Mediocrity

As I’ve said before I’m reading Dick Couch’s 2005 book Down Range. In the forward, Richard Danzig, senior fellow at the Center for Naval Analyses and former Secretary of the Navy, makes a point about how the book can be used “as a case study in the motivation, organization, and conduct of operations – operations of any kind.”

He goes on to say that contained in the book are lessons on how to do difficult things. He then wonders why, if the SEALs’ program works so well, can’t that program with its strategies or lessons be used to reform say public education, healthcare and the environment? The answer he believes is because we simply haven’t made them a priority as we have our military. Then he asks: think about what could be accomplished if not only did we care, but cared enough to get things right?

As Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss) says in Mr. Holland’s Opus to Vice Principal Eugene Wolters (William Macy) when the school is forced to cut the music program for lack of funding and vice principal chooses long division over reading and writing, “Well, I guess you can cut the arts as much as you want, Gene. Sooner or later, these kids aren't going to have anything to read or write about.”

When I began writing A SEAL in Uniform, I decided to begin each of my chapters with lyrics to a song. The songs I chose generally set the mood for the chapters and described what the chapters were about. I did this because my dream, in addition to publishing this book and sexy SEAL series, is to create a soundtrack for it. I want this because I think a soundtrack would draw the reader deeper in to the story and give them more insight into the characters’ world and the emotions they feel. To my knowledge, this has never been done and as a first-time novelist, presenting this idea is daunting.

I recently read Leadership Lessons of the Navy SEALs, a 2003 book by Jeff Cannon and Lieutenant Commander Jon Cannon. In the last chapter of their book, “If you need to scream, you need to practice,” the authors talk about practical applications and how in order to learn to do things that don’t come naturally, we have to first do them and then practice them over and over. But taking that first step is scary, so to allay our fears, we have to accept that we’re going to make mistakes. By accepting that mistakes are part of the process, we can lose the self-consciousness, take action and succeed.

So, here’s my blog today about my fear of trying something new. I’ll end with the last two sentences from the Cannon book.

“Scared? You should be. But that’s just your body’s way of saying it’s alive.
Now go to work.”