Mindset … stop talking about it and start living it.
Sarah McKinley incident and “mindset” brief foolishness
On New Year’s Eve 2011, alone except for her infant son and scared for her life and the life of her child, 18-year-old and recently widowed Sarah McKinley still had the composure to access multiple firearms, barricade the door, and give her child a bottle to keep him silent. She then called 911 requesting help and asking a dispatcher if it was okay to shoot an intruder if he entered her home. She did that all before she did in fact shoot and kill him. She never had a mindset brief; she got it done just the same.
A lifetime of managing pain and fear in high-risk environments has taught me to function in it with great success. That is why a triathlete doesn’t learn to endure the physical pain of that last 2 miles of the run with a briefing or in only a week of training, that mentality … not mindset … comes from years of pain, suffering and repeated exposure to difficulty. Acquiring a proper and strong mindset is a long-term endeavor, it doesn’t happen overnight or after a briefing. Some ask me “what did Special Operations teach you?” I never had a mindset brief that I can remember…so if I did, it obviously wasn’t memorable. Culturally, Special Operations taught me everything by putting me in positions where I had to manage fear, anxiety, fatigue and stress for hours, days and sometimes weeks on end, or fail. I lived my mindset with rough men in hard times. It wasn’t a briefing it was a lifestyle. Create your own mindset by living a life that will support those difficult times that will require both physical and moral courage. Sarah McKinley never got the briefing, but she had the mindset to fight, win and survive.
Mindset … stop talking about it and start living it.
Respect for those who gave it all for their community:
The number of U.S. law enforcement professionals who died in the line of duty last year increased 25% from 118 in 2023 to 147 in 2024, according to preliminary data from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
The leading cause of the deaths was gunfire, responsible for 54 of the fatalities. Forty-six deaths involved vehicles, including 29 fatal traffic crashes, the nonprofit said. The FBI has also tracked an uptick in the number of law enforcement professionals killed in the line of duty.
Get off your phones! Yesterday, I was walking across a food market parking lot and saw a woman walking ahead of me reading her phone. She never looked up and walked into a moving vehicle, receiving a broken leg for her lack of situational awareness. Damn, what a moron. You should always be aware of everything within 5 feet of you and everything within 25 feet when on the move. Don’t be a moron.
It’s not about achieving a standard, it’s about continual improvement and not becoming complacent. Whether that’s in the gym, on the range, or on the job- the standard is simply the minimum to get in the door. The pursuit of improvement is what separates the top from the bottom.
To me, it’s all pretty simple … but simple and easy are not synonyms.
If you can’t shoot exceptionally well, you’re not even prepared to talk CQB.
The principles of surprise, speed and violence of action are used to mask location, disposition, and intention in order to gain relative superiority. RS is based on limiting an opponents preparation and subsequent reaction time, then seizing the initiative and simultaneously exploiting both. These concepts become exaggerated when entering a room and so the speed of entry is always based on how rapidly you can engage. The better your hard skills, the faster you can engage, the faster you can engage the faster you can effectively enter, the faster you enter the more advantage you posses on entry. The concepts are simple, the execution is not easy.
“But then, handguns are truly at their best when they are used to fight your way to a rifle. A rifle you should not have put down in the first place. Play with handguns — fight with rifles.”
“Don’t pity yourself. Demand better. Because when you encounter a lion in your life, they will not have pity on you. Life has no pity. But, we can continue to better ourselves, demand honesty and prepare to the best of our ability”.
