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Marine Corps Officer Candidate School
Way back in the summer of 1985, I spent my June and July in a special kind of hell called Marine Corps Officer Candidates School—Marine OCS.
Most people, when they hear the word “school”, think that Marine Officer Candidate School would be a place where you learned how to be an officer in the Marine Corps.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Marine OCS was all about putting you under a tremendous amount of physical, mental and emotional pressure to see if you could make good decisions and lead people while tired and stressed.
I remember getting called into the drill instructor’s office (called is the polite word) as part of a group getting commendations for scoring high on the Marine physical fitness test. That lasted about 15 seconds.
Then they yelled at us to get out.
As I ran back to my rack, I heard my name yelled again. I ran back into the drill instructor’s office as part of a second group—many of whom were in the first group—just in time to get a counseling form for poor performance on the physical fitness test.
Pushing Through Failure
That was the theme. They put you in no-win situations or gave you tasks with timelines you couldn’t possibly meet, made you encounter failure face-to-face, made you experience failure at your core, then watched to see if you fought through it. Or gave up.
They weren’t worried about being fair to us. They were focused on one question: Can we trust you to lead our beloved Marines in very stressful situations?
The OCS experience made you dig deep into yourself. OCS made you encounter yourself—your good and your bad—in straightforward, sometimes harsh ways.
It forced you to face your relationship with yourself.
Happiness is About Relationships
From our earlier podcasts, we know that the key to Happiness in life is not money or status or education. An 80-year Harvard study confirms that the key to Happiness in life is high-quality relationships. If you have high-quality relationships, you’ll not only be happier; you’ll also be healthier and live longer.
So where do we have relationships in life? Those are the areas where we should focus our lives for Happiness. The answer is simple. There are six areas of relationship in life. There is your relationship with yourself, your family, your friends, your relationships at work, as a citizen in your community and with the Creator. Six areas of opportunity to pursue Happiness.
In this podcast we’ll discuss some basics about relationships, then we’ll talk about a critical relationship—the relationship you have with yourself.
Your Relationships Are Only As Good As You Are
The idea of relationship seems obvious, but we can learn some important things from unpacking the concept.
Relationship is fundamental in our lives, with the most important relationship being the one you have with yourself. One of fundamental things that defines you as a human being is that you are self-conscious—that you are in relationship with yourself.
Our relationships with others can only be as good as we are in the relationship.
Think of relationship like a bridge. By its nature, a bridge must have at least two anchor points—one on each side of the span. Two strong anchor points makes the bridge—the relationship—strong. If one of the anchor points is weak, the bridge—the relationship—will be unstable and weak as well.
In fact, a bridge is only as strong as its weakest anchor point.
In the same way, if you are a good person and a strong anchor point, you will have stronger relationships. If you are weak or unsettled, your relationships will suffer. Your relationships can only be as good as you are.
Relationships and Trust
Relationship is also an act of faith, of trust, in the other. Your relationships are only going to be as strong as the confidence you have in each other.
When you have trust in the other, you can focus your attention on moving forward. If you don’t trust the other, you spend your time and energy trying to make sure you are safe from the other.
And that trust in the other includes the trust you have in yourself. Self-confidence enables you to move forward with strength and conviction. Self-doubt can paralyze and even destroy you.
So, what can you do to strengthen your relationship with yourself?
Strengthen Your Relationship With Yourself
First, you must be able to love and lead yourself before you can love and lead other people. You must have an accurate and realistic appreciation of who you are, for your strengths and challenges and growth areas, and for your shortcomings. The better you know yourself, the better person you can become.
Develop Self-Confidence
You need to develop self-confidence by proving yourself to yourself. You need to set and accomplish goals, becoming stronger and gaining confidence as you do so.
You need to avoid arrogance—a too-high opinion of yourself—and pursue humility and modesty. Humility and modesty are not self-hatred or deprecation, they are an honest understanding and assessment of yourself.
Appreciate Your Gifts
You can only learn to love yourself by appreciating and developing the strengths, the gifts, you have been given.
Lead Yourself
And you need to be able to lead yourself. You need to avoid temptation. You need to push yourself even when you want to quit. You need to gain confidence by setting goals and leading yourself to achieve them.
There are a few more things about developing your relationship with yourself.
Lead the Story of Your Life
You need to understand that you are writing the story of your own life. It might be a short story. It might be a long one. Every day you write another page in that story of your life. You shouldn’t just wander through life. You should pursue the story of your life with purpose, acting in the best way that you know how at the time.
And that brings us back to our purpose in life: Happiness. You need to ignore the distractions, the temptations, of wealth or status or whatever, and really focus on developing high-quality relationships with yourself and others. The highest quality relationships are based in love.
So, the story of your life, pursuing Happiness, should be the story of you developing high-quality, loving relationships with yourself, your family, your friends, your co-workers, your fellow citizens and your Creator. Great relationships will give you the greatest chance for Happiness and success in life. Everything else is a distraction.
Pursue Wisdom
You need to pursue Wisdom—that is very important. Wisdom is much more than just knowledge of the Truth. Wisdom is knowledge of the Truth combined with the character to live that Truth. Wisdom comes from studying the lessons of the classroom and the lessons of life, combined with the self-discipline to do the right thing.
Every time. Especially when no one is looking.
Every time that you do the right thing, your character becomes stronger. Your wisdom becomes deeper. You become a better person who can be in even better, stronger, deeper and more fulfilling relationships with yourself and those around you.
That puts you on a better path writing a better story of your life pursuing Happiness.
Practice Love
Finally, you must practice love because that is the best, deepest and most fulfilling kind of relationship. You must practice humble love of yourself. Affectionate love for your family. Brotherly and sisterly love for your friends and co-workers. And passionate love (eros) and self-giving love (agape) for your spouse.
It is easy to love those who love you. The truly great person learns how to love those who persecute them.
Pulling It Together
So, let’s pull it all together.
Your life is your story of pursuing Happiness. Achieving Happiness in life is all about having high-quality relationships. The strength and depth of your relationships begins with having a great relationship with yourself.
How do you achieve that? The trick is to both love and lead yourself so you can love and lead others.
You must develop self-confidence and strength by setting and achieving goals as you lead the story of your life.
You must be humble—honest with yourself about yourself—through self-knowledge of your strengths, challenges and shortcomings.
The relationship you have with yourself becomes the foundation for the relationships you have with others. The better the foundation, the more fulfilling the relationships, and the happier you will be.
You should pursue wisdom—the combination of knowledge of the Truth with the good character to live the Truth. Wisdom is the wellspring of high-trust in relationships.
Finally, you should practice love in all things. Practicing love makes you a better person, makes stronger relationships and gives you the best chance for Happiness and fulfillment in life.
Back to Marine Corps Officer Candidate School. It was one of the toughest challenges of my life, but it was through that challenge, through the pain and failure and rare success, that I learned so much about myself. That I gained deeper confidence in myself. The OCS experience was a big factor in making me who I am today—hopefully for the better. It gave me the foundation to develop life-long relationships with others with whom I served in the Marine Corps—and outside of the Marines in life.
I’m Pete Bowen.
