Navy Seals Sayings Quotes

I think of a saying I once heard that was attributed to the Navy SEALs: “Slow is efficient. Efficient is fast. Slow is fast.

Remaining for a moment with the question of legality and illegality: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368, unanimously passed, explicitly recognized the right of the United States to self-defense and further called upon all member states 'to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the terrorist attacks. It added that 'those responsible for aiding, supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of those acts will be held accountable.' In a speech the following month, the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly acknowledged the right of self-defense as a legitimate basis for military action. The SEAL unit dispatched by President Obama to Abbottabad was large enough to allow for the contingency of bin-Laden's capture and detention. The naïve statement that he was 'unarmed' when shot is only loosely compatible with the fact that he was housed in a military garrison town, had a loaded automatic weapon in the room with him, could well have been wearing a suicide vest, had stated repeatedly that he would never be taken alive, was the commander of one of the most violent organizations in history, and had declared himself at war with the United States. It perhaps says something that not even the most casuistic apologist for al-Qaeda has ever even attempted to justify any of its 'operations' in terms that could be covered by any known law, with the possible exception of some sanguinary verses of the Koran.

He kissed her forehead and pushed away. She moved so he could reach the doorknob and open the door. Standing in the opening, he glanced back at her. She waited for him to say something... Goodbye, Thanks for the blowjob, something, anything. Instead, he tipped his head in a small nod, stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind him. That was it, then. In less than an hour, this man had captured her heart, loved her and then left her. It had to be the quickest beginning ,middle and ending of a romance in the history of the world.

Regardless of how you think an operation is going to unfold,” I answered, “the enemy gets their say as well—and they are going to do something to disrupt it. When something goes wrong—and it eventually does—complex plans add to confusion, which can compound into disaster. Almost no mission ever goes according to plan. There are simply too many variables to deal with. This

My evolution had begun, but as my Navy SEAL future crystallized over the next several months, I learned that when you change, not everyone in your life will be on board. You will get some serious resistance, and it will be a pain in your ass. Everywhere I turned, I found family members, friends, and coworkers resistant to my evolution because they loved the Ecolab-spraying, chocolate-shake-slurping fat ass. At three hundred pounds, I made them feel much better about themselves, which is another way of saying, they were holding me back.

Tell me you're bare underneath the dress." She gulped. "I'm bare underneath this dress." Gently dropping her arms back to her sides, he slid his finger down the center of her chest. Tingles shot out from the tips of her breasts and gathered at the base of her spine, between her legs. "Tell me you want me as much as I want you," he said, his voice husky. Never had she imagined doing something as reckless as sleeping with a guy for one night. But this wasn't any guy. And it wasn't just about her getting off--God, how she needed to do that. It was about closure. Saying goodbye on her terms. It might be a bad idea, but it was the best bad idea she'd ever had. She dropped the panties and put her hands on his chest. "I want you.

when someone is not leading you, then you lead them. You pick up the slack for their weakness. My leader doesn’t want to come up with a plan? That’s okay. I will. My leader doesn’t want to give a brief? That’s fine. I will. My leader doesn’t want to mentor the younger troops? That’s okay. I will do it. My leader doesn’t want to take the blame when something goes wrong? That’s fine with me. I’m going to take the blame. And you have to think about that one. That one can be tricky because you think to yourself, “If I take the blame, I’m going to look bad. I’m going to look bad in front of the team and in front of the more senior boss—my weak boss’s boss.” But think about it from a leader’s perspective. Let’s say the mission was a failure, and the boss comes in to find out what happened. Listen to the way this situation plays out: I’m the guy that was in charge of the mission and I say, “Sorry, boss, we failed. But it wasn’t my fault. It was his fault,” and I point the finger at someone else. Now imagine that the guy I pointed the finger at says, “Yes. It was my fault. Here’s what happened. Here are the mistakes I made. And here is what I am going to do to fix the situation next time.” Who does the senior boss respect more? The guy who blamed someone or the guy who took responsibility—the guy that took ownership? Of course, it is the guy that takes ownership of

Navy Seals Stress Relief Tactics (As printed in O Online Magazine, Sept. 8, 2014) Prep for Battle: Instead of wasting energy by catastrophizing about stressful situations, SEALs spend hours in mental dress rehearsals before springing into action, says Lu Lastra, director of mentorship for Naval Special Warfare and a former SEAL command master chief.  He calls it mental loading and says you can practice it, too.  When your boss calls you into her office, take a few minutes first to run through a handful of likely scenarios and envision yourself navigating each one in the best possible way.  The extra prep can ease anxiety and give you the confidence to react calmly to whatever situation arises. Talk Yourself Up: Positive self-talk is quite possibly the most important skill these warriors learn during their 15-month training, says Lastra.  The most successful SEALs may not have the biggest biceps or the fastest mile, but they know how to turn their negative thoughts around.  Lastra recommends coming up with your own mantra to remind yourself that you’ve got the grit and talent to persevere during tough times. Embrace the Suck: “When the weather is foul and nothing is going right, that’s when I think, now we’re getting someplace!” says Lastra, who encourages recruits to power through the times when they’re freezing, exhausted or discouraged.  Why?  Lastra says, “The, suckiest moments are when most people give up; the resilient ones spot a golden opportunity to surpass their competitors.  It’s one thing to be an excellent athlete when the conditions are perfect,” he says.  “But when the circumstances aren’t so favorable, those who have stronger wills are more likely to rise to victory.” Take a Deep Breath: “Meditation and deep breathing help slow the cognitive process and open us up to our more intuitive thoughts,” says retired SEAL commander Mark Divine, who developed SEALFit, a demanding training program for civilians that incorporates yoga, mindfulness and breathing techniques.  He says some of his fellow SEALs became so tuned-in, they were able to sense the presence of nearby roadside bombs.  Who doesn’t want that kind of Jedi mind power?  A good place to start: Practice what the SEALs call 4 x 4 x 4 breathing.  Inhale deeply for four counts, then exhale for four counts and repeat the cycle for four minutes several times a day.  You’re guaranteed to feel calmer on any battleground. Learn to value yourself, which means to fight for your happiness. ---Ayn Rand

The war against ISIS in Iraq was a long, hard slog, and for a time the administration was as guilty of hyping progress as the most imaginative briefers at the old “Five O’Clock Follies” in Saigon had been. In May 2015, an ISIS assault on Ramadi and a sandstorm that grounded U.S. planes sent Iraqi forces and U.S. Special Forces embedded with them fleeing the city. Thanks to growing hostility between the Iraqi government and Iranian-supported militias in the battle, the city wouldn’t be taken until the end of the year. Before it was over we had sent well over five thousand military personnel back to Iraq, including Special Forces operators embedded as advisors with Iraqi and Kurdish units. A Navy SEAL, a native Arizonan whom I had known when he was a boy, was killed in northern Iraq. His name was Charles Keating IV, the grandson of my old benefactor, with whom I had been implicated all those years ago in the scandal his name had branded. He was by all accounts a brave and fine man, and I mourned his loss. Special Forces operators were on the front lines when the liberation of Mosul began in October 2016. At immense cost, Mosul was mostly cleared of ISIS fighters by the end of July 2017, though sporadic fighting continued for months. The city was in ruins, and the traumatized civilian population was desolate. By December ISIS had been defeated everywhere in Iraq. I believe that had U.S. forces retained a modest but effective presence in Iraq after 2011 many of these tragic events might have been avoided or mitigated. Would ISIS nihilists unleashed in the fury and slaughter of the Syrian civil war have extended their dystopian caliphate to Iraq had ten thousand or more Americans been in country? Probably, but with American advisors and airpower already on the scene and embedded with Iraqi security forces, I think their advance would have been blunted before they had seized so much territory and subjected millions to the nightmare of ISIS rule. Would Maliki have concentrated so much power and alienated Sunnis so badly that the insurgency would catch fire again? Would Iran’s influence have been as detrimental as it was? Would Iraqis have collaborated to prevent a full-scale civil war from erupting? No one can answer for certain. But I believe that our presence there would have had positive effects. All we can say for certain is that Iraq still has a difficult road to walk, but another opportunity to progress toward that hopeful vision of a democratic, independent nation that’s learned to accommodate its sectarian differences, which generations of Iraqis have suffered without and hundreds of thousands of Americans risked everything for.

The best pilots usually have the most unflattering nicknames. The pilots I know say they don't generally have much confidence in anyone with a call sign like Maverick or Viper. If you meet one named Outhouse or Dumpster Diver, however, it's a safe bet he's good to go.

Military life and culture seem to be foreign territory for many of the people who write for national magazines and newspapers today. Every time they refer to Navy SEALs and other SOF outfits as "Special Forces," which only describes the Army's Green Berets, they reveal themselves to be as ignorant as someone who doesn't know, say, a Shia Muslim from a Sunni. Recently, in a well-attended forum at a public university, a prominent journalist referred to the Joint Special Operations Command, as "an executive assassination ring, essentially" for Vice President Dick Cheney. The fact that the guy who said this has a Pulitzer Price might confirm your worst fears about those who write "news" for a living. (Naturally, in the same presentation, he also referred to special operations units as "Special Forces.

Train hard and train long. Don’t ever say “I got it, I got it” and not know what you’re doing.

A functioning team is more than just a group of people with a common goal. It’s a group of people who can work toward that common goal despite having different opinions about how to reach it. No, not everyone has the same say. No, not everyone’s opinion will play a part in the end. The boss makes the final decision and will live or hang by that decision.

So rather than saying the words “front sight,” I recommend putting a picture of what the front sight should look like in your mind and not continue pressing back on the trigger unless that is what you see with your eyes.

Visualize the conversations your friends have about how they all knew you’d never be able to make it. Imagine having to explain quitting to every single person who knew you were going to BUD/S. You have to face them. You have to live with many of them. Imagine trying to find a way to overcome the shame of failing. How long is it going to take for them to stop thinking of you as a failure, a quitter, a pussy? How long until anyone takes anything you say seriously again? Visualize being sent to a crappy ship, an undesignated Seaman. Imagine, if you will, a life below deck where you spend 18 hours chipping paint and repainting the spot you chipped. Imagine not seeing the sun for days or weeks at a time. This picture is worse than anything in BUD/S. Experience the shame and humiliation of quitting once in your head. Feel how much you hate yourself for giving up on your dream. Then never, ever, ever experience it in real life.

Discipline starts every day when the first alarm clock goes off in the morning. I say “first alarm clock” because I have three, as I was taught by one of the most feared and respected instructors in SEAL training: one electric, one battery powered, one windup. That way, there is no excuse for not getting out of bed, especially with all that rests on that decisive moment. The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win—you pass the test. If you are mentally weak for that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, that weakness translates to more significant decisions. But if you exercise discipline, that too translates to more substantial elements of your life.

remember: the enemy gets a vote.” “The enemy gets a vote?” the plant manager repeated, questioning what that meant. “Yes. Regardless of how you think an operation is going to unfold,” I answered, “the enemy gets their say as well—and they are going to do something to disrupt it. When something goes wrong—and it eventually does—complex plans add to confusion, which can compound into disaster. Almost no mission ever goes according to plan. There are simply too many variables to deal with. This is where simplicity is key. If the plan is simple enough, everyone understands it, which means each person can rapidly adjust and modify what he or she is doing. If the plan is too complex, the team can’t make rapid adjustments to it, because there is no baseline understanding of it.” “That makes sense,” the chief engineer said. “We

NOBODY CAN PREDICT WHO’LL MAKE it through BUD/S. The brass tries to figure it out; they bring in psychologists and boost the number of guys beginning the process, hoping more SEALs will be left standing at the end. They tweak the design to create more equal opportunity for minorities, but all that happens is that the instructors do to the students exactly what was done to them, and always 80 percent don’t make it. We have more white SEALs simply because more white guys try out. Eighty percent of white guys fail, 80 percent of Filipinos fail, 80 percent of black guys fail. And the irony is, the Navy doesn’t want an 80 percent failure rate. There can’t be too many SEALs. We’re always undermanned. From the beginning of boot camp, the instructors try separating guys who want to be SEALs. They put them together, feed them better, give them workouts designed to prepare them for BUD/S. These promising rookies get in better shape, are better nourished, and are psychologically primed to go. Then they’re sent to SEAL training and 80 percent fail. No matter what the Navy process tweakers do, they can’t crack it. You’d think the Olympic swimmer would make it. You’d think the pro-football player would make it. But they don’t—well, 80  percent don’t. In my experience, the one category of people who get reliably crushed in BUD/S are that noble demographic, the loudmouths. They’re usually the first to ring the bell. As for who will make it, all I can say is: Are you the person who can convince your body that it can do anything you ask it to? Who can hit the wall and say, “What wall?” That strength of mind isn’t associated with any ethnicity or level of skin pigmentation. It’s not a function of size or musculature or IQ. In the end, it’s sheer cussedness, and I’m guessing you’re either born that way or you never get there.

dexterity and problem solving but also a rigorous psychological examination, which included a Rorschach test. Many aviators would later say that passing the exam was the toughest thing they’d ever faced in the Air Corps.

You must train your intuition—you must trust the small voice inside you, which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide. —Ingrid Bergman

The harder you are on yourself, the easier life is on you. Or, as they say in the Navy Seals, the more you sweat in peacetime, the less you bleed in war.

Hey…If someone stopped looking at you the way we are now, then he was a fucking idiot. Trust me when I say we know exactly what we have here and how fucking lucky we all are.

Given that seven of the top twenty most-visited sites on the Web are porn sites, and that nearly 33 percent of all Internet searches are for terms related to sex, it’s safe to say that we’re sinking a ton of time and money into digital voyeurism.

This can have devastating consequences for the fast-growing company. Over a short period of time, say a year, the number of employees can leap from 50 to 150 in a startup, or from 150 to 500 or more during a later phase of rapid growth when the business model is promising and the funding is in the bank. Seemingly overnight, the new employees can vastly outnumber their predecessors, and this dynamic can permanently redefine the corporate culture. Brent Gleeson, a leadership coach and Navy SEAL combat veteran, writes, “Organizational culture comes about in one of two ways. It’s either decisively defined, nurtured and protected from the inception of the organization; or—more typically—it comes about haphazardly as a collective sum of the beliefs, experiences and behaviors of those on the team. Either way, you will have a culture. For better or worse.”2

Putting flow-prone kids into high-flow environments means a lot of flow. Arming them with advanced flow-hacking techniques means even more. All this flow makes the activity deeply rewarding, both fulfilling a child’s innate need for autonomy, mastery, and purpose and further increasing their sense of intrinsic motivation. When Tom Schaar says, “I love being with my friends at the skate park — that’s the greatest feeling,” what he’s saying is no one has to force him to practice, the autotelic nature of the activity — the fact that it drives him into flow — is the source code of his motivation.

if there really is no way you can win, you never say it out loud. You assess why, change strategy, adjust tactics, and keep fighting and pushing till either you’ve gotten a better outcome or you’ve died. Either way, you never quit when your country needs you to succeed. As Team 5 was shutting down the workup and loading up its gear, our task unit’s leadership flew to Ramadi to do what we call a predeployment site survey. Lieutenant Commander Thomas went, and so did both of our platoon officers in charge. It was quite an adventure. They were shot at every day. They were hit by IEDs. When they came home, Lieutenant Commander Thomas got us together in the briefing room and laid out the details. The general reaction from the team was, “Get ready, kids. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.” I remember sitting around the team room talking about it. Morgan had a big smile on his face. Elliott Miller, too, all 240 pounds of him, looked happy. Even Mr. Fantastic seemed at peace and relaxed, in that sober, senior chief way. We turned over in our minds the hard realities of the city. Only a couple weeks from now we would be calling Ramadi home. For six or seven months we’d be living in a hornet’s nest, picking up where Team 3 had left off. It was time for us to roll. In late September, Al Qaeda’s barbaric way of dealing with the local population was stirring some of Iraq’s Sunni tribal leaders to come over to our side. (Stuff like punishing cigarette smokers by cutting off their fingers—can you blame locals for wanting those crazies gone?) Standing up for their own people posed a serious risk, but it was easier to justify when you had five thousand American military personnel backing you up. That’ll boost your courage, for sure. We were putting that vise grip on that city, infiltrating it, and setting up shop, block by block, house by house, inch by inch. On September 29, a Team 3 platoon set out on foot from a combat outpost named Eagle’s Nest on the final operation of their six-month deployment. Located in the dangerous Ma’laab district, it wasn’t much more than a perimeter of concrete walls and concertina wire bundling up a block of residential homes. COP Eagle’s

Excellent. My name is Lieutenant Meyer. I’ll be your rescuer today. This rescue of your person is brought to you by the United States Navy and SEAL Team 8. We hope you have a nice rescue, and please feel free to fill out the questionnaire at the end of the trip. Tips are welcome.” Lieutenant Meyer had a strong sense of snark. “Sorry, my CO says my sarcasm will get me killed one day. Let’s get you out of here while they’re too drunk to notice we’re leaving. And you can call me Wolf.

Which is a long way of saying that it didn't matter if my body couldn't bounce back like theirs. Or that I had to eat cleaner food, stretch in the morning and at night, and prioritize recovery. It didn't matter if I had to sleep less because there are only so many hours in any fucked-up day. If that's what it took, I was a willing warrior. Willing warriors don't reach for excuses. While it's human nature to try and talk yourself out of doing the hard or inconvenient thing, we know that it's non-negotiable. There are a lot of people out there who are willing to sign up for the military or police force, apply for a job, or enroll in college or graduate school because they expect some tangible and timely return on their investment. Warriors aren't in it for cash or benefits. That's all gravy. Even though I was broke, I would have found a way to pay the U.S. Navy to be a SEAL. Nobody recruited me to Fort St. John, and I lost money by taking the job. But willing warriors seek out our own missions and pay any and all tolls required. I wanted to do this fucking job, period. p283

You're not horribly terrible." He shook his head at her. "You say the nicest things." He held her gaze for a moment. "You're not trying to get into my pants, are you?

And he talks about the 5 percent, which is Special Operations guys, and how, clinically, we’re all borderline sociopaths. But in my mind we’re not the ones that are messed up; it’s the other 95 percent of the population. We run toward the sound of gunfire. Like the fireman who, when everybody else is running this way, is running into the flames. A cop, anyone who does that sort of work, is in that 5 percent, that personality that we need to get that job done. And be able to do that job and rationalize it, religiously or country or however you deal with it, say, ‘Okay, that was my job, that’s why I did that. But now I’m back and I’m fine.’ 

Where did you grow up?" He wiggled his eyebrows at her. "Who says I've grown up?

I’ve heard one of my SEAL mentors say that there are rules about bitching. He said everyone has the right to bitch about a mission or job for five minutes. After those five minutes, you shut the fuck up and get to work.

But the bigger point is that these studies reflect a sea change in how we think about thinking. They move us from “disembodied cognition,” the idea that our thinking happens only in the three pounds of gray matter tucked between our ears, to “embodied cognition,” where we see thinking for what it really is: an integrated, whole-system experience. “The body, the gut, the senses,6 the immune system, the lymphatic system,” explained embodied cognition expert and University of Winchester emeritus professor Guy Claxton to New York magazine, “are so instantaneously and complicatedly interacting that you can’t draw a line across the neck and say ‘above this line it’s smart and below the line it’s menial.

My dad was a Navy SEAL.” Vaughn didn’t say anything for a moment, then swore. “Don’t tell me, Kelly Matthews is your dad?” “You know him?” She couldn’t have been more surprised. “He was our training officer, and he tried to kill me several times.” Jillian laughed. “He was just trying to teach you how to survive.” But she couldn’t believe they knew each other. “Are you sure he wasn’t just psychic and wanted to make sure I didn’t end up dating his daughter? Then again, his daughter tried to kill me. Like father, like daughter.” “I told you. If I had wanted to kill you, I would have. You don’t hold grudges do you?

Let’s say you’ve worked with your dog to go to his bed or some other area of the house after greeting company. Reward the dog by going over to him and offering a few simple words of praise. More important, get down on his level, pet him, and spend a few seconds with him. I’m frequently surprised by how seldom some owners interact with their dogs on the dog’s level—not acting like a dog, but physically moving into the space the dog occupies. Once you have a good relationship with that dog, doing so is a reward.

Abraham Lincoln wrote, “Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.

Take care of your gear, and your gear will take care of you" Navy SEAL saying.

I feel like it is my fault that Mikey died. I feel responsible,” Seth told me with tears in his eyes. I thought about it for a moment and then told him the truth: “We are responsible.” I paused for a moment. Seth didn’t say a word. He was surprised by what I had said. “We are responsible,” I said again. “It was our strategy. We came up with it. We knew the risks. You planned the missions. I approved them. We were the leaders. And we are responsible for everything that happened during that deployment. Everything. That’s the way it is. We can’t escape that. That is what being a leader is.

Look at her, look at her face,” Freeman says of the photo of Hillary in the Situation Room holding a hand to her mouth and surrounded by men paralyzed, their eyes fixed to a screen showing images of a Navy SEAL raid on a compound in Pakistan. “She’s carrying the hope and the rage of an entire nation.” In 2011, Hillary attributed her expression in the photo to her pollen allergies.

It was Friday night, so after dropping our bags we went straight to Shep’s Bar, actually just the remodeled basement of Cottage 3. The place was named for Bill Shepherd, a NASA veteran of three space shuttle flights who was now in Star City training to become the first commander of the International Space Station. He was also a former Navy SEAL who was legendary for saying in his astronaut interview, when asked what he could do better than anyone else in the room, “Kill people with my knife.

When SEALs sweep a building,” says Rich Davis, “slow is dangerous. We want to move as fast as possible. To do this, there are only two rules. The first is do the exact opposite of what the guy in front of you is doing—so if he looks left, then you look right. The second is trickier: the person who knows what to do next is the leader. We’re entirely nonhierarchical in that way. But in a combat environment, when split seconds make all the difference, there’s no time for second-guessing. When someone steps up to become the new leader, everyone, immediately, automatically, moves with him. It’s the only way we win.

Thank you for your briefing,” said the colonel when I was done. “But I do believe that if you could not say the word ‘fuck,’ your speeches would be only half as long.

Discipline starts every day when the first alarm clock goes off in the morning. I say “first alarm clock” because I have three, as I was taught by one of the most feared and respected instructors in SEAL training: one electric, one battery powered, one windup. That way, there is no excuse for not getting out of bed, especially with all that rests on that decisive moment. The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win—you pass the test. If you are mentally weak for that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, that weakness translates to more significant decisions. But if you exercise discipline, that too translates to more substantial elements of your life. I learned in SEAL training that if I wanted any extra time to study the academic material we were given, prepare our room and my uniforms for an inspection, or just stretch out aching muscles, I had to make that time because it did not exist on the written schedule. When I checked into my first SEAL Team, that practice continued. If I wanted extra time to work on my gear, clean my weapons, study tactics or new technology, I needed to make that time. The only way you could make time, was to get up early. That took discipline.

Before the ship sank and the transmission was cut off, Burke heard the young man say: “I will fight this ship to the best of my ability and forgive me the mistakes I am about to make.” The voice would haunt and steel him for the rest of his life.

I’ve been reading this amazing book by a Navy SEAL who says that high-functioning teams must be clear on three things: the purpose of the team, my role within the team, and the value I bring to the team. I want to take actions that are consistently aligned with those things, but I’m not clear on what some of them are. This is what I think our team’s purpose is, what my role is, what value I bring to the team, and what valuable actions I must hold. Am I on track?

The new paradigm says that focusing solely on piling up accomplishments makes it impossible for us to experience success—an optimized daily experience that’s sustainable over time.

When I say intentional communication, I mean impeccably precise, painfully specific word choices.

In order to ensure ownership and efficiency of communication we are going to share an elegant linguistic tool: To help remove the risk that you’ve ineffectively communicated, utilize a simple follow-up question: “What did you hear me say?

Whether you are talking to your wife or your business partner, make an agreement ahead of time that each of you is allowed at any point in time to ask the other person, “What did you hear me say?