change the way you look at big challenges, I couldn’t recommend it enough!

Nick’s amazing feat of recovery is a stuff of legends even within the high performing Special Forces community. To earn his way back to an operational ODA, he had to perform physical tasks such as: jumping off a 4 foot platform with 50lbs of kit and land without having his hands touch the ground, tread water while weighed down with a diving belt and twin 80 (cu ft) scuba tanks on his back, and ruck 20+ miles. During all of this, he was humble enough to understand that no matter how hard he worked at his recovery, he would not be as physically capable as when he had two legs, so to remain an asset to his team he took the initiative to work on the soft skills of SOF: studying foreign languages and cultures, mission planning and design, campaign planning, etc. Simply put, Nick’s story leaves no more room for excuses, ever.

Nick’s story has helped thousands of people overcome challenges and adversities. He has been on a number of podcasts (listed on his website) to share his incredible story. Some of the highlights from his appearances on the Vigilance Elite, Jocko, Tom Rowland, and Bulletproof Veteran podcasts below.

The moments following getting shot in the leg by a PKM from 20 yards away: I loosened up one of the tourniquets and grabbed some gauze out of my medkit and balled it up in to what we call a powerball, and jammed it up into my thigh. I was trying to reach up towards my hip to feel for the pulse of my femoral artery. Well a few minutes had gone by and by then blood starts to shunt inward to protect your vital organs, to keep you alive as long as possible, so I have very little dexterity left in my hands. But I think I felt something, I am brushing past broken bones, the pain is starting to kick in, and I was starting to go out. I ram that gauze down as hard as I can and resecure the tourniquet. Then I thought, ok, my work here is done, so I drug myself over to where some of my teammates where who also had injuries. I saw my senior medic who had taken a round to the calf, tourniquette was on and bleeding had stopped, he was just in a lot of pain, so I was just talking to him and started comforting him. I knew my time was coming and wanted my last moments on earth to be alongside these guys doing whatever I can to provide them comfort.

On receiving the wrong blood type during a transfusion: My teammate and I have similar last names, both starting with the letters L and A, they gave me his blood type and they gave him my blood type. I am O+ (universal donor). He is AB-, the most incompatible blood type that there is and that is what they gave me. When they realized they gave him the wrong blood type, they discovered their mistake with me as well. They call Bagram hospital while I was on the medevac bird and coding. They told the docs that they just gave me 6 units of the wrong blood type, there is no way I was going to make it through this flight, and to be ready to receive a dead body. I show up, I have coded, medevac flight crew got real creative to keep me clinging to life. They rushed me off into surgery without a heart beat

On pushing the limits right from the get-go: My surgeon, the chief of ortho, comes in and said: “Here is the deal, my staff wants me to take you into the operating room right now and amputate your leg at the hip just to get rid of the infection. They are right in a lot of ways since this infection could kill you at any moment. You are riddled with bacteria. I think I can save more of your leg but it is going to be a streetfight, a slug fest, and I need you in the fight with me if we are going to have a chance at it.” I was wacked out on painkillers and I look up at this stranger who I just met, whose staff wants him to remove the leg at the hip due to bacteria that could kill me, but he wants to save more of my leg. I answered him yea man lets do it, I want to see what I can do.

On what it takes to make such a comeback:  During the eight months I was working as an instructor after getting released from the hospital, I was out of my mind obsessed with being able to come back to the team. Everything had been removed from the equation. I knew that If I was going to have a legitimate shot at being successful at this, I was going to have to train  at the highest level of my life. I had to cut out every single thing and every single person that didn’t need to be there. My regiment for that eight month period was meticulous and completely dialed in. My nutrition, sleep, training, studies, reading, it was all centered around getting back to the team.

Being humble enough to realize it is not about yourself: While I was at Walter Reed I had this vision in my head about getting back onto the team and doing my job. At that time it was about me wanting to do what I wanted to do. Me getting back to the lifestyle that I love, getting back into the fight, making the enemy regret not killing me, that is where I was at. It was very selfish, stubborn, and competitive. I am grateful for that period since it got me through a lot of difficult challenges in the early goings in the hospital and even when I got back to Bragg when I was training like a maniac. Once I started going through that twelve week progress of evaluations, tests, and assessments, I completed a handful of them and doing well and the confidence was high. I woke up in the middle of the night one day, sweating and heart beating, and it hit me in that moment that I was trying to get back to a team.  A team that has eleven other guys on it. Most of whom have wives and kids, and I didn’t take them under consideration for a single time up until that point. And it scared the shit out of me. All of a sudden the aperture opened up. As bad as I want this and as hard as I have been working for this, all the sacrifices I have been making to get to where I am now, I never pondered if this was within the best interest of the team. I ended up asking them “Guys, is what I am doing the right thing to be doing, cause I cant see it. I am obsessed with this but I got these blinders on. All I can see and feel is the work, I need your guys’ input and I apologize that I haven’t considered you guys up until this point”. They all answered me the same way, that they just didn’t  know at that point, but that they genuinely wanted me to keep pushing forward and figure it out together. And when we do get there and it doesn’t work out for the best interest of the team, they would be the first ones to tell me.

On the benefits of doing things for others: if you are trying to do it for the greater good, chances are you are going to do it a lot better. I came out of that conversation like a had a rocket up my ass, completely totally reinvigorated. I was so excited and eager. I had the support and my entire mentality had changed, I was ready to take it up an entire level. I got in the weight room and instead of thinking about taking those first steps off the airplane into Afghanistan and beating my chest “I made it back, I did it” as glorifying/satisfying as it would feel, I instead envisioned my teammates four year old son, and I needed to crush that workout right now for that kid. I just felt a whole new surge and energy that was coursing through my body

On re-assessing strengths and weaknesses: The physical lifestyle is what I thrived off of. That is what I enjoyed doing and that is what my team needed me to do. I quickly came to the realization however that I would never be as physically capable as a one legged guy as I was with two legs. So I had to find other ways to become an asset to the team.  How do I bridge the gap to maintain my status as an asset to the team? I began looking at the softer side of our business. I began looking at ways to invest my time and energy to build those skill sets. I began reading about cultural dynamics, geopolitics, and increasing my foreign language capability. I got myself into different military schools that were usually reserved for more senior guys (operational art and design, campaign planning, targeting). I rode that train aggressively and I hated every minute of it, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

What it means to be resilient: It has been a wild right. I truly believe that at the core of resiliency is passion and purpose. This is real stuff, when you love something and when you believe you were put on this earth to do something, that enables you to get past the endless list of setbacks, punches to the face, and literally falling on your ass over and over again. When the doubt starts to come in, when you start to question what it is that you are doing. When you are obsessed with it, when you love it that much, it makes it possible.

On his relationship with failure: Failure is something I strive for daily and usually I am successful. You can use physical training as a vehicle to learn how to use failure in all other aspects of life. It is pretty easy to reach failure through physical training, you can always push yourself harder and faster, pick up more weight and run a faster time. It is a small failure, certainly not the end of the world, but it gets you conditioned and accustomed to failure. We want to live at the edge of our capability and to know where that line is you have to cross it and get knocked on your ass and get back up. You can then use that trained mindset in the rest of your life. Failure is where all the lessons are and where the wisdom is. Going into failure repeatedly teaches you how to get back up, Extract that knowledge from that failure and ram it back into your system to improve, both at the micro and macro level. If we are constantly living within our safe little bubble we will not make any big strides.

On enjoying the journey: We need to enjoy the process as much as the prize. We need to enjoy the hike to the top of the mountain as much as we like being on the summit. This takes work and repetitions. Time is our most valuable and most limited resource. It starts with your vernacular. Don’t say “I didn’t have time”. You simply didn’t make time. WE choose how we use time, we choose how to prioritize time. Combining these two things together is what gets you discipline.

Focus on what you can do: When you get injured, people tend to focus on the things they cant do instead of the things they can do. This was a great opportunity to enhance my training in another way. Same thing with other setbacks like loosing a job. Focusing on the negative can paralyze you. For me it began in my hospital bed. I am not doing the types of physical training I was doing, so what can I do from the bed? Bring in some bands and some 2lb dumbells. This was from going from the best shape of my life to lifting a 2lb dumbbell. It was extremely humble and more importantly it made me focus on the things I COULD do, and that still equaled progress. That didn’t end, and it still going today.

On the importance of setting goals: I will always place the mission first. This may sound like it has a strong military undertone, but it can apply to everyone. Everyone has dreams. That is what the mission is, it is a dream, a long term goal. It is waiting at the end of the road. Missions are impactfull and life changing, but for many a mission will remain that, just a dream. Many do not reach mission success; they do not turn the dream into reality. Those that do recognize the need for something to reach success, sacrifice.

On his relationship to challenges: I experience them all the time. You know when it is coming. You are either in the storm or moving towards the storm. I know the adversity is coming. We are looking for those opportunities, that T intersection. You have an opportunity to continue to grow and grind past it knowing that most people will falter at that point, and that ends up leading to stagnation and regression. These exact moments in time is what you have been waiting. Through being able to continue through these dark times, even if it is at 70%, 60%, 40%, you are still grinding through fear, pain, adversity, and on the backside of that is where growth exists. Almost seeking out struggle and failure, actively hunting it down to a point where you enter the realm of reckless. You are so thirsty to adversity because you get conditioned over time that every time I get past these hard times is when I grow and progress and level up. Now I am just hunting these things down. I am actually trying to fall flat on my face. To avoid the realm of reckless is where strategy comes into play. You have strategically thought it out, it makes sense, and your research backs it up. It is the process of hunting failure and adversity, what keeps us safe in the realm of reckless and insanity is our plan of attack.