Honor, Courage, Commitment: Grit Wins the Gold

Review by Bill Doughty

Like having Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky as anchors, the last few chapters of Dr. Angela Duckworth's milestone, "Grit" (2016, Scribner, Simon & Schuster), completes an extended relay of a book–filled with life advice and examples of achievement and success.

In fact, Duckworth talks about Phelps, Ledecky, Kevin Durant and other Olympics heroes–along with dozens of other public and private individuals in this powerful book subtitled "The Power of Passion and Perseverance."

Readers will want to race through this book to pick up valuable tips about potential, resilience, character, training and achievement. From diverse fields or endeavors such as sports, zookeeping, NASA, cartooning, spelling bees and more, Duckworth delivers examples from her own life as well the lives of people including Jeff Bezos, Steve Young, Tom Seaver, Julia Child, John Irving, Aristotle, Ta Nehishi Coates, Benjamin Franklin, Will Shortz, Warren Buffet, and the nation of Finland.

A Navy SEAL monitors youth training camp. (Photo by MC3 Geneva G. Brier.)

Duckworth explores West Point's "The Beast" (barracks boot camp) as she and other scientists attempt to predict who will succeed and who will drop out. The same evaluation is done, no doubt, in all military branches especially in hyper-competitive areas such as Navy BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training.

Natural talent, initial physical strength, and inherent skills are not most important. Mental toughness–grit–is.

Winners like Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky and Usain Bolt want to go head-to-head with other people, are willing to train continuously and with passion, and can accept failure as motivation for the next challenge. They understand "there are no shortcuts to excellence."

It helps, Duckworth notes, to have "purpose-driven grit"–a vision and calling, whether it's the Olympics, service in the military or as part of an NBA or NFL team. Each has its culture of teamwork,service and, some more than others, a concept of a greater good.

After seeing Duckworth's TED talk on grit, Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll, author of "Win Forever," contacted her and invited her to the Seahawks camp. Carroll's philosophy is, "Do things better than they have ever been done before."



The day after Carroll's team beat the Denver Broncos to win Superbowl XLVIII in 2014, he said this in an interview:

"We're looking for great competitors. That's really where it starts. And that's the guys that really have grit. The mindset that they're always going to succeed, that they've got something to prove. They're resilient, they're not going to let setbacks hold them back. They're not going to be deterred, you know, by challenges and hurdles and things ... It's that attitude–we really refer to it as grit."

Carroll had this to say about Duckworth after he shared a town hall with her in Seattle last year: “She has such a big personality and attitude, she’s really fun to work with. She goes really fast with her thoughts and ideas, which is just fine with me, so we’ll cover a lot of stuff in a short amount of time. She’s got a real sense of urgency about discovery as well, so we see things in a similar fashion in that regard as well.”

Duckworth examines Carroll's reaction to the next year's Superbowl XLIX and the Coach's decision to pass rather than run the ball with Marshawn Lynch, resulting in a historic loss. Failure became another opportunity for resilience.

Carroll's idol-mentor was Coach John Wooden, a World War II Navy veteran and epic winning coach of UCLA Bruins basketball team. Wooden's advice comes across in this found (unintentional) haiku from the great coach:

success is never

final; failure is never

fatal; ... courage ... counts

Duckworth is impressed by this Japanese saying: "Fall seven, rise eight." People with grit don't give up. They rise to the challenge. They learn that it takes at least 10 years and 10,000 repetitions to become an expert or master. They have purpose and passion.

Duckworth offers great words of wisdom, including her own found haiku:

our potential is

one thing; what we do with it

is quite another

As a neurobiologist and psychologist, Dr. Duckworth can explain the neuroplasticity of a "remarkably adaptive" brain that allows people to achieve their vision.

"Like a muscle that gets stronger with use, the brain changes itself when you struggle to master a new challenge. In fact, there's never a time in life when the brain is completely 'fixed.' Instead, all our lives, our neurons retain the potential to grow new connections with one another and to strengthen the ones we already have. What's more, throughout adulthood, we maintain the ability to grow myelin, a sort of insulating sheath that protects neurons and speeds signals traveling between them."

This book is packed with advice for individuals, leaders and parents. It includes a self-test and practical how-to advice, along with personal and public examples of people and situations where grit wins "the gold."

It's a perfect Navy read in the context of preserving a resilient workforce and fostering core values: Honor, Courage, Commitment."

'Killing Game'–ISIS & Augmented Reality

Review by Bill Doughty

Radical jihadist movements like ISIS, al Qaeda and Boko Haram attract young people with mental problems–men and women who are subject to addictions and delusions, drawn to hatred, with access to guns, bombs and other weapons, according to author Mark Bourrie, "The Killing Game: Martyrdom, Murder and the Lure of ISIS" (2016, HarperCollins). 

Canada's Bourrie helps us get not only an international perspective but also the historical and scientific context of homegrown terrorism while dissecting the family dynamics of turncoat terrorists.

The international perspective is timely in the wake of recent rampages in Nice, Orlando, Brussels, Baghdad, Bangladesh, Somalia, Turkey and Afghanistan by ISIS-inspired killers.

Today at least 80 people are dead in Kabul after a jihadist suicide bomb attack, and ISIS claimed responsibility.

Recruitment of terrorists has deep roots in history.

Great Britain helped the Confederacy recruit Canadians to fight in the U.S. Civil War. During the Spanish-American War young men from Canada fought in the Spanish Republican Army because they looked "to fascism for solutions to their personal problems and economic messes..."

Haj Amin al-Husseini and Adolf Hitler on 28 November 1941

Similarly, foreign fighters were attracted to Nazi Germany, according to Bourrie, especially in the last years of World War II. "Hitler and his murderous henchman Heinrich Himmler had a strange fascination with Islam. It was, and still is, reciprocated."

Today, the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) and related extremists use sophisticated ways to reach, teach and recruit young people worldwide. They employ new media, promote video games and develop apps, pushing their message of hate and violence on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms. When it comes to ISIS, or ISIL, "No other organization ... set out to find brutal ways to kill and novel ways to publicize atrocities."

"So much of ISIS's war-porn propaganda is directed at ... bored young people who aren't engaged by the consumer ethos of their own society and who feel that adventure is passing them by. They want to step into the video games that have become so important to them and be the heroes that they play on the small screen. As Abu Sumayyah al-Britani, a British fighter with ISIS, posted on Twitter, war is the ultimate in virtual reality."

According to Bourrie, young people grow up playing violent games so routinely that they are "desensitized to the sight of killing."

This affects–and effects–parts of the brain.

Bourrie notes that researchers in China studying the impact of Internet addiction have found that excessive online gaming leads to depression, irritability and impulsiveness and can affect the structure of the brain.

"Anyone who can tap into the minds of young people and connect with their desires and insecurities can exploit them," Bourrie writes. "ISIS's brand of religion, with its simple answers to complex and disturbing modern questions, appeals to people in shattered societies."

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Fear leads to an attraction to authoritarianism. After World War I, "Mussolini offered a return to the Roman Empire. Hitler offered Germany domination of Europe. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS's leader and self-styled caliph offers the return of the glory days of Islam, when armies ravaged what was left of the eastern Roman Empire."

Bourrie reminds us that millions of Americans struggled to give meaning to the attacks of September 11, 2001, "just as they struggled to turn Pearl Harbor into a crusade against fascism and militarism" in 1941.

How can Western nations prevent ISIS recruitment of mentally unstable, deluded or sociopathic young people in their societies?

Can young would-be terrorists be deprogrammed and reeducated? One of the most important keys lies in the Muslim community, Bourrie writes:

"Radical Islam is vulnerable to several counterattacks. The most potent comes from persuasive, learned Muslims who can argue back against ISIS's simplistic and violent interpretation of Islam. This is already happening, but more Muslims need to get involved, and they need the media skills to be able to face ISIS on the Internet. Moderate Muslims also need to ensure that their mosques and social groups aren't dominated or hijacked by radicals. At the same time, authorities in Canada and other Western countries should back these people up and do more than just arrest terror suspects. They need to look at the way European states work with the families of extremists and develop a ... system that provides effective intervention and support for the relatives of people drawn to extremism. Right now, some Muslims feel intimidated by the extremists. They need protection so they can speak out."

Canada's Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Brian Dickson

He says, "There needs to be even more international cooperation to share information and fight jihadi recruitment." And he says marginalization of Muslim communities is not the answer; hatred is not the answer. He includes a quote from Supreme Court of Canada's Chief Justice Brian Dickson about the dangers of hate speech:

"Hatred is predicated on destruction, and hatred against identifiable groups therefore thrives on insensitivity, bigotry and destruction of both the target group and the values of our society. Hatred in this sense is a most extreme emotion that belies reason; an emotion that, if exercised against members of an identifiable group, implies that those individuals are to be despised, scorned, denied respect and made subject to ill-treatment on the basis of group affiliation."

Hate begets hate. People who fear and hate, for different reasons, cause death and destruction every day. Only a small percentage of violent deaths in the United States are caused by violent Islamist extremists. 

Remembering victims in Nice, France.

Bourrie reminds us of mass murders by white supremacists in Charleston, South Carolina (9 African Americans gunned down); Oslo, Norway in 2011 (77 people, mostly children, murdered); and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 2001 (when Timothy McVeigh assassinated 168 men, women and children). An attack in Munich, Germany yesterday killed 9 people and occurred five years, to the day, of the Norway massacre.

But it's sobering to consider the scale of hatred and killing in the name of Islam worldwide in recent decades, especially in the last few years. Wikipedia publishes a list, which as this gets posted hasn't been updated with the most recent attacks–including today's horrific suicide bombings in Kabul, reportedly part of ongoing Sunni-Shiite hatred.

Bourrie concludes:

"It's my view that we're seeing the beginning of a general war in the Islamic world. It may be fought simultaneously, or the fighting may move from one country to another. Internal forces will tear apart Saudi Arabia and continue to threaten the regime in Iran. Shiites, backed by Tehran, push against Sunnis backed by the Saudis. The regime in Egypt, the most populous country in the region, survives because the army still has the ability to suppress Islamism, but time may be running out for Egypt's generals."

Meanwhile the radical jihadists and other extremists continue their spew of propaganda, trying to entice young people with promises of sex, glory, kittens and personalized iPhone covers. "One fact ISIS propaganda never mentions is that–if the fates of known Western fighters are any indication–ISIS fighters don't usually live long." 



Kudos to Patrick Crean Editions and HarperCollins for the disconcerting cover with blazing blue eyes, remarkably similar to the face of a great folk singer who is the antithesis of hatred and is instead dedicated to understanding, hope and love–James Taylor ("You've Got a Friend" and "Fire and Rain")–which makes the impact of the cover that more powerful.



Here's to "understanding, hope and love" in the real world and in augmented reality now and in the future.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People 

By Stephen R. Covey 

Review by Bill Doughty

This is more than a book review. That’s because the ‘7 Habits’ is more than a book...

Covey calls his groundbreaking work a “companion in the continual process of change and growth.” He challenges readers to take his “companion” with them on life’s journey, integrating his seven habits at home and at work to build relationships, strengthen leadership and chart a course.

No wonder The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was selected for the CNO’s recommended reading list. Covey’s insights about character often dovetail with senior leaders’ strategic guidance; the Navy’s core values of honor, courage, and commitment; and Navy Ethos. In fact, he spends a lot of time talking about courage. “High courage and consideration (of others) are both essential to win/win,” Covey says. 

Think of the best leaders you’ve known, the most respected colleagues and co-workers. Chances are, they have a win/win approach to leadership (more about that later). . . 

Using diagrams and models Covey takes us through the interlocking pieces of his 7 habits. 

Habit 1, “Be Proactive,” is all about empowerment, the ability to control your environment – making good choices and determining the course you will navigate. 

Habit 2, “Begin with the End in Mind,” gets deeper into character and values, recognizing that people who have a sense of purpose are indeed highly effective. For Sailors, Marines and civilians serving in the Department of the Navy, the CNO’s Guidance for 2009 reinforces the Maritime Strategy as the Navy’s purpose – “sustaining combat readiness, building a fleet for the future and developing 21st Century leaders.” The Maritime Strategy, “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower,” puts the ‘operative’ in ‘cooperative’ for “Security, Stability, Seapower.”

 

Habit 3, “Put First Things First,” discusses organization and implementation or, as CNOs and Fleet Commanders have put it, “focus on execution.” Covey says that principle-centered leadership comes from practicing the principles of personal management, and draws this distinction: “Management, remember, is clearly different from leadership. Leadership is primarily a high-powered, right brain activity. It’s more of an art; it’s kind of a philosophy.” He shows us that we have to manage our lives and our selves before we can lead others. 

Habit 4, “Think Win-Win,” begins the evolution to independence and eventually to the ultimate goal, interdependence. Here it’s all about cooperation, teamwork, and consideration for others – creating a paradigm of high trust and a vision that is positive and proactive. 

Habit 5, “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood,” is Covey’s very powerful communication message about the importance of listening, summed up in the popular maxim: “People need to know how much you care before they care how much you know.” 

Habit 6, “Synergize,” talks about the creativity that comes from bringing all the habits together to open new possibilities for us, our parents and children, and our leaders and coworkers. Covey thinks this can change people and society itself. “Could synergy not create a new script for the next generation – one that is more geared to services and contribution, and is less protective, less adversarial, less selfish; one that is more open, more trusting, more giving, and is less defensive, protective and political; one that is more loving, more caring and is less possessive and judgmental?”

 

Habit 7, “Sharpen the Saw,” is the habit of balanced self-renewal, completely in line with the Navy’s emphasis on continually training, maintaining, educating, and learning. These are the basics of the seven habits in what Covey calls his “companion.” For many readers, this is not new information, but it can reinforce and strengthen already good habits. 

Personally, I re-read one or two chapters from time to time, once after a 2007 podcast of “Talk of the Nation – Science Friday” with Ira Flatow on National Public Radio.  The show’s topic was “Can Thoughts and Actions Change Our Brains” – a fascinating discussion of some pioneering work in neuroscience called neuroplasticity (changeability of the brain).

In essence, science is showing how our brain can change in response to our life experiences and even the very thoughts we think. 

Behavior can change the way our brain works – even structurally. Whether it’s called “mind over matter,” “the power of positive thinking,” “the power of prayer and meditation” or “cognitive behavior therapy (CBT),” it is thinking about thinking in a different way for a better outcome. CBT might as well be called “Covey’s Better Thinking.” 

Neuroscientists are proving that cognitive behavior therapy can help people suffering from depression, obsessive-compulsive behavior and post-traumatic stress disorder. (Check out the great discussion about PTSD and traumatic brain injury, mentioning neuroplasticity, in a Bloggers Roundtable discussion on PTSD from Jan. 2009.)

CBT can even help with brain motor cortex functions in stroke victims. Interestingly, the development of neurons occurs in patients who are self-motivated, not forced . . .  which brings us back to managing ourselves and leading others. 

Nearly everyone can benefit from knowing we can have a lot of control over our own destiny. New discoveries in neuroplasticity reinforce the importance of a positive worldview and the value of education and reading . . . which brings us back to the Covey “book.” 

Covey’s philosophy really is more than a book. It has become synonymous for open and trusting management systems and with how individuals can make good choices about behavior and lifestyle, based on a win-win model of leadership and a positive view of the world . . . which brings us to Covey's blog, a good 7th habit tool.

Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is in the “Management and Strategic Planning” section of the Navy Professional Reading Program Guide.