THE THREE RINGS MINDSET

The Three Rings Mindset, Excerpts

Author: John Mangan

JohnManganBooks@gmail.com

 

The Purpose of this Book

In March of 2002, I went into combat utterly unprepared for what I would face. I’d been in the military for almost a decade and received thousands of hours of training: Army ROTC, the Air Force Academy, Pilot Training, qualification in the HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter, a dozen exercises, and a Red Flag. The military invested millions of dollars teaching me how to control my aircraft and its systems, but not my body and mind. Thus, my first combat missions were a chaotic, searing experience that left lasting scars. It was only years later, after hundreds of missions, that I truly learned how to master my physiology and perform at the peak of my ability. I’ve often wished that I could go back to the beginning, sit my younger self down, and teach him those hard won lessons. I can’t do that, but perhaps I can with the next generation.

That’s why I wrote this book, which draws from my own experience and the most recent scientific research that reveals how professionals overcome fear and control their natural stress response. These techniques take only a few minutes to learn and can be used in extraordinary situations, or in everyday life.

At first, I was writing only for pilots, but eventually I realized that these techniques work just as well for first responders, business leaders, doctors, and athletes—anybody who needs to make snap decisions under pressure. If you aren’t an aviator, take these techniques and translate them into whatever stressful situations you find yourself in; they can change your world. Whether you’re a parent juggling a chaotic household, a teacher wrangling a tough classroom, or an office worker facing tight deadlines, these tools can be used to calm your mind and sharpen your focus during high-stakes moments, turning stress into strength whenever life tests you.

OPERATION ANACONDA

After a ninety-minute flight, we arrived at FARP Texaco, a crude airstrip that had been bulldozed into the raw earth by the Russians twenty years prior. The rusting hulks of their abandoned vehicles still littered the area. We landed in a blinding brownout, refueled from a UH-47 fat cow, found a spot to park, then shut down. Our command element, callsign Deliverance, told us to expect a launch order sometime after dark. When that moment came, we would fly to the center of the fight, land, and extract as many wounded soldiers as possible. Currently, twenty-four wounded soldiers were waiting for rescue, far more than we could carry. I ran some quick numbers. With eighty soldiers on the ground and twenty-four of them wounded, they’d suffered a thirty percent casualty rate in just a few hours of fighting. The situation was desperate.

Within thirty minutes, the final mission planning was complete. All that remained was to await the launch order. The remains of the day faded in silence, and the sun settled over the Gardez Mountains, setting their snow-capped peaks alight with shades of violet and pink. In this long moment of pause, I made my first crucial mistake: I began to think about things other than how to accomplish the mission. I began to think about the magnitude of what we were about to attempt and the risk that we were taking. We would be operating at the absolute limit of our aircraft’s performance envelope, landing at an altitude and weight that we had never attempted before, at a mountainous location we had never seen, with only starlight for illumination. We would be surrounded on three sides by entrenched enemy positions armed with small arms, heavy machine guns, RPGs, and mortars. The Taliban had enough firepower to maul eighty American soldiers and drive off three Apache gunships. And those Apaches had been damaged while flying at attack speeds and altitudes. We were going to land in the center of that shooting gallery and then sit motionless while they loaded up the wounded soldiers.

As Air Force Rescue pilots, we train to pick up one or two downed aviators hiding behind enemy lines. We had never so much as table-talked a scenario that involved picking up a dozen soldiers in the middle of an ongoing firefight. We had never worked with army units before and didn’t know their operating procedures. The odds of us pulling this off unscathed were slim.

Confronted with the likely prospect of an imminent and fiery death, my thoughts flew to my family back home and how they were going about their daily lives, unaware of what was about to happen to me. We had lost my mother to cancer only three months before, and her loss was still incredibly raw. I imagined what it would do to my father when he received an unexpected knock on his door and learned that his son was dead. I thought about what it would do to him when he had to call my siblings and tell them the news. I actually visualized him speaking the words, “John’s been killed.”

Focused now on death, loss, and the price of failure, I spun into a pit of anxiety and dread. I’d opened the doorway to fear, and it slithered in like a snake, coiled around my diaphragm, and began a slow and relentless squeeze.

The last of the light faded. The stars bloomed overhead, brilliant and cold. I sat alone in the cockpit, which seemed as dark and cold as a tomb. I listened to the radios, my hands jammed into my armpits, my breath fogging, my feet going numb. Hours passed as I listened to the faint crackle of the SATCOM channel, my thoughts churning. Suddenly, a squelch break, a message was coming through.

“Gecko 11 Flight, Deliverance.”

I sat upright and reached for my pen and notepad. “Deliverance, this is Gecko 11. Go ahead.”

“Gecko 11, you have green light; report when airborne.”

The shot of adrenaline was almost painful, like the jump scare in a horror movie. I shouted out the door that we had a green light. The crew scrambled to their stations, and our helicopters roared to life. Ten minutes later, we were clattering toward our objective, the intercom abuzz with inter-crew chatter as we ran checklists, performed power calculations, and dumped fuel to lighten our load. The workload was like nothing I’d experienced before. The SATCOM radio in flight lead was broken, but the one in my aircraft was still working. The plan was for Phil to fly while I worked the five radios, coordinating with Deliverance, copying instructions, radio frequencies and grid coordinates, then passing the info up to Ed Lengel in flight lead so he could make decisions. Deliverance, Ed, and I were playing a game of telephone back and forth, and I was trying to perform some of the duties usually reserved for an experienced flight lead. I was in over my head. We had not been included in the planning for Anaconda, so we knew exactly nothing. We didn’t know the command structure, who was operating in the area or their callsigns, contact frequencies, capabilities, weapons, positions, or flight routes. The SATCOM provided a continuous flow of bad news.

“Gecko 11, do not approach from the North. B-52s are striking targets near Marzak.”

Best avoid that. Where the hell is Marzak? How do we contact their JTAC? What are the target coordinates? What are they dropping? How far should we avoid the area by? We need to—

“Gecko 11, do not approach from the East or South. AC-130, Grim 31 is currently striking targets within 250 meters of your objective. Contact Grim 31 on frequency 245.80”

AC-130 overhead. Threats within rifle range. That’s bad. Gotta coordinate our arrival with Grim. When will he stop firing? We need to—

“Gecko 11, do not approach from the West, Army H-47s are inserting troops two miles west. Contact Razor 01 flight on 126.00”

H-47 inserts in the objective area? What altitude are they at? What route are they flying? Do they know we’re here? What’s the deconfliction plan?

The situation was impossibly, comically, bad. A cartoon caricature, an absurd exaggeration of bad. The information was coming in faster than I could pass it forward, let alone begin solving the problems they created. I watched the navigation system counting down the minutes until we joined the greatest shitshow on earth. With each tick of the clock, the fear snake tightened around my diaphragm, and I began to feel sparks of genuine panic. The fear whispered in my ear, telling me I’d made a colossal mistake by becoming a rescue pilot. Every decision that had led to my sitting in this cockpit was wrong. The enemy, the landing zone, the B-52s, the AC-130, the H-47s, the problems—so many damn problems. I should be sitting behind a desk somewhere, tapping away on a PowerPoint presentation, not strapped into an aluminum trashcan waiting to be shot and then burned to death.

Ed was now talking to the TACP, coordinating our arrival at the landing zone. He needed me to solve the other problems and to help with the plan, but I couldn’t formulate one. My mind was working like an engine filled with sludge, burnt oil, and sand, the gears turning in irregular fits and starts. I needed to be sharp, on point, and creative, but I wasn’t. I needed to be so much more, but all I could do was my basic copilot duties while stammering away on the radios and scribbling down notes. I felt like a drowning man being swept through swirling rapids, being carried inexorably toward a chaotic, violent conclusion that I could neither see nor control.

Up ahead, flashes of light came from the objective area. Only three miles away now. Ed put us into a circular holding pattern, then briefed us on the game plan he had devised. The surrounding terrain was too tight, and there were too many unknowns, too many problems we hadn’t solved. He didn’t want both of us wandering around a tight valley with the Taliban blasting away, so he directed us to hold in the current location. He would proceed in alone, find the landing zone, and then call us in. He’d also contacted Grim 31 and arranged for the AC-130 to hold its fire until we were safe on the ground. Thank God that Ed was on top of things. Moments later, he broke away from our orbit and disappeared over a small ridgeline, heading to his fate. We circled in silence, waiting.

Minutes later, Ed came over the radio, “I’m down safe. You’re cleared in.”

Phil pointed our nose toward the objective; we were now committed to God knows what. The distance counted down: 1.5 miles away now. Directly in front of us, we could see scattered flashes of gunfire. Right in the center of the action was a bright glowing orb, the infrared light on top of Ed’s helicopter. Phil announced that he intended to land just short of, and to the right of Ed. This would be the most challenging approach that any of us had ever attempted. As a helicopter decelerates to land, it begins to settle into the downwash created by its own rotor system. The slower a helicopter flies, the stronger the downwash. Essentially, it’s like trying to run up a downward escalator. As you try to land, the escalator begins going downward faster and faster, thus, more engine power is required to remain in the air. Given the high altitude and our heavy weight, we didn’t have the power to hover more than a few feet above the ground. Our calculations indicated that we would have to touch down just as we bled off the last of our airspeed, a delicate balancing act. Anything less than perfection would see us drop out of the sky. This situation was particularly dangerous because we couldn’t see the place where we intended to touch down, it was just too damn dark. Even with our night-vision goggles (NVGs), we wouldn’t be able to see the touch-down point until we were about ten seconds out. All we could do was aim for a spot and hope that it was suitable for landing.

“On the approach,” Phil said. The fear was coming in waves now. My breathing was rapid and shallow. My heart thumped like a framing hammer in my chest. The gunfire and tracers were brighter now, creating a streaking effect in my night-vision goggles. I lowered my head and chin, trying to get as much of my body behind my armored chest plate as possible. A ludicrous concept, but in that moment, it seemed possible to me. I scanned the instruments, calling out altitude, ground speed, and sink rates to Phil. As we closed on the landing zone, two hundred meters out, we began to pick out details of the objective. To my horror, I realized that the worst-case scenario was unfolding: Ed’s aircraft was perched atop a small knoll with sloping terrain on all sides. He was also facing the exact opposite direction of our current approach path. We were nose-to-nose, landing in the wrong direction. We would have to perform a 180-degree turn to align with—

An RPG detonated forty meters behind Ed’s aircraft in a brilliant flash of light. Australian special-ops troops responded and killed the shooters just outside the perimeter. Tracers stitched the LZ both coming and going, the firefight intensifying as the Taliban did its best to kill us while our own ground troops poured it back.

Slowing for the final touchdown, the airframe shuddered as the downwash enveloped us, signifying that we had only a few seconds of controlled flight left. But the ground directly beneath us was steeply sloped and covered in large boulders. We couldn’t land here. We were out of airspeed and power, but still twenty-five feet in the air. The engines redlined at max temperature, caution lights flashing, the rotor RPM decaying rapidly, the warning horn blaring like a biblical trumpet of doom. Out of airspeed, power, and options, we entered the crash sequence. Through the dim glow of my NVGs, I saw a smooth patch of ground just to our left. It was too steep to land on but looked like a decent place to crash. Phil, seated on the right side of the helicopter, was unable to see it, so I grabbed the sticks, shouted, “Copilot has controls!” and banked our descending aircraft toward the smooth patch, hoping to get us there before impact. Descending, still shouting, “Copilot has controls,” I was able to guide us toward the selected crash site, level the aircraft, and apply the last of our rotor energy just before ground impact. The rotor RPM sank deep, deep into the danger territory, warning horn blaring, engines redlining, the controls mushy. But we didn’t crash. Instead, the wheels stopped a foot or two above the ground, the hover stabilized, and the rotor RPM began to creep back up. “No way! We made—”

A Taliban DShK gunner opened fire from an elevated position to our front, sending a solid stream of tracers plunging down through the rotor system and ricocheting past the cockpit, leaving curlicue streaks in my NVGs.

At that moment, my self-aware, logical mind, vanished. Some primitive entity rose from the depths and took control. I call this entity The Animal because for the next ten seconds, I made no conscious decisions. Instead, my actions were controlled entirely by The Animal’s sense of self-preservation and pretrained responses.

The Animal, its hands frozen in a death grip on the controls, fed in a forward-left stick and full right pedal and hovered up onto the top of the knoll while side-sliding in a broad Tokyo-drift arc (sliding left, while turning right), around to the opposite side of Ed’s aircraft. Throughout this fast and furious drift maneuver, each of my left gunner’s screams of “Stop left! Stop left!” were immediately answered with my counter-screams of “I’m sliding left! I’m sliding left!” Ten seconds later, we landed, safe, in a perfect position behind Ed, aligned with his takeoff direction, ready to receive the wounded. I did not decide to do this, it just happened, because in training I always place my helicopter in a similar position behind the flight lead.

The Animal vanished, and I returned.

“Ha! We knocked a bunch of dudes over,” Greg Sisco, my left gunner, said.

“They gonna be OK?”

“Yeah. They’ll be fine.”

“OK.”

I then relinquished the flight controls back to a rather stunned Phil Swenson, not sure what had just happened, let alone how it had happened. I sat in silence as our PJs dashed out of the helicopter, firing their rifles at the elevated Taliban positions. Overhead, Grim 31 opened up with its 105-mm cannon and 40-mm Bofors, raining explosive shells onto the surrounding hills. I watched the surreal scene of bandaged troops being dragged toward the helicopter under fire. I was stunned by how bad the situation was. An unwounded soldier dropped his rifle and tried to shove his way onto the aircraft. A casualty was struck for a second time while being carried toward us.

The fear began to billow up inside me again. With no tasks to distract me, I could feel my human self being peeled away, like thin skin, revealing the primitive Animal lurking beneath. It was a scalding, dehumanizing experience, and I pushed back against it, trying to keep myself present. I had to do something, anything besides just sitting there, so I buried my face in the mission computer, ran some power calculations, and initiated a verbal mantra of Don’t look outside. Don’t look outside. Don’t look outside. Although Phil and I had little to do at that point, we stayed busy going over our takeoff and egress plan again and again—not because it made the plan any better but because it gave us something to focus on other than the danger. In retrospect, it was the perfect way to combat fear and maintain control: Do something you know how to do. Work problems. Focus on something other than yourself. Stay busy.

An eternity later, with the wounded on board and the PJs corralled back into the cabin, we egressed and got clear of the battle. Forty-five minutes later, we delivered the wounded to Baghram Air Base. We then refueled and headed back to Kandahar. I have little memory of our three-hour flight home, the landing and the shut-down, the post-adrenaline fatigue beating on me like a hammer.

 PROBLEM FIXATION

Previously, we discussed how fear triggers your FFF response and how this affects your intellectual capacity. Now, let us examine how it affects your focus: Imagine that you and your buddies are having a wonderful day in the Alaskan bush. Your belly is full of roasted moose, and you are seated in the shade of a pine tree, casting your line into a beautiful stream that runs deep and clear. It’s a lovely day, with blue skies and a gentle breeze. Everybody is chattering, laughing, joking, and looking forward to the night’s festivities around the campfire. But then you hear the deep baritone of a grizzly grunting in the brush and see a flash of yellow fangs rushing toward you. Suddenly, you are no longer thinking about your friends, the weather, food, fish, or tonight’s party. Instead, you are laser-focused on the mortal danger as your body prepares for a short, violent spasm of running, screaming, and stabbing.

Look at what happened to your focus. Initially, your focus was broad in both time and space. You were able to fish, admire the weather, chat with friends, think about the past, and anticipate the future. But when FFF kicked in, your focus collapsed into a narrow cone and was pulled onto the thing you feared. You developed tunnel vision and tunnel focus. This is called problem-fixation.

Humans are built to focus on and pay attention to the things they fear. This instinct is regularly exploited by politicians, advertisers, and journalists because placing people in a state of fear is the easiest way to guide their attention. Now consider what problem-fixation does to an aviator. When that engine explodes and your aircraft starts to shake itself apart, problem-fixation will ensure that you remain emotionally focused on the immediate danger, not on finding a long-term solution to the situation.

Now, let’s look at problem-fixation acting on an aviator in a dangerous situation.

Figure 6

Problem-Fixation

Upon encountering a threat, the focus of our aviator is naturally pulled toward the danger, which stokes her emotions and fears. If she allows her focus to remain on the danger, this will elevate anxiety, promote mistakes, and send her spiraling into a doom loop. With her focus padlocked on the danger, she can’t identify a winning game plan, let alone perform the tasks that would move her toward success. Wrong-focused and filled with debilitating anxiety, she’ll keep making mistakes until she arrives at the inevitable destination: failure.

Now let’s examine how an aviator can defeat problem-fixation.

Figure 7

Defeating Problem-Fixation

First, our aviator breaks away from the danger and shifts to a broad focus. Remaining right-focused, she determines what is the best course of action, defines what success will look like, and then identifies the tasks that lead to that destination. Note that two distinct changes occurred: Firstly, her focus changed from narrow to broad; secondly, what her focus was dwelling on shifted. Both changes require conscious, deliberate effort to overcome natural FFF instincts. Now that our aviator has identified a roadmap to success, her focus will change again.

Figure 8

Moving Towards Success

To execute her plan, she maintains a narrow focus on performing each of the steps that lead to success. However, over time, she will periodically pause, broaden her focus, and evaluate whether the plan is working and whether the task list needs to be modified.

Notice that the key to dealing with emergencies is to have a highly structured and well-rehearsed response, ready to go. Here is an example of an effective emergency response paradigm.

1. Emergency occurs.
2. Deliberate pause: Belly breathe and recite a relevant mantra.
3. Evaluate the time criticality. State how much time you have before you must act.
4. Defeat problem-fixation; go wide-focus, use a what-is mindset, and identify a solution.
5. Identify the tasks that will get you to that solution.
6. Go narrow focus on accomplishing each of the tasks. Use Positive-Process Oriented Thinking.

By having a highly structured and well-rehearsed response to emergencies, you can defeat problem-fixation and immediately begin identifying solutions. But consider, even if you’ve defeated problem-fixation, some of your team members might not have, and they’re still running in circles, making things worse. In this case, use your leadership skills to stop the chaos, provide direction, and drive toward a solution.

Controlled Drift of Focus

We have discussed how to counter problem-fixation during moments of extreme stress, but what happens when there is a long break in the action? What if you have a long transit time, or you leave the fight to refuel and rearm? In these moments of pause, we often allow destructive mindsets to creep in. We’re humans after all and can’t stay on task indefinitely. In such cases, what should you do?

There is a technique called controlled drift of focus where you allow your mind to relax and drift away from the situation, but you do so in a controlled and deliberate manner. Recognize that there are acceptable things to think about, as well as things you should NOT think about, subjects that destroy your combat mindset.

Approved Areas. If you’re going to let your mind wander, here are some subjects that will NOT destroy your combat mindset: In exquisite detail, review the plot of your favorite movie, or build the plot for your first novel. Imagine building your dream house, nail by nail, starting a business, or restoring an old car. Think about your favorite hobbies. Memorize and recite epic poetry or classic sonnets (Homer, Tennyson, Yeats, Kipling, Virgil). Solve mental puzzles. Review your aircraft’s operating parameters. Occupy your mind with unemotional but intriguing subjects.

Forbidden Areas. Spouse, children, the world back home, what will happen to your loved ones if you die, social drama, financial problems, family vacations. Avoid thinking about sentimental subjects and strong human connections with the outside world. Yes, those will give you a satisfying emotional tug, but such a tug pulls you out of your combat mindset and makes you less effective. Thinking about these things is like opening a door, and in slithers fear, self-pity, and doubt.

Remember my story about FARP Texaco and how I waited several hours before attempting the Anaconda rescue? I started thinking about all the wrong things: my deceased mother, my father, siblings, loss, and death. When we finally launched into combat, I wasn’t ready to smash heads. Instead, I was disconnected, jittery, and fearful. Mindset is a battle, and I’d kicked my own ass.

 Ambush Over Marjah

The night of July 14, 2009, was a busy one. We had recovered the injured soldier from Musah Qala just after sunset, then returned to Bastion to continue holding alert. Word began coming in that a motorcycle-borne IED had struck a platoon of Marines. Two Marines were missing and assumed dead, their bodies lost in a canal. A third Marine was stable but suffering from blast trauma. I had flown a SCUBA body recovery mission in Iraq the previous year, and I knew that such missions were long, laborious, and could take four to five hours. Our PJs would have to transload hundreds of pounds of SCUBA gear, then don full-body hazmat suits before diving into the putrid canal. Also, there were threats in the objective area, so I wanted to complete the mission and extract the PJs before sunrise. The perceived sense of urgency induced me to make a grave mistake.

As I reviewed the flight plan on our navigation system, I saw that a direct flight path would take us directly over the town of Marjah, a notorious Taliban stronghold. I reasoned that since there was no moon, a high-altitude flight profile would allow us to pass over Marjah in safety. The Taliban would hear us overhead, but any Taliban ground fire would be ineffective.

With the PJs and their gear loaded into the helicopters, we left Bastion, turned toward the objective, and started our climb. As the world fell away beneath us, the air buffeting through my open door grew cooler, pleasant even. I loved flying doors off, with nothing between me and the entire world; it was the truest sense of flight I ever experienced. It was like riding in the sky chariot that ancient humans dreamed of. I stuck my leg out the door and rested it atop the refueling probe. The windblast sluiced up my pant leg and ballooned out my flight suit, drying the sour sweat that flowed from beneath my body armor. The stars that I rode through were brilliant and eternal. The streets below were empty and still. Nothing moved save us. It was beautiful, peaceful even. There was a sudden, brilliant strobe of light, like an immense camera flash. “Break left! Break left!” screams exploded from the back of my aircraft. There was actual terror in the voice, a sense of pleading, for the love of God, please break left! I snapped the aircraft into a ninety-degree lefthand overbank and thumbed the flare button. The world went stark white, and flash heat warmed my face as a dozen decoy flares rippled off the helo and a cacophony of conflicting screams crashed through the intercom and radios. Cannon fire flashed past the cockpit like shimmering green softballs, and a missile snaked up after my wingman, trying to gobble him up. More flares, more break calls, groundfire, missiles, wingmen, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria, all the worst parts of the Bible, an absolute shitshow of confusion, and the only thing I knew for sure was that I needed to be in some other place than where I currently was.

Then my left gunner, Adrian Jarrin, cut through the chaos and yelled, “Break right! Break right! ADA eight o’clock, five hundred meters!” Instantly, the chaos evaporated, and everybody on the aircraft knew what was going on, what to do, and what their roll was.

As we cut back to the right, my flight engineer, James Patterson, leaned out of the right window, looked toward our tail and picked up the ground fire as it appeared on his side of the aircraft. “Right’s tally ADA, five o’clock, six hundred meters! Continue right, continue right, roll out! Continue. Continue. Break left! Break left! It’s coming back through the tail!”

Adrian, on the left side, picked up the threat again and continued to direct our maneuvers away from the groundfire that continued stabbing after us. Throughout the chaos, my copilot, Evan Roth, called out altitude, airspeed, and power settings as we dove for the ground, fine-tuning our flight parameters and helping me max-perform the aircraft. In this controlled and practiced manner, my crew worked as a well-oiled machine and guided us on a serpentine path that extended and dove away from the ambush site, reversing direction every time the enemy gunners pulled a lead on us. Those 14.5-mm guns chased us for almost two miles through break after break, but we eventually outranged them.

In retrospect, the most amazing aspect of the situation was how the team solidified the moment that Adrian used the magic words—the specific words and phrases we always use during training. Those phrases had become a mantra that triggered a well-practiced game plan. At first, it was chaos, and the team had no coherent direction. But as soon as Adrian gained situational awareness and called out the “ADA mantra,” we all knew what to do and instinctively sprang into the roles we had rehearsed hundreds of times in training. The people who needed to be quiet were quiet; the people who needed to shout, shouted; and the pilots knew exactly what maneuvers to perform. One second, we were floundering like a bunch of cats in a burlap sack, the next second, we were a professional team running an old play.

We’d outranged the guns, but I’d burned off all our altitude running from the ambush. Now we were at rooftop level, blasting through Marjah with the whole town shooting toward the sky as if it were New Year’s Eve in Tijuana. Seeing the whole community come together for the common cause of mass murder was moving. I broke right, away from a belt-fed tracer stream and ran for open sky, but another stream erupted immediately to our front. In the left door, Adrian leaned on his .50 cal heavy machine gun, providing an unbroken six hundred beats-per-minute drumline, delivering the good news to everybody who needed it. In the right door, James Patterson helped clear my flight path.

“Watch the trees! Climb! Climb! Climb!”

“I got ’em! I got ’em!”

“I could smell those trees!”

It was all going swimmingly, except that I was now trapped in a continuous right turn, for every time I tried to straighten out, another tracer column erupted in front of us, and I was forced to continue to the right. Eventually, I realized that we had done a full 360 and were back at our starting point. A feeling of despair washed over me, and I heard my voice say something non-repeatable over the radio, a humiliating cry for help. Even as I said it, a strange, disconnected part of my psyche did a face-palm of shame. Relief washed over me as I remembered my aircraft didn’t have a cockpit voice recorder. At that same moment, we came to a place that Adrian had given a thorough blasting on our last pass. Seeing the gap in the ground fire, I rolled out of the turn, ran for the open hole, and sprinted to safety out in the open desert. Ho. Lee. Crap.

Lesson learned? Train your team, train your team, and then train some more. Perfect those combos, and use mantras that trigger game plans. That’s how to deliver effective teamwork under fire.

Also, a high-altitude profile doesn’t work when the enemy has night vision goggles and long pointy sticks.

Conclusion

Over six decades ago, Colonel John Boyd, a fighter pilot and strategist, transformed combat aviation with his energy-maneuverability theory. By applying a scientific approach to aircraft performance, Boyd showed pilots how to harness energy—speed and altitude—to outmaneuver opponents and max perform their aircraft in any situation. At the Fighter Weapons School, he’d challenge any pilot to a dogfight, letting them start on his tail, betting forty dollars that he could reverse positions in forty seconds. Utilizing his scientific techniques, Boyd always prevailed, thereby earning the nickname “Forty-Second Boyd.” Today, sport psychology offers a similar revolution for human potential. Through disciplined practice of these techniques, we can optimize our minds and bodies, not only to survive high-stakes challenges but also to thrive in them. As Boyd showed aviators how to master their machines, sport psychology shows us how to master ourselves, forging a resilient, adaptable mindset that turns obstacles into opportunities and stress into energy. The stakes are high, and the journey is demanding, but the path is clear. Embrace these principles and commit to transforming who you are. Your greatest performance awaits.