Motivation Daily by Motiversity - NAVY SEAL MINDSET #2

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

US Navy Admiral William H. McRaven, one of the most decorated US commanders, delivers one of the best motivational speeches you will ever hear. “Life is a struggle and the potential for failure is ever present, but those who live in fear of failure, or hardship, or embarrassment will never achieve their potential. Without pushing your limits, without occasionally sliding down the rope headfirst, without daring greatly, you will never know what is truly possible in your life.” ― William H. McRavenMusic by Really Slow Motion (https://bit.ly/RSMMusic). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The link is in the description. What starts here changes the world. I have a few suggestions that may help you on your way to a better world. And while these lessons were learned during my time in the military, I can assure you that it matters not whether you ever served a day in uniform. It matters not your gender, your ethnic or religious background, your orientation or your social status. Our struggles in this world are similar,

and the lessons to overcome those struggles and to move forward, changing ourselves and changing the world around us will apply equally to all. So here are the 10 lessons I learned from basic shield training that hopefully will be of value to you as you move forward in life. Every morning in seal training,

my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room, And the first thing they'd do is inspect my bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers would be pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard, and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack. 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 we 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. And 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 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.

So if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. During seal training the students, during training, the students, during training, training the students are all broken down into boat crews. Each crew is seven students, three on each side of a small rubber boat, and one coxin to help guide the dinging. Every day your boat crew forms up on the beach and is instructed to get through the surf zone and paddle several miles down the coast. In the winter, the surf off San Diego can get to be eight to ten feet high, and it is exceedingly difficult to paddle through the plunging surf unless everyone digs in. Every paddle must be synchronized to the strove to the strove to the strove to the stroke

counter the coxswain. Everyone must exert equal effort or the boat will turn against the wave and be unceremoniously dumped back on the beach. For the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle. You can't change the world alone. You will need some help. And to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the goodwill of strangers, and a strong coxon to guide you. If you want to change the world, find someone to help you. paddle. Over a few weeks of difficult training, my seal class which started with 150 men, was down to just 42. There were 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 with the little guys, the Munchkin crew,

we called them. No one was over 5'5 foot five. The Munchkin boat crew had one American, one African American, one Polish American, one Greek American, one Italian American, and two tough kids from the Midwest. They out paddled, outran, and out swam all the other boat crews. The big men and the other boat crews would 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 had the last laugh, swimming faster than everyone in reaching the shore long before the rest of us. Steel training was a great equalizer.

Nothing mattered but your will to succeed, not your color, 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. Several times a week, the instructors would line up the class and do a uniform. inspection. It was exceptionally thorough. Your hat had to be perfectly starched, your uniform immaculately pressed, your belt buckle shiny and void of any smudges. But it seemed that no matter how much effort you put into starching your hat or pressing your uniform or polishing your belt buckle, it just

wasn't good enough. The instructors would find something wrong. For failing in uniform inspection, the student had to run, fully clothed, into the surf zone, then wet from head to toe, roll around on the beach until every part of your body was covered with sand. The effect was known as a sugar cookie. You stayed in the uniform the rest of the day, cold, wet, and sandy. There were many a student who just couldn't accept the fact that all their efforts were in vain, that no matter how hard they tried to get the uniform right,

it went unappreciated. Those students didn't make it through training. Those students didn't understand the purpose of the drill. You were never going to succeed. going to succeed. You were never going to have a perfect uniform. The instructors weren't going to allow it. Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform, you still end up as a sugar cookie. It's just the way life is sometimes. If you want to change the world, get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward. Every day during training, you were challenged with

multiple physical events, long runs, long swims, obstacle courses, hours of calisthenics, something designed to test your medal. Every event had standards, times you had to meet. If you failed to meet those times, those standards, your name was posted on a list, and at the end of the day, those on the list were invited to a circus. A circus was two hours of additional calisthenics,

designed to wear you down, to break your spirit, to force you to quit. No one wanted a circus. A circus meant that for that day, you didn't measure up. A circus meant more fatigue, and more fatigue, meant that the following day would be more difficult and more circuses were likely. But at some time during seal training, everyone, everyone made the circus list. But an interesting thing happened to those who were constantly on the list.

Over time, those students, who did two hours of extra calisthenics, got stronger and stronger. The pain of the circuses built inner strength and physical resiliency. Life is filled with circuses. You will fail. You will likely fail often. It will be painful. It will be discouraging. At times, it will test you to your very core.

But if you want to change the world, don't be afraid of the circuses. At least twice a week, the trainees were required to run the obstacle course. The obstacle course contained 25 obstacles, including a 10-foot wall, a 30-foot cargo net, a barbed wire crawl to name a few. But the most challenging obstacle was the slide for life. It had a three-level 30-foot tower at one end and a one-level tower at the other. In-between was a 200-foot-long rope.

You had to climb the three-tiered tower, and once at the top, you grabbed the rope, swung underneath the rope, and pulled yourself hand over hand until you got to the other end. The record for the obstacle course had stood for years when my class began in 1977. The record seemed unbeatable until one day a student decided to go down the slide for life head first.

Instead of swinging his body underneath the rope and inching his way down, he bravely mounted the top of the rope and thrust himself forward. It was a dangerous move, seemingly foolish and fraught with risk. Failure could mean injury and being dropped from the course. Without hesitation, the student slid down the rope perilously fast. instead of several minutes it only took him half that time. And by the end of the course, he had broken the record. If you want to change the world, sometimes you have to slide down the obstacles head first. During the land warfare phase of training, the students are flown out to San Clemente Island,

which lies off the coast of San Diego. The waters off San Clemente are a breeding ground for the great white sharks. To pass seal training, there are a series of long swims that must be completed. One is the night swim. Before the swim, the instructors joyfully briefed 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. As Navy SEALs, one of our jobs is to conduct underwater attacks against enemy shipping. We practiced this technique extensively during training.

The ship attack mission is where a pair of sealed divers has dropped off outside an enemy harbor and then swims well over two miles underwater using nothing but a depth gauge and a compass to get to the target. During the entire swim, even well below the surface, there is some light that comes through. It is comforting to know that there is open water above you. But as you approach the ship,

ship, which is tied to appear, the light begins to fade. The steel structure of the ship blocks the moonlight. It blocks the surrounding street lamps. It blocks all ambient light. To be successful in your mission, you have to swim under the ship and find the keel, the center line and the deepest part of the ship. This is your objective. But the keel is also the darkest part of the ship, where you cannot see your hand in front

of your face, where the noise from the ship's machinery is deafening, and where the it gets to be easily disoriented and you can fail. Every seal knows that under the keel at that darkest moment of the mission is a time when you need to be calm, when you must be calm, when you must be composed, when all your tactical skills, your physical power and your inner strength must be brought to bear. If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moments. The ninth week of training is referred to as Hell Week. 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 water runs off and creates the Tijuana sloos, a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you. It is on Wednesday of Hell Week, let you paddle down to 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 until there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud

if only five men would quit. Only five men, just five men, and we could get out of the oppressive cold. Looking around the mudflat, 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 the 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 tune, 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, a 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 singing when you're up to your neck and mud. Finally, in seal training there's a bell, a brass bell that hangs in the center of the compound for all the students to see. All you have to do to quit, all you have to do to quit is ring the bell.

Ring the bell and you no longer have to wake up at 5 o'clock. Ring the bell and you no longer have to be in the freezing cold swims. Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the runs, the obstacle course, the PT, and you no longer have to endure the hardships of training. All you have to do is ring the bell to get out. If you want to change the world, don't ever. ever ring the bell. It will not be easy.

Start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone. Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often. But if you take some risks, step up when the times are the toughest, face 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 live in a world far better than the one.

far better than the one we have today. And what started here will indeed have changed the world for the better. Thank you very much.