Admiral William McRaven recently delivered a commencement address to his alma mater, University of Texas. His advice was so well received that he expanded his speech into a best-selling book. Drawn largely from “a lifetime of lessons crammed into six months” of Navy SEAL basic training, McRaven offers some refreshing common sense to a complicated world where such wisdom is sorely lacking.  

When a  petty officer visits the Navy SEAL trainees’ barracks in the morning, he had better find his men standing at attention with boots and buttons polished, uniforms perfectly crisp without so much as a wrinkle, and a bed that is perfectly made. The instructor inspects the precision of the hospital folds at the corners and tautness of the tucks.

The consequence for failing to attend to these details was the “sugar cookie” treatment, where the slobs would be told to jump into the cold Pacific and then roll down a dune until completely covered in wet sand. Then they would proceed with the day’s drills and routines as usual. This provided strong incentive for paying painstaking attention to those details. Thus, the morning habit became firmly embedded in every SEAL, and usually stays with them throughout their lives.

Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003. The author visited Saddam on a daily basis to make sure that he received proper care. He couldn’t help but notice that Saddam never made his bed. Blankets were kicked aside each morning and left in a heap.

Whether you’re a soldier, civilian or prisoner of war, there are few guarantees. You don’t know what the day will hold. Much will be beyond your control, but you can begin it with an iota of peace and introduce a sense of order to a world that can be a nasty, chaotic place. If you want to see change in your life and the world, begin by making your bed. If your day starts with a win, it’s likely that more wins will follow.

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Part of basic training for Navy SEALs involves carrying a small rubber raft everywhere: from the barracks to the canteen and anywhere else in between. This encourages teamwork and camaraderie among recruits, as a raft is impossible to carry without the help of others. On days where a recruit is sick or unusually exhausted, his fellow SEALs take on the extra load or share their rations with the one who seemed to need it more that day. This encourages other-centeredness and a desire to reciprocate a good deed. This exercise (and many others) instills in each SEAL the lesson that training is impossible to complete without the help of others.

Can anyone accomplish anything significant without help at some point? Don’t forget the people who have come alongside you in moments when you’ve gotten knocked down. No one’s life is challenge-free. Just like the SEALs on the beach who needed each other to haul the boat, so each of us needs a good team if we hope to reach our destination in life.

It wasn’t hard to underestimate Tommy Norris. You could easily see a young, cocky recruit passing judgment on the five-foot-four man, writing him off as unfit to be a Navy SEAL. However, that recruit would be humbled to learn that Norris was actually a lieutenant and that he was the last SEAL to receive a Medal of Honor for bravery in Vietnam. During the war, Norris went behind enemy lines to save two downed soldiers. At another point, he survived a Viet Cong bullet to the face and was left for dead. Norris was eventually saved by a US petty officer. When he recovered from his injury, he became part of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team.

Tommy Norris was almost kicked out of basic training in the late 1960s—not because he was insubordinate, but because he was a skinny, puny kid and his officers didn’t think he’d make it. Norris showed tremendous grit and perseverance and proved them all wrong.

We need to be careful about writing people off. The size of the fight can far exceed the size of the man.

During SEAL training, recruits are ordered to make themselves a “sugar cookie” for failing to follow orders to an instructor’s satisfaction. After stumbling out of the ocean and coating yourself in sand, you have to go through the day’s grueling routine, but with grit scratching your skin with every twist and turn you make that day. While there were other more painful ordeals, this one was the most mentally taxing.

Instructors were not above doling out a capricious sentence. Lieutenant Moki Martin would make recruits roll through the sand dunes simply to remind them that life isn’t fair. The sooner they learned that, the better. Martin had the opportunity to practice what he preached when a brutal bicycle accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. He’s been in a wheelchair for over three decades now, and he’s never uttered a word of complaint. He has refused the refuge of self-pity.

Our heroes are not defined by their limitations, but by what they do despite those limitations. Moki Martin was a fearless leader and a phenomenal athlete, as comfortable in the water as on land. He was a triathlete before the triathlon had become a cultural phenomenon. He had a lot to lose, but he showed his substance when faced with loss.

When you are unjustly made a sugar cookie, don’t stop. Life will never be fair. Just keep going.

Stragglers who fail to keep the expected pace and finish drills in the allotted time frames end up in the Circus. The Circus is an additional two hours of extra runs, swims, and calisthenics after everyone else has finished for the day. So if you or your assigned partner doesn’t finish a two-mile swim fast enough, your day gets even longer. On top of that, you get the undivided attention of the instructor, who ridicules and pushes. The catch with the Circus is that once you’ve completed the extra drills, you are doubly exhausted and have less recovery time for the next day, which leaves you in an excellent position to fall behind the next day. It’s a vicious cycle that many people fail to escape.

For some, however, the punishment becomes the means of moving to the top of the class. Some emerge from the Circus faster and stronger than those who never had to endure it. In the case of the author and his teammate, in the final, most grueling swim of basic training, they were not only the first pair to complete the five-mile swim, but their competition was still miles behind—not even visible from the finish line!

Life’s difficulties can break you or make you. No one is inoculated against failure. When you make a mistake, there is a price to be paid, but if you learn from it, you will be ready for bigger challenges.

The most unnerving part of a four-mile night swim through the bone-chilling Pacific waters was not the low visibility, the currents, or the potentially disorienting darkness, but the knowledge that there was a  high concentration of great white sharks. Makos, hammerheads, and leopard sharks also inhabit the waters of San Clemente, California, but that didn’t make the SEAL trainees nervous. The thought of modern-day dinosaurs capable of tearing a human in two likely swimming nearby was unsettling, but to stay behind was tantamount to quitting. The goal of becoming a Navy SEAL is such a strong desire that the recruits dive in anyway. A high ideal can override any fear.

Courage is a vital quality. It enables you to blaze your own trail instead of depending on others to choose a path for you. It fortifies you when you’re tempted to take the low road. A culture will not flourish without courage. A timid, silent people will end up at the mercy of despots.

Within a day of Saddam Hussein’s capture, the new Iraqi leaders entered his cell with shouts and denouncements. The Butcher of Baghdad was now in handcuffs and a bright orange jumpsuit, but a malicious and condescending smile spread across his face. The yelling subsided as the despot invited his guests to be seated in the nearby folding chairs. There was an air of smug serenity about Saddam, as if he were meeting with minions in his palace. As the dictator began to speak, the author could see apprehension growing in the eyes of the new leaders. They feared that Saddam was still capable of terrible things. Clearly he retained a power over them.

For the next month, the author gave orders that Saddam was to have no more visitors. Every morning, Saddam would stand up to greet the admiral, and the admiral would tell Saddam to stay on his cot. This communicated that there was nothing he could do or say that people would want to hear. A year later, the people of Iraq had him hanged for vicious crimes. They held him responsible for the thousands of slaughtered Shias and Kurds.  

Whether national despots or punks on the playground, bullies flourish when people capitulate to their demands and cave to their intimidation. Bullies smell fear like sharks smell blood. Stand up to life’s sharks. Don’t show them weakness or they will strike.

In the six months of the most brutal military training program, Hell Week is the worst of the worst. Six days in the Tijuana mudflats between San Diego and Mexico means long runs trudging through pits of mud, strenuous swims, and enduring an especially-barbed barrage of taunts aimed at breaking the will. More recruits quit during Hell Week than any other part of the training.

Halfway through Hell Week, an instructor approached the cold, demoralized, clay-encrusted recruits with an oddly conciliatory smile and an offer of hot coffee, soup, and a fire—on the condition that five men quit. One began to make his way towards the instructor, which typically signals that four more will follow shortly. As he got up, someone nearby began singing a familiar song. His voice was cracked and raspy, but everyone else joined in. The instructor shouted for the men to stop singing, but they only sang louder. The man who’d gotten up rejoined the rest of the recruits and took up their song. The instructor allowed himself a faint smile, silently pleased at the display of fortitude and solidarity.

We all have moments when we’re up to our necks in mud and a word of hope is desperately needed. Say that word, sing that song, and others will join you. People are looking for a reason to carry on, and hope gives them that reason.

Whatever you do, don’t give up. The path of least resistance is actually the harder road, and it fills its travelers with regret. The first day of training, the instructor told his men that he would make life hell for the new “tadpoles.” Only a handful makes it through the training, and those who quit will regret it the rest of their lives.