“All animals, including humans, need to see the connection between action and consequence in order to learn or react appropriately.”

As a leader, you have to balance the dichotomy, to be resolute where it matters but never inflexible and uncompromising on matters of little importance to the overall good of the team and the strategic mission.

Leaders must accept total responsibility, own problems that inhibit performance, and develop solutions to those problems.

leadership is the single greatest factor in any team’s performance.

Once people stop making excuses, stop blaming others, and take ownership of everything in their lives, they are compelled to take action to solve their problems.

There are no bad units, only bad officers. This captures the essence of what Extreme Ownership is all about.

Although discipline demands control and asceticism, it actually results in freedom. When you have the discipline to get up early, you are rewarded with more free time.

More than a decade of continuous war and tough combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan gave birth to a new generation of leaders in the ranks of America’s fighting forces.

Whether on the battlefield or in the business world, leaders must be comfortable accepting some level of risk.

Most important of all, he believed winning was possible.

I had to take ownership of everything that went wrong. Despite the tremendous blow to my reputation and to my ego, it was the right thing to do—the only thing to do. I

The infamous they.

To not move around, observe, and analyze, in order to make the best decisions possible, was to fail as a leader and fail the team.

Calm but not robotic, logical but not devoid of emotions.

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.

You know well that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them.

Love needs to be proved by action.

When your every thought and your every action is directed to your ultimate life goals, you become unstoppable and assured of great success and happiness.

Cut your excuses in half and double your actions around your goals.

We must create our own world or we will die from inaction.

People say a lot. So, she watches what they do.

The greatest misfortune that can come to a human being is to lose his inner peace. No outer force can rob him of it. It is his own thoughts, his own actions, that rob him of it.

Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.