Aug 17, 2026 · 37 min · 11 segments
The principles we talk about during this episode can be applied anywhere - to learning anything, to keeping a cool head when things go wrong, to being resilient, and to the importance of knowing the…
Blaine SmithHost
I can't speak on behalf of the United States military or any other armed forces organization.
I suspect there are two major reasons, maybe three, and I'll kind of rattle them off really quick.
The first one is I think we need to find out if people have the capacity to learn.
Many of them will have done a lot of it in their career, but many of them will not have.
And even those who are familiar with it have probably never done it in that kind of terrain or with that heavy of a load or over that distance.
If you're going to perform at the highest level, In those kinds of organizations, even if you're good to start with, you've got to have that kind of white belt, humble mindset where you need to be able to learn advanced tactics or that kind of thing.
Um, a second piece I think is there's a certain level of like independence, self-reliance, resilience that goes into this.
When you don't have any kind of security blanket out there in the woods day or night, if you get a little turned around, if you feel like you're a little bit lost, um, there, there's a certain level of panic that sets in for all of us when we think we probably should be at our point right now, but I can't quite find it.
Like, are you good at, When things aren't going quite according to plan, can you kind of find your way back mentally and emotionally to make a correction and get back on track? So I think that's the second and maybe that's even maybe a little bigger than the learning mindset one, but they're both important.
They need to know that, you know, the kind of root core fundamentals of a very basic skill that will then apply probably every day the rest of your career.
And I think you and I chatted about this only very briefly before we hit record.
And for me, that's what really jumped out was this, you know, This ability that we all need to maintain but often lose in all things, which is the core fundamental understanding, the root of the thing, the basics of it, like having some rigorous understanding of an important skill, that thread might run throughout a lot of other skills.
and if we're using you know tools whether they're digital tools or otherwise to sort of show us the way uh if that tool were to break down or if something unforeseen were to happen or we bump up against some kind of new and novel problem set if we don't really understand how things work under the hood whether that's algebra or land navigation or a thousand other things then we're just not going to be as robust we're not going to be as capable we're not going to be as resilient and i think they need for people in those jobs to to be able to do those things i
like it a lot so the three things that i heard here are one capacity to learn two independence and resilience and three first principles core understanding of the fundamentals essentially is that right That's what I got in my that's my four minute answer or two minute answer, whatever that was to that question.
I can't speak on behalf of the United States military or any other armed forces organization.
I suspect there are two major reasons, maybe three, and I'll kind of rattle them off really quick.
The first one is I think we need to find out if people have the capacity to learn.
Many of them will have done a lot of it in their career, but many of them will not have.
And even those who are familiar with it have probably never done it in that kind of terrain or with that heavy of a load or over that distance.
If you're going to perform at the highest level, In those kinds of organizations, even if you're good to start with, you've got to have that kind of white belt, humble mindset where you need to be able to learn advanced tactics or that kind of thing.
Um, a second piece I think is there's a certain level of like independence, self-reliance, resilience that goes into this.
When you don't have any kind of security blanket out there in the woods day or night, if you get a little turned around, if you feel like you're a little bit lost, um, there, there's a certain level of panic that sets in for all of us when we think we probably should be at our point right now, but I can't quite find it.
Like, are you good at, When things aren't going quite according to plan, can you kind of find your way back mentally and emotionally to make a correction and get back on track? So I think that's the second and maybe that's even maybe a little bigger than the learning mindset one, but they're both important.
They need to know that, you know, the kind of root core fundamentals of a very basic skill that will then apply probably every day the rest of your career.
And I think you and I chatted about this only very briefly before we hit record.
And for me, that's what really jumped out was this, you know, This ability that we all need to maintain but often lose in all things, which is the core fundamental understanding, the root of the thing, the basics of it, like having some rigorous understanding of an important skill, that thread might run throughout a lot of other skills.
and if we're using you know tools whether they're digital tools or otherwise to sort of show us the way uh if that tool were to break down or if something unforeseen were to happen or we bump up against some kind of new and novel problem set if we don't really understand how things work under the hood whether that's algebra or land navigation or a thousand other things then we're just not going to be as robust we're not going to be as capable we're not going to be as resilient and i think they need for people in those jobs to to be able to do those things i
like it a lot so the three things that i heard here are one capacity to learn two independence and resilience and three first principles core understanding of the fundamentals essentially is that right That's what I got in my that's my four minute answer or two minute answer, whatever that was to that question.
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