“Is this what I want to be? This? Is this all I’ve got—is this everything I can give? Is this going to be my life? Do I accept that?”

In the SEAL Teams, the bond of our brotherhood is our strongest weapon. If you take that away from us, we lose our most important quality as a team.

A leader must lead but also be ready to follow. Sometimes, another member of the team—perhaps a subordinate or direct report—might be in a better position to develop a plan, make a decision, or lead through a specific situation.

The best leaders are not driven by ego or personal agendas.

The most fundamental and important truths at the heart of Extreme Ownership: there are no bad teams, only bad leaders.

Leadership isn’t one person leading a team. It is a group of leaders working together, up and down the chain of command, to lead.

Departments and groups within the team must break down silos, depend on each other and understand who depends on them.

We wrote this so that the leadership lessons can continue to impact teams beyond the battlefield in all leadership situations—any company, team, or organization in which a group of people strives to achieve a goal and accomplish a mission.

We learned that leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory, particularly when doubters question whether victory is even possible.

If mistakes happen, effective leaders don’t place blame on others. They take ownership of the mistakes, determine what went wrong, develop solutions to correct those mistakes and prevent them from happening again as they move forward.

The U.S. Navy SEAL Teams were at the forefront of this leadership transformation, emerging from the triumphs and tragedies of war with a crystallized understanding of what it takes to succeed in the most challenging environments that combat presents.

Cover and Move, Simple, Prioritize and Execute, and Decentralized Command.

The most impressive thing about this improvement in performance was that it did not come from a major process change or an advance in technology. Instead, it came through a leadership principle that has been around for ages: Simple.

Establishing an effective and repeatable planning process is critical to the success of any team.

The test for a successful brief is simple: Do the team and the supporting elements understand it?

Staying ahead of the curve prevents a leader from being overwhelmed when pressure is applied and enables greater decisiveness.

A good leader does not get bogged down in the minutia of a tactical problem at the expense of strategic success.

The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

Don’t demand or expect that events happen as you would wish them do. Accept events as they actually happen. That way, peace is possible.

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.

It was strange how your brain could know what your heart refused to accept.

My greatest victory has been to be able to live with myself, to accept my shortcomings. I’m a long way from the human being I’d liked to be, but I’ve decided I’m not so bad after all.

Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it.

Death comes for us all in the end.