Collection of articles by various authors.

Get into the Navy SEAL mindset with this raw, brutally honest, in-your-face self-help guide that will teach you how to thrive on adversity. During the brutal crucible of Navy SEAL training, instructors often tell students to "embrace the suck." This phrase conveys the one lesson that is vital for any SEAL hopeful to learn: lean into the suffering and get comfortable being very uncomfortable. In this powerful, no-nonsense guide, Navy SEAL combat veteran turned leadership expert Brent Gleeson teaches you how to transform every area of your life—the Navy SEAL way. Can anyone develop this level of resilience? Gleeson breaks it down to a Challenge-Commitment-Control mindset. He reveals how resilient people view difficulties as a Challenge, where obstacles and failures are opportunities for growth. Next, they have a strong emotional Commitment to their goals and are not easily distracted or deterred. Finally, resilient people focus their energy on the things within their Control, rather than fixating on factors they can't impact. Embrace the Suck provides an actionable roadmap that empowers you to expand your comfort zone to live a more fulfilling, purpose-driven life. Through candid storytelling, behavioral science research, and plenty of self-deprecating humor, Gleeson shows you how to use pain as a pathway, reassess your values, remove temptation, build discipline, suffer with purpose, fail successfully, transform your mind, and achieve more of the goals you set

Members of America’s armed forces have their own distinctive language: milspeak. Especially since WWII, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines have invented and adapted their own slang vocabularies, creating a colorful insider’s lingo of bureaucratic buzzwords, acronyms, mock jargon, dark humor, and outright profanity. Milspeak gives a unique and touching insight into military life from basic training to the trenches; from the flightdeck to the cockpit. This comprehensive field manual, complete with descriptive and humorous illustrations, includes more than 500 colorful entries including: Voluntold: Derisive slang for “I was ordered to volunteer.” Back to the taxpayers: Navy slang for where a wrecked aircraft gets sent. Dome of obedience: Slang for a military helmet. Also called a brain bucket or Skid Lid. Echelons above reality: Higher headquarters where no one has an idea about what is really happening. Embrace the suck: The situation is bad, deal with it. Embrace the Suck is the perfect gift for the soldier, sailor, marine, or airman in your life—or for the Beltway Clerk* who yearns to speak like one. *Derisive term for a Washington political operative or civilian political hatchet man. May refer to so-called “Washington defense experts” who’ve never served in the armed forces.

Discover how the freedom of sucking at something can help you build resilience, embrace imperfection, and find joy in the pursuit rather than the goal. What if the secret to resilience and joy is the one thing we’ve been taught to avoid? When was the last time you tried something new? Something that won’t make you more productive, make you more money, or check anything off your to-do list? Something you’re really, really bad at, but that brought you joy? Odds are, not recently. As a sh*tty surfer and all-around-imperfect human Karen Rinaldi explains in this eye-opening book, we live in a time of aspirational psychoses. We humblebrag about how hard we work and we prioritize productivity over play. Even kids don’t play for the sake of playing anymore: they’re building blocks to build the ideal college application. But we’re all being had. We’re told to be the best or nothing at all. We’re trapped in an epic and farcical quest for perfection. We judge others on stuff we can’t even begin to master, and it’s all making us more anxious and depressed than ever. Worse, we’re not improving on what really matters. This book provides the antidote. (It’s Great to) Suck at Something reveals that the key to a richer, more fulfilling life is finding something to suck at. Drawing on her personal experience sucking at surfing (a sport she’s dedicated nearly two decades of her life to doing without ever coming close to getting good at it) along with philosophy, literature, and the latest science, Rinaldi explores sucking as a lost art we must reclaim for our health and our sanity and helps us find the way to our own riotous suck-ability. She draws from sources as diverse as Anthony Bourdain and surfing luminary Jaimal Yogis, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Jean-Paul Sartre, among many others, and explains the marvelous things that happen to our mammalian brains when we try something new, all to discover what she’s learned firsthand: it is great to suck at something. Sucking at something rewires our brain in positive ways, helps us cultivate grit, and inspires us to find joy in the process, without obsessing about the destination. Ultimately, it gives you freedom: the freedom to suck without caring is revelatory. Coupling honest, hilarious storytelling with unexpected insights, (It’s Great to) Suck at Something is an invitation to embrace our shortcomings as the very best of who we are and to open ourselves up to adventure, where we may not find what we thought we were looking for, but something way more important.

A thoughtful and timely discussion contemporary war literature and films.

Learn the 25 rules of hosting that should never be broken. Read "Words of Widsom" and stories from some of the top comedians working today.

With irreverence, humor, and soul-touching candor, the former editor of Bicycling magazine explores the CrossFit phenomenon, the fitness revolution sweeping America, chronicling his experience "inside the box" and how he got into the best shape of his life. Lifelong amateur athlete Stephen Madden decided to put himself to the test, physically and mentally, by immersing himself in the culture, diet, and psyche of CrossFit—the fast-growing but controversial fitness regime that's a stripped-down combination of high intensity aerobic activity, weightlifting, calisthenics, and gymnastics practiced by more than two million athletes worldwide. But what's crazier? The fact that such a grueling regimen—in which puking and muscle breakdowns during workouts are common—is so popular, or that people pay good money to do it? In Embrace the Suck, Madden chronicles the year he devoted to mastering all of the basic Crossfit exercises like double unders, muscle ups and kipping pullups, and immersing himself in the Paleo diet that strips weight from its followers but leaves them fantasizing about loaves of bread. Throughout, he explores the culture of the sport, visiting gyms (boxes) around the country, becoming a CrossFit coach, and confronting some basic questions about himself, his past and athletic limitations—and why something so difficult and punishing can be at once beautiful, funny, and rewarding.