If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a little sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. And at the end of the day, that one completed task will turn into multiple completed tasks.
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 you happen to have a bad day, you'll come home and your bed will be made.
But you did it! And a made bed gives you the courage to believe that tomorrow will be better. And if you want to change the world, start by making your bed!
Over the course of a few weeks of training, my SEAL class started out with 150 men. It dropped to 42. There were now 6 boat crews of seven men each.
I was on the boat with the tall guys, but the best boat crew we had were the little ones. The runt crew, we called them, not one of them was over 5'10". The runt crew had: an Indian-American; one African-American, one Polish-American; a Greek-American; an Italian-American, and two tough boys from the Midwest.
They rowed, ran, and swam more than all the other crews. The big men on the other boat crews were always cracking jokes. Of the small fins of the dwarfs when they were going to put them on their feet before each dive.
But somehow these runts, from all over the world, always had the last laugh. They swam faster than anyone else and reached the shores long before the rest of us. SEAL training was a great equalizer.
Nothing mattered to be successful. Not your color, your ethnic origin, your education or your social status. If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers!
Every day during training you are challenged in various events: Long runs, dives, obstacle courses, hours of exercises, something to test your competence. Each event has standards and times to meet. If you fail to meet these times, your pattern and your name is published on a list.
And at the end of the day, those on the list are invited to a "circus". Circus is 2 hours of additional exercises. Designed to let you down, to break your spirit, to force you to give up.
Nobody wants the "circus". A circus means that for that day you were no good. The circus means more fatigue and more fatigue means the next day will be harder and harder means more circus.
But at some point during SEAL training, everyone did the "circus" thing. But an interesting thing happened to those who were consistently on the list. Over time those students who did 2 extra hours in the circus got stronger and stronger.
The pain of the "circus" built inner strength and physical resilience. Life is full of "circuses". You will fail.
You will likely fail many times. It will be painful. It will be disheartening.
Sometimes it will test your essence. But if you want to change the world, don't be afraid of circuses! To pass SEAL training, there are a series of long dives that must be completed.
one of them is night diving. Before the dive, the instructors need to inform all the species of sharks that inhabit the waters of San Clemente. They claim 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 starts circling your position stay firmly in place. Don't swim too far. Don't act scared.
And if the shark is hungry for a late-night snack, and it comes toward you, then smack it with all your might on its snout and it will turn and walk away. There are many sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the dive you will have to deal with them.
So if you want to change the world, don't run away from sharks! If you want to change the world, you must be your best in your darkest hour! The 9th week of training is known as "Hell Week" It's six days without sleep, with constant physical and mental exhaustion.
A special day out for the mud marshes is the area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water rushes in and creates the mud. A land where the mud will swallow you. It's the Wednesday of "Hell Week" that you'll be paddling for the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold, the howling wind and the relentless pressure to quit from the instructors.
As the sun begins to set on Wednesday night My training class has committed some "flagrant infraction of the rules" and has been ordered to go full in the mud. Mud swallowed each man until there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us that we could get out of the mud if only 5 men quit, just 5 men and we could get out of that bitter cold.
it was clear that some students were on the verge of dropping out. There were still 8 more hours until the sun came up, 8 more hours of freezing cold. The teeth chattering along with the students' moans were so loud that it was hard to hear anything.
And then a voice began to echo through the night. A voice began to sing. The song was totally out of tune, but it was sung with great enthusiasm.
One voice became 2 and 2 became 3 and before long everyone in the class was singing. The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we continued chanting, but the chanting persisted. And somehow the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little softer, and dawn not so far away.
If I've learned anything from my time traveling the world, it's the power of hope. The power of a single person. One person can change the world by giving people hope.
So if you want to change the world, start singing when you're up to your neck in mud! Start each day with a completed task. Find someone to help you in life.
Respect everyone. Know that life is not fair and that you will fail many times. But if you take some risks, rise up when times get tougher, stand up to the strongest, lift up the downtrodden, and never, ever give up.
If You Do These Things The next generation and generations after will live in a much better world than the one we have today. And what started here will truly have changed the world for the better.