Every few years, we get snow in Seattle. Generally speaking, snow in Seattle is a disaster.

We get snow so rarely that there is no infrastructure for it. No snow plows or salt/sand trucks. People are bad drivers in the rain so you can imagine what they are like in snow and ice. Worse, this areas is extremely hilly and wooded so adding ice makes many areas inaccesible.

This kind of weather makes me want to hunker down and hide in our home bunker until clear skies reappear. Now that we have a child, I worry more so today I left the safety of home and braved the streets to get supplies.

First I planned my route mentally so that I avoided as many hills as possible. Then I set out, drove around, got things done, and came home. There was a little sliding but I made it just fine.

The problem is that I was terrified the whole time. White knuckled, rigid muscles, heart in the throat terrified. So much so that I had to laugh at myself and I got to thinking.

the special forces mindset

Years ago I knew a guy who had been in the Special Forces. I was kind of surprised when I heard that because he didnt seem all that special or bright but he was memorable.

He wanted to learn to snow board. Instead of taking a lesson like a normal person would do, he rented a board and climbed on the ski lift. He literally knocked himself unconscious coming down the mountain but he taught himself how to board.

As I got to know him, it struck me that he just didnt worry about physical harm. If he wanted to do something, he did it. He was indifferent to getting hurt and he had no doubts that he could achieve his goals.

spelunking builds confidence

When I lived in Kentucky, my office took a trip to Mammoth Caves. But we didnt go on the tourist, wheelchair accessible tour most people take. A friend of mine signed us up for a "private" cave tour. Wearing old clothes, a hard hat and a miners head lamp, we crawled through increasingly smaller caves for an entire day.

But the memorable part came for me towards the end of the day. I was really tired and we came to an impasse. We asked our guide, "Where do we go now?" and he pointed to an impossibly small hole in the wall that no one had noticed. (Did I mention how small it was?)

Well I was too tired to complain so I got down and crawled through the hole into a huge tunnel. (Turns out there was an another way through for people that freaked out or were too large to fit.) Like worms we crawled out of nowhere into the path of the normal tour and that is when it hit me.

You can be trained to do the impossible. You can be trained to ignore the voice in your head that is screaming "no fooking way you can do that!" and just do it. After you do the impossible enough times, you probably dont even think about that voice anymore. You see life in a different way. "Charge up that heavily fortified hill and kill those Japanese soldiers with my bare hands? No problem. Have lunch ready when we get back."

That cave trip was my Special Forces moment. The one time in my life where I did the impossible without a second thought and it wasnt until later that I realized what I had actually done. It was a brief moment but I never forgot it or the lesson about achievement.

bad weather, big deal

The truth is, I have driven in a LOT of bad weather. I grew up in Michigan and we never thought twice about the roads or snow or ice. In college, I drove around in a 2WD pickup truck with a few bags of sand in the back for traction.

I drove my grandmother 300 miles through a blizzard one Christmas. I drove with my mom from Texas to Michigan through a terrible ice storm. I drove a moving truck through the Great Plains in a terrible storm that closed the freeways and left dozens of big rigs stranded, covered in ice -- and I wasnt just in a moving truck, I was towing by old pickup! In my current 2WD Toyota I have driven through mountain roads and crossed a police barricade that was turning away any vehicles that werent 4WD.

I have driven through a LOT of bad weather and yet I have never had an accident nor have I ever been stuck. Admittedly I had two close calls in my truck on ice but no history of serious problems. Even so, it still terrifies me to drive in bad weather.

I bring this up because it helps me recognize how much I think about what could go wrong and how little I credit the fact that nothing ever has. Admittedly there is a line between confident and foolish. It is also clear to me that you get more careful as you get older, probably because you see more of what could go wrong and your realize what you have to lose. I guess another word for that is wisdom.

But I want my children to be Yoda-esque "can do!" special forces types who are aware of the risks but get things done nonetheless. People who get out of the house and do things when others are stuck at home worrying about what could go wrong. I am confident one can learn this mindset, Im just not sure how to teach it.