Strategies and Style

What better thing to do on a cold weekend than go to the movies?

Zero Dark Thirty documents the nearly ten-year man hunt for OBL after the September 11 attacks.   Kathryn Bigelow scores again - just as poignant as The Hurt Locker and also as engrossing.  This movie does a great job of explaining and informing while entertaining - especially difficult when the spoiler is so well known.

As the film is culminating, shortly before the capture and while the US Navy SEAL team 6 is still in the helicopter but approaching the Pakistani compound, the camera focuses on one of the soldiers who has headphones on and we learn that he is listening to the dynamic life coach, Tony Robbins.

And it made perfect sense - to have the strength and fearlessness of one of those SEALS, a little Tony Robbins inspiration would be crucial.

In a recent article, Robbins addresses the push and pull we all feel from time to time - the wavering between possibility and necessity.  Robbins notes that some people are motivated by necessity - that they do something not because they want to, but because they feel they must.  They are not looking at infinite possibilities.  They take what comes and accept what is available and put their head down and grind it out.  Others are possibility people.  They are dreamers, motivated by what they want to do and look for experiences and choices based on possibility.

As you might've guessed, there's no correct tendency here.  We need the steady Eddies and the stargazers.  Some of us get our energy from the consistent, reliable routine and others are bored if new directions are not a daily option.

Thinking back to the film, and that real-life event, the guys who executed must've had a lot of disciplined training.  I'm not sure they walked across burning coals like participants do in Robbins' Change Your Life workshop, but there was probably a mix of personalities on that helicopter(s) that were tuned into their respective styles before implementing the strategies that resulted in the real-life outcome and the film's ending.