Carolina QuotesOver the past three years, I have been stopped on the street by great folks telling me their own stories: How they didn't back down from the sharks, how they didn't ring the bell, or how making their bed every morning helped them through tough times. They all wanted to know more about how the ten lessons shaped my life and about the people who inspired me during my career. This small book is an attempt to do so. Each chapter gives a little more context to the individual lessons and also adds a short story about some of the people who inspired me with their discipline, their perseverance, their honor, and their courage.
William H. McRaven Carolinian
Source
p. ix-x
- work
- Make Your Bed (2017)
- year
- 2017
Cite this record
“Over the past three years, I have been stopped on the street…” William H. McRaven. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-EAE7914037. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/eae7914037
More from William H. McRaven
During Navy Seal 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 coxswain to help guide the dingy. 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 8 to 10 feet high and it is exceedingly difficult to paddle through the plunging surf unless everyone digs in. Every paddle must be synchronized to the stroke count of 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 coxswain to guide you. If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.
Before you can master any of the other axioms of wisdom, you must first strive to be men and women of honor and integrity. That is what sets the great leaders above the commonplace. It will not be easy. It never is. But it is also not complicated.
The Rangers have a Latin saying, Sua Sponte. It means, Of Your Own Accord. In other words, doing what needs to be done, without being told to do so. There is often the misguided belief that soldiers only follow orders, but the strength of the American military is that the great soldiers, the truly great leaders, do what is right without being told. They do what is right to protect their men and women. They do what is right to uphold the reputation of their unit. They do what is right to bring honor to their country. They do what needs to be done, whether ordered to do so or not. This sense of initiative separates the great leaders from the mediocre ones. No one ordered Ralph Puckett to run with reckless abandon into the open field, but someone had to do it.