How to Deal with Damn Near Anything: The Paratrooper's Guide to Life

By John McGlothlin

There is a hidden side to the military-behind the stories of leadership and valor is a distinct culture that promotes personal growth and development. In How to Deal with Damn Near Anything: The Paratrooper's Guide to Life, John McGlothlin shows how this culture can benefit anyone.

Using a mix of research and first-han

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Sep 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781636767536

Book preview

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How to Deal with Damn Near Anything

How to Deal with Damn Near Anything

The Paratrooper’s Guide to Life

John McGlothlin

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 John McGlothlin

All rights reserved.

How to Deal with Damn Near Anything

The Paratrooper's Guide to Life

ISBN

978-1-63676-751-2 Paperback

978-1-63676-752-9 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63676-753-6 Ebook

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 0.1.

How to Use This Book

Part I.

The Hidden Military – And How It Can Help You

Chapter 1.

Why Paratroopers: Double Volunteers

Chapter 2.

Why Not Classrooms: Truth, Unity, Love

Chapter 3.

Why Not the Workplace: 2.8 Years

Part II.

The Five Inner Traits

SELF-AWARENESS

Chapter 4.

The Phone Container

Chapter 5.

How to Build Self-Awareness

INITIATIVE

Chapter 6.

First Out the Door

Chapter 7.

How to Build Initiative

EFFICIENCY

Chapter 8.

The Distracted Commander

Chapter 9.

How to Build Efficiency

Part VI.

ADAPTABILITY

Chapter 10.

A Shark Goes Extinct

Chapter 11.

How to Build Adaptability

INSISTENCE

Chapter 12.

Who Are You Competing Against?

Chapter 13.

How to Build Insistence

Conclusion

Lumpy Shins

APPENDIX

To MK for her love and endless support, to Chelsea for her graciousness, and to every soldier who ever jumped out of a perfectly good airplane

The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense or its components

Introduction

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

A lieutenant suddenly came flying out of the door, thirty-four feet in the air, eyes closed and arms flailing as he futilely tried to grab the side of the tower he just exited. The rest of us turned to look as he slowly and uneventfully made his way down a zipline attached to the tower, landing with a soft thud next to fellow Airborne School trainees on a nearby dirt mound. A lot of us were nervous—the jump tower was said to be just tall enough to invoke a fear of heights—but his exit was the loudest and most memorable.

As with any new job, the training phase at Airborne School can be awkward, as some people pick up things faster than others. The flailing lieutenant was one of several hundred soldiers who jumped from the tower that day, a surprisingly diverse group that included everyone from future Special Forces operators to supply clerks and admin personnel. Gravity doesn’t care how cool your job sounds or how impressive your title is; a colonel and a private both fall at the same speed and will hit the ground just as hard if they don’t pay attention.

I was fortunate to attend Airborne School on my way to the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vicenza, Italy. The next five years were a blur of training and travel, deployments and injuries, Italian pizza and German beer. But as memorable as those experiences were, the most important thing—what truly changed my worldview and career when I returned to civilian life—was happening quietly in the background. It turns out being a paratrooper isn’t just about jumping out of airplanes. It is about absorbing a culture and developing a particular set of traits useful to anyone, even if normal jobs rarely develop them and normal schools rarely teach them.

At the time, I thought the military was different for the obvious reasons. An accounting firm doesn’t suddenly get sent to Baghdad for a year, after all. And those differences are very real. But when I left the full-time military, it wasn’t the lack of Humvees or MREs that was jarring. It was the way people approached challenges and the unfortunate lack of training on how to do it well.

My first stop after the 173rd Airborne was the University of Virginia School of Law, and the list of orientation tasks included buying a copy of something called The Bluebook. This name caught my attention right away; the first thing we ever received in the military was a book with the exact same title.

The military version contained plenty of mundane rules, but it was also something more nuanced. Along with the proper distance for a salute (six paces) were stories about people like Captain Viola McConnell, the only Army nurse on duty in all of Korea when communist forces surged southward in 1950, and her quest to evacuate 700 patients on a single boat designed to hold twelve crew. And there was a list of seven basic values arranged in a cheesy-yet-earnest way to form the acronym LDRSHIP, each accompanied by a story that exemplified it.

Only a minuscule fraction of those in the military will ever find themselves in situations like CPT McConnell, so the stories weren’t meant as guides. They were just reminders that our training would be useful in any situation, no matter how challenging.

Nearly a decade later, I opened a copy of the legal Bluebook while standing inside the school bookstore. What kind of lessons would this version have?

Subtitled A Uniform System of Citation, it was just as filled with minutiae as the military version, including how to refer to the Vermont Rules for Small Claims Procedures (cite as V.R.S.C.P.) and abbreviate Kyrgyzstan (Kyrg.). Every legal document has citations, and the legal Bluebook painstakingly describes how to structure one.

But that was it. Five hundred-plus pages of footnote formatting.

There were no traits to embody or stories to learn from. There was no human element at all. As with most of higher education and the workplaces that follow, it was a technical education, something no more helpful to developing us as people than an algebra textbook or a printer manual.

This approach leaves a crucial gap, and we will fill that gap by developing five traits—self-awareness, initiative, efficiency, adaptability, and insistence—that are inwardly focused. Not only are there profound mental health benefits to this approach, but these traits have also been shown to bring faster promotions, higher salaries, increased job performance, and even improved physical health.

These traits are not about morality or leadership; while both matter deeply, they are already discussed at length in a variety of places, including books by fellow veterans. These five traits are different. Instead of focusing on other people and how to lead them, they help us build from the inside. They bring satisfaction, balance, and happiness while avoiding anxiety, stress, and disillusionment. And they provide a strong and lasting foundation for success.

As I gained more post-military experience, I saw the approach taken in graduate schools was not unusual or even unjustifiable. The inner traits listed above are not easily tested, quantified, or taught in a classroom. Yet the gap left by the technical approach and the problems that resulted were obvious from the first day of class.

When universities were first founded, they expressly set out to develop people in addition to teaching them facts and figures. This was often a moral or religious mission, but it was broad enough to include more practical lessons. As the role of universities changed (often at the request of students and parents), that ambition receded in favor of a focus on credentialing, rankings, and facilities. There are faded remnants of the previous goals in the occasional motto or brochure, but for most schools, a few Latin words on a crest or the fleeting words of a graduation speaker are the only signs of previous efforts at more comprehensive development.

The result of this change was a classroom like mine on the first day at UVA Law. Everyone was capable and intelligent, but when asked to apply those plentiful skills, the result was a tidal wave of anxiety and stress. To its great credit, UVA worked hard to provide a welcoming environment outside of class. Its obligations and accreditation remain dictated by outside organizations, however, and that means a curriculum tightly focused on the technical even as graduates face rising levels of mental health issues and employer dissatisfaction about their skillset.

Unfortunately, those employers are largely uninterested in developing inner traits. This is also understandable; employees come and go often and expect more independence in how and where they work. But the result is that professional development never addresses the gap educational institutions leave unfilled, and we remain without the support needed for self-improvement.

Mentorship programs might help, but they are rarely used in practice despite being lauded by workplace development experts. They are surprisingly complex to design and wither without regular attention from leadership. Did you know January was designated National Mentoring Month? Neither did I, and I’m guessing your employer didn’t mention it.

This is where the military is different. It doesn’t have a mentorship program because it is a mentorship program. The written material for initial military training focuses on LDRSHIP values, but as we take a look inside how the Army designs and conducts training—including an unprecedented change to one of its best-known traditions—we will discover a concurrent development of inner traits that is a product of culture rather than curriculum.

It may seem far-fetched to compare the military to anything else, as our society treats soldiers with such respect that we become almost otherworldly figures. But soldiers are regular people who come from across society and, in the case of National Guard and reserve units, still live in every part of the country. Most of our time in the military doesn’t look like Saving Private Ryan or Stripes; it is a series of small lessons, reinforced over time, that build something enduring.

This book makes those lessons available for anyone. We will accomplish this through a mix of examples drawn from my experience as an enlisted soldier and officer, expert research in psychology and developmental best practices, and stories of the traits in action. For example, we will take a close look at initiative—it may seem like everyone in the Army is born eager to charge up the nearest hill, but a trainee facing an open door can be just as hesitant as an employee or student facing an open question. The difference is that military training ensures each participant will go through that door, while people elsewhere often have the option to hide in plain sight. Doing this is counterproductive, however, as jumping in has many important benefits.

It is worth noting the military anecdotes are specifically not from combat. I deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan, but whatever successes I had there were a result of the training environment that came before. It is this hidden side of the military that defines and elevates the institution into something special and is what holds value for you as a reader regardless of your profession.

In the days after the lieutenant’s terrified exit from the Airborne School tower, I learned a bit more about what happened. For several minutes before his jump, the tower door had been strangely empty, and the line of soldiers snaking up the stairs had stalled. What we could not see was that the Airborne instructor, after several unsuccessful attempts to convince the lieutenant to jump, finally told him he didn’t have to. With a great sigh of relief, the lieutenant took his hands off the doorway, where they had been bracing against any possible exit. He then received a swift kick in the ass, sending him flying out of the door.

I never spoke with this lieutenant; each class at Airborne School has up to 400 students, and any given year sees over 10,000 people graduate. But I did see him one more time, standing in the middle of a crowd at graduation, excitedly talking with family and friends while wearing his shiny new Airborne wings. A scant ten days after his involuntary zipline ride, he had willingly jumped five times from an actual airplane traveling 800 feet above the ground at 150 miles per hour.

How did he make it? What about him changed so quickly? It would have been easy for the instructor to fail the student; several hundred others were literally waiting in line to jump. What’s the harm in having one fewer paratrooper? The answer is that the instructor was invested in that soldier as a person, not just as a student or employee, and was willing to risk developing him by pushing him out of his comfort zone instead of just pivoting to the next person in line.

In the civilian world, there may not be anyone standing behind you, ready and willing to place a bit of motivation into your backside at just the right moment. You can stare out of that door forever, but sometimes passing through it requires a certain extra kick.

This book can be that kick.

The Five Inner Traits

Self-Awareness

The willingness to be honest with yourself in all respects—to derive confidence from your strengths and humility from your flaws, to both see the world and be seen by it in a realistic manner, and to understand that fooling ourselves is all too easy without cultivating sources of genuine feedback.

Initiative

The willingness to act—to understand the value of imperfect decisions and to keep moving forward when pessimism or inertia sap the motivation of those around you and create incentives to tolerate the status quo indefinitely.

Efficiency

The willingness to think practically—to understand that effort must be tempered with perspective, to block out drama and distraction, and to prioritize results while including enough process to guard against recklessness.

Adaptability

The willingness to change—to embrace it instead of being pulled along grudgingly, to make small adjustments when the need is not obvious to others, and to follow through on larger changes that take you further into the unknown.

Insistence

The willingness to set boundaries and enforce standards—to establish an environment others recognize and respect, and to avoid being swayed by personalities and temporary circumstances in favor of remaining true to things more lasting and consequential.

Chapter 0.1

How to Use This Book

This is not the first book ever written about personal development, so it is important we set expectations and a few boundaries as we begin.

Our goal is to use unexpected lessons from the military to help develop traits key for happiness and stability yet overlooked at work or in higher education. Those lessons are about training and culture, and thus transferrable to normal life, rather than the combat stories most commonly told about the military.

The military described here is the one that exists at the lowest levels and is exemplified by paratroopers. As ranks get higher, bureaucracy increases dramatically, people start to become numbers, and a military career can devolve into a political one. At some point, a desk is a desk regardless of whether the person sitting