Embrace the Hormetic Effect
When I was training for the Secret Service, I learned about a phenomenon called the Hormetic Effect. The word hormesis comes from the Greek word hórmƒìsis, which means rapid motion or eagerness. In medical terms, hormesis refers to the body’s strengthening response to the administration of low doses of stress. This is how vaccines work — a low-dose virus is introduced into your body, which causes your immune system to produce antibodies to fight it. It’s also how muscles grow back larger and stronger when your muscle fibers repair the microtears sustained from weight training exercises.
But hormesis isn’t just about physical adaptation; it’s about adapting mentally to difficult situations, as well. Our Secret Service training was designed around this concept. Over the course of months, our instructors incrementally exposed us to greater and greater amounts of stress to the point where we could highly function, both mentally and physically, while under extreme cognitive loads.
Our training included drills that required us to run and shoot and maneuver our way out of a burning building and keep our protectee safe — all at the same time. The logic went that if our presidential motorcade was assaulted by multiple adversaries from multiple directions, we’d be able to logically think, swiftly move, and effectively fight our way to safety without losing the life of our protectee. (It’s one thing to try to save yourself when you’re under attack — it’s a whole other thing when you have to save two lives, one of which just happens to belong to the president of the United States.)
The first time we ran this scenario, it’s fair to say I slightly panicked. I may have run in the wrong direction, and it’s possible I became so tunnel-visioned that I couldn’t locate where the threat was even coming from. Tunnel vision is the Secret Service agent’s enemy; it can make you so hyper-focused on one particular threat that you’re unable to see what else is happening around you. But the more we practiced, the more I learned to manage my mental faculties. Gradually, the repeated bouts of stress built up my tolerance to chaos.
The intentional addition of microstressors in our personal lives can help strengthen our resilience for all sorts of challenging scenarios. My Secret Service training drills might not be the most relatable example for the average person, but I apply the same logic to help build my distress tolerance for other, more common aversions. For instance, public speaking. To this day, I put myself in front of people as much as possible to get better at presenting my ideas and fine-tuning my social skills — all vital to fulfilling my goals.
Much of our pre-pandemic self-care rhetoric seemed to strive toward a stress-free existence. But as is plainly evident now, we need a certain amount of stress to give us the tools to respond to the bigger unknowns that life will inevitably throw at us. Think of your mind like a muscle of adaptability. If you train it, it will get stronger. If you let it lay on the couch in sweatpants while stuffing your face with nacho chips and binge-watching Netflix, not so much.
Regardless of what you fear, stress about, or hope to improve upon, you can always find a way to conquer it, so long as you gradually work your way toward that goal. You can do so by implementing the following steps:
Expose
Identify some stressors that you can introduce into your life to help you strengthen your mental armor. Don’t jump off the deep end here. Remember — you should start small, but these should be uncomfortable. They might make you feel awkward or even afraid, and that’s okay so long as you don’t overdo it.
Experience
Observe and take note of your stress response. Study yourself under the condition of heightened stress to learn all that you can about your natural reaction to the stimulus. Did you freeze up? Did you feel the sudden urge to quit or run away? Did you experience rejection or failure? Good! Believe it or not, all of these experiences help fortify your mental armor so take them in.
Adjust
After analyzing your responses, identify areas where you want to make adjustments. What can you do differently to help you achieve the desired result? Perhaps you want to spend more time on your preparation and planning. Or hold out 30 seconds longer before quitting or walking away. Or manage your breathing a bit better to help you stay calm. Every little adjustment you make will add up to big improvements over time.
Overcome
After you identify what worked and what didn’t, choose one area to really focus on and correct. Don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to fix everything in one fell swoop. It’s too much of a mental load. The idea is to keep the task both manageable and attainable.
Repeat
Repeat steps one to four. Having strong mental armor requires repetition, so you must keep at it. It’s not enough to just attain mental mastery of a task, process, or outcome; you must also maintain it. Think of it like trying to improve your bench press. In the beginning you may be only able to handle lifting 25 pounds at a time, but with enough patience and practice, you’ll be able to work your way up to 150 pounds. The best part of this learned resilience is that, when you strengthen one area of your life, you acquire skills that spill over other areas as well.
Becoming good at something involves practice, practice, and more practice. But by being proactive about confronting your stressors, you’ll find yourself far more capable and far less likely to make a mistake based on nervousness or self-doubt.
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April 19, 2020 at 11:56PM
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The Secret Service Training Tactic for Building Mental Endurance - Forge
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