I doubt you taught it to your boys. They’re your boys. You’re just encouraging/nurturing in them what’s already there.
You don’t join the Marines without a fair bit of mental toughness already. You join the Navy instead (kidding).The Core just encourages and brings out what’s there. I’d reference my father in law, a Marine and forward gunnery observer who made three Pacific landings under heavy fire, and was finally wounded on Pelielu. He joined the Marines BECAUSE he was mentally tough. They just refined what he already possessed.
And “mental toughness” is essentially impossible to separate from desire.
I stand by my point.
Again, good intelligent post. Though, just by example, I think the tough backpacking hunts I took them on beginning at age 9 steeled them a bit.
Similarly, I recalled after all my Marine training and Desert Storm experiences (granted, that was, by comparison, an easy war), hearing others say things like "I had to stay up all night last night" for work or whatever, "and it was the hardest thing I ever have done." If I had to say up all night, I wouldn't consider that the hardest thing I ever had done. I think being pushed to your real, not perceived, limits in whatever context, even as a young adult, can change your level of resilience.
By another general example, it's fairly accepted that the more effectively and harder troops and units are trained impacts their mental ability to handle the worst in combat later. That certainly is true of troops who already have been in combat. They're generally more able to deal with it.
For example, assume that the first set of scenes in Saving Private Ryan is fairly accurate, generally, as a depiction of war. If those same troops had not been mentally toughened by training or previous combat experience, even if they had been technically trained for the task, I think there is no way they make it up and over those bluffs under fire.
Just a whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger philosophy, though taken to extreme, that's not true of course.
JMHO.
You don’t join the Marines without a fair bit of mental toughness already. You join the Navy instead (kidding).
LOL.
