On Resilience to Uncertainty, Psychological Endurance and the Ranger Program
On Resilience to Uncertainty, Psychological Endurance and the Ranger Program
“I recall being four years old in a village. The village was small -a simple grocery store and not even a barber. Everyone knew each other. My mother and father were the teachers at the small school in the late ‘80s. With no toys around, I had no choice but to learn how to spend time alone. At least, that was the case for me. But I don’t remember struggling with it. I don’t recall ever wanting toys. Whatever I needed, I conjured up with my imagination.
I would leave the house early in the morning and return late in the evening. When I got hungry, I’d knock on any door in the village, say “I’m hungry,” get fed, and head back outside.
Like an early-age philosopher, I’d wander around with a stick made from a thick branch of a hazelnut tree. I’d pass the last house in the village and reach its boundaries -lush green hills, nature, winding dirt roads. “What lies beyond that bend? Is this the extent of the world?” I still remember the curiosity and excitement that these thoughts stirred within me. I first wanted to see what was around the next bend. Without realizing it, I’d thrown myself into the mountains and rocks. I remember escaping from wild boars and being stranded atop hazelnut trees for hours. One bend led to another, and at that age, I’d wander a bit farther from the village. One day, summoning my courage, I secretly climbed into the back of a truck, which took me to the town center. I thought the flashing signs in shop windows were fireflies. When I returned, I played by making signs with fireflies, and writing names. Upon reaching the center, I realized there was a world beyond the village. Thankfully, the truck drivers took me back to the village.”
So, how is it that the innocent feelings of curiosity and excitement we have toward the unknown can transform into existential anxieties like uncertainty and insecurity?
Our experiences, what happens to us, and what we go through essentially constitute our past. If we integrate the experiences from the infinitesimal moment “dt” up to the previous moment, we might arrive at our total experience. The “now,” however, is a much more intriguing topic. I enjoy pondering it. Perhaps we’ll discuss it in another essay. The main subject of this piece is the future; from where we stand, as far as we can see, it’s a fairly simple and straightforward matter. Because everything seems evident!
On the other hand, the future contains far less concrete information than we might think. From our vantage point, we also see unknowns that we cannot perceive with crystal clarity but can predict using various methods and conduct risk analyses. These can be thought of as opportunities and risks. Perhaps by developing ourselves in this area, we can expand and enlarge the set upon which we can perform risk analysis. We can define this set as the “known unknowns.” However, there’s a much larger set consisting of surprises, requiring high adaptability, and composed of unfamiliar elements. We can think of this set as the “unknown unknowns.” I shared a small diagram below.
Despite such a classification, I can’t come up with a rational explanation for why some unknowns evoke curiosity while others turn into a state of uncertainty that causes distress.
When we examine it closely, we realize that the emotion caused by uncertainty is actually a feeling of insecurity. It’s a situation where we don’t know the outcome and don’t feel safe. Humans tend to fear the unknown and have a propensity to bring clarity to everything. It’s as if we need to think, “If I’m prepared, I will succeed.” When we look at it from this perspective, we can understand that uncertainty is directly linked to the anxieties we experience because it touches on an ontological issue. Given this, I believe that the difference lies in the type of relationship we establish with the situation before us. How we perceive it, what meaning we attribute to it, and what we plan to do with it determine how we handle the situation. From that point on, a chain reaction begins.
Moreover, the things we can control in life are generally quite limited. We can control our emotions, thoughts, choices, words, and reactions. Things outside of this are either completely out of our control or within our sphere of influence. We cannot intervene directly, but we can still have some impact. Sometimes these uncontrollable things emerge as a result or side effect of what we can control.
Gabriel García Márquez beautifully summarized uncertainty by saying, “People plan, and God laughs at them.”
Since the factor that makes the difference is our approach to the subject, we can develop resilience against uncertainty by reorganizing our relationship with it. This is precisely where the concept of Psychological Resilience comes into play. Psychological hardiness is defined as the ability to cope with challenging events, adapt, use flexibility, move forward, and recover and heal from adverse emotional experiences in the face of a challenging stressor.
Psychological resilience is not just a trait; it also includes the capacity to manage one’s toolbox and all the resources one possesses. Years ago, when talking to a retired Navy SEAL, he mentioned that he didn’t believe psychological resilience could be taught. I heard a similar sentiment from a former Army commando while meeting with a delegation at the U.S. War College in 2019. Both said that while some people think it can be taught, they themselves didn’t believe it. When designing my own training methodology, I thought a lot about this subject. I experienced it with many people. I witnessed it both in the methodology I developed for Cyber Struggle and previously when I had the chance to work with various age groups and different profiles during my years of coaching basketball.
Frankly, I am among those who think psychological resilience can be taught; in fact, I believe in it. Recall what I mentioned in my previous essay, “Changing the Meaning of Processes and Challenges,” about neuroplasticity and the growth mindset. If you haven’t read it, it might be good to take a look to understand the context. I believe it can be taught, but I also think there are quick stimuli that can directly, positively or negatively, affect the teaching process to the same extent. Perhaps the people I spoke to, when confronted with these stimuli, preferred to think of it not as independent stimuli but as an innate gift. Because this teaching and learning process carries the risk of quickly bringing a person to the point of thinking, “Either you have it in you, or you don’t.” I can’t deny that. But isn’t the same true for other traits? The simplest is “diligence”! We hear similar things about it, but I think it’s also a habit that can be changed.
Of course, approaching the subject scientifically is also quite new. Some beliefs in military units can sometimes become thought patterns passed from person to person on an individual basis. I certainly don’t belittle thought patterns formed through experience, but there are also examples where some assumptions, incorrectly defined or superficially stated, become hereditary because they are repeated by more than one person. Anyway.
The concept of psychological hardiness is actually new. In a study conducted with Bell Telephone company executives between 1975 and 1986, the psychologist Suzanne Kobasa first introduced this concept. As a result of this study, it was observed that executives who were more resilient in the face of uncertainty shared certain common traits.
It can be said that psychological hardiness has three main dimensions:
Commitment Dimension
This involves engaging in life instead of withdrawing when facing problems, without losing a positive outlook. Being able to stay committed to something despite difficulties is essentially related to believing in and attaching ourselves to our own meaning and purposes.
Performance athletes, artists, or anyone producing high performance in the face of any difficulty seem to share this trait the most. They can show dedication. I assume you can visualize the importance of believing in one’s own meaning and purpose to be able to dedicate oneself despite everything.
This dimension is entirely related to our sphere of control depicted in the figure above. In the face of events, the tools at our disposal – our behaviors, thoughts, and discourses – are elements directly under our control. By using these tools, we can influence the conditions that uncertainty brings about.
Focusing on things outside our control during moments of uncertainty is of no use. In my observation, uncertainty manifests in two ways. Sometimes it confronts us at a tactical level, and we need to evaluate it as part of tactical processes. Other times, when it’s at a strategic level, our way of perceiving it turns the issue into a tactical semantic confusion.
For example, a group of soldiers falling into an ambush during a terrain search is a tactical-level uncertainty. On the other hand, constantly comparing ourselves to others and not being able to do what we need to do today as we should – regarding our social position where we see ourselves ten years from now – educes the issue entirely to a tactical level.
Challenge Dimension
The challenge dimension is directly related to change and adaptation. It involves moving forward with change instead of avoiding it and accepting it as an opportunity. Facing changing environments and events with a more innovative, flexible, and open stance indicates influencing what’s happening and learning by experiencing it. At this point, we can again say that there is a direct reference to neuroplasticity and the growth mindset.
We can say that the “super duo” that makes us fragile consists of our regrets about the past or our worries related to future expectations.
In most cases, we find ourselves in conflict with ourselves over our past choices. Of course, what we’ve experienced leaves marks on us. At some point, its impact on shaping our present cannot be denied. After all, what we experience turns into experience. However, these internal conflicts mean that our past is taking over our present beyond mere experience.
Or the future… The future is essentially an unknown for everyone. However, some of us define our relationship with the future through unrealistic expectations, mentally elevating the probability of bad events occurring. Instead of adding meaning to processes, they define them with self-defeating feedback. This, with a larger force multiplier, makes us more fragile in the face of uncertainty.
While we’ve established such a negative relationship with the past and the future, all we have left is the “now.” However, those of us who maintain this distorted relationship with this duo often waste the “now” by constantly comparing ourselves to others. Sometimes it’s our level of knowledge, sometimes our social status, sometimes our happiness, financial situation, physiology, or possessions. A constant state of comparison and the resulting feeling of inadequacy…
Uncertainty, Psychological Resilience, and the Ranger Program
Cybersecurity remained confined for years to areas like engineering, IT, software development. Before anything else, cybersecurity is about ‘security’, and ignoring the possibility that it might intertwine with things that security encompasses to in our kinetic lives was convenient for many.
The developments and conjuncture we’re in make the impacts of cyber incidents increasingly significant and critical every day. When the high levels of uncertainty brought about by the unorthodox nature of cybersecurity are added to the pressure concerning the potential outcomes of cyber incidents, the overall stress intensifies significantly. This increase creates much more pressure on those dealing with cybersecurity than it did 5-10 years ago. Think about it: in most cases, we don’t know when and from where attackers will strike. We don’t know what kind and level of force they will use. We have no idea how long the attack will last. We have no definitive information about their intentions, and we can’t predict the outcomes of the incident. We also have no idea how these processes will affect our careers as cybersecurity experts, our future in that institution, or our position in society.
When we add to this complex situation the fact that the new generation grows up away from old-school habits that would help develop human-centered skills – like declining neighborhood and street culture, socialization – and the change in targets in basic education within the family leading to their inability to acquire habits that would contribute to adaptation and resilience, things become even more complicated.
Indeed, issues like personel turnover, burnout, depression, and their impacts on total capacity have started to take up more space on the agendas of institutions providing Security Operations Center services worldwide.
A few years ago, the criticality of the targets we focused on within Cyber Struggle became much more understandable.
Recent research on psychological resilience and cybersecurity professionals has produced quite striking results.
Approximately 64% of the professionals interviewed stated that the stress environment created by uncertainty and pressure prevents them from producing sufficient capacity to protect the institutions they are responsible for. About 45% of them reported that the stress they experience has negatively affected their relationships with their families, spouses, close ones, and children. Almost the same proportion of experts stated that they use medication, alcohol, or substances to cope with this uncertainty. These are the results of today’s pressures. But we must not forget that this pressure will increase even more over the years. For this reason, the biggest expectation of institutions providing Security Operations Center services is for artificial intelligence to take over the work, distancing themselves from human nature as much as possible. Although I don’t think a completely unmanned process is possible in the very near future, expectations will inevitably change. Even the change in these expectations alone will create uncertainty and pressure on people who want to become cybersecurity experts. Therefore, there’s no escape from uncertainty.
I want to touch on the nature of cyber incidents repeatedly in other contexts.
By the way, the picture I tried to draw above is not independent of existential crises that can occur in any profession or area of business life; on the contrary, there’s a layered pressure added on top of it.
It would be more appropriate to discuss the change in expectations in a separate essay. I plan to elaborate on topics like what types of expectations are forming and how they might relate to us becoming more functional individuals in that essay.
The Uncertainty of Everything
Throughout the Ranger Program, we keep activities (in-class, out-of-class contacts, activities, etc.) within a reasonable frame of uncertainty. Participants don’t know when their classes begin. They constantly try to track and determine class times through their seniors.
This has many benefits from various perspectives. The tension of not knowing when their interactions will occur triggers more communication among them. Accordingly, team members follow up with their seniors and make reminders, while the seniors try to reduce their own uncertainty pressure by putting pressure on the instructors.
The same applies to technical or human-centered skill tasks assigned to the team. They don’t know how many tasks will be assigned throughout the program, when they will be assigned, or how they will be requested. As instructors, we read/review an average of about 1,500 submissions during a Ranger Program.
Although each task is evaluated behind the scenes, participants don’t receive specific feedback on what they’ve done unless there’s a critical issue. Generally, feedback given to them is provided in a way that doesn’t allow them to associate it with any task. Of course, exceptions may occur; however, we avoid this behavior unless it’s necessary to provide such feedback.
We often prefer not to follow a specific topic sequence for the lesons to be covered. Since there is no subject flow and the acquisition process proceeds through problems and uncertainty, we frequently have to refer back to the same topics or thought mechanisms. This approach contributes to the neuroplasticity process and helps in detaching from the emotions felt in the face of uncertainty.
Since the process operates through acquisition by experiencing events rather than learning, topics are conveyed through uncertain problems. Especially at the beginning of the program, participants cannot make sense of what they are doing or why they are doing it. Some things seem very simple to them; some seem meaningless; they don’t know what purpose some serve, and this creates a feeling of emptiness. We aim to introduce participants to this feeling of emptiness and uncertainty in a short time.
From the moment they are sufficiently exposed, uncertainties begin to lose their importance. Participants start to detach from anxieties and emotions and become indifferent to anything other than producing solutions to the problems before them. Without realizing it, they begin to reorganize their relationship with uncertainty.
For us who follow the process, seeing these changes and witnessing people experiencing this live is incredibly exciting. That’s why when someone tells me that psychological resilience cannot be developed, I feel like shouting, “Then what am I experiencing?”
The Effect of Uncertainty on Critical Thinking
The reformation of the relationship with uncertainty as I mentioned above continues in direct proportion to critical thinking skills. Here, I have to refer again to my previous essay. If you haven’t read my article on neuroplasticity and the growth mindset, I suggest you take a look here and then continue with the remaining part by making the connection to ensure continuity.
In this process where we are forced to acquire both technical and human-centered skills, constantly having to learn new things as a team or on our own, and having to do this under various pressures – especially time – the brain adopts a mode that is more open to experience. At the same time, the system pushes the participant towards critical thinking.
The Effect of Uncertainty on Teaming
In the Ranger Program, forming a team consciousness is mandatory and a factor that affects scoring. Backstabbing teammates, hiding and not sharing obtained information, and constantly spreading toxic thoughts within the team are grounds for warnings. These behaviors are prohibited.
In such a program filled with uncertainty but with high demands for tasks and duties, so to speak, you need the team to survive. Sometimes the team may need you; sometimes you may need the team. At this point, everyone is naturally tested in the areas where they are lacking. Those with insufficient technical skills meet this need from the team; those with insufficient social skills try to address these deficiencies; those with problems in human-centered skills receive support in this area. The important point here is that the mind is still in a growth state. Without this, the Ranger Program will be insufficient for the participant. Because the program is not designed to create an illusion that will make you feel good with unnecessary technical knowledge and traditional memorization methods. The program expects full cooperation and dedication from the participant. I would like to remind you again of the challenge dimension of psychological resilience that I mentioned above.
In summary, team consciousness is a very important tool for both reducing uncertainty and providing flexibility in coping with surprises, ambushes, and uncertain situations. Working towards being a team is not done solely for this purpose, but I want to discuss these in another essay.
Uncertainty and Mindfulness
The moment when uncertainty takes its most tangible form with all its surprise and pressure is the “present” moment. Dealing with the now is to take a stance against the most solid form of uncertainty.
Mindfulness essentially means awareness. But this awareness is actually a conscious awareness. In essence, this word signifies a state of being that should be more experiential than conceptual.
Noticing what’s happening in ourselves and our surroundings at a certain moment ‘t’ with attitudes like patience, non-judgment, compassion, and empathy… Since it’s the conscious awareness of the present moment, it helps us detach from the confinement of our minds between the regrets of the past and the anxieties of the future, as I mentioned above.
The Ranger Program begins on the first day with the sentence, “If you can do something at that moment, do it; don’t postpone it. You don’t know what you’ll experience in the next moment.” Being in the flow and consciously noticing the now, if the program is a theater, is like getting into the role; this significantly contributes to gaining maximum experience and achieving the highest level of development and acquisition.
In addition, some periodic assignments for human-centered skills, when done properly, help understand emotions and thoughts within that moment.
Because, essentially, humans have two types of strategies to cope with uncertainty.
The first is a problem-focused strategy. Facing new problems and acquiring new skills to remove perceived, thought, or felt obstacles, producing alternative solutions, in other words, staying directly in growth. Turning difficulties into development opportunities.
The other is an emotion-focused strategy. The state of being able to stay a little longer in the moment we experience the emotion felt during uncertainty. The centers of tornadoes -their eyes- are actually much calmer places compared to the chaos happening around them. Therefore, I’m talking about seeing the situation as an opportunity by spending some time at this moment to define these emotions, trying to understand their reasons (there is certainly a thought behind these emotions), noticing the thought errors or cognitive distortions I have, and analyzing how realistic these thoughts are. This opportunity helps us decide how to manage the stressors by answering questions like whether we should distance ourselves from the factors causing stress, seek social support, or avoid these factors.
Emotion-focused strategy involves putting some distance between ourselves and these emotions, detaching from them, perhaps seeking social support (e.g., being a team), and managing the causes of stress. Understanding these emotions and thoughts will move us away from being reactive and turn us into individuals who respond based on our own choices. This way, we’ll see more possibilities.
Finally, as you know, a person’s development -no matter the subject- is directly related to their personal development. When we are better as a whole, whatever our job or profession is, our relationship with it will also be better.
The same goes for learning. Being more psychologically resilient will push us to stay more focused, and because we’ll be in a growth mindset, we’ll become much more open to learning and change. Transitioning to such an adaptive and learning phase will also enable critical thinking skills, faster learning, and being more functional. I want to discuss this part of the matter in further essays.
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Articles from the workshop
