This week’s post comes from Ryan Krupa. Ryan is the creator of the Theory of Sagacious Leadership, the Light of Leadership training series, and the Leadership Resiliency Training System. He has delivered over 1,700 training sessions with an attendance that exceeds 20,000 participants. He has been on the forefront of leadership development initiatives at Google, Microsoft, Starbucks, and most notably, U.S. Special Operations units. His aim is to educate leaders with the ability to uplift consciousness, unleash potentials, and awaken souls. His mission is to serve as a guardian while leaders explore the stages of human development. Share, post, comment, and signup for MilitaryMentors.org!!
Photo by Taylor Friehl on Unsplash
Perspective: Truth Ignited Through Violent Actions
My formation, what shaped me as a man, centered on becoming capable of delivering and enduring physical violence, both as a competitive hockey player and as a leader of Marines. Both activities required me to use energy and skill to render an opponent powerless.
Let me be clear on my meaning and use of the word violence for this essay.
Violence is defined as: “Powerful, strong, and extreme” and “Of an action: involving great physical force or strength and not gentle.” The Origin of this word comes from defining a quality as: “Having a marked or powerful effect”.
Power and strength, in mind, body, soul, and talents is a prerequisite for leading.
Leaders use power, influence, and authority to exercise leadership. The irony, when it comes to mentoring, we need to gentleness too.
Hockey as a Training Ground
Hockey is one of the non-martial, iconoclastic, warrior sports. A player dons protective gear, covering the body from head to toe: attaches razor blades to his feet; uses a stick for offense and defense; uses a puck, vulcanized rubber, as a bullet to score; and attacks an opponent, using the body with as much force as possible.
The aim is to score goals. This end justifies the means of violence. This means violence ignited the competitive and aggressive nature in me. Nature is violent, wild, and unforgiving; so is a part of man’s nature. Hockey attracts and uses this aggressive and spirited quality of human nature.
I loved the sport of hockey. I loved the adventure. I loved the practice. I loved the preparation. I loved game day. I loved the test. I loved the collision of teams. I loved knowing where I stood in relation to the other competitors.
The Necessity of Feedback
I loved the feedback. Feedback lets you know if you are hitting the mark. Back then, there was not much mentoring, at least not for our character. But you had the coach, the one who let you know when you were not hitting the mark. The feedback, usually as wrath delivered immediately upon mistakes, made sure mistakes were corrected as quickly as possible. Mistakes served as lessons of experience.
We had to develop thick skin and toughness. We had to develop a strong will and belief in self to recover from poor performances.
Keenly aware, even back then, I wondered why did everything make sense on the ice but off the ice, nothing seemed to make sense. In day-to-day life I experienced the pain of boredom. I had understanding on the ice; off the ice I did not understand.
The search for understanding
We need mentors to guide us through the thresholds and the chain of ignorance, knowledge, and understanding. As with hockey, coming to understanding involves constant movement.
Is this not why some of us love sports? It’s immediate; each game is win or lose. It’s measured by the statistics of each team and each athlete. We understand the cycle of skill, practice, competition, recovery, and repeat; the win/loss columns reflects this cycle. It’s tangible. It makes sense. One knows where one stands. I loved this cycle.
This understanding in sports does not correlate directly to understanding in life; understanding who and what we are and what we are here to fulfill is a life-long, movement-filled dynamic process.
The Darkness in the Gap
The experience of athletic understanding is brief; it does not last. The suspension of disbelief, of one’s true reality, ends just as a game ends. Then it’s back to normal life, back to your reality until the next practice. In between the game and the practice, in that gap of space, most of my character mistakes happened. That is where the darkness lived, in the gap. This is where I could not see; I did not even there was a gap. I did not know the gap left me blind in darkness. Mentors were there to provide us with the gift and light of understanding. Without such a mentor, I only knew I made mistakes – the mistakes that I would never make again on the ice.
In those early formative years, athletics did transmit the experience of adventure, meaning, and understanding. This transmission triggered a drive to seek even deeper understanding. My internal drive set it’s sight on coming to know reality itself.
Reflection: The Beginning of Self-Knowledge
From this perspective I sought not just excellence in an activity, but understanding in living. Lofty questions were triggered in reflection over my mistakes: Who am I? Where do I come from? Why am I here? What am I here to fulfill? The contrast of such experiences, on and off the ice, triggered these questions within me. Athletics provided experiences that were meaningful and significant to me. Life provided experiences that revealed my immaturity, amongst other deficiencies.
We need to return to the definition of violence as it implies “having a marked or powerful effect”.
In this context the effect of violence did, in fact, increase my self-confidence and self-worth and set me free from being physically intimidated by other people.
I learned what mattered most is the hard work and skill required to compete. Athletes had to earn that skill through training. The coaches were there to unlock our potential and hold us accountable.
This is why coaches and mentors are worth their salt. They know how to awaken talent and unlock potential. Part of a mentor’s role is to build up the self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-worth in the mentee so the mentee can focus on the work instead of being worried about the opinions or perceptions of others.
The Irony of Sports: Only Gentleness Makes One A Master
The irony of sports is that it does not make one a master of human nature. Saint Thomas Aquinas writes “gentleness above all makes man master of himself”.
Nowhere in my youth did coaches and mentors speak of mastery and the importance of gentleness. I forced my body to violence of action and my body paid for it with injuries. During those years I had very little gentleness, temperance, patience, and peace. I was only happy on the ice colliding with an opponent.
The word gentleness, in the context of mentoring, means the mentor exhibits “moderate in action, effect, or degree; not harsh or severe,” “mild temperament or behavior; kind and tender,” and/or “noble qualities; having high moral principles and ideals.” These are the qualities required of leaders who mentor future leaders and warriors.
I could not articulate what I’m writing about now back then. It’s ironic. All the sports skills and all the hours of practice did not transmit to skills to be used in character crises off the ice. Learning during those times served as great lessons. In high school I learned about character mostly from mistakes, not from training.
Growing as a leader I wanted to know how to train character for those experiences off the ice, to be prepared for those moments, to be on guard and ready. Experience continued to be a brutal teacher until I matured. Practicing the virtues of gentleness and patience continues to become a life-long test.
The Experience of Transcendence
What I loved about the sport was the intensity, the concentration, the speed, the willing, and the strength.
What I really loved… not the sport… nor the collision… but the transcendence…
The sport demanded intense focus. The intensity of this focus, on the immediate present, ignited a transcendent experience of joy and inner fulfillment. This transcendent experience happened again and again for a decade in my formative years. That inner fulfillment, that joy, is what I loved. The sport served as the means to that end: joy and fulfillment. This realization initiated a freedom from being attached activities, awards, and prestige. The sport awakened the spiritedness and strength within; and within is where I began to search for truth, meaning, and purpose. Though not directly, as I look back now, those original coaches and mentors on the ice helped to unlock something for my future. This was the true gift, much more than any win or loss on or off the ice.