Admiral William McRaven

William Harry McRaven was born November 6, 1955 at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, the son of a decorated U.S. Air Force officer and career educator. He grew up on military bases around the world. He attended the University of Texas at Austin on a Navy ROTC scholarship, earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1977, and was commissioned as a Naval officer that same year.

McRaven completed Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training in 1978 — the grueling course at Coronado that features the six-mile swims, the obstacle courses, and Hell Week. He went on to spend 37 years as a SEAL, holding every operational leadership position from platoon commander through Task Unit commander through Special Mission Unit commander. His 2001 Naval Postgraduate School master’s thesis on the theory of special operations was later published as Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare — Theory and Practice and remains required reading inside special operations communities around the world.

He commanded Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from June 2008 to August 2011. JSOC is the organization that coordinates the special missions units of all U.S. military branches — the tier-one operators who execute the nation’s most sensitive direct-action missions. Under his command JSOC ran the operational cycle that, over several years, dismantled the senior leadership of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On May 2, 2011, McRaven commanded Operation Neptune Spear — the raid on the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. The mission was conceived, rehearsed, and executed by SEAL Team Six under McRaven’s direct command authority. He stood in the Situation Room with President Obama and his national security team as the raid unfolded. The operation has been the subject of multiple books, documentaries, and films.

Three months after the Abbottabad raid, McRaven was confirmed as the 9th Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) — a four-star billet overseeing all Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Air Force Pararescue and Combat Controllers, and Marine Raiders. He held SOCOM from August 2011 until his retirement in August 2014.

He retired with four stars, 37 years of service, and a shelf of medals including the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (with three oak leaf clusters), the Silver Star, and three Bronze Stars with V for valor. He then served as Chancellor of the University of Texas System — the 14-institution UT network — from 2015 to 2018.

In May 2014, three months before his retirement, McRaven delivered the commencement address to the University of Texas at Austin Class of 2014. The speech opened with the line that became the title of his first bestseller: “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” Across twenty minutes he laid out ten lessons from SEAL training — each one applicable far outside the military — including “find someone to help you paddle,” “measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers,” and “never, ever ring the bell.” The video has been viewed more than 15 million times on YouTube alone. The resulting 2017 book, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life… And Maybe the World, became a #1 New York Times bestseller.

He has since written Sea Stories (2019), The Hero Code (2021), The Wisdom of the Bullfrog (2023), and Conquering Crisis (2024) — each book extending the same operating philosophy he laid out in the original commencement speech into deeper territory of leadership, character, and crisis decision-making.

His central teaching, compressed: small disciplines are not small. They are the foundation of every large discipline. Making your bed takes two minutes; it proves you can finish something; it guarantees you come home to one small thing done right; it means the worst day of your life ends with the smallest possible victory already in the bank. Change the world? Start with the bed. The rest is the same principle at larger and larger scales for the rest of your life.