I Quit My Corporate Job To Become A Navy Seal

Even if you're not thinking about joining the Navy Seals this military motivational speech by Brent Gleeson will help you understand that life can be like military training, you have to focus your mind on always going forward, despite the setbacks. Go all in!

Video Script:: 

I quit my corporate finance job and joined the United States Navy with a dream of becoming a seal decision of course that would forever changed my life set me on the path but I'm on today so one day I was having a conversation with my twin brother he's like branch you've gotta be kidding me seals I are you you're not being serious right Ally man I I don't even really know much about it but I know one thing there is no way in hell you could ever do that I mean let's face it these aren't these guys supposed to be I don't know what world-class warriors or something like really tough guys you are not tough at all again don't know much about it but I'm pretty certain seals are nerdy sniffily emotional guys who cried during a Clorox bleach commercial so let's just forget we had this conversation and stick with your nerdy finance job well now I knew I had to do it right this is a true story literally a week later I quit my job and my buddy whom I've been training with moved up here to Crested Butte Colorado where we trained for an additional six months for five hours a day at 10,000 feet altitude to get into the best physical condition that we could in in early 2000 joined the Navy and after a couple months of basic training it's on a plane headed out to sunny San Diego California and we would begin our journey I can tell you with exact certainty and clarity like it was yesterday that I have never been more nervous in my entire life than the day I stepped foot into the lobby the Naval Special Warfare trainings but of course this point there was no turning back I had to be all in it takes 18 months and costs about three million dollars to acquire one seal and that doesn't count the millions of dollars and years of arduous training once you actually make it to a team that 18 months is broken into various segments the first segment is six months long and called bud's another one of our acronyms it stands for basic underwater demolition seal Budds has a ninety percent failure rate of highly capable candidates none of us are extraordinary exceptional individuals were just common people with an uncommon desire to succeed so imagine those types of activities going on for months and months at a time and then the irony is that the training just gets more difficult after that so the third week of buds the third week of this 18-month training pipeline is called hell week and I assure you it's a lot worse than that sounds it's designed to do one thing simply weed out those not committed to the vision of becoming a seal you do not sleep for an entire week you run the equivalent of multiple marathons while wet and Sandy inside and out this is called getting a sugar cookie it sucks because the instructors make a concerted effort to ensure you get the sand on the inside of your clothing so that it strips the flesh off your body as you run it's like wearing sandpaper inside out you swim dozens of miles in the open frigid ocean you run with heavy logs heavy boats heavy backpacks you run the offs to of course multiple times a day endless calisthenics brutal beatings all while battling severe bruising cuts lacerations stress fractures cellulitis broken bones things that seemed uncomfortable or things that seemed almost seemingly impossible they would come apart their everyday life that winning mindset of persistence and determination reminds me of a great quote by Barton Luther King jr. that says if you can't fly you run and if you can't run you walk if you can't walk you crawl but no matter what you keep moving forward the SEAL Teams we have an ethos a Creed that embodies our culture and our values and a similar line from that ethos says I will not quit I persevere and thrive in adversity and if knocked down I will get back up every time I am never out of the fight and that winning mindset is how each and every one of you all of us can continue to take point in our own lives to push the confines of our comfort zone to push the limits to take calculated risks to succeed and win and to be all in all the time if you think about that that mindset that winning mindset winning here is a conscious decision you will and make up your mind whether you want to pass or you're gonna choose to fail keep moving no matter what find an excuse to win you can push yourself further than your mind or body ever thought possible Budds training is based on the rule of seven when your brain is telling you that you can go no further and take no more pain you can go seven times longer seven times more and push yourself seven times harder and again that's why very few people make it through this selection process I wanted to tell you guys a brief story about trust from my buds classes hell week experience the students have no idea what hell week will commence the anxiety the anguish literally eating away at your soul and as a way to inspire us and motivate us our class leader who is the highest ranking officer in your class he read to us the st. Crispin's Day speech from William Shakespeare's Henry the fifth and he read aloud those famed lines that say we few we happy few we band of brothers for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother John died four days later [Music] we were four and a half days into hell week there were only about 30 students left of the 250 we were in full gear no fans and an Olympic sized swimming pool doing relay races four and a half days in the hell week you're hallucinating so violently your body is so brutally beaten it's more of an evolution and controlled drowning long story short John suffered a massive heart failure and drowned in the pool right next to us but again we were hallucinating so violently and so exhausted at that point nobody had any idea what was going on so they ran us back across the street to the Special Warfare Center and they put us in the classroom where we waited for a couple hours after a couple hours the door opens and the instructor staff walk in and with them was the commanding officer of buds at the time walked at the front of the room turned around to address the class he said gentlemen listen up lieutenant John Scott was pronounced dead at 1:00 a.m. lieutenant parado you're taking over and he said it with that level of candor I believe purposefully he paused for a minute to let that sink in when he said gentlemen get used to this feeling that you have right now this is what its gonna be like in the teens and you will lose teammates you have to learn to control your emotions stay focused on the mission you trust each other no matter what especially amidst adversity it was a bit of odd foreshadowing because he really had no idea how right he really was literally four months later was 9/11 and that's when we all knew we'd be going to war or trust to being a free meal and although Navy SEALs are widely known to be the most elite and feared Special Operations fighting force in the entire world we've been living in a constant state of VUCA of pain of loss sacrifice and disruption in our post 9/11 reality yet how have we continued to persevere adapt and lean into that pain and sacrifice to fight and defeat two very dangerous and decentralized enemy in large part it's due to our very well-defined and distinct organizational culture a culture where every single person pushes the limits and boundaries of their comfort zone every single day we get comfortable being uncomfortable or as we say in the SEAL Teams we embrace the suck same thing when I made that decision to transition from corporate finance to start training and join the Navy to become a seal a total mindset transformation I had to think about the reality of the world around me in a totally different way everything had to change in order for me to achieve that lofty goal the program that has a 90 percent failure rate at any time in our life when we have that vision that vision and that lofty goal and the SEAL Teams we say you got to eat the elephant one bite at a time we break the big goals into bite-size chunks making them less daunting and more achieve baby seals can only be forged in adversity every single person in this room has and will continue to face various aspects of adversity throughout your entire life but again as you know it's what we do and how we react in the face of adversity it builds our character and defines who we are the trust you have in yourself to fulfill the promises you make to yourself to achieve those goals to be disciplined and accountable and like accountability Trust is the bedrock of any successful Purpose Driven Life it's how you fuel the drive to achieve those goals it builds resilience resilience is the foundation of any life lived outside your comfort zone it is a privilege you must earn every day we to all of us can embody that winning mindset each and every one of you can take away from this how to embody that winning mindset to get comfortable being uncomfortable to win would be all in all the time [Music]