Operators Association

How to Develop a Warrior Mindset

Zack Hughes • Aug 13, 2021

Inspire, adapt, and overcome with these SOF mentality strategies.

Becoming a warrior is about more than being physically fit and capable. It’s also about having the mindset required to attack obstacles and overcome difficulties – a warrior mindset. 

The problem is, developing your mind is much more complicated than strengthening your body. Everyone is unique and motivated by different things. Despite this, there are a couple of exercises that everyone can do to start thinking like a warrior. In this OA guide, we’ll be giving you four strategies for building the warrior mindset you need to thrive in the military or civilian world! 

Find Your Purpose
Before you can start viewing the world through the perspective of a warrior, you must look within yourself and figure out what inspires you. If you regularly keep up with these OA guides, you’ll recognize finding your purpose as a subject we commonly discuss. 

Here’s why: if you find your purpose and start living your life by core principles, you no longer need the approval of others to justify your behavior. While this type of self-sufficient, independent thinking is beneficial to all aspects of life, it becomes invaluable if you want to join the military – a profession that few people understand and can empathize with. Finding your purpose is the first step to building your warrior mindset.

Cultivate Your Self-Esteem
Building on the previous point, cultivating your self-esteem is the next crucial step to building an unbreakable warrior mindset. Once you’ve found your purpose and started living your life by principle, you need to improve your confidence

A hallmark of the warrior mindset is the ability to confidently and aggressively attack obstacles. To do this, you must face your struggles with maximum effort. This requires building trust in your physical and mental capabilities. There are many ways to develop your self-esteem, but an easy way to start is by challenging yourself daily. By learning how to overcome small obstacles regularly, you will harden your mind and develop confidence in your ability to prevail over greater challenges in the future.

Enjoy Overcoming Discomfort
For thousands of years and across cultures, warriors were some of the most respected people in society. Since ancient times, soldiers and military members have been revered for their bravery, and warriors continue to be portrayed and praised in the modern media. This begs the question, why do humans have so much respect for them?

The answer: it’s because warriors don’t shy away from difficulty. When trouble arises, it is the warriors that stay behind while others flee – they form the phalanx, assemble the shield wall, and run towards the gunfire. If you want to start thinking like a warrior, you must learn to enjoy overcoming discomfort and facing challenges. While this aspect of the warrior mindset is critical, developing it looks unique for different people. Not everyone faces the same challenges or struggles with the same things – some people’s obstacles are physical, while those of others are financial or mental. Whatever your conflict is, you must attack and overcome it. If you’ve been looking for a sign to start making drastic changes to improve your life, this is it. Learn to enjoy overcoming discomfort and you’ll be one step closer to forging your warrior mindset! 

Keep Track of Your Progress
The final step to developing your warrior mindset is to keep track of your progress. As you begin to find your purpose, improve your confidence, and start overcoming the struggles in your life, you’ll want to track your growth and keep yourself accountable. Start setting both short-term (quarterly) and long-term (yearly) goals for things you want to achieve. Make these goals explicit and measurable – your progress shouldn’t be subjective. You must be able to quantify it. 

With a bit of effort, even the most abstract goals can be measured. For example, if you want to improve your relationship with your family, you can set a target for how much time you want to spend with them every week. The better you can measure your progress, the better you’ll be able to identify whether you’re succeeding or falling behind. Set goals, keep track of your progress, and never stop improving yourself.


Finding your purpose, cultivating your self-esteem, overcoming discomfort, and tracking your progress are the four critical steps to developing a warrior mindset. If you can master this way of thinking, you will instantly become more confident at overcoming obstacles, building relationships, and improving your life, both in the military and civilian world. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to consistently apply these strategies in your daily life. That’s where we come in! 

When you become an Operators Association member, you get your physicality, leadership, and knowledge in one place. Aspiring Operators get instant access to hundreds of SOF podcasts, an exclusive weekly accountability group, and a 900+ member community full future special operators and SOF cadre. Visit our packages page to get started today!

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