Most of us think some period of seven days a week, 10-12 hours a day of work is hard. It isn’t. Our deployed soldiers pretty much ALWAYS work 7 days a week, and at a rock bottom minimum 10 hours a day. When on longer patrols, they go out 48 hours straight at a time. The guys I talked with last night said they only got about 5 hours of sleep on average for the year they were there, and keep in mind their days not infrequently included getting shot at, and witnessing and inflicting death.
A Seabee I talked with said they worked 12 on/12 off for his year there (7 days a week, of course) and got rocketed nearly every afternoon. Since it was always just after the late afternoon mosque meeting got out, it was predictable, so not really dangerous (they of course had bunkers/shelters), but that the concussion rockets in particular still shocked your system. No doubt no few of them literally crapped their pants, which is not at all a sign of anything but an organic reaction to severe stress.
Our men and women are professionals. Of course there are all sorts of gripes and genuinely bad decisions, but the rank and file still warrants our admiration.
As I see it, there is likely no more sure means of learning to conquer self pity than service in the military. We know so little of how hard they work because they don’t bitch about it. They bitch about overall strategy, specific individuals, the rules of engagement (if fired on, they can only fire back if someone gets hit), but never in my experience the hours of work, which are staggering by civilian standards.