Can You Change the World If You Don't Make Your Bed?

So I recently saw this article on facebook and was immediately interested.  I'm a sucker for motivational tips on how to live a better life; especially those that include things I already do so I can feel awesome about myself and not really have to do anything extra.  And these were from a Navy Seal!  I will feel even more awesome when I see things I am already doing on his list!

My excitement grew as I began reading and the first lesson started with "if you want to change the world."  I really do want to change the world.  This would be a particularly enjoyable motivational list.  I would do good, while improving myself (while still hoping it would mostly be things I’m already doing – I’m pretty busy and not looking to add much to the to-do list).

And then I finished reading number one and my hopes were crushed.  The Navy Seal’s life principle number one?  Make your bed every morning.  Epic fail.  I never make my bed, unless people are coming over.  Wait, let me rephrase that.  Unless people are coming over who will be coming upstairs and will see my bed.  That’s right – I only do it if someone will see it.

And he really put a lot of stock into this bed-making thing.  Apparently, making my bed is step one in accomplishing anything else that day.  It is the springboard from which accomplishing all of my other tasks will, well, spring.  My pride in my well made bed will spur me on to accomplish other things all day long.  If I can’t get this little thing right, I’ll never get the big things right.

And I don’t want to make my bed.  On my list of things I need to do in the morning before I leave the house, making my bed wouldn’t even appear.  It’s not like it’s #23 and sometimes I get to it if it’s a good morning.  It’s not even a remote thought.  I might accidentally make it if I throw my comforter around while I’m looking for a lost sock or kid’s toy or something and it ends up kind of covering the bed.  But that’s as close as it is going to get to being made.

But then I decided to turn this whole thing upside down and find a way to make it work better for me (my snarky self is very adept at doing that).  I realized I should not get stuck on the first principle and that although I choose not to make my bed as a part of my being very efficient in the morning (see, things are looking up already, I’m efficient not lazy), it’s not a particularly difficult thing to do and I should move on to the other principles so I could find something with which I could change the world (and again, hopefully something I was already doing).

This was a good plan.  Numbers two and three gave me hope. I’m paraphrasing here but they seem to be let other people help you and short people are just as good as tall people.  I like to tell people what to do and I’m pretty short so those really resonated with me. 

I now had two out of the first three (so what if this was based upon some very loose interpretations) and decided I should quit while I was ahead.  

I’m very aware the Navy Seal would not consider quitting while one is ahead a life principle that will result in changing the world, but if you will recall about two paragraphs ago I changed this to playing by my rules, so it counts.