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Summary: Stop making excuses. Act as if your life depended on it
Review: Stop making excuses. Act as if your life depended on itWant to lose weight? Stop making excuses. Forget about fad diets. Try this instead: Imagine that the life of someone you love ABSOLUTELY DEPENDS on your losing 15 pounds. Could you do it? Of course you could. Suddenly all the excuses you'd had in the past would be meaningless. You wouldn't find excuses. You'd not only lose weight, you'd walk through a wall of fire if necessary to save their life. Apply the same technique to ANYTHING you want to do --- from stopping drinking, to ending procrastinating, curing a compulsion to gamble. Find an incentive that's strong enough --- one that puts at risk the life of someone you love --- and you can do anything. Imagine for a minute that in every thing you do, your life is at stake --- even in ordinary circumstances. Going to the supermarket, for example, or driving down a highway. When you begin doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way --- as if your life were on the line --- life suddenly takes on a whole new meaning. These are some of the secrets of living your life as extraordinary. Every second of every day is an opportunity to start all over. Failure has no meaning. Living life as a Navy SEAL means you become UNbeatable. Why? Because you never give up. "Failure" disappears from your vocabulary. The time you allow between failure and starting all over again drops from months, days or hours to zero. And when you develop the habit of starting again immediately, you are, quite literally, unbeatable. Jack Schropp asks you to consider a lioness living in the jungle. If she returns from a day of stalking prey and comes back empty-handed, does she berate herself? Does she mutter, "Elsa, you pounced too soon." Do other lions chastise her, "Elsa, you've got to get your anger management under control. It's throwing off your ability to pounce." No, when the lioness misses, she simply adjusts and tries again. And again. Over and over, until she succeeds. Doubt isn't part of her experience. The only thing with meaning is her NEXT opportunity. Schropp encourages us to live like the lioness: Focused. Without doubt. And without meaningless self-recriminations. Bellyaching? It's nonsense. Like SEALS, we're volunteers in most of the things we do in life. Nobody puts a gun to our head and forces us to get married or to take or stay with a dull, unsatisfying job. When we stop thinking of ourselves as victims and begin thinking of ourselves as volunteers, our whole outlook changes. SEALS also know the secret of teamwork. Just as geese know to fly in formation, with one taking the lead for a while, then dropping back so others assume the lead position. None tire quickly because all in the flock take their turn at the helm. SEALs know that their lives, and the lives of their teammates, depend on everyone doing what they say they will do, when they say they will do it. Most people who begin SEAL training never finish. At least 66 percent of the members of every SEAL class drop out before they graduate. Schropp includes a list of excuses trainees offer up when they quit (everything from "I didn't know it was going to be like this," to "my a-- hurts," or "I ran out of clean underwear. Honest.") Reading the list makes us realize how stupid people sound when they make excuses. This book will help anyone prepare for a more rewarding future. And in doing so, it teaches another SEAL secret: The future is NEVER what we expect it to be. This isn't really a book about SEALS. It's about living life effectively. It's not a self-help book, but it can be one of the most helpful books you'll ever read. It's not perfect. Sometimes it jumps around a bit. The writing is a bit uneven in places. But the ideas sparkle. They're practical. You can put them to work immediately --- in your personal life and in your career. And you'll see immediate results. Best of all, you'll gain access to a no-nonsense formula for living that can make you unbeatable. Count on it.
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