Military service can involve the most stressful situations anyone can experience, yet by controlling mental processes, a soldier can limit the negative effects of stress, even making it work positively for him.
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Being a serving soldier is mentally demanding. The challenges can range quickly from prolonged boredom to sheer terror. Effective mental management is essential.
Mental Tools
The challenges of military service begin for most recruits on day one of their basic training. At least in professional armies, training programmes are designed specifically to pressure-test the candidate, to show his real personality under extreme physical and mental conditions
What is of particular interest to the instructors is to see how the recruit will act at the point of exhaustion. If he simply shuts down and stops thinking, he is unsuited to a military career. If he stays focused, keeps motivated and considers his actions at all times, then he has the makings of a fine soldier. This chapter is about how to stay in this second mental state.
How Your Mind Works
At a basic level, your brain controls the involuntary or unconscious functions of your body to keep you alive. These functions include heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, regulation of body temperature and digestion. Your central nervous system (made up of the brain, spinal cord and nerves) controls movement and sensory processing, such as vision, hearing and taste. The cerebrum, which is much larger in humans than other animals, controls thought processes and emotions, and stores memory. Simply put, it is that cerebrum that makes humans different to animals, which mainly perform instinctive actions necessary for survival and basic socializing.
The Body’s Nervous System
The body’s nervous system is an extremely complex work of biological engineering, yet even for the non-scientist a basic comprehension of its functions can help in understanding the full spectrum of mental performance. In essence, the human nervous system is broken down into two parts:
• Central nervous system. This consists of the brain and the spinal cord, and is the core of the human body’s mental and physical functions.
• Peripheral nervous system. This system is itself divided into two parts: the somatic nervous system, which sends sensory information to the central nervous system and motor nerves connected to skeletal muscle; and the automonic nervous system, which is responsible for controlling the smooth muscle of organs and glands.
As we can see from this brief outline, a large part of the nervous system’s functioning is devoted to unconscious processes and the maintenance of basic body functions. It is for this reason alone that diet and mental function are intimately connected – the better the diet,
