Admiral William McRaven's Lessons Learned From Being Fired

At some point in time we all fail. I made a point in my book about talking about some of my failures, and some of my failures were pretty spectacular. When I was a young Navy Lieutenant I was inarguably the best job a Navy SEAL could want to have, and my commanding officer and I, so the guy in charge of me, at some point time, we did not see eye to eye on things, and as a result he fired me. Well it's never good to get fired it's particularly bad to get fired when you're in the Navy. So I went on to do another job, but the people you run into, you hear the whispers, you know you hear them saying: Yeah there's McRaven. Isn’t he the guy that got fired? You have to decide that you are either going to move away from that community, go do something entirely different, or you're gonna have to show people that you're better than that, that you can overcome these failings, that you can overcome these mistakes. and so I did, and I was bound and determined to show people that I was better than the McRaven that had gotten fired from his job. I will tell you, you also need people to help you through those tough times. I was fortunate that my wife when I was going through those times she said: Look, you're better than this, you've never quit at anything in your life, you're not going to quit now, so stop feeling sorry for yourself and get back to work. And probably the best advice I ever had. That was one of a hundred or a thousand failures I had in my career. Fortunately most of them didn't cost anybody their lives, but there were some decisions I made that did cost people their lives because that's the nature of sometimes what happens in combat, and those you live with for the rest of your life. You always go back and say: What could I have done better? Could I have done anything better? But those failures are particularly hard.

Channel: Inc.

Views: 219,008

Keywords: Inc. (Magazine), Inc.com, Small Business, Entrepreneurship, Business, News, Investment, Venture Capital, Capital, Markets, Entrepreneur (Profession), Startup, Leadership, William McRaven, Admiral, Navy, Make Your Bed, fired, got fired, unemployed, comeback, business tips, Revoke my security clearance too Mr. President, William H. McRaven, navy admiral mcraven, navy admiral, navy admiral speech, navy admiral commencement speech make your bed, mr. president, osama bin laden raid

Id: XR3BpdBZC4I

Length: 2min 12sec (132 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 10 2017