Embrace the Suck

How do you cultivate the inner armor to endure suffering, adapt to any hardship, and craft a life of purpose? In Embrace the Suck, former Navy SEAL Brent Gleeson answers this with a philosophy forged in the crucible of combat. He argues that extraordinary lives aren’t born from comfort—they’re built from struggle. Drawing on hair‑raising SEAL training stories and personal failures in both war and business, Gleeson shows that resilience is a skill you can train like a muscle. When you learn to face discomfort head‑on, you master not only adversity but yourself.

Gleeson contends that living greatly means choosing pain on purpose: doing the hard, boring, or downright miserable things that forge character and strength. His main contention—embracing the suck—is military slang for meeting hardship with grit, humor, and intention. For him, the phrase becomes a framework for personal growth encompassing pain, failure, purpose, discipline, and mindset. The book functions as a kind of resilience field manual, blending battlefield realism with applied psychology and performance science.

Resilience Is a Trained Skill

At its core, Gleeson insists resilience isn’t innate; it’s the product of deliberate conditioning. Pain and discomfort are the training grounds for mental toughness, much like muscle tearing precedes strength gains. We all face adversity—loss, failure, rejection—but only those who change their relationship with pain rise above it. Drawing from psychologists like Carol Dweck and Kazimierz Dąbrowski, Gleeson shows that adopting a growth mindset is essential: rather than avoiding the hard stuff, use it as fuel for forward motion. Just like SEALs train for chaos until it feels normal, you can rewire your brain to respond to difficulty with composure and curiosity.

The Three Ps: Persistence, Purpose, and Passion

Gleeson’s foundational framework—the “Three Ps”—is what separates those who persevere from those who quit when the surf gets cold. Persistence keeps you pressing on when progress is microscopic. Purpose links your struggle to something larger than yourself, like a mission or cause. And Passion provides emotional energy that keeps resilience sustainable even when reason says stop. These traits define not only SEALs but anyone intent on designing an extraordinary life, from entrepreneurs to parents. Resilience, he writes, “is a summation of what you fight for and what you refuse to give up.”

From the Battlefield to Real Life

Through visceral storytelling, Gleeson connects combat lessons to civilian challenges. Hell Week, with its freezing surf and sleepless nights, becomes a metaphor for any personal crucible where comfort collapses and character emerges. The same principles that help soldiers survive firefights—discipline, communication, accountability—apply just as much to running a company or rebuilding a marriage. The difference, Gleeson says, lies in how you interpret the pain: as punishment or preparation. Every hard thing can cement or corrode your mind depending on the story you tell yourself while it’s happening.

Why It Matters Now

Written amid the global turbulence of 2020, the book is a response to a world suddenly acquainted with collective struggle. Gleeson positions resilience as the ultimate competitive advantage—not only for survival but for fulfillment. Whether confronting a pandemic, business collapse, or personal loss, the same principle applies: lean in instead of retreating. Building those calluses of the mind prepares you for any battlefield life throws at you.

What You’ll Learn

Across twelve chapters and numerous “mental models,” Gleeson leads you through a progression. You’ll begin by seeing pain as a pathway to growth, then learn how to overcome victimhood by owning bad hands and reframing setbacks. You’ll audit your values, tame temptation, and practice deliberate discomfort daily. From there, you cultivate discipline and apply SEAL planning and execution frameworks to civilian goals. Ultimately, you practice purposeful suffering—choosing struggles that matter—and confront mortality as motivation.

By the end, Embrace the Suck reframes hardship as the universal classroom for greatness. Whether you’re scaling your business, recovering from trauma, or just trying to live more intentionally, Gleeson’s message hits with Navy‑grade clarity: stop waiting for comfort. The extraordinary life you’re after begins the moment you stop resisting the storm and start steering through it.

Pain, Gleeson argues, is life’s primary instructor. In BUD/S training, students lie for hours in freezing surf, shivering as instructors whisper temptations to quit. At first, he resisted the pain; then he learned to lean into it. That moment—his epiphany at Coronado Beach—became the seed of his philosophy. Pain, he writes, can either cripple or catalyze. If you let it crush you, it defines you. If you embrace it, it refines you.

The Pain Transformation Process

To turn suffering into strength, Gleeson introduces the Pain Transformation Process—a sequence of actions to channel adversity:

• Fully experience pain. Don’t suppress emotions; acknowledge them. Cry, scream, but stay present.
• Challenge your perspective. View failure as temporary. Audit your thoughts and reframe the situation.
• Surround yourself with the right influences. Seek mentors and cut out those who drain energy.
• Stay active; avoid numbing habits. Replace destructive coping (booze, escapism) with physical exertion and creative work.
• Accept and forgive. Resentment poisons; letting go liberates.

The purpose isn’t to glorify pain but to harvest its lessons. Like a muscle strengthening under resistance, your psyche hardens only through friction. Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dąbrowski called this “positive disintegration”—the breaking down of old structures to build new, higher ones. (Carol Dweck’s Mindset echoes this: discomfort is the soil for mastery.)

From Combat to Everyday Struggle

Gleeson illustrates this with searing combat scenes in Fallujah, where fear, confusion, and grief were daily reality. The lesson: pain is constant, control is optional. What matters is your response. Even outside the battlefield—after divorce, business collapse, or loss—adopting the “embrace” mindset transforms suffering into mobilizing energy. When you can say, “this hurts, but it matters,” you’ve crossed the threshold from reaction to resilience.

Using Pain as Motivation

Pain tells you what’s important. A wound points to a value violated or a goal unmet. Learning to reinterpret its signal trains emotional intelligence. Gleeson counsels asking: What is this pain trying to teach me? Instead of anesthetizing yourself with distraction, convert agony into accountability. “Pain,” he writes, “is weakness leaving the body—but only if you let it.”

In short, suffering isn’t the enemy; avoidance is. Whether from grief, injury, or life's random blows, the invitation remains the same: extract wisdom from the hurt. When you learn that discomfort doesn’t kill you, you stop fearing it—and that’s freedom.

According to Gleeson, resilience begins when you stop asking “Why me?” and start asking “What now?” Everyone gets dealt bad hands—illness, layoffs, heartbreak. But winners focus on response, not blame. Using a metaphor from poker, he shows that the best players don’t curse their hands; they master the table. Life, like war, rewards those who adapt mid‑battle.

Learning from Jason Redman

He exemplifies this through SEAL teammate Jason Redman’s story. Shot multiple times in Fallujah, Jason nearly died and endured 37 surgeries. Yet on his hospital room door, he posted a bright orange sign reading: “If you’re coming to feel sorry for me, go elsewhere. This is a room of optimism and rapid regrowth.” That poster now hangs in Walter Reed Medical Center. Redman’s resilience wasn’t denial—it was defiance. He turned tragedy into fuel, later becoming a best‑selling author and motivational speaker.

From Causality to Action

To cultivate that same mindset, Gleeson introduces the Five‑Step Root Cause Analysis model, adapted from battlefield debriefing:

• Name the shitty thing that happened.
• Identify the high‑level cause, distinguishing what’s within your control.
• Ask “why” five times to uncover the deep root cause—usually mindset or habits.
• List lessons learned, objectively.
• Plan action steps—specific, time‑bound corrections.

In other words, stop replaying the failure reel; conduct an after‑action report. SEALs learn to analyze, adapt, execute—no room for paralysis by analysis. Gleeson extends this to daily life: lost your job, missed your goal, got dumped? Identify your role, extract the lesson, move forward.

Perspective on Misfortune

Gleeson reminds us that some degree of pain is self‑inflicted by fixation. As leadership scholar Glenn Mangurian observed, adversity distorts but also clarifies truth—it strips away illusions. What remains is your capacity to respond with composure. When everything goes sideways, resilience means controlling the controllable and letting go of the rest. As Ernest Hemingway wrote, “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong in the broken places.”

By turning every setback into a post‑mission analysis, you trade victimhood for victory. You can’t control your cards, but you can learn to play them like a SEAL.

After mastering pain, Gleeson argues you must next master your compass—your values. Without them, discipline becomes empty exertion. Drawing on the death of his classmate John Skop during SEAL Hell Week, he describes how losing a brother forced him to confront what mattered. Values aren’t abstract words, he warns; they’re behavioral guardrails defining the difference between courage and recklessness, duty and ego.

The Tragic Lesson of John Skop

During a brutal training evolution called the caterpillar swim, John—already suffering pneumonia—lost consciousness and drowned. The class was devastated, but training resumed. Gleeson realized that John’s death symbolized living one’s values unto the end: commitment, service, and purpose bigger than self. His fallen comrade’s paddle hangs in Gleeson’s office as a reminder that life is short; misaligned values waste it.

The Personal Values Manifesto

To realign your own compass, Gleeson proposes the Personal Values Manifesto, a four‑step self‑audit:

• Brainstorm all values meaningful to you (faith, courage, wellness, honesty).
• Group them into four to six core themes.
• Define supporting behaviors—what living each value looks like daily.
• Design accountability mechanisms—habits, reminders, or people to keep you aligned.

High‑performing organizations do this through mission statements and charters; individuals can do the same. (James Clear, in Atomic Habits, also emphasizes constraining choices to fit values—fewer but clearer rules increase freedom.)

Aligning Action with Integrity

Without value alignment, even success corrodes. Gleeson contrasts “Jeff,” a friend driven solely by money, whose marriage and health collapsed, with warriors and entrepreneurs who tie goals to service and integrity. The difference isn’t ambition—it’s direction. As Tecumseh’s “Death Song” reminds us, honor comes from living so that “the fear of death can never enter your heart.” Once your purpose and principles are transparent, suffering becomes meaningful, not random.

Choosing adversity aligned with your core values turns any hardship into a rite of passage. You stop asking whether the struggle is worth it—because it is who you are.

Gleeson personifies distraction as Temptation Tiger—the seductive force that lures you from your purpose. Whether it’s comfort, complacency, or vice, the Tiger waits at the bottom of every ravine promising easy pleasure. The difference between mediocrity and mastery, he says, is self‑control: the muscle to say no when yes feels good.

Self‑Control as a Trained Muscle

Drawing on psychologist Roy Baumeister’s Willpower, Gleeson likens discipline to physical conditioning. Exertion depletes energy in the short term but builds capacity over time. Daily acts of restraint—not succumbing to social media, managing anger, finishing the workout—expand your willpower reservoir. Aristotle said, “We become just by doing just actions.” Gleeson reframes this as “go to war with yourself daily.”

A SEAL’s Training Isolation

Before BUD/S, Gleeson proved this principle by exiling himself to Crested Butte, Colorado, training at high altitude and eliminating all comfort. No partying, no distractions—just mountains, pain, and purpose. Removing temptation entirely made discipline automatic. When he faced actual SEAL training, that environment‑by‑design gave him an edge.

The Taming Temptation Tiger Model

To resist modern distractions, he distills the strategy into a model recognizable to any goal‑setter:

• Clearly define goals—make them time‑bound and emotionally resonant.
• Visualize success—imagine every detail of winning.
• List your top distractions and rank them.
• Actively remove or minimize them.
• Find an accountability partner to keep you honest.

Each step builds the “muscle memory” of restraint. Temptation never disappears—you just get faster at recognizing it. In business terms, you’re establishing systems that make right choices the default. Over time, that repetition becomes identity: you’re simply not the kind of person who quits early or gives in.

In everyday life, taming the Tiger might mean deleting apps, ditching toxic company, or saying no to another obligation. The point isn’t abstinence; it’s focus. When you corral scattered energy back into your mission, excellence stops being effort—it becomes habit.

If pain is the teacher, failure is the exam. Gleeson argues that you can’t achieve excellence without botching a few missions first. “If you ain’t failin’, you ain’t tryin’,” he repeats. Every SEAL, entrepreneur, or artist learns through missteps—the trick is distinguishing data from defeat.

Failure’s Eight Realities

From research and experience, he lays out eight psychological truths about failure: it distorts goals, skews self‑perception, causes helplessness and fear, triggers self‑sabotage, fuels anxiety, drains willpower, and, most crucially, tempts you to fixate on the past instead of the controllable present. His antidote? Focus on “your three‑foot world”—what’s directly within reach.

Learning from the Battlefield and the Boardroom

He tells of tripping into a cesspool during an Iraqi raid—a literal experience in failure management. Instead of spiraling, the team debriefed, joked, adjusted, and moved on. Later, when his first big speaking event bombed, he used the same method: accept feedback, refine preparation, and return stronger. Reframed, humiliation becomes a growth asset.

Calculated Risk

Gleeson differentiates calculated from reckless risk. Before any mission—or major life decision—he uses a SEAL‑style prebrief: Define the goal, list threats, identify resources, set go/no‑go criteria, and debrief afterward. Whether launching a business or marriage, the discipline is the same. This structure transforms fear into a plan.

By treating every failure as a feedback loop, you inoculate yourself against despair. You stop aiming for perfection and start optimizing for progress. As Winston Churchill put it, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal—it’s the courage to continue that counts.”

Gleeson distinguishes between bad suffering—the kind born of avoidance, resentment, or meaningless struggle—and purposeful suffering, where difficulty supports your mission and values. Life, he writes, is a constant exchange of problems; wisdom is choosing better ones. “Would you rather suffer the boredom of safety or the pain of growth?” he asks.

The Village of Choice

He illustrates this through a parable: villagers fear to leave their settlement’s walls, believing monsters lurk in the forest. One curious man ventures out, faces hardship, and discovers a thriving city beyond. Every comfort zone is like that village—safe but stagnant. Step beyond, and you’ll bleed a little but truly live.

Suffering Practices

To engage suffering productively, Gleeson prescribes five practices backed by psychology research:

• Share struggles with trusted allies.
• Face and express emotions instead of suppressing them.
• Let emotions run their full arc—grieve completely, then release.
• Reflect and reorder priorities around what truly matters.
• Use your experience to serve others, transforming pain into empathy.

Living Beyond Comfort

Across examples—from WWII survivor Louis Zamperini to polar explorer Ernest Shackleton—Gleeson shows that meaning arises from endurance. Shackleton’s doomed Antarctic voyage epitomizes voluntary hardship: men risked everything for purpose and comradeship. Likewise, engaging in meaningful struggle—raising a family, leading a company, healing a trauma—makes suffering sacred, not senseless.

By choosing your pain rather than being a victim of it, you regain agency. The storm remains—but you sail it with intention. As Marcus Aurelius wrote, “What stands in the way becomes the way.”

The final section shifts from mindset to action. Gleeson insists that toughness without execution is wasted potential. The Navy SEAL ethos, “In the absence of orders, I will take charge,” defines his closing message: don’t wait for permission to build your extraordinary life.

From Discipline to Culture

Teams, like individuals, thrive on accountability. During SEAL Hell Week, instructors swap leaders between high‑ and low‑performing crews. Immediately, failing teams rise under disciplined leadership, while successful ones remain strong because culture endures even without the leader. The takeaway: when discipline becomes habit, you’re unstoppable no matter who’s watching.

The Outcome Pyramid

To translate purpose into results, Gleeson introduces the Outcome Pyramid—a stack linking five elements: Purpose → Beliefs → Actions → Rituals → Outcomes. Your purpose drives values; values guide daily rituals; rituals yield measurable outcomes. Like a mission brief, it aligns intent with execution. This framework echoes Stephen Covey’s “Begin with the End in Mind,” but militarized for intensity and clarity.

Working Backward from Death

In the last chapter, “We’re All Going to Die,” Gleeson reminds readers to confront mortality as motivation. When you imagine your eulogy, material trophies vanish; what remains is character, service, and love. His fallen teammates Michael Murphy and Chris Kyle embody this truth—they gave their lives in service, singing their death songs with honor. Living by that awareness strips away procrastination. You realize there’s no “someday.”

When you combine discipline, action, and moral clarity, resilience becomes legacy. Pain forged it, purpose guides it, and execution sustains it. Embracing the suck, Gleeson concludes, isn’t about enduring misery—it’s about wielding it to carve a life so fierce and full that you meet death already victorious.