If you served in the military no matter what branch of service you were in, you learned at some point the importance of having space to maneuver. Whether you were maneuvering pairs of boots, a tank, a ship, or a fighter jet, having adequate physical space was essential to executing maneuver smoothly and safely. Likewise, when we encounter challenges in life, our minds need maneuver space to mentally negotiate difficult moments. This series will highlight each month a different brief cognitive tool that you can use in your daily life to potentially create more maneuver space. Remember having maneuver space, or space to think, is a gift in life. Once you create it, use it to your advantage!
Negotiating Obstacles
Negotiating an obstacle course is a confidence-building task that most members of the military will do at some point in their careers. Obstacle courses are challenging both physically and mentally. On the course, there is a method to negotiate obstacles: face them head-on, confront your fears, physically overcome them, and reach the other side safely. Building on this concept, there is also a tactical battle drill called breaching an obstacle. “Breaching is a tactical mission task in which the unit employs all available means to break through or establish a passage through an enemy defense, obstacle, minefield, or fortification.”[1] Breaching, as any combat engineer can attest, is a high-risk operation that can rapidly consume resources such as lives, time, equipment, ammo, fuel, and water/food. Because of this, the military often looks to bypass smaller obstacles, mitigating the risk of conducting breaches and conserving resources in order to negotiate larger obstacles and objectives that lay ahead. With smaller obstacles, we may also ‘mark the grid coordinate’ on a map where they are located. Then at a later point, we can return and reduce them when we are ready. In civilian life, expending large amounts of resources like time, money, health, mental well-being, happiness, peace, and tranquility on obstacles that do not pose a significant threat is counterproductive and has a negative impact on our quality of life. The below model may help further illustrate this concept:
I often ask Veterans, “What is the easiest way to negotiate an obstacle?” It’s not a trick question. The answer is, simply bypass and go around it! Occasionally obstacles in civilian life are significant, such as true threats to your health, safety, or access to food/water/shelter. When these happen, we need to address them head-on, potentially even gathering all our resources and focusing on breaching. However, while many daily obstacles in civilian life may at first seem overwhelming when we create mental space we see they are not insurmountable. Bills to pay, relationship difficulties, tension with an employer, getting your child to their soccer game, traffic, doing the laundry, and a potentially large list of other daily stressors are real obstacles. But do they require a high-risk direct breach method to negotiate? If we create more mental maneuver space, our minds can often find many creative ways to bypass such obstacles. Finding alternative ways around them, expending minimal or no resources at all, allowing us to focus only on obstacles that are significant.
[1] Department of the Army. (2022). ADP 1-02 Terms and Military Symbols. (Glossary-4). https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN35425-FM_1-02.2-000-WEB-1.pdf
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Check out previous issues of Maneuver Space here:
Maneuver Space: Volume 1, Issue 1
Maneuver Space: Volume 1, Issue 2
Maneuver Space: Volume 1, Issue 3
Maneuver Space: Volume 1, Issue 4
Maneuver Space: Volume 1, Issue 5
About the Author: Mr. Bongioanni is a licensed mental health counselor who also works for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. He is also a senior leader in the U.S. Army Reserve. His professional interests include human behavior, applied psychology, and military cultural competence. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.
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