Navy Seal William McRaven: If You Want To Change The World, Make Your Bed!

if you want to change the world start off by making your bed if you made your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day it will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another and by the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into mini task completed making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter if you can't do the little things right you'll never be able to do the

big things right and if by chance you have a miserable day you will come home to a bed that is made that you made and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better to pass SEAL training there a series of long swims that must be completed one is the night swim before the swim the instructors joyfully brief the students on all the species of sharks that inhabit the waters off San Clemente they assure you however that no student has ever been eaten by a shark at least not that they can remember but

you are also taught that if a shark begins to circle your position stand your ground do not swim away do not act afraid and if the shark hungry for a midnight snack darts towards you then summons up all your strength and punch him in the snout and he will turn and swim away there are a lot of sharks in the world if you hope to complete the swim you will have to deal with them so if you want to change the world don't back down from the Sharks over a few weeks of difficult training my

seal class which started with a hundred fifty men was down to just 42 there are now six boat crews of seven men each I was in the boat with the tall guys but the best boat crew we had was made up of little guys the Munchkin crew we called him no one was over five foot five the Munchkin boat crew had one American Indian one African American one polish American one Greek American one Italian American and two tough kids from the Midwest they out paddled out ran and out swam all the other boat crews the

big men and the other boat crews will always make good-natured fun of the tiny little flippers the munchkins put on their tiny little feet prior to every swim but somehow these little guys from every corner of the nation in the world always have the last laugh sewing faster than everyone and reaching the shore long before the rest of us SEAL training was a great equalizer nothing mattered but your will to succeed not your color and not your ethnic background not your education not your social status if you want to change the world measure a person

by the size of their heart not by the size of their flippers ix weight training is referred to as Hellwig it is six days of no sleep constant physical and mental harassment and one special day at the mud flats the mud flats are an area between San Diego and Tijuana where the rough water runs off and creates the Tijuana sloughs a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you it is on Wednesday of hell week but to paddle down in the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive this freezing

cold the howling wind and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors as the Sun began to set that Wednesday evening my training class having committed some egregious infraction of the rules was ordered into the mud the mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads the instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit only five minutes just five men and we could get out of the oppressive cold looking around the mud flat it was apparent that some students were about to give up it was still

over eight hours till the Sun came up eight more hours of bone-chilling cold a chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud it was hard to hear anything and then one voice began to echo through the night one voice raised in song the song was terribly out of ten but sung with great enthusiasm one voice became two and two became three and before long everyone in the class was singing the instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singing but the singing persisted and somehow the mud

seemed a little warmer and the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so far away if I have learned anything in my time traveling the world it is the power of hope the power of one person the Washington a Lincoln King Mandela and even a young girl from Pakistan Malala one person can change the world by giving people hope so if you want to change the world start each day with a task completed find someone to help you through life respect everyone know the life is not fair that you will fail often but if

you take some risks step up on the time through the toughest faced down the bullies lift up the downtrodden and never ever give up if you do these things the next generation and the generations that follow will a world far better than the one we have today and what started here will indeed have changed the world for the better