Easy Makes Us Weak: Forging Mental Toughness, Resilience and Character

By Jim Brault

Have you ever wondered if you had what it took to survive some of the most intense training in the world? This inspiring book chronicles a man's unique experience in a life-changing program called Kokoro, a 50+ hour non-stop training crucible modelled after the U.S. Navy SEALs' Hell Week. Kokoro has been called the toughest civilian training program in the world. It is a fascinating and funny story of what it took to prepare for and survive such an event.

As the author takes you through his journey to prepare for this gruelling event across the 5 Mountains of Development (Physical, Mental, Emotional, Intuitional and Heart / Mind, non-quitting Spirit), you will learn how to develop in these areas in your own life. Whether you are looking to engage in the severe test of Kokoro or other SEALFIT events, or are embarking on a journey to develop as a complete person, Easy Makes Us Weak will show you how to do just that so that you gain mental toughness, increase your resistance, and build your character.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543942132

Book preview

also by jim brault

Lessons from the Masters: Seven Keys to Peak Performance and Inner Peace

The Winning Mindset, with Kevin Seaman

A Path of Mastery: Lessons on Wing Chun and Life from Sifu Francis Fong

©2018 by Jim Brault

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, digital, mechanical, recording, or any future technologies, developed or otherwise (except for reviews in the public press) without prior written permission from the publisher and author.

The information in this book is meant to supplement, not replace, proper physical training. Like any activity involving speed, balance and physical exertion, physical training poses some inherent risk. The author and publisher advise readers to take full responsibility for their safety and know their limits. Before undertaking any activity described in this book, you are advised to consult with your medical doctor, and do not take risks beyond your level of experience, aptitude, training and comfort level.

Published by: Book Baby

First Edition

ISBN 978-1-54394-212-5 eBook 978-1-54394-213-2

To my wife Jessie,

who lets me train as much as I want.

Author’s note

A definition, a warning, and a disclaimer walk into a bar . . .

The definition: The word Hooyah appears a lot in this book. Hooyah is a response used in the Navy. It is an all-encompassing term that can mean, at various times, yes, no, I understand, or heck yeah!

Here’s the warning.

You’ve no doubt heard the phrase swears like a sailor. Easy Makes Us Weak is about my experience going through a civilian version of the Navy SEALs Hell Week. There’s a fair amount of colorful language, much of it said in a humorous way as a means of reframing some pretty rough training (there’s a reason they call it Hell Week). For the instructors, however, humor wasn’t their driving motivation.

If you are offended by cursing, this probably isn’t the book for you.

If you are okay with it, then read on.

Disclaimer: About 14 minutes of 50-plus hours were filmed, and the dialogue in those sections is verbatim. The rest is from my own or other people’s memories, and although I’ve done my best to represent it as spoken, I went 3 days with no sleep so it’s probably not 100% accurate. If not the actual word-for-word conversations, I’m confident that I’ve conveyed the essence of the dialogue.

Contents

How I spent my summer vacation

Perfect weather for rattlesnakes

How did you train?

Win in your mind first

Run the day

Do the hard things first

Play back the day

We fall to the level of our training

Smile—it’s only a beat down

Train for everything

Have uncommon standards

It pays to be a winner

Get to your team quickly

Use a mantra

You didn’t get there by yourself

This is too easy

You can’t be great at everything

You need five or six people for log PT, right?

Purpose gives you power

If you let them in, they win

Your true strength

The equalizer

Damn you, swami!

Adios HQ

Reposition yourselves

Easy makes us weak

Finish strong

This is for us!

You are . . .

You can’t buy these

Can you please help me?

LinkedIn requests

The Next Challenge

The other side

Your action step

Sample training

Acknowledgements

Forward

I launched the now world-renowned Kokoro™ crucible event in 2007 through my company SEALFIT™. The singular purpose of the event was to prepare Navy SEAL, and other Spec Ops candidates from U.S. and allied nations, for the arduous training programs which awaited them. As a former SEAL Commander, I knew first-hand how challenging these programs are. In the SEALs alone, out of the thousands who try and make the cut each year, the program (called Basic Underwater Demolition – SEAL training, or BUDS for short) graduates fewer than 200 new SEALs a year, total. The attrition rate is about 80% from the start of BUDS, but actually over 95% when you consider that fewer than a third of all candidates even make it to BUDS from their initial visit to a recruiter.

The success rate at BUDS of those who have attended SEALFIT Academy and Kokoro (which simulates the famous SEAL Hell week’s non-stop physical and mental challenge) is an astonishing 90%. In other words, those candidates who take their future seriously, and learn the methods of physical, mental, emotional, leadership and team development that we teach, succeed… while others fail.

Why? Because I know how to train individuals to think, act, lead, team and live like a Navy SEAL. This is not an easy thing to do, and has taken me over ten years to learn through trial and error with thousands of warrior trainees.

Something interesting happened soon after launching Kokoro. I started getting requests to attend from civilians - business leaders and entrepreneurs, both men and women. Even entire corporate and athletic teams seeking to elevate their performance started knocking. These individuals and teams desired to participate in the same training, with the same standards to develop the same level of mental toughness, leadership qualities, and winning mindset as the SEAL-SOF candidates. Today, more than 75% of Kokoro attendees are such individuals.

Additionally, since not all of these folks had the physical ability, health or even desire to engage in the intensely rigorous training of SEALFIT, I was inspired to create a more accessible integrated development program based on the same principles. Unbeatable Mind™ is a year-long training based off of my own life experience and personal training plan, honed in combat and over twenty years as a SEAL leader, and longer as an entrepreneur, martial artist and meditation teacher. I saw first-hand, in the most extreme leadership and performance environments, that physical and mental toughness are not enough to perform at your peak over extended periods of time, not to be a truly effective leader. A focus on physical and mental toughness are also not enough for one to live an extraordinary life. Therefore, the Unbeatable Mind approach is called the Five Mountain Path, and it integrates Physical, Mental, Emotional, Intuitional and Spiritual lines of development into a single training program.

Over the years I have been inspired to see people from all walks of life attend SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind training. They share one thing in common: an intense desire to grow and meet the best version of themselves possible. They do not shy from challenge, and have emptied their cup to learn new ways of thinking and being… ways that lead to a life of uncommon meaning and significance. I noted that their craving stemmed from a common theme: Most had significant accomplishments by society’s standards – they were great athletes or very fit, had solid careers, financial stability (even wealth) and enjoyed stable relationships – but they still felt incomplete. There was an emptiness they couldn’t seem to fill and a sense that they could be doing and serving in far more meaningful ways – meaningful both for them and the world. But they did not have the tools, strategies and support to break ingrained patterns that got them to where they were at now, let alone to figure out what was next.

My team and I find great satisfaction in guiding these individuals to their Five Mountain Path and to new plateaus of awareness, meaningful success and the extraordinary life they craved so much. Though I can see the changes and hear the testimonials, I don’t typically get a ring-side seat in the full transformation process. I see the skills applied during our training, but I am not inside their heads and can’t see the impact in their day to day live afterwards. Now Jim Brault has given us an opportunity to do just that!

Jim, in this excellent inside look at his SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind experience, takes us deep into Kokoro #47. Easy Makes Us Weak is an authentic, practical and very funny peak into the transformative training of SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind, and into one of the exceptional individuals who drank the Kool-Aid and is now living that life he dreamed of.

If you are considering a similar path, then Jim will be your Swim Buddy, helping you get ready for Kokoro or other SEALFIT program. If you are reading this book to gain insights and are not planning the challenge (yet!), then Jim’s stories will deliver exactly what you need and show how you can be unbeatable in life.

Mark Divine

Encinitas, California, 2018

Kokoro™, Kokoro Yoga™, and Unbeatable Mind™ are trademarks of Unbeatable, LLC. SEALFIT™ and the 50+ hour Kokoro™ crucible are trademarks of SEALFIT, Inc. The denotation ™ is noted only once throughout this book for ease of reading.

How I spent my summer vacation

If there is no struggle,

there is no progress.

Frederick Douglass

I was never in the military. The closest I got was speaking to an Army recruiter who was stationed outside our high school cafeteria one day in late spring of my junior year. I thought it would be cool to jump out of airplanes, blow shit up, and shoot stuff (not people).

For a couple of weeks that summer I wore green Army fatigues, black boots, and a white T-shirt to try and tune in to the military vibe. I was working up the courage to get a crew cut to complete the look, wetting my hair to simulate what it might look like. This was the late 70s, the era of big hair and blow dryers (for both sexes), and a buzz cut was not amongst the trending hairstyles.

Finally I made the decision to get one. My Dad used to give my two younger brothers and I brush cuts when we were little and off I went in search of the clippers.

Turns out we no longer had them. My brother Brian said his girlfriend had some, so we borrowed those. They were dog clippers, but hey, same thing.

Yeah, actually they weren’t the same thing. Human clippers have guides so that you get a uniform level of trim. Dog clippers do not have this handy attachment, or at least his girlfriend’s didn’t. Or maybe she just didn’t bother to give it to us.

I knew something was wrong when, after the first pass, my brother said, Uh, followed by a really long pause. Then, You are going to kill me.

His girlfriend burst out laughing.

I grabbed a mirror.

Not good.

Well, just finish it, I said, resigned to completing the ill-conceived project.

It didn’t get any better.

My Mom almost had a heart attack. You never really want to hear the phrase, What did you do? after a haircut. It’s not like I was 3 years old and cut my hair with scissors. I was 16.

The next day I went to an actual barber who had human clippers. He just laughed and shook his head. Not much I can do, he said. I pretty much have to take it down to the skin.

When I went to football double sessions later that day, Coach Vienna, this former Marine, giant of a man who still sported a crew cut, loved it. Everyone should get a haircut like this! he said. Later that year in lifeguard training when we got to the panicked swimmer test, I think he went a little easier on me because of my hair (or lack of it).

That was pretty much the extent of my military experience.

But I have always been drawn to brutally hard training. My high school wrestling coach told me during my senior year that I was probably the best-conditioned 138-pounder in the country.

Hard training—hard work in general—was something my father instilled in all five of us kids. And nearly 40 years after the dog clipper incident, I went through the most grueling, most demanding, and most rewarding training of my life.

Training that changed the way I thought about human potential. Training that changed the way I thought about mental toughness and the strength of our will. Training that revealed the awesome power of a team and the other-worldly energy of our spirit.

That training was called Kokoro.

SEALFIT’s Kokoro Crucible is described as the world’s premier training for forging mental toughness. Modeled after the US Navy SEALs Hell Week training, it is a non-stop, 50-plus-hour training experience that challenges its participants like never before.

Commander Mark Divine, former Navy SEAL and founder of the program, calls it a crucible experience that will test you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. During it, you will be pushed and pulled in ways you have never experienced before, challenging you to realize the truth about who you are, your vast potential, and elevate you to the fifth plateau of awareness. You will meet yourself for the first time, says Divine.

Kokoro has a reputation for being the hardest civilian training in the world, and a month before my 55th birthday I graduated Kokoro 47, one of only three in the smallest graduating class since its inception (since then Kokoro 49 had one person graduate).

This book could have been called How I Spent My Summer Vacation because with the exception of doing my job and celebrating our older son’s wedding, the summer of 2017 was spent training for, going through, and recovering from Kokoro.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

A little background about me physically: I’ve worked out pretty much every day since I was 12. I wrestled in high school and college and have over 300 matches under my belt. I started training in martial arts in 1983 at age 21, have black belts in Tae Kwon Do and Wing Chun Kung Fu, and had a 17-3