Be All You Can Be

The universal wish to make the most of our lives.

I have a belief about people, and it’s contained in the phrase, “be all you can be.” The “aha” that gave birth to my belief unfolded for me in the summer of 1971. Let me tell you about it. 

During the Viet Nam War era, our country drafted young people into the armed services, forcing many of them to serve involuntarily. As you know, the draft was controversial. Thousands rioted in protest, and additional thousands fled to Canada to avoid military service and the war. It was a big problem for our political leaders, and the Army was researching the pros and cons of eliminating the draft, and converting into a “Modern Volunteer Army” (MVA).

In mid-1971, I was between my first and second years of business school, looking for a summer job to help pay expenses. I got lucky and was hired to be the principal interviewer for the Army’s MVA research program. I was qualified for the job, in part because of my military experience—I had enlisted in the Army right out of high school, later graduated from West Point, and then served two years of combat duty in Viet Nam. 

Over the summer of 1971, I traveled to five Army bases and interviewed hundreds of young soldiers, asking them, “Why did you join the Army?” Here are some typical answers. There’s a pattern to them…see if you can spot it.

“I was getting into drugs…had to get away.”

“My best friend’s big brother came home after three years in the Army. He used to be a f***up, but now he’s a man. I wanted some of that.”

“If I had stayed at home, I’d be runnin’ the streets…probably dead by now, or in jail.”

“I couldn’t get into college [or couldn’t afford it] and I needed a way to get my life started.”

“I didn’t know what I wanted to be, or even how to figure it out, so I went where I could do something useful until I could make up my mind.”

“I thought the Army would toughen me up, get me in shape, teach me something.”

“The judge told me, ‘Join the Army or go to jail.’ Not much of a choice, but it was a way out of what I was headed for.”

Can you see the common thread? They all wanted something better for themselves. They may not have known what “better” might be, in fact damn few did, but they had a feeling that, in the Army, somehow, they could improve themselves and get a leg up on life.

At the end of that summer, I analyzed more than 600 videotaped interviews, and then wrote a report, which we submitted to the Army for consideration. We even made a presentation to a couple of generals at the Pentagon. Then…silence. We never did get official feedback. 

But a couple of years later, the Army went all-volunteer, and shortly after that adopted the motto “be all you can be,” which ran as their recruiting theme for the next 25 years or so. It became one of the all-time most successful advertising slogans…much better than “Join the Army and See the World,” or “Army Strong,” or “An Army of One.”

All those young people I talked with wanted pretty much the same thing: To make the most of their potential. To have better lives. To be more successful. To think better of themselves. They wanted to “be all you can be,” and for them the Army was a step in that direction.

So here’s the point of this story: I have come to believe that “be all you can be” is a basic drive for all of us. It takes different forms for each of us, and sometimes, perversely, it leads to immoral, or even criminal behavior for those who think the only way they can be exceptional is to misbehave. Also, many of us mistake celebrity or status or wealth as indicators of becoming all we can be. Those are important achievements, and I don’t want to diminish them. But the deeper, underlying need—the driving force—seems to be the desire to be the best we can be.

There are exceptions, of course. Many of them. We’ve all seen people who have given up, succumbed to addiction, been beaten down by the pressures of life, or suffered tragic circumstances. But I believe that even those who have given up still harbor the wish to be better, even if they’re not willing or are incapable of making the effort. 

To me, believing that “be all you can be” is a universal desire helps me be more compassionate. When I see people behaving in ways that don’t make sense to me, when I have to deal with the jerks we all encounter from time to time, when people (including me) screw up, and when I see people struggling with the game of life, I can feel for them. I can respect them. They may not do it the best possible way, or the way I would do it, but they’re doing it. They’re in the game.

And the game is, “be all you can be.”