A Navy SEAL Commander on Living a Life of Excellence, Agility, and Meaning
In Never Enough, Mike Hayes—former Commander of SEAL Team TWO—helps readers apply high-stakes lessons about excellence, agility, and meaning across their personal and professional lives.
Mike Hayes has lived a lifetime of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. He has been held at gunpoint and threatened with execution. He’s jumped out of a building rigged to explode, helped amputate a teammate’s leg, and made countless split-second life-and-death decisions. He’s written countless emails to his family, telling them how much he loves them, just in case those were the last words of his they’d ever read. Outside of the SEALs, he’s run meetings in the White House Situation Room, negotiated international arms treaties, and developed high-impact corporate strategies.
Over his many years of leadership, he has always strived to be better, to contribute more, and to put others first. That’s what makes him an effective leader, and it’s the quality that he’s identified in all of the great leaders he’s encountered. That continual striving to lift those around him has filled Mike’s life with meaning and purpose, has made him secure in the knowledge that he brings his best to everything he does, and has made him someone others can rely on.
In Never Enough, Mike Hayes recounts dramatic stories and offers battle- and boardroom-tested advice that will motivate readers to do work of value, live lives of purpose, and stretch themselves to reach their highest potential.
Review
Thank you, Bookishfirst and Celadon Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Every wondered what it takes to get into one of the toughest branches in the military? This book has answered that question and so many more. And this story is more than just his experiences during his life fulfilling careers, but he gives us lessons he has learned from these experiences and how any of us, even us regular people, can learn to be better.
Some of my favorite things about this book was the stories he shares of his career as a SEAL. That is what drew me to this book in the first place. I don’t normally read books like this but from the very beginning I knew this would be the exception. Not only the mind boggling, life changing, stories he shares but the way he executed sharing them. I thought that him being a SEAL would make this book hard to understand and to enjoy because I have nothing in common with him, but he wrote in a way that anyone can follow and learn from. He not only has wonderful skills in leadership but can write so well. Every word flowed together, and it was truly pleasing to read his words.
I wouldn’t say this book it exactly a memoir but more of lessons you can learn. Every chapter is a new lesson to learn and each chapter is broken down into even more subtopics that help to achieve the main goal. At first, I thought that he had un-realistic expectations to tell people that they will never be enough. I thought his view would be a person has to be tough, show no weakness, work until they die, push and push until you wither away, but that was far from the truth. Yes, this book it called never enough and to some extent he is saying you are never enough, but not in the way I first thought. He explained that being Never Enough doesn’t mean we don’t have our limits, because all of us do and each of them are different, but instead explains that we can always improve our skills, we can always learn more, and try to take our mistakes we have made and learn from them. He teaches that we need to think of others before ourselves, and how we should think of ourselves and other, that even if in a position of power, we need to be flexible to let others take the lead too. I could truly go on and on with the lessons to be gleamed from this book. And all of these lessons have personal experiences to back them up. Some are happy, some are sad, but they all are inspiring.
He has had the life experiences that 10 people combined couldn’t have in their whole lives for his half a life he has liven so far. I do recommend this book, because I think everyone can learn something, and the stories of his life are truly eye opening. I was hooked from page one and engaged the whole time. A true work of art, and well deserved.