[June 22 2026] Soldiers use the image of the hero’s perfection to motivate themselves. Self motivation is what people don’t understand about Soldiers, they don’t understand it at least to the degree that Soldiers are uncorrupted. Soldiers are doing everything they can to kneel before the most beloved hero and try to make themselves worthy.
You see this in the Odyssey by Homer, the quintessential hero’s journey of Odysseus. In the story, Odysseus lives in the ordinary world of Ithaca as king. He answers the call to adventure by joining the Trojan War, faces refusal through trials, meets mentors, crosses thresholds into danger, endures tests and ordeals like the Cyclops and sirens. He returns transformed with wisdom, reunites with family, and restores order in his kingdom.
That’s the chivalry story. That’s what military leaders should encourage in their Soldiers. Out of the ancients, as far back as we have stories passed down to us, we see the hero emerge from the defective, imperfect, and tragic figure, to fight the dragon and then emerge changed in a positive way as he returns to his home.
I don’t think people have any idea how paralyzing it is for the Soldier to engage with that lifestyle, yet knowing they lack what it takes to show courage and commitment. During my four decades of service, I’ve talked to thousands of young men (and women too) who are absolutely terrified of their duty to be a Soldier because they are terrified of failing to live up to their idealized hero.
And that Soldier’s potential failure exists in precise proportion to their knowledge of and motivation to be like the hero, which is a paradoxical situation to be in. It’s also why many Soldiers do such foolish things in front of other Soldiers that they desire most to please; or at least to show they are not a coward.
These Soldiers don’t see the hero as a person, they see him as the manifestation of a judgmental ideal. And then it’s only in establishing a better knowledge of that hero and other Soldiers (they see as “good” Soldiers) that they can actually start to see what it takes to be like that hero.
The Soldier sees this as requiring a sacrifice, and the sacrifice is that they can never be like an ideal hero, so to be like the hero, they must reject the perfect hero and see heroes as separate from the ideal. The true hero is one who is certainly not what we really “see” but someone imperfect.
I had a friend in the U.S. Army who had been a bit of a hero himself in the Vietnam War. He spoke with many Soldiers about self-motivation and the idea of hero worship. On occasion, he would ask his Soldiers to go speak with a “hero” from Vietnam. He sent them to talk with heroes that showed great courage in that war, and could be found in those days. Why?
The idea was to get over your fear of seeing a hero and being rejected by him. And therefore getting to see the hero in real life, to see that they were not perfect, that they were scared and acted stupidly, and that they were often ordinary men who were put into extraordinary circumstances and they came back alive.
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Sir, I just read your old post “Never Buy a Drunk a Beer.” https://www.theleadermaker.com/never-buy-drunk-beer/
Like today, we all have different forms of internal motivation, but comparing ourselves to an ideal is the classic one that you’ve written about often, and rightly so. Great article. Thanks. 🤠
Hey, Cowboy, just a hint for you. Go out to Amazon and get a few copies of Gen. Satterfield’s book “55 rules for a good life” (linked to above) and read it, and also give the books away to young adults and recommend they read it. Great advice, and proven advice that no one should overlook. It’s a great start point for young folks but for older people too. Just me thinking here on Gen. Satterfield’s comment forum. Yeah, thanks for this old post.