The Art of Manliness - #307： Make Your Bed, Change the World

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast well a few years

00:00:19.420 ago a commencement speech was given at the university of texas by a former navy seal and

00:00:23.760 navy admiral that went viral the message of that speech make your bed and you can change the world

00:00:29.380 well my guest today is the man who gave that speech and he's recently published a book where

00:00:32.440 he expands on the ideas he told ut's college students back in 2014 his name is admiral william

00:00:37.260 mcraven and his book is make your bed little things that can change your life and maybe the

00:00:41.760 world today on the show admiral mcraven and i discuss why something as simple as making your

00:00:45.380 bed every day can lay the foundation for success in every aspect of your life how a parachuting

00:00:49.140 accident taught him an important lesson in avoiding self-pity and learning how to rely on others for

00:00:53.060 help and why rolling in the sand as a seal trainee taught him how to become more resilient to the

00:00:56.840 whims of life we in our conversation talking about how a leader can remain hopeful and share that

00:01:00.520 hope with his team when all seems hopeless and what do you have to do to avoid ringing the bell

00:01:04.920 this podcast will be fired up to make your bed and become a better man after the show is over check

00:01:09.060 out the show notes at aom.is make your bed

00:01:12.040 admiral mcraven welcome to the show thanks good to be here a couple years ago you gave a

00:01:28.640 commencement speech at the university of texas i'm an ou fan so i don't know how we're gonna do

00:01:32.920 this here but um we'll do just fine we'll do fine we'll take it out of the red river rivalry right

00:01:38.040 right well uh this commencement speech you gave went viral and then you've just come out of the

00:01:42.600 book where you expand on this commencement speech you gave and in the commencement speech the thing

00:01:46.120 that stuck home with a lot of people was this idea of making your bed can change the world how so how

00:01:52.840 can making your bed and paying attention to the small details change the world yeah you know it's

00:01:57.080 interesting i think probably most of our parents raised us to kind of make our bed and and and mine were

00:02:03.000 no no different my mother was a teacher from texas and my father was a military officer and growing

00:02:08.360 up you know they always told me you know when i got up make your bed but i'm not sure i really

00:02:12.520 understood why that was important when i went to seal training you know here we were you know we'd come

00:02:17.800 to seal training to become a kind of battle-hardened seals and in fact the first thing we did every

00:02:23.320 single day was we had a uniform inspection and we had a bed inspection and and it became clear as i

00:02:30.280 went through training and frankly as i went through the rest of my military career why that was

00:02:34.040 important and the point was one it is the first task you do of the day and if you do it well it

00:02:40.360 encourages you to do other tasks and other tasks and other tasks and so it kind of starts your day off

00:02:45.240 right but the other part of this is you know little things matter so for the seal instructors you know

00:02:51.960 you were given you know very specific guidelines on how to make your bed you know you had to have

00:02:57.880 hospital corners at a 45 degree angle your your pillow had to be you know positioned right at the

00:03:04.040 the base of the headboard and right in the middle the blanket had to be folded correctly

00:03:08.200 and and they wanted to make sure that you did it to exacting standards and their point was look if

00:03:13.240 if you can't even make your bed right how are you ever going to run a seal mission so in addition to

00:03:19.160 it being the first task of the day the fact of the matter was the little things in life matter

00:03:22.760 do the little things well and you'll end up doing the big things well equally equally well and another

00:03:27.000 point you made is that you're not going to get praise for these things it's just something you

00:03:30.120 have to do no one's going to slap you on the back for making your bed or doing these small tasks

00:03:34.040 right well you know part of skill training also was you know learning how to fail but but you're

00:03:38.600 right you know routinely you would do something that was exceptional your uniform would look great

00:03:43.400 you know your brass was great your shoes were polished you had excelled but the instructors didn't

00:03:48.520 really care because hey that's the standard you want to be great this is what the expectation

00:03:52.520 is don't expect somebody's going to come around and and give you a participation trophy or a pat on the

00:03:56.840 the back do your job and do it to the very best that you can so in one section you talk about a

00:04:02.200 parachuting accident you had can you tell us a bit about that and how you overcame that setback yeah

00:04:06.840 this was in 2001 we were going out for a routine training jump free fall jump and a beautiful california

00:04:14.840 day in san diego we were we were jumping from 12 999 feet right below 13 000 and and normally on a jump

00:04:23.240 like that you jump out about 5 000 feet you you look around you you wave off as we say to make

00:04:28.360 sure the people around you know you're going to pull and you pull your ripcord well in that particular

00:04:32.520 day i i jumped out and everything was going fine and as i got to about 5 500 feet i looked below me and

00:04:38.920 there was a jumper had slid below me so he was a couple hundred feet below me and i realized that

00:04:45.080 i needed to move out of his way but i didn't move out fast enough he opened his parachute and in

00:04:49.800 relative terms of course he was coming up while i was going down so i hit his parachute as he was

00:04:55.320 moving upward in relative motion i spun around kind of knocked me you know a little bit i don't say

00:05:01.240 completely knocked me out but it it dazed me i didn't know where i was in in terms of distance

00:05:06.920 to the ground so i pulled my parachute and when i pulled the ripcord the pilot chute wrapped around

00:05:11.720 one leg and a riser around the other and and i i was falling and my parachute had not opened so as

00:05:18.200 i'm falling kind of head first to the ground tangled up in the parachute the good news was

00:05:22.120 the parachute opened now the bad news was when it opened it was wrapped around my legs and it

00:05:27.240 basically just broke my body in half one leg going one way one leg going the other and so broke my

00:05:33.560 pelvis ripped the muscles out of my stomach broke part of my back but the the point in the book was

00:05:40.360 that you know i i had to recuperate i had to recover and as tough as i was and i was in command of

00:05:46.280 all the seals on the west coast at the time and i'd had a lot of uh incidents in my life that were

00:05:51.160 kind of near life threatening but i'd always managed to get out of them but but not this time and so as

00:05:55.880 i kind of lay in my hospital bed it took a lot of people to kind of get me up out of that bed to save

00:06:01.400 my career i mean my wife ended up doing uh nursing duties uh my boss emerald eric olson helped me in my

00:06:08.920 career friends came by and and you know you realize at that point in time that i don't care how tough you

00:06:13.720 are you know you need other people to help you make it through life and so that was a little bit

00:06:18.680 of the moral of that story but i will also tell you that you know my accident pales in comparison to

00:06:25.240 the injuries and the wounds that i saw in combat in iraq and afghanistan and other places i mean these

00:06:30.440 young men women today the the wounds that they suffer from ieds and from gunshot wounds you know put

00:06:36.280 it all in perspective but but even those folks you know when that happens we all need a little bit of

00:06:40.760 help making it making it through life well i'm sure was that hard for you you know i'm sure it's

00:06:44.600 hard for a lot of soldiers who are very self-reliant and want to pull their weight was that hard for you

00:06:49.640 to take help yeah it was again i had been as you point out self-reliant for my whole life and my

00:06:55.480 whole career and then all of a sudden you know i can't even walk i mean i need somebody to get me out

00:07:00.520 of bed i need somebody to change my bedpan i need you know physical therapists to come by my career

00:07:06.360 look like it was over i needed somebody to kind of get my career back on track so all of a sudden you

00:07:11.320 realize that there are a whole lot of people out there at the end of the day that you are probably

00:07:14.840 relying on whether you know it or not but when you have an event like that an accident like that you

00:07:19.720 begin to find out who those people are and you're very very appreciative of of everything they do to

00:07:24.360 to take care of it so in throughout the book you talk about uh seal training and one aspect of seal

00:07:28.760 training is sugar cookies what are the sugar cookies and what did the sugar cookies teach you about

00:07:34.040 being resilient well the sugar cookie is a sugar cookie is a term we use when you are required to

00:07:40.040 go jump in the ocean so jump in the surf zone and you're in full uniform so back then we wore these

00:07:45.720 green utility uniforms you go jump in the in the surf zone and then you come back and on the beach and

00:07:51.560 you roll around in the sand until you recovered head to toe in sand therefore the the term sugar cookie

00:07:58.040 but the point about the sugar cookie that that really bothered a lot of the trainees the students

00:08:03.800 was that it was very arbitrary so there were certain events when you failed an event a timed run or a

00:08:09.320 time swim you knew you had failed it and therefore you knew that there would be some sort of you know

00:08:14.040 accountability and and uh harassment and punishment to follow but in the case of the sugar cookie

00:08:19.960 sometimes it was just if an instructor didn't like you if the instructor just didn't think something

00:08:25.240 was right you could become a sugar cookie and the arbitrariness of it bothered a lot of the students so

00:08:30.520 there were days i remember a young officer that was with me he would always have a perfect uniform

00:08:35.080 the hat was perfectly starched the uniform looked great his brass was polished the boots shined but

00:08:40.680 every morning he would be told to get a sugar cookie to be you know go jump in the surf and roll around and he

00:08:46.120 just didn't understand it and the point the instructors were trying to make was hey look life's not fair

00:08:51.080 you know some days uh you are perfect you give everything you've got and life still punches you in

00:08:56.920 the gut so this was the i think the lesson they were trying to teach is hey get over it don't wallow in

00:09:04.120 self-pity you know you're better than that just just keep moving forward yeah i'm sure that's an

00:09:08.680 important mindset for a seal to have because you can do everything right on a mission but things out of

00:09:13.640 your control just break up your plans so another aspect of seal training was the circus which

00:09:19.480 also seemed like unfair and terrible so what's the circus and seal training and what did that teach

00:09:25.560 you about becoming stronger the circus was a little different in that the circus was actually a

00:09:30.440 function of whether you failed an event so if you didn't make a timed run if you didn't make your swim

00:09:37.080 on time or you came in last in a swim then the circus was generally an additional you know one and

00:09:42.120 a half to two hours of additional physical training at the end of every day the hard part about the

00:09:47.560 circus was you would go all day doing physical training so i mean you'd start off the morning

00:09:52.760 early with a long run and then a long swim and then an obstacle course and then more calisthenics

00:09:57.560 i mean that was the nature of the average day at seal training then when everybody went home if you'd

00:10:03.800 made the circus list then you had an additional two hours and the problem is the next day you would

00:10:07.560 come in you'd be exhausted and invariably you wouldn't make the run time again and so it could

00:10:13.480 become a bit of a death spiral in terms of your ability to you know to hang tough and you know

00:10:19.240 to kind of get over these failures and a lot of the students again had trouble realizing that i'm

00:10:26.200 never going to get out of this death spiral because every day it looks like i fail another event i'm back

00:10:30.840 in another uh in another circus but what we found uh my swim buddy mark thomas and i found that and while

00:10:37.880 we weren't in the the circuses every day we were in enough of them and if you did the additional two

00:10:43.480 hours you know if you failed and then you were held responsible but you worked through it you had more

00:10:49.560 push-ups more pull-ups more sit-ups you actually became stronger and the point of the message was

00:10:55.160 sometimes failure can make you stronger if you learn from the lessons uh if you hang in there and just

00:11:00.120 keep pushing through the failure at the end of the day you come out on the other end and i i tell the

00:11:05.000 story of mark thomas and i who were not particularly a good swim pair we were almost always invariably

00:11:11.160 last in the swims so we would find ourselves frequently at the circuses but on the very last

00:11:16.840 swim of the seal training we ended up being first and i think a lot of that has to do with the fact

00:11:21.640 that you know mark and i had a lot of extra physical training how'd you push yourself through

00:11:25.400 that you know when you're going to circus after circus like how do you is it just pure grit you just

00:11:31.000 got to find something inside of you to keep going i'm sure a lot of guys give up i'm sure a lot of

00:11:35.320 guys ring the bell when they got caught in the circus well that's exactly right because i i think

00:11:39.960 they they realize that my gosh i am in this death spiral if i have to go two or three circuses in a

00:11:46.120 row will i ever be able to make it and so a lot of them did ring the bell and i i think it's like

00:11:51.560 anything else in seal training or in life you know we're all going to have tough times point is you have

00:11:56.840 to work through them you just don't quit it's not rocket science it's not deeply profound you just

00:12:03.480 don't quit and uh and again whether it's seal training or something else in life you know we're

00:12:08.920 all going to get stuck in the circus at some point in time you know hang in there uh work through the

00:12:13.720 tough times and you'll be fine on the other end of it so there's a section you you title be your very

00:12:18.760 best in the darkest occasions you've gone through some dark occasions uh you know your parachute

00:12:23.560 accident and you've also had to you know you're in charge of the seals and i'm sure you you were in

00:12:28.760 charge of missions where you know men died or injured how do you how do you stay your best in

00:12:35.080 those dark moments when all you want to do is you know wallow in self-pity moaning groan i mean are

00:12:39.880 there any tactics you use to just keep your best yeah i think this is a recognition that in all of us

00:12:47.000 there is something inside of us i'm convinced that you know every man and woman has it within them

00:12:52.120 to rise to the occasion in these dark moments and the point of the story was i've seen this i've seen

00:12:59.560 it time and time and time again when families came together when you know brothers who lost brothers

00:13:06.680 stepped up to to help their you know the mother and father who had had to go through this terrible

00:13:11.480 tragedy um entire towns came out when a young ranger was killed and and you saw people rising to the

00:13:20.520 occasion in their dark moments and so this is not something i think you can you can't train for it

00:13:26.520 i don't know that anybody can teach you how to to do well in a dark moment the point is i think you have

00:13:33.080 to realize that we all have it within us to overcome those dark moments and you have to dig deep to find it

00:13:40.840 but i think it's in every one of us and and i've seen it in you know young men young ladies who overcome

00:13:47.480 terrible tragedies and keep going and they are the last people maybe you would have expected to rise

00:13:51.640 to the occasion but they do because i'm convinced it's been put inside all of us and you just have

00:13:57.000 to look hard for it that leads to the one section you talk about providing hope as a leader you know

00:14:01.800 when all seems hopeless i guess part of that is just setting the example because courage is contagious

00:14:06.520 exactly right i talk about in the book you know start singing when you're up to your neck in mud and

00:14:12.520 that that refers to an event called hell week that we have as we go through training and back in the

00:14:17.560 day when i went through they had these things called the mud flats and the mud flats were you know three

00:14:22.920 or four feet deep of mud and so you you would have to sit in the mud and you were up to your neck in mud

00:14:28.680 and it was cold and it was wet and it was they generally had this about the third day of hell week so

00:14:33.160 hell week was for us six days of no sleep constant harassment by the instructors to weed out those that

00:14:39.880 really didn't want to be seals and and and the third day of hell week was down at the mud flats

00:14:46.280 and so by this time you haven't slept in a couple of days and you're right on the beach so the wind

00:14:49.960 is howling and it's cold and i remember one point in time we're all in the mud and it's dark outside

00:14:55.880 and the instructor came up and he and he had a cup of coffee in his hand and there was a fire nearby and

00:15:01.960 and a couple of the other instructors were hanging around the fire and he said hey look this is easy

00:15:05.320 guys he said why don't you all come on out uh look you know you've got a cup of coffee here we even

00:15:09.960 have some chicken soup kind of sit by the fire it's all easy easy all i need is for five of you to quit

00:15:16.920 if five of you quit then the rest of the class can come on out here and and and of course he was baiting

00:15:21.800 the class but there were a couple there was a guy right next to me we were all you know i had arms

00:15:26.680 linked and i remember the guy next to me starting to to bolt he was he was ready to have that cup of coffee

00:15:30.920 in the fire and and then one of the trainees started singing and i'm often asked what was

00:15:37.000 the song and i've told people not a song i can repeat in in mixed company or in public but having

00:15:43.000 said that it it created other you know others started singing as well the instructors of course

00:15:47.880 got mad and so we ended up staying in the in the mud for you know another hour or so we did not get

00:15:55.160 out and get our our cup of coffee but the point was that one individual gave the rest of us hope

00:16:00.920 and i think in the book i talk about general john kelly who is now the secretary of homeland security

00:16:07.640 and and he had lost his son in combat and and i watched as he and others but he in particular we

00:16:16.040 all had to go to dover to greet the families who had uh loved ones that were killed when we had a

00:16:23.000 helicopter shoot down in afghanistan and john kelly was able to talk to these families in a way that

00:16:28.200 nobody else could and all of those all of us us around him you know we were inspired by how he

00:16:34.920 inspired the families and how he and his wife you know overcame this terrible tragedy that they had to

00:16:40.120 deal with and so you know one person can truly make a difference whether you're you know a john kelly

00:16:45.960 or whether you're you know a guy stuck in the mud flats so speaking of people who can make a difference

00:16:52.040 one guy you highlight in your book is a former seal uh tommy norris can you tell us a little

00:16:56.920 about him and the lessons he taught you well tommy norris is a great story because uh if you were to

00:17:02.760 meet tommy norris on the street you might not give him a second look he's a medium stature kind of small

00:17:09.320 framed not the kind of guy you would think of as you know a big tough navy seal and the story i tell in

00:17:16.280 the book is the first time i i met tommy norris i was i was at the seal compound the headquarters i was

00:17:23.560 a senior in college and i was going there just to to do a quick uh have a quick discussion with one

00:17:29.080 of the seal instructors to find out what training was all about and i looked down the hall and i i saw

00:17:34.120 this fellow down the hall again small framed uh individual and and i in my own mind i was thinking

00:17:41.080 does this guy really think he could be a navy seal because yeah my impression was all navy seals were

00:17:47.320 you know six foot two or six foot four you know 220 pounds muscle bound and i remember thinking this

00:17:53.240 poor guy because he was looking at pictures of vietnam era seals it wasn't until later that morning

00:18:00.680 when all of a sudden i was introduced to him and the introduction was bill this is tommy norris he was

00:18:05.960 the last seal medal of honor recipient from vietnam and of course you realize that well yeah

00:18:11.960 i think this guy will make it through seal training not only will he make it through seal training he

00:18:15.480 went on to be one of the one of the legends in the community and and of course went on to be on the

00:18:21.160 fbi's hostage rescue team as well and the point was it's easy to mistake folks it's really all about

00:18:27.240 your heart it doesn't have anything to do with how fast you are how strong you are you know it's all in

00:18:32.920 your heart with tommy norris you know he was one of the gutsiest guys in the history of the seal teams

00:18:37.800 but but also one of the one of the more modest humble guys you'll ever meet love that so last

00:18:43.320 question before we go uh in the everyone knows about the iconic bell at seal training you know

00:18:49.480 you ring it and you're out what do you tell the folks who have their own there's their own bell

00:18:54.280 whatever that is in their life and they're just so tempted to ring it how do you stop yourself from

00:18:59.080 ringing it when everything in you wants to do that well when when we go through seal training

00:19:03.720 a lot of times we we have this philosophy of take it one evolution at a time the the philosophy is you

00:19:12.760 start off you're going to become a frog man you know navy seal is a frog man from the world war ii

00:19:17.320 days so you start off as a tadpole and you are evolving from a tadpole to a frog man so we call

00:19:23.960 them evolutions they're they're separate events and what happens a lot of times is you know the

00:19:29.880 the students will look too far down the event horizon so they'll wake up in the morning and of

00:19:35.400 course the first thing you do is an hour and a half of calisthenics and you're tired and and you're

00:19:40.120 exhausted and you're looking at that bell because it's in the compound it's in the the courtyard where

00:19:45.400 we do our physical training and it's it seems to be ever present and if at that point in time when you

00:19:51.080 are the most tired you look at that bell and you say gosh almighty you know the next evolution we

00:19:56.600 have is going to be a long run and then after that we're going to have a long swim and then after that

00:20:01.080 we're going to do an obstacle course and then after that you see those those students didn't make it they

00:20:05.960 saw the bell and they just decided that they couldn't keep going and sometimes it's important

00:20:11.080 to realize that you take it one event at a time you're going to have difficult times in your life

00:20:15.880 uh try not to look too far down the road just handle the problem as it is right now get over

00:20:22.360 that and then you'll have the energy you'll have the the inspiration the fortitude to keep going

00:20:28.360 and and i remember very early on in training you know one of the instructors came out and he was kind

00:20:33.640 of very uh pro forma if you will he said you know gentlemen uh you know you're here in the toughest

00:20:38.520 military training in the world and all you have to do to quit is is ring this bell and you know if you

00:20:43.480 quit you won't have to do the long runs you won't have to do the long swims anymore and then i remember

00:20:47.720 he he clearly kind of you know broke form and he and he was a navy seal and he looked at all of us

00:20:53.800 and there were about 150 or 55 of us when we started and he said but gentlemen let me tell you

00:20:59.000 something if you quit you will regret it for the rest of your life and i think he was right and i think

00:21:05.400 if you're pursuing anything i don't care what you're pursuing if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer

00:21:09.560 or a great musician or whatever you want to do in life you know there are going to be times when

00:21:15.080 you get beaten down when you don't think you're going to make it you just don't quit and that bell

00:21:20.440 will be in front of every person at some point in time in their life and when you see it just realize

00:21:25.800 that just keep going put the bell behind you and and life will work out if you just don't quit well

00:21:31.240 admiral mcraven this has been a fantastic conversation where can people find out more about your book oh

00:21:35.800 well thanks well you know the books on sale at amazon barnes and noble all the other distributors

00:21:41.320 it's called make your bed and and i'm i'm happy that that you know people i think people will find

00:21:47.160 it inspiring because it's about the people that inspired me and and there are a lot of them out

00:21:51.400 there you know i i talked in my last story about adam bates a young man who lost both of his legs

00:21:56.760 but he represents every single soldier sailor airman and marine that that ever served that had to go

00:22:02.200 through tough times but of course it's not just those in the military like i said we all encounter

00:22:06.680 tough times at some point in time i'm hoping that this the small book called make your bed will will

00:22:12.040 help people when they encounter those tough times admiral mcraven thank you so much for your time it's

00:22:16.120 been a pleasure the pleasure is mine thank you very much my guest today was admiral william mcraven he is

00:22:20.120 the author of the book make your bed little things that can change your life and maybe the world it's

00:22:24.840 available on amazon.com it's a great book for college grads even if you're not a college grad go pick this

00:22:29.960 book it'll leave you fired up also check out our show notes at aom.is make your bed where you find

00:22:34.840 links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of

00:22:43.560 the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness

00:22:47.560 website at art of manliness.com and if you enjoy this show i've got something out of it i'd appreciate

00:22:51.320 if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher it helps us out a lot as always thank you for your

00:22:54.920 community support until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - May 26, 2017

#307： Make Your Bed, Change the World

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