Make Your Bed

Admiral William H. McRaven delivered a commencement address to the graduates of The University of Texas at Austin on May 17, 2014. It's been almost 37 years to the day that he graduated from University of Texas. The University's slogan is, “What starts here changes the world.” 

Admiral William H. McRaven in his address said

  “ If You Want To Change The World, Start Off By Making Your Bed”. …

I have been a Navy SEAL for 36 years. But it all began when I left University of Texas for Basic SEAL training in Coronado, California. Basic SEAL training is six months of long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet and miserable. It is six months of being constantly harrassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL.

Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack—rack—that’s Navy talk for bed.

It was a simple task—mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle hardened SEALs—but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make 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. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.

If you can’t do the little things right, you will never 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.

If you want to change the world … start off your day by making your bed ,i.e start each day with a task completed..

Source: “Make Your Bed” by Admiral William H. McRaven

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Extreme Ownership

Own everything in your world, and blame no one else....

Sent to the most violent battlefield in Iraq, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit faced a seemingly impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city deemed “all but lost.” In gripping firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, they learned that leadership—at every level—is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails. Task Unit Bruiser became the most highly-decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War.

Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations.

If there is anybody to learn leadership principles from, it would be these gentlemen.

 “For all the definitions, descriptions, and characterizations of leaders, there are only two that matter: effective and ineffective. Effective leaders lead successful teams that accomplish their mission and win. Ineffective leaders do not. And the only way to  become effective is to take…Extreme Ownership ”

The basic idea is that leaders are responsible for every thing that is in or somehow impacts their world. It’s easy to assign blame to outside circumstances or other people (subordinates, superiors, peers), but Extreme Ownership removes those excuses.

Source : “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win ” by Jocko Willink

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