O
n ANZAC Day this year, I
caught up with a good
friend and fellow soldier
from the 2nd Commando
Regiment, Rhys Dowden. Now
out of the army, Rhys works
with people in the area of
mental toughness and is the
founder of Operator Edge. I
asked him about his business
and am keen to share with you
his responses:
“What I teach now is mental
resilience or mental toughness,
and the way I like to look at it
is, why do people want to get
mentally tough? At the end of
the day, it’s so you can achieve
what you want. That requires
being disciplined, getting over
setbacks, coming back from
failures and being able to stand
up for yourself. The first thing I
like to say to people is you need
to build what I call a ‘personal
foundation plan’, which is like
a business plan. Businesseshave a vision, a mission and
core values. Vision: how do you
see your business turning out?
Mission: what do you actually
want to achieve? And core
values: what do you stand for?
Then apply that to your own
personal situation. Get your
vision, mission and your core
values sorted. Understand who
you truly are and where you
want to go, and how you want
your life to turn out.
“Next, pick your goals. I
talk then about the military
appreciation process — you’re
going to fully plan out your
mission like we did in the
military: Situation, Mission,
Execution, Administration and
logistics and, finally, Command
and signals (SMEAC). Why did
we use that method? Because
it worked. When we did it in
the army, everybody knew the
mission; everybody knew their
job and what they’re workingtowards. You’re going to know
what you’re going for and
exactly what your mission is,
how to execute it and what you
need to get it done.
“So, now you have a detailed
step-by-step plan, it’s time
to create ‘actions on’ in the
execution phase, so when things
go wrong, you know what
you’re going to do about it. A lot
of people experience setbacks
and then they drop their bundle.
They get emotionally attached
[to their planned route] and it
hits them hard because they’re
not expecting it. So, like we did
on military operations, if you’re
going for a goal, you sit down
and plan out all of the potential
problems during each phase
of your execution — ask, ‘what
could possibly go wrong?’ —
and then combat those with
‘actions on’ so you can deal with
those problems as they occur.
That way, when it happens
it’s not a surprise and it’s not
going to take a toll on your
confidence. You will respond
to the problems straight away
and get back on track as soon
as possible.
“So you now have your
personal mission and the
execution worked out; the
third part is dealing with
failure. When you set what I
call ‘big, hairy, audacious goals’,
when you go after something
big, you’re going to fail along
the way — there is no doubt
about it. I’ve failed a numberof times to get to where I am,
both during my army time and
in business where I am now.
If you can’t deal with failure,
then you’re not going to reach
your goals, it’s as simple as
that. To deal with failure, you
must firstly understand that
failure is going to happen,
then understand that failure
happens to everyone. Look at
successful people — all of them
have failed, but it’s the ones
who keep going and don’t let
failures define them as people,
who are ultimately going to be
successful.
“There are two mindsets: the
‘growth’ mindset and the ‘fixed’
mindset. The fixed mindset
person is one who hits a hurdle,
stumbles and thinks that they
are not good enough or not
naturally talented enough. So
they’re not learning from their
mistakes, they just thought
they could reach their goals
without problems or failures.
Alternatively, a person with a
growth mindset understands
that failure is part of the
journey. They learn from their
failures and want to understand
why they happened. When
you can work out why, you can
learn from it, and then you can
provide a solution.
“Everybody fails, it’s part of
the process — but what can
you learn from that failure? How
can you grow as a person, get
better and improve yourself,
and not let it happen again?”A former ADF commando turned business coach and BJJ practitioner
can offer some pertinent lessons on persisting with purpose to achieve a
result — core traits we hope to develop through martial arts training.Plan to Fail...Succeed
Sgt (retired) Paul Cale fought in Afghanistan and until
mid-2013 managed the Integrated Combat Centre at 2nd
Commando Regiment, developing CQC programs for
Australian special forces. He is now a team leader at the
Australian Institute of Sport’s Combat Centre and delivers
CQC training for the Australian Defence Force via his
company Kinetic Fighting — check out kineticfighting.comCLOSE QUARTERSCale (left) and
fellow commando
Rhys Dowden on
ANZAC Day 201796 ƫđƫ333ċ (%06) #ċ*!0 | (^) MARTIAL MINDS