“Yes, And?” The Art of Embracing the Suck
The Army loves its aphorisms. You’ve definitely heard “hurry up and wait,” or “slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” These phrases are the connective tissue of our professional culture. But among them, “embrace the suck” stands as a definitive, if crass, pillar of the military experience.
Like many junior leaders, I’m guilty of throwing these expressions around as a shorthand for “get over it,” but failing to explain how actually to live them out. Part of leadership is about sharing guidance, but another important aspect is translating that guidance into a repeatable process your subordinates can put into action. Without the process, “embrace the suck” is just an empty phrase with no real impact on those we lead.
Junior officers are the most influential leaders in the Army because they are the primary interface between the strategic “why” and the tactical “how.” Most junior enlisted Soldiers will form their lifelong opinion of the officer corps based on their first PLs or XO. If a developing Soldier sees their leader complain about the cold, cut corners on a sensitive-items check because they’re tired, or collapse under the pressure of a shifting OPORD, that Soldier learns that “the suck” is an acceptable excuse for failure.
The Science of Deprivation
To understand how to embrace the suck, you must first realize that military training is fundamentally an exercise in deprivation. Sleep, food, rest, and warmth—at some point, the environment will take these things from you. The more you try to eke out five more minutes of sleep or hoard a few extra calories, the more that desire for comfort will define you. Author Michael Easter speaks to these diminishing returns in The Comfort Crisis.[1]
The friction between your expectations and reality creates a psychological drag. Once you decide to stop hoping for comfort, its absence no longer bothers you. This is known as the Stockdale Paradox—a concept derived from Admiral James Stockdale and his experience as a POW in Vietnam—the ability to confront the harsh facts of your current reality yet maintain an unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end.[2]
The Mindset of “Yes, And?”
Embracing the suck is built on a cognitive reflex to reply “Yes, and?” When the voice in your head complains, “It’s too hard,” or “I’m exhausted,” you answer it every single time with, “Yes, and?” In psychology, this is known as Cognitive Reappraisal.[3] Research published in the Journal of Psychological Science suggests that individuals who reframe high-stress situations as “challenges” rather than “threats” exhibit better cardiovascular profiles and higher levels of task performance. The key here is creating momentum; you must think “yes, and” rather than “yes, but—.” “But” is the jerk at the end of the parachute. It stops you dead and knocks the wind out of you. “And” keeps things moving. Visualizing challenges as an “and” instead of a “but” changes an obstacle into a mere environmental condition.
The reason it’s hard to give up “but” for “and” is because one reflects how the world should be, while the other reflects how it is. Junior officers haven’t spent as much time grappling with the frustrations of real-world training conditions. This is especially true when an error arises from someone other than the junior officer in question. For example, imagine you are the Platoon Leader in charge of a raid mission. You’ve just realized that the point-man of the formation has been reading his compass wrong. Your hit time to conduct the raid is looming, and you haven’t even reached your planned ORP. In this situation, it may be tempting to blame the point man and resign yourself to conducting the mission late: “We’re running out of time, but he messed up, so we can’t meet our hit time.”
Shifting blame is not only poor leadership, but also self-deception; real-world conditions aren’t fair, and if you can’t operate when the environment turns against you, then you won’t be an effective leader in the field. Instead, reframe the situation like this: “We’re running behind, and we still have to meet our hit time, so the plan needs to change.” Now the pieces can start falling into place. Once you frame the environmental conditions honestly, you can start making moves based on what is within your control. For example, you might take the ORP by force rather than deliberately, buying time to get the mission back on track.
Three Tangible Ways for Junior Officers to “Embrace the Suck”
For a junior officer, “embracing the suck” cannot be an internal dialogue. It must be a visible, infectious investment in the task at hand. This is because no one tries hard at something they don’t care about. If you, as the JO, aren’t invested in a particular training (such as CBRN or cyber awareness), your lack of enthusiasm will spread to your formation. Soldiers see when the boss is “checked out,” and if you don’t care about something, they certainly won’t.
Completing the task is only half the puzzle; doing so with a constructive attitude is the spark that kindles motivation. It may seem at first like complaining about a frustrating task ingratiates you to your Soldiers—you feel like you are acknowledging how frustrating their jobs can be and that you’re in the suck with them. However, by doing so, you are fostering a long-term culture of resentment and resistance to improvement. Leading means showing others how to do something, and attitude is an inextricable part of the how. Here are three ways to apply this specifically to the JO experience:
- The “First Out, Last In” Standard of Administration
As a junior leader, you can model excellence even in adversity by focusing on small, controllable actions. Doing so, you implicitly communicate to your team: “Yes, this is awful, and we are still effective professionals.” Enthusiasm matters even more for your solo tasks; your Soldiers expect you to put on an amped-up façade on range day or during PT. How you approach your own tasks tells them how serious you are about your responsibilities.
Seeing their PL or CO blowing off administrative duties makes Soldiers question the quality of that leader and the unit’s readiness, and an undisciplined example entices them to take their own duties less seriously. “Build[ing] cohesive team[s] through mutual trust” is a pillar of Mission Command (ADP 6-0).[4] Trust cannot be taught or instilled through pep-talks; it’s built when a Soldier looks through the freezing rain and sees their PL in the same mud, performing the same warrior tasks, with a “yes, and” attitude. You cannot preach resilience from under a dry poncho while your Soldiers are getting soaked.
- Radical Information Transparency
The “suck” is exacerbated by the unknown. Junior officers often fall into the trap of hoarding information because they are stressed or feel the plan is too “ugly” to share. Embrace the suck of a bad plan by being honest with your NCOs. “Yes, the FRAGO just changed our mission for the third time tonight, and we have exactly two hours to prep.” By collectively confronting the situation, you move from being a victim of the “Big Army” to a partner in solving the problem.
Sharing information with your Soldiers also engages them, enhancing both their learning and the mission’s overall success. Soldiers who stay behind in the ORP during every leader’s recon and only pull security will have a low personal investment in the mission. Work with your Platoon Sergeant to make it engaging for them. First, ensure that everyone, down to the rifleman level, has a basic understanding of your plan. Switch up which teams are responsible for POW collection, demo, etc., to ensure Soldiers get a well-rounded view of the composite tasks of the mission. Have your PSG run rehearsals for these tasks while you’re off on your recon.
These little changes add no extra time to the mission as a whole. Still, they keep your Soldiers focused on the big picture and recontextualize how seemingly tedious tasks contribute to overall success. When Soldiers understand not just the “what” and the “I,” but also the “why” and the “we” of a plan, their performance will reflect that understanding. [5]
- Deliberate Discomfort Training
Resilience is a muscle that undergoes hypertrophy when stressed. Research on Stress Inoculation Training (SIT) shows that incremental exposure to manageable stress reduces the “startle response” in high-stakes environments. By seeking out hardship, you can inoculate yourself against freezing up when it really matters. As leaders, JOs should bring a “work hard, play hard” approach. Counterintuitively, this means most of your leadership is accomplished outside of training.
By showing that you respect your subordinates’ personal time and recovery between training sessions, you can bank goodwill and energy to spend on training even harder. Knowing there’s an end in sight and there’s recognition for going the extra mile (literally or figuratively) incentivizes your subordinates to increase their discomfort threshold, preparing them for the day they exchange training stakes for real ones.
The Takeaway: Leverage the Advantage of Finitude
Hardship is merely the sum of consecutive hard moments. Taken at large, a 12-month deployment or a month-long NTC rotation feels insurmountable. But when you approach one moment at a time, you leverage the advantage of finitude.
Don’t ask yourself, “Can I make it through this 20-mile ruck?” Your mind is likely to say “No.” Instead, ask yourself, “Can I make it over this next hill?” Better yet, ask yourself: “Is there any point in not pushing? The less I try, the longer this will drag on. I’m only adding regret to the fatigue.” The harder moments you expose yourself to, the easier the next one will be.
Embracing the suck means acknowledging that nothing outside of you will make the situation better. It puts the onus on you to improve your environment through small, manageable changes. The crux is realizing that being passive drags you down and being proactive, especially when facing discomfort, gets you through. Become a shark and never stop moving. Choose your hill. Conquer it. Then find the next one.
Author Bio: 1LT Nate Mattera was a 70B medical administration officer and platoon leader. He currently attends medical school and plans to return to active service after graduation. LT Mattera holds a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy.
Photo: Courtesy of DVIDS. SPC Cole Moore. 15 February 2026. 11th Airborne Division.
[1] Easter, M. (2021). The comfort crisis: embrace discomfort to reclaim your wild, happy, healthy self. First edition. Rodale Books.
[2] Collins, J. (2001). Good to great. Random House Business Books.
[3] Gross JJ. (2002) Emotion regulation: affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology. 39(3):281-91. doi: 10.1017/s0048577201393198. PMID: 12212647.
[4] Department of the Army. (2025). Army Doctrine Publication 6-0, Mission Command. armypubs.army.mil.
[5] Stillman, P. E., Fujita, K., Sheldon, O., & Trope, Y. (2018). From “me” to “we”: The role of construal level in promoting maximized joint outcomes. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 147, 16–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2018.05.004
