I recently read the book The Heart and the Fist – The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of A Navy Seal. The book was written by Eric Greitens who was a Rhodes Scholar who earned his PhD at Oxford and did extensive humanitarian work around the globe before becoming a U.S. Navy S.E.A.L. I found the book to be well-written, interesting, and insightful. We relentlessly research and study how people can better prepare for and respond to life and death crisis situations. Greitens book was one of the books I read while researching our latest book Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters due out from Barron’s this April.
I thought the author did an excellent job in examining how mental confidence is built during SEAL training. He also does a great job in describing specific concepts the Navy uses to instill the unusually high level of confidence and competence in their trainees and graduate of SEAL training. I recommend The Heart and the Fist for those who are serious students of school crisis planning As we have maintained for years, while it is impractical to try to train educators in the same manner as special forces operators, some of the same concepts they use can be conveyed to members of the general public in an appropriate fashion to help them improve their ability to think fast and survive challenging events. Many school crisis planners we have worked with have successfully incorporated lessons learned in other disciplines such as the military, law enforcement, fire service, and emergency medical care.