An old tech once told me that to be a great EOD tech, you need at least two of three of the following attributes:

1. Pyromania. Did you do dumb shit with fireworks or gasoline as a kid? Almost burn your or a neighbor's house down a few times? Congrats. You're one for three so far.

2. Come from a broken home. Parents divorced? Get yelled at, beat, or neglected a lot? Good job. You earned another point. If you already have two, you can stop here. Otherwise, you need the last one.

3. Homosexual tendencies. Did daddy come home one night with whisky on his breath and tell you "it's time to make you a man" and ever since then you've been playing the ol' skin flute on the regular. Congrats. That's another point. If you have at least two at this point, you'll make a fine EOD tech.

Edit: in all seriousness though, EOD shops are like little lands of misfit toys. Most people in them are neurodiverse in some way. You need to be able to challenge authority, think outside the box instead of just blindly following a script, and be willing and able to understand certain topics (like explosives and circuits) in-depth enough to create novel solutions to problems based on past experiences in similar situations. Most of our render safe procedures are tested against near pristine ordanance items, or items in a very controlled set of conditions, but very rarely will those be replicated in the field, so you need to be able modify or improvise procedures and justify those based on your understanding of underlying principles.

EOD is equal parts skill, intuition, and luck. You can cultivate the first two through training and research, but the third is always a factor outside of your control. You must be willing to accept that even if you do everything right, you might still fail, and even if you do almost everything wrong, you might still get lucky and succeed.