Brush Your Teeth, Change The World!
Or- Only brush the ones you want to keep, and how to keep promises to yourself.
Think.
I have become convinced that the simple act of brushing your teeth twice daily is the secret to success.
But, there is a catch…
In the morning when you splash water on your face and wash the sleepiness from your eyes, you have a perfect opportunity to take a good, up-close look at yourself while you are running your toothbrush along your molars and bicuspids. There is no better time to establish your intention for the day.
At work, I encourage the Marines to commit each morning to doing the things that Raiders do. To upholding the standard, and to taking choice off of the table.
Look yourself in the mirror and commit to following through on the plans, goals, and habits that you have established for yourself.
As we used to say in recon, Plan the dive and dive the plan.
You’ve got to say it, and you’ve got to mean it. The mirror is also a great place to stick a post-it note with a reminder. A quote or goal that you are committed to achieving.
Now it is as simple as spending the next 18 or so hours honoring the commitment you made to yourself. If you can’t honor commitments to yourself why should anyone else trust you?
In the evening, before bed, as you scrub the day’s accumulation of plaque and tartar from your fangs, again look in the mirror and very critically answer the question, “How’d I do?”
You probably won’t have been perfect, perfection is rare, and likely a sign that you have set the bar too low.
Each day, settle on:
One sustain: One thing you did really well that you will keep committing to doing until you no longer have to think about it.
Two-three Improves-Things that you can get better at.
Maybe you didn’t put out in the gym.
Maybe you ate too many cookies.
Maybe you spent too long staring at nonsense on your phone instead of reading an honest-to-goodness book.
You can beat yourself up about it, but I guarantee you can’t go back in time and change it.
Instead, lean forward, take a good, hard look at yourself, and ask WHY?
Why am I doing things that are not bringing me closer to my goals?
If you knew you were headed in the wrong direction in the woods would you keep going?
No?
Then why do it in life?
The hard thing and the right thing are often the same thing.
By now your gums are probably bleeding, so take it easy chief, and have a good rinse and gargle.
Get some rest and get back after it tomorrow.
Read. The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
If you’ve had trouble digging into the Stoics, Ryan Holiday’s writing is a great place to begin. Quite often the stumbling block in front of us is what we need to climb over to reach our goal.
Write.
Because quite a few of you have asked for some form of proof that I am actually penning my memoir, I have decided to provide a small sample from the first chapter, which opens at night in a pub in Darwin Australia.
There is a saying in the Marine Corps that fairy tales begin with, “Once upon a time” but sea stories start with, “No shit, there I was.” It was turning into that kind of night. And so, we drank and rehashed stories that grew in scope with each telling.
Willy was recounting an episode from a training deployment we had completed some months earlier, a practice High Altitude - High Opening parachute infiltration on a desert base in China Lake, Ca. On the last night of our trip, we convinced the staff of the base’s enlisted club to let us stay after closing time. After a hard night of drinking, Willy and I were watching the sunrise through the window when we heard a ruckus coming from the kitchen. We walked in to find Smitty dressed in a chef’s cap, apron, and little else cooking an obscenely large quantity of frozen hash brown patties on the club’s enormous flat-top griddle. That was about the time that a member of the base's civilian guard force entered and bellowed, "If I have to tell you again to leave, you ain't going to the barracks, you're going to jail!" While we had all been there and had heard the story repeatedly, Willy’s imitation of the guard always brought a fit of laughter.
We were still laughing when the bartender roared, “Oy, mates!” and dug for the remote to push up the TV’s volume. It was 10:32 pm for us. 9:02 am Eastern Standard Time.
It was hard to recognize what I was seeing, a tall building shot from an unsteady camera, a plume of smoke. An accident of some kind. And then the camera panned out to a sister building and another airplane that set us all on a collision course…
If you want more you will have to buy the book which I hope will be available this fall. Stay tuned for updates.
Repeat.
Words of wisdom from those who said it best.
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” -Calvin Coolidge
“If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.” —Benjamin Franklin
“There’s never enough time to do everything, but there’s always enough time to do the most important thing.” —Dean Bokhari
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” –George Patton
As always, thanks for reading. See you next Thursday!
As always, spot on. Those that know the difference between fairy tales and sea stories usually have the best stories. I wrote some of mine out, in hopes of doing a book, you've inspired me to pick up that task again.
I also am using a lot of your material in teaching my young mentoring associates, with all due credit and acknowledgement to the author of course. The LOEs could be a leadership course in themselves.
Semper Fi/Semper Fortis