Admiral William McRaven's 'Make Your Bed' Speech

Admiral William McRaven, the architect of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, stood before 8,000 University of Texas graduates and told them to make their bed. It sounds absurd. It is not. McRaven's speech distills the lessons of Navy SEAL training into ten actionable principles for changing the world, starting with the smallest possible action: making your bed every morning.

The logic is unassailable. If you start every day by completing a task — no matter how small — you have already accomplished something. That small victory compounds into a second task, then a third, then a day's worth of completed objectives. And if you have a terrible day, you come home to a bed that is made — evidence that at least one thing went right. The discipline of small things creates the foundation for large things.

McRaven moves from making your bed through nine more lessons drawn from SEAL training: find someone to paddle with you, measure people by the size of their heart not the size of their flippers, get over being sugar cookies (accept that sometimes life is not fair), embrace the mud, do not be afraid of the circus, slide down the obstacle headfirst, do not back down from sharks, be your very best in the darkest moment, and never ring the bell. Each lesson is illustrated with a story from the most demanding military training on Earth, delivered with quiet authority by a man who commanded the most consequential special operation in modern history.