Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL and founder of The Mission Continues, delivered an address at Tufts University in 2012 built around a simple but profound insight he discovered across vastly different circumstances. Greitens first observed this truth as a college student working in refugee camps during the Yugoslav civil war, where parents and grandparents caring for young children were often faring better than teenagers and young adults who felt no one needed them. He then lived it during the hardest moment of Navy SEAL Hell Week, when — unable to sleep after 72 hours, his foot throbbing, consumed by self-pity — he walked outside, put his head under a faucet, and told himself: 'It's not about me. This test is about my ability to be of service to the people who are asleep in that tent right now.' The instant he stopped focusing on himself, all the fear and self-pity washed away.