The McRaven Rules

ADM Bill McRaven was a former commander of the Navy Seal Teams. I worked with a couple of his teams and have always admired him. Below are 10 Life Lessons delivered to U of Texas graduates in 2014, which are pretty good rules for entrepreneurs:

  1. 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 do another task and another and another.
  2. For the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle.
  3. Measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. If you want to change the world, sometimes you have to slide down the obstacle headfirst.
  7. There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim, you will have to deal with them.
  8. Every SEAL knows that under the keel, at the darkest moment of the mission, is the timee 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. If I have learned anything in my time travelling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person–Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandela, even a young girl from Pakistan, Malala –one person can change the world by giving people hope.
  10. 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. If you want to change the world, don ever, ever, ring the bell.