07/14/2025

Develop Your Grit with These Four Steps

Sometimes, success means 'just don’t quit'

A close family member of mine is a former U.S. Navy SEAL. He helped me overcome a fear of heights by teaching me to rappel on the cliffs in San Diego near his base, but that's a story for another day.

Over the years, he’s described the extremely challenging physical and mental nature of his training, including seven days of constant physical activity with a total of some three hours of sleep the entire week. This is why they call it "Hell Week."

Not surprisingly, the most recent Navy statistics say that on average 80 percent of SEAL trainees will fail to complete the first phase of training, including Hell Week. That means that in a class of 150 enrollees, only 30 candidates will remain after the first eight weeks of training.

Please select this link to read the complete blog post from John Millen.