Start your day with a task completed: Sometimes the simple act of making your bed can give you the lift you need to start your day and provide you the satisfaction to end it right.

You can’t go at it alone: You cannot paddle the boat alone. Find someone to share your life with. Make as many friends as possible, and never forget that your success depends on others.

Only the size of your heart matters: If you want to change the world … get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward. (If a Navy SEAL fails to follow basic requirements (such as making their bed perfectly), they’re instructed to roll around on the beach until they’re covered head to toe with wet sand—referred to as a “sugar cookie”).

Life’s not fair—drive on: Sometimes no matter how hard you try, no matter how good you are, you still end up as a sugar cookie. Don’t complain. Don’t blame it on your misfortune. Stand tall, look to the future, and drive on.

Failure can make you stronger: In life, you will face a lot of Circuses. You will pay for your failures. But, if you persevere, if you let those failures teach you and strengthen you, then you will be prepared to handle life’s toughest moments.

You must dare greatly: Life is a struggle and the potential for failure is ever present, but those who live in fear of failure, or hardship, or embarrassment will never achieve their potential. Without pushing your limits, without occasionally sliding down the rope headfirst, without daring greatly, you will never know what is truly possible in your life.

Stand up to the bullies: In life, to achieve your goals, to complete the night swim, you will have to be men and women of great courage. That courage is within all of us. Dig deep, and you will find it in abundance.

Rise to the occasion: At some point, we will all confront a dark moment in life. If not the passing of a loved one, then something else that crushes your spirit and leaves you wondering about your future. In that dark moment, reach deep inside yourself and be your very best.

Give people hope: We will all find ourselves neck deep in mud someday. That is the time to sing loudly, to smile broadly, to lift up those around you and give them hope that tomorrow will be a better day.

Never, ever quit: Life constantly puts you in situations where quitting seems so much easier than continuing on. Where the odds are so stacked against you that giving up seems the rational thing to do.