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Excerpt from MISSION DRIVEN by Mike Hayes

When I arrived in Iraq, it was April, just a few months before the hot summer, where the daily high temperatures were already above 100 degrees and would, soon, sometimes reach into the 130s. I knew my team needed to be ready to work in the heat, so as we prepared all spring, I tried to push my team to do more. SEAL deployments overseas involve a lot of individual freedom. We choose how to stay fit, when and how to work out, and how to fill our time between missions. One (of many) homemade fitness devices we built was a humongous truck tire attached to a chain, attached to a weight belt that could be worn around the waist. We created a one-mile run and a “leaderboard” with everyone’s times. Nothing drives SEALs more than competition—with self and with others. No one said anyone had to do that mile tire drag sprint in the heat, but those of us who did sure talked trash to the guys who didn’t.

The activity was also metaphorical. The extra weight represented the heat to come, the drag we would all feel on our bodies. We would have competitions, and at the start of training, even though I was a decade older than many of the SEALs I was leading, I would win. “You are the guys fresh out of training,” I would tell them. “Why am I the fastest one here?”

I was the fastest in part because I had been doing this the longest—intense training, focused on almost nothing else but my body and the mission, putting myself in the best possible position to outlast the enemy, to spot them from farther away, to react more quickly, to gain every advantage I could. We work out so we will see and respond to the enemy first—that’s the goal. When life and death depend on whether you can drag a tire for a mile, your body figures out how to do it faster and faster and faster, while at the same time keeping your eyes up and out on the horizon, training yourself to be as observant as possible for threats, no matter how personally miserable you are.

Once I called out the new guys about being slower than me, it was game-on. I was going back and forth with a young new SEAL named Will Pipkin on the leaderboard, each of us trying intensely to shave a second or two off our times to regain the top spot. As our six-month deployment came to a close, I was a bit demoralized because Will was about ten seconds ahead of me—a nearly impossible time for me to overcome. But I decided I would go out by myself on the afternoon before we flew home. I gave it everything I had and then more. I did it—putting myself at the edge of human misery and perhaps never having done anything harder in my life. I overtook Will!

I decided I wouldn’t tell him until we were on the plane home. We were all, of course, ecstatic to be going home, and when I gathered the regular tire-sprinters together, I prepared to have the last laugh. I told everyone about how I had crushed Will, how much better I was than him, how he just couldn’t overcome the “old guy,” etc. And Will, in a stone-cold emotionless response, said, “Sir—I knew you were going to do that. I planned for that. I got up at four a.m. and walked up to the leaderboard and saw your new time. About an hour ago, I beat you again by more than ten seconds.” All I could do was smile. How privileged I was to work with such great SEALs.

What’s my larger point? If you dropped me in the desert right now and asked me to drag a truck tire for a mile, I would come in last or close to it—because that simply isn’t my mission anymore. Life changes. If you ever think you have it all figured out forever, you’re absolutely wrong. Part of a Mission Driven life is understanding that the mission evolves and adapts, just as we evolve and adapt as individuals.

Consider a dilemma: Spend a few precious hours perfecting a PowerPoint presentation, or take a walk with a friend? There is no right or wrong answer universally. It depends on the situation, on your priorities, and on the specifics. We can decide to spend those extra hours on a PowerPoint deck when we’re twenty-three and need to impress our boss, but the equation may be different when we’re fifty-three and trust that we’ve done enough and will get plenty more value from a walk with a friend. Or perhaps not. It depends, as every decision does. Every moment of our lives is a choice, every instant a potential transition where we could decide to continue on the course we’re on, or shift to something new and different. We will all shift many times throughout our lives—perhaps especially if families and children become part of our journey.

Our priorities can shift by choice or by external circumstances that define them for us. But life isn’t about having the same priorities over time. We can stagger the rewards and find our mission at every stage even if the balance changes over the years. Life is ultimately a dynamic equation. You never know when you are going to need or want to make a shift. Circumstances change. And it takes all the meta-skills discussed earlier to navigate those changes, particularly resilience, and the ability to see hard days not as failures but as the moments most necessary for growth. Failures that lead to learning are successes in the end. Hard days that lead to easier ones make the pain worthwhile. It’s never too late to make a better choice.

I’ve had so many near-death experiences. I still remember being in my Afghanistan makeshift office, on a video call with my wife and daughter, when the roof and walls shook from a rocket explosion. In those moments when you legitimately know it may all be over, you don’t think of yourself. You think of who you’re leaving behind. No one ever wishes from their deathbed that they had spent less time with the ones they love and more time at work. You can’t take your money with you when you go. I was in Iraq and Afghanistan when improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were blowing up vehicles daily. Some days losses were counted in the dozens. Some of those IEDs contained 100+ pounds of explosives and were regularly going off, creating giant holes in the road. There was potential disaster lurking at every turn (and on the straightaways, too!). Each time I got into an armored vehicle, I wondered, Would I even know if I died?

All the clichés are true. You see your life flash before your eyes; you go back to your poorest choices and wish you could have done better. You go to the things you haven’t done but want to. Honestly, that’s one of the things that caused me to write my first book, Never Enough. It’s not that I thought, Oh no, I didn’t write my book. Rather, I realized, I’ve been so privileged to live through and grow through so many situations that few ever do, for good and bad, that I feel I have to share, inspire, and help individuals and our nation. And that’s what drove me to write Mission Driven as well.

I know what patriotism is, and all I want in this life is to be known as an American and a patriot. Life is about making others and our great nation better. You can do better. We can do better. Every single moment of every single day.

Excerpted from MISSION DRIVEN Copyright © 2025 Mike Hayes. Published by Grand Central Publishing, a Hachette Book Group company. All rights reserved.