Israel is our most important ally in the Middle East. We must always stand with Israel. - Dan Crenshaw

In BUD/S the failures are more surprising than the successes. A lot of times, the most athletic, the fittest, the physically strongest candidates were the ones who quit. They should have been able to just crush it, but they didn't. Part of that is because they spent too much time on physical preparation and not enough on mental preparation. They believed that because of their physicality, their athleticism, they wouldn't be so surprised when faced with immediate failure. Those failures happen so fast in BUD/S. Your body fails constantly. That's what the program is designed to do to you. It is not physically possible to do everything that is being demanded of you. So you break down; you can't do every repetition of every exercise. We called them beatdowns for a reason. The instructors want us to break down and run away with our tail between our legs. They keep pressing us to go on, even after you thought that the activity was over. That happens to you over and over again. Your muscles fail you. And the instructors understand that difference between quitting- a failure of the will- and failing- your body giving out when you have already pushed yourself past what you once perceived as your limit. They respect that you hung in there long enough to truly fail. That's probably why you see so much anxiety and increasing suicide in our larger society. We have the most comfortable society the world has ever known. And that's good; I'm glad we do. But it's also made some people weak, and they break down when confronted with suffering. If you want to be a person who doesn't freak out just because you're scared or whatever else you're doing, then decide to be that person. Every time you fall short of that goal, look back on that situation and tell yourself you're going to do better next time. Eventually you will.

As bad as I had it, lots of people have had it worse than me. Lots of others had made the ultimate sacrifice. I've got the initials of eight of those guys tattooed on my chest. So even when you're lying bleeding on the ground, unable to see much of anything, and later totally facedown in a bed for six weeks, you know what? Your buddies don't even get to have that chance because they're dead. That sounds morbid, but it's true. It should toughen your spine a little bit and make you feel grateful for being here at all. Too many people don't show gratitude for the new mission that they might have. They complain. They complain about the Veterans Administration. They complain about their disability payments. They complain about their lack of opportunity. Well, your buddies don't get to complain at all, and I think they would be grateful for anything. Living with duty means having a duty to those who aren't able to complete their mission because they would want you to keep going. They would want you to live life with a purpose. That's a message for civilians; that's a message for veterans.

A favorite memory of many veterans is their time sitting around grumbling incessantly about their circumstances with their teammates. I have to admit that we do this way more than the average group of people. It's like a continuous group therapy project. When the guys stop complaining, leadership starts to worry. What's wrong with them? Are they depressed? Something wrong at home? The reality is that in these high-performing environments, where everyone is a perfectionist and overachiever, people like to point out deficiencies in the most over-the-top fashion, usually with a side of sarcastic and cutting humor. The good news is that they also aspire to fix those problems. Or maybe we are just a bunch of divas. I don't know. Maybe it's both.