Jason Van Camp is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point where he also played Linebacker for the Army Black Knights football team. After graduating from West Point, Jason attended U.S. Army Ranger School and was later deployed with the 101st Airborne in the invasion of Iraq. Jason would go on to become a Green Beret and a Detachment Commander with the 10th Special Forces Group where Jason led his team on close to 300 combat missions to kill or capture high-value targets and created and commanded one of the largest Foreign Internal Defense Forces in U.S. history. Jason is also the founder of Mission Six Zero, a leadership assessment, and development company and he is the author of “Deliberate Discomfort: How U.S. Special Operations Forces Overcome Fear and Dare to Win by Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable.”
In this episode of The Alpha Human Podcast, Jason and I discuss why he joined the US Army Special Forces as well as the lessons he learned as a Green Beret and Detachment Commander. We discuss his book “Deliberate Discomfort” and the profound experiences faced in combat by many of the men he served alongside and what they can teach us about embracing our fears, getting uncomfortable, and succeeding in the unknown. We delve deep into a number of concepts that allow teams and individuals to push the boundaries of human performance including the difference between trust and belief, self-determination theory, and how to find a locus of control in the fog of war and volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environments. We also discuss how to feed and energize the human spirit, why the “Look Up” mantra is the secret to the elite mind-set of Special Operations Forces, and how happiness, success, and a life worth living is found only through a life in service to others.
Links:
Mission Six Zero: https://missionsixzero.com/
Deliberate Discomfort: How U.S. Special Operations Forces Overcome Fear and Dare to Win by Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable: https://amzn.to/3lPzZBi
Warrior Rising: https://www.warriorrising.org/