Top Highlights

• My fall on the ice had driven home to me that I wanted to spend my career among men like that: men who dealt with life as it came at them, who were more interested in living life fully than in their own longevity. I didn’t care about making money. I wanted to be outdoors—and in the company of adventurous people.
• In any organization, it’s all about selecting the right team. The two qualities I was taught to value most in selecting others for promotion or critical roles were initiative and aggressiveness.
• Marines reward initiative aggressively implemented.
• It now became even more clear to me why the Marines assign an expanded reading list to everyone promoted to a new rank: that reading gives historical depth that lights the path ahead. Slowly but surely, we learned there was nothing new under the sun: properly informed, we weren’t victims—we could always create options.
• You make mistakes, or life knocks you down; either way, you get up and get on with it. You deal with life. You don’t whine about it.