Steve Giblin - Walking in Mud: A Navy SEALs 10 Rules for Surviving the New Normal

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

Walking in Mud:

A Navy SEALs 10 Rules for Surviving the New Normal

2021 by Steve Giblin with Jon Land

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-63758-064-6

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-63758-065-3

Cover design by Cody Corcoran

Interior design and composition by Greg Johnson, Textbook Perfect

This book contains research and commentary about COVID-19, which is classified as an infectious disease by the World Health Organization. The research about COVID-19 is still ongoing. For the most current information about the coronavirus, please visit cdc.gov or who.int. Although every effort has been made to ensure that the personal and professional advice present within this book is useful and appropriate, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any person, business, or organization choosing to employ the guidance offered in this book.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

I dedicate this book to the first line health care workers, the survivors, and the victims of the pandemic, as well as all their families.

Also, to my familyespecially my wife Barbara, my children Tom, Taylor, Tori, and Sydney, my father Paul and mother Judy, and my stepmother Joyce.

To my friends, Teammates and Naval Special Warfare writ large for my special career in the Teams and those who raised me and also rode the ride with me, but more importantly the ones who were my FNGs and ultimately did the real heavy lifting in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the greater Global War on Terrorism.

To Tommy Valentine, Danny Deitz, Michael Murphy, Axe, and the many more heroes whove made the ultimate sacrifice in training and in combat. I think about you every day. If not for all of you I wouldnt be who I am. Thank you.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

Lao Tzu

Contents

W ell, here we are. The long shadow of COVID-19 is at last receding, bringing brighter days with it.

But how bright?

Our best guess is something like 60 percent of the employment reduction is going to be temporary, and 40 percent is going to be permanent, Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University, told Marketplace.org last May. Looking through history at previous recessions, often these temporary layoffs unfortunately turn out to be permanent.

And, according to AARP, COVID-19 will change everything, from how we greet each other to whats on our bucket list. Its the single greatest disruption of our lifetime, says Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California. The kind of change thats occurred over a few months will change how we do things for years.

Pharmafield, in an article titled New Normal, New Thinking: Life Post COVID-19, adds, The COVID-19 pandemic has changed, and will continue to change, the world and the way we work, rest and play. So going back to the way we were before COVID-19 is not an option. The challenge, and I think the opportunity, is now to start the process of thinking about a new normal.

Ian Davis from McKinsey & Company said this in that same article: What will normal look like? While no one can say how long the crisis will last, what we find on the other side will not look like the normal of recent years.

The point is the light breaking through the clouds of COVID may not burn as bright for everyone. Indeed, the effects and realities imposed upon us by the New Normal are likely to have ramifications for everyone (some more than others). I faced plenty of metaphorical clouds in my twenty-six years as a Navy SEAL, and my goal in the pages that follow is to provide you with time-tested tools to deal with whatever shape the New Normal takes and what that means for you.

So why is this book so damn important to me, and why did I feel the need to intertwine my life story and experiences, as well as those of a few others, into a guide for surviving the post-pandemic world, this New Normal in which we find ourselves? My goal, my purpose, is to get a message out thats been gnawing at me for several years, even before the pandemic struck.

For many people, everyday life has been getting more and more polarized. Politics is dividing friendships, families, and workplaces. The news has become an either/or predicament: either you believe this or you believe that, with nothing in the middle. We have our left- and right-wing news agencies, and they feed us conflicting news that spins it into the narrative they want us to hear.

This naturally divides us into subgroups of Americans, and it has transformed our sense of collective identity into competing camps. Its become a way of life, permeating and influencing our conversations, the people and groups we associate with, the shows we watch, and, hell, even the places we eat out at. Yes, now there are restaurants that have made public their moral or ethical beliefs, and that has created factions of people who either will eat there because they agree with the mindset or those who will not come hell or high water; theyd rather starve.

Amazing! Even eating has become polarized!

More recently, weve all witnessed the competing viewpoints of maskers and the non-maskers, the vaxxers and the anti-vaxxers. All the contention and conflict that was present prior to the virus has only been inflamed by the social, economic, and practical changes imposed upon us in this New Normal fostered by COVID-19. To put it in US Navy SEAL terms, the virus has left us walking in mud on the bottom of a dark bay carrying a heavy load while breathing from a scuba tank. And as a former SEAL, I find myself wanting to help make sense of this unexpected burden were all living with by sharing some of my own experiences and how they relate to what the whole country is facing.

Many of you have no doubt heard of the infamous BUD/S bell that hangs outside the training cadres office. You ring it once to get the attention of the cadre inside. Ringing it three times triggers a Drop on Request, meaning you quit. Once rung, you can never un-ring the bell. I think all of us at some point in the months since COVID hit have wanted to ring our own metaphorical bell three times. To throw up our hands in the face of overwhelming adversity and changes forced upon us that we neither embraced nor signed up for. As much as anything, the mission statement for this book is to provide an alternative to ringing the bell when life piles on, if not because of COVID, then because of something else. And, unlike the case in BUD/S, you can indeed un-ring your metaphorical bell and this book will help you there, too, in steering a course toward recovery, reconstruction, and, even, redemption.

How do we get out of the figurative mud in which we find our feet mired, slogging along with every step a challenge? Thats the question. For the answers, turn the page, and lets begin our journey to the other side.

To augment present naval capabilities in restricted waters and rivers with particular reference to the conduct and support of paramilitary operations, it is desirable to establish Special Operations teams as a separate component within Underwater Demolition Units One and Two. An appropriate cover name for such units is SEAL being a contraction of SEA, AIR, LAND.