Insights from 'Make Your Bed' by William H. McRaven
Make Your Bed is a book by Admiral William H. McRaven. Here are my notes from the book, but I highly recommend reading it yourself. It focuses on how simple things can change a life and the importance of consistency.
1. Start Your Day with a Task Completed
Every morning in basic SEAL training, instructors would show up in the barracks room, and the first inspection was of your bed. If you did it right—corners squared, covers pulled tight, pillow centered, and extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack—it was perfect. It was a simple task, mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection.
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.
2. You Can’t Go it Alone
During SEAL training, students are broken down into boat crews. Each crew has seven students: three on each side of a small rubber boat and one coxswain to guide the dinghy. Every day, your boat crew works to get through the surf zone and paddle several miles down the coast.
In the winter, the surf off San Diego can be eight to ten feet high, and it is exceedingly difficult to paddle through 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.
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 them.
If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.
3. Only the Size of Your Heart Matters
(Notes on measuring a person by the size of their heart, not their flippers).
4. Life’s Not Fair: Drive On!
Several times a week, the instructor would line up the class for a uniform inspection. It was exceptionally thorough. Hats had to be perfectly starched, uniforms immaculately pressed, and belt buckles shiny. But it seemed, no matter how much effort you put into it, it just wasn’t good enough. The instructor would find “something wrong.”
For failing the inspection, the student had to run fully clothed into the surf zone and roll around on the beach until every part of their body was covered with sand. The effect was known as a “Sugar Cookie.” You had to stay in that uniform all day.
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 make a difference, get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.
5. Failure Can Make You Stronger
During training, trainees were challenged with multiple physical events: long runs, long swims, obstacle courses. Every event had standards. If you failed to meet them, your name was posted on a list. 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 more fatigue, and more fatigue meant the following day would be more difficult—and more circuses were likely.
But an interesting thing happened. Over time, those students who were constantly doing the extra two hours of 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.
If you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the Circuses.
6. You Must Dare Greatly
(Notes on taking risks and overcoming anxiety).
7. Stand Up to the Bullies
To pass SEAL training, there are a series of long swims. One is the night swim. Before the swim, the instructors joyfully brief the trainees on all the species of sharks that inhabit the waters aimed to scare them.
But you are 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 toward you—then summon up all your strength and punch him in the snout.
There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim you will have to deal with them.
If you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks.
8. Rise to the Occasion
One of the jobs of Navy SEALs is to conduct underwater attacks. A pair of divers is dropped off outside an enemy harbor and swims over two miles underwater to their target.
As you approach the ship, which is tied to a pier, the light begins to fade. The steel structure blocks the moonlight. To be successful, you have to swim under the ship and find the keel—the darkest part of the ship.
Every SEAL knows that under the keel, at the darkest moment of the mission, is the time when you must be calm and composed.
If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moment.
9. Give People Hope
(Notes on the power of one person singing in the mud).
10. Never, Ever Quit!
Finally, in SEAL training there hangs a brass bell in the center of the compound for all the students to see. To quit, all you have to do is ring the bell. Ring the bell and you no longer have to wake up at five o’clock. Ring the bell and you no longer have to endure the hardship.
If you want to change the world, don’t ever, ever ring the bell.
