No Such Thing As Perfect

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over a decade of SWAT operations is that there are no perfect plans and you almost never feel ready. Another thing I learned is that the FBI will be the first to volunteer you for the part of the plan that is most likely to go sideways.

The Good Idea Fairy

Our SWAT team was conducting a joint operation with the FBI, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Not necessarily to me, but to someone. Our teams had multiple targets that we were planning to hit simultaneously, giving us the tactical advantage and inflicting psychological damage on the enemy. The plans were thought out, drawn up, briefed, rehearsed, and then violently executed. Afterward, we shook hands, slapped backs, and told jokes. Then the Good Idea Fairy showed up.

Someone, somewhere — most likely wearing an FBI raid jacket and sitting in a leather chair behind a desk in a climate controlled room — thought it would be a good idea for our team to hit an additional location in broad daylight knowing that it was very likely that the remaining members of the hornet’s nest we had just kicked could be in there waiting for us. We knew that word traveled fast among the criminal element and with an operation as sophisticated and well-funded as theirs was, the odds of success were inversely proportional to the level of danger we would be in. If it was such a good idea, I wondered, why wasn’t the FBI sending their own people?

Do Your Job

A hasty plan was hatched and we were off. I remember riding in the back of the BearCat thinking to myself that a shootout was inevitable. It’s one of the handful of times in my career that I was certain I was about to get shot at. This good-idea-operation had all the makings of an after action report featured on primetime news networks and what-not-to-do instructional videos. I didn’t feel ready, but I did have a job to do.

Someone once said that if you wait until you’re ready then it’s too late. And as a recovering perfectionist, I agree. But I think there is a distinction to be made between feeling ready and being ready.

Feeling Ready

Oftentimes, it seems, that feeling ready is just a form of perfectionism, and perfectionism is really just a reason to procrastinate, fueled by the fear of failure — which happens to be me in a nutshell.

Unhealthy or irrational fear can hold us back from success, paralyzing us. No risk, no reward and all that. Fear, then, becomes an excuse to never leave our comfort zone, to keep our hand down when we have a question, to never talk to strangers, to keep our money in our mattress and out of the market, or to never give ourselves the chance to try and fail and grow.

A healthy amount of fear is a good thing. Fear keeps us safe. It can pull us back from the brink of stupid — sometimes preceded by the phrase, Let’s see what this baby can do! Rational fear, however, grounds us in the reality of the cause-and-effect world we live in. It forces us to be a little smarter so that we can live a little longer.

Being Ready

Being ready lies somewhere between a best guess and hubris. Yes, there is no substitute for planning and preparation, but whether you’re running a marathon, starting a business, or assaulting a drug cartel’s local office, there’s no way to know whether or not you are, in fact, ready. There are just too many variables to account for them all. The best you can do is mitigate risk, execute when the time is right, and trust the people on your left and right.

If you spend the time studying for the final exam you can, by all measurements, be ready, and still score less than 100. You can train your socks off for the PT test and be ready, but you can still roll your ankle and go down like a sack of potatoes. You can plan and rehearse a high-risk search warrant and be ready, but things can still go wrong and people can still get hurt. Being ready is a gray area, it is not a guarantee.

Ready Or Not

When it came time to execute our operation in broad daylight, I was on edge to say the least. I was laser-focused, my senses were heightened, and I decided to accept the fact that I was going to be in a gunfight. So, I told myself that I would just fight it out, come what may. Hundreds of scenarios ran through my head during the ride there, and they continued running as we systematically assaulted that building and broke it down piece by piece using sound tactics, good judgment, and calm communication.

When it was all over, there was no one home, and all that danger and apprehension and fear actually acted as the catalyst to keep me on my toes. In the end, we secured the objective and rendered it safe for investigators. We did our job, ready or not.

Execute, Execute, Execute

In short, the absence of fear doesn’t mean you’re ready, and the presence of fear doesn’t mean you’re not. Feeling ready is a poor measurement of reality, while being ready will always be subject to trial by fire.

There is no such thing as perfect this side of Heaven — I don’t care if it’s a SWAT operation, a business plan, or a marriage proposal. You can feel ready, and not be ready. You can be ready and not feel ready. You can do everything right and things can still go wrong.

If you’re passively waiting around to be ready, you can always find a reason to hold off a little longer — to wait on the weather or the stars or the market or the government or your circumstances or whatever to change in your favor — and there you will remain, on the threshold of a life worth writing about. To win, you must go through the door.

Do the research, put in the work, make a plan, and then execute, execute, execute.

__________________________

• Are you a perfectionist?
• Do you fear failure?
• Are you doing the work and the preparation it will take?
• What are you waiting for?

__________________________

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