The elite team of Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011, is still largely shrouded in mystery. But in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, Eric Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, divulged the one quality that makes for a successful SEAL—the ability to think about other people and a higher purpose. Here's an excerpt from his article:

The rigors that SEALs go through begin on the day they walk into Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training in Coronado, Calif., universally recognized as the hardest military training in the world. BUD/S lasts a grueling six months. The classes include large contingents of high-school and college track and football stars, national-champion swimmers, and top-ranked wrestlers and boxers, but only 10-20 percent of the men who begin BUD/S usually manage to finish ….

What kind of man makes it through Hell Week? That's hard to say. But I do know—generally—who won't make it. There are a dozen types that fail: the weight-lifting meatheads who think that the size of their biceps is an indication of their strength … the preening leaders who don't want to get dirty, and the look-at-me former athletes who have always been told they are stars …. In short, those who fail are the ones who focus on show.

Some men who seemed impossibly weak at the beginning of SEAL training—men who puked on runs and had trouble with pull-ups—made it. Some men who were skinny and short and whose teeth chattered just looking at the ocean also made it. Some men who were visibly afraid, sometimes to the point of shaking, made it too.

Almost all the men who survived possessed one common quality. Even in great pain, faced with the test of their lives, they had the ability to step outside of their own pain, put aside their own fear and ask: How can I help the guy next to me? They had more than the "fist" of courage and physical strength. They also had a heart large enough to think about others, to dedicate themselves to a higher purpose.