I read this today. It was the commencement speech given by Naval Admiral William H. McRaven at the UT graduation in May 2014. Here is an exerpt from it. Look over it; it's such a worthwhile read. It says so much of what I want for you two:
I have been a Navy SEAL for 36 years. But it all began when
I left UT 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 harassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to
find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy
SEAL.
But, the training also seeks to find those students who can lead
in an environment of constant stress, chaos, failure and hardships. To me
basic SEAL training was a lifetime of challenges crammed into six months.
So, here are the 10 lessons I learned from basic SEAL training
that hopefully will be of value to you as you move forward in life.
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
— 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 by making your bed.
During SEAL training the students
are 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 tossed 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 good will of strangers and a
strong coxswain to guide them.
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
35. 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 of the
little guys — the munchkin crew we called them — no one was over about
five-foot-five. The munchkin boat crew had one American Indian, one African
American, one Polish American, one Greek American, one Italian American, and
two tough kids from the Midwest. They out-paddled, out-ran and
out-swam all the other boat crews. The big men in 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 and the world,
always had the last laugh — swimming faster than everyone and reaching the
shore long before the rest of us. SEAL training was a great
equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color,
not your ethnic background, not your education and not 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.
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 and 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 the uniform inspection, the student had to run, fully clothed into
the surf zone and 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 that 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 effort was in vain. That no matter how hard they tried
to get the uniform right, it was 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. You were never going to have
a perfect uniform. 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
mettle. Every event had standards — times you had to meet. If you failed
to meet 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, built 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 high wall, a 30-foot cargo net and 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 training 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 training. 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 obstacle 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 brief the trainees 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 recently. 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 summon 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 basic training. The ship attack mission is
where a pair of SEAL divers is 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 their 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, which is
tied to a pier, 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 centerline 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 it is easy to get
disoriented and fail. Every SEAL knows that under the keel, at the darkest
moment of the mission, is the time when you must be calm, composed — when all
your tactical skills, your physical power and all your inner strength must be
brought to bear.
If you want to change the world, you
must be your very best in the darkest moment.
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 area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and
creates the Tijuana slues, a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.
It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend
the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold mud, 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 till there was nothing visible but our
heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men
would quit — just five men — and we could get out of the oppressive
cold. Looking around the mud flat 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. The chattering teeth and 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. We
knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well. 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, 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 — Washington, 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 in mud.
Finally, in SEAL training there is 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 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 do 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. Just ring the bell.
If you want to change the world
don't ever, ever ring the bell.
...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 take you take
some risks, step up when the times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up
the downtrodden and never, ever give up — if you do these things, then the next
generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than
the one we have today. And what started here will indeed have changed the world
— for the better.
Babies, you have no idea the amount of hope I have for you two.
I am amazed every single day by you two and I can't believe that you two are
mine. I am immensely proud to be your mother and I am so honored to be the one
that is (hopefully) shaping and guiding you down the path for success. I've
said (and will continue to) this many times before, but I can't wait to see
where life leads you. Know that I will always be an arm's length away. Just
reach out...I'll be there.
Love you. Forever.
