Changing the World Starts with You

Sometimes I’m very thankful for the internet and social media because not only does it allow me and many others to have a platform, it can lead you to exactly what you needed without you even noticing. While browsing Instagram the other day, I stumbled upon a one minute video of retired Navy Admiral William H. McRaven's inspiring 2014 commencement speech, at the University of Texas and instantly knew I needed to hear the whole speech. McRaven delivered a 20 minute speech discussing 10 important life lessons he learned during Navy SEALs training. McRaven opens his speech by stating the University of Texas slogan “What starts here changes the world” and how if every student can change the lives of ten people and those people changed the lives of ten people, in five generations the graduating students of UT could change the world. He then gave two examples of his experience in Iraq and Afghanistan were an individual was able to change the lives of dozens by mere instinct, thought and decision. I thought those examples were an eye opener to the importance of your decisions and what you do in life. Sometimes things can seem small or unimportant but really it has much more weight than you could’ve imagined. But for those who haven’t seen the speech before or would just like a breakdown of some of the 10 points McRaven made, I have listed them down below.

If you want to change the world:

1.Start off by making your bed

         “ 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 encourage you to do another task.”

          “ The little things in life matter if you can’t do the little things right you will never do the big things right.”

2. Find someone to help you paddle

          “ 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 it take friends, colleagues, and the goodwill of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide them.”

3. Measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of the flippers

          “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.”

4. Get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward

          “ It seemed 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.”

          “ There was many students who couldn’t accept the fact that all their efforts were in vain and 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,  you were never going to have a perfect uniform.”

5. Don’t be afraid of the circuses

          “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 is posted on the 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.”

          “ 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 too your very core.”

6. Sometimes you have to slide down obstacles head first

          “A student decides to go down the slide for life head first … It was a dangerous move. Seemingly foolish … failure could mean injury and being dropped from the course. Without hesitation the student slid down the rope perilously fast. Instead of seven minutes it’s took half the time… He broke a record.”

7. Don’t back down from the sharks

          “ There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim you’ll have to deal with them.”

8. You must be your very best in the darkest moments

          “ As Navy SEALs one of our jobs is to conduct underwater attacks against enemy shipping … The steel structure of the ship blocks the moonlight, it blocks the surrounding street lamps, it blocks all ambient light.”           “Every SEAL knows … 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.”

9. Start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud

          “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.”

          “If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person…”

10. Don’t ever, ever ring the bell

          “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.”

         McRaven’s speech is a reminder to strive for better in an effort to make a difference. The world will never change if you always back down from challenges and always seek rewards for your triumphs. Life is unfair but it is up to you to decide whether you will wallow in that fact or start each day fighting to make a difference.