My heart is heavy today.

Yesterday morning, I woke up at 4 a.m., made my son a skinny latte and an asiago bagel sandwich, and drove him to the airport. I hugged him goodbye — and not just him. I said goodbye to a version of him I’ll never see again.

Judge is headed to Marine Corps Officer Candidate School. Six weeks. Sergeant instructors in his face. Exhausting physical and mental demands. Leading small teams through chaos, running obstacle courses, pushing past limits he doesn’t yet know he has. It’s the crucible the Marine Corps has used for generations to answer one question: do you have what it takes to lead Marines?

He believes he does. And I believe in him.

I know this world. As a former Marine Corps Captain, I lived it — every sleepless night, every moment of doubt, every breakthrough that only comes when you have nothing left and keep going anyway. I wouldn’t wish OCS on my worst enemy.

And yet here I am, cheering him on.

The Misconception That Needs to Die

There’s a persistent myth about military training — that it produces cookie-cutter warriors. That it grinds individuality into dust and leaves behind obedient automatons who check their brains at the door. You’ve heard the version: “I could never join the military. I can’t stand anyone yelling at me.” As if the yelling is the point. As if the goal is to reduce you to a compliant archetype who does what he’s told and nothing more.

Yes, you follow orders in the military. But leadership? Leadership is something else entirely.

Leadership in the Marines is highly creative, deeply authentic, and begins from a position of hard-won confidence.

What Actually Gets Transformed

The Marine Corps breaks candidates down — not to destroy them, but to clear away the rubble that life has piled on top of who they really are. The false beliefs about their own talent. The accumulated weight of every time someone told them they weren’t good enough. The distorted maps of their own limits, drawn by fear and inexperience.

What candidates leave with is not a uniform identity. They leave with something far more valuable: an unshakeable sense of their own capability, and a critical understanding of how leadership actually works.

Here’s what six weeks in Quantico teaches:

You lead through influence, not authority. This is the one that surprises people most — that a top-down driven organization would center this principle. But it does, because it has to. You can’t bark someone into their best performance. You have to be what “right” looks like in thought, word, and deed. You have to earn the follow.

Excuses only satisfy those who deliver them. Every candidate learns this one fast. An excuse may feel like an explanation, but it functions like surrender. Marines are taught to own outcomes and drive toward solutions.

You are only as strong as your weakest team member — and building them up is your job. Not complaining about them. Not working around them. Building them. This shifts leadership from performance to service.

Camaraderie and pride outlast every material reward. Not the salary. Not the car. Not the house on the hill. The bonds forged under pressure — when someone carried your weight because you couldn’t, and you carried theirs — those don’t depreciate.

Service and sacrifice are the foundations of greatness — and ego is the enemy of both. The candidates who thrive are the ones who check their ego long enough to put the mission, and the people, first.

The Goodbye That Makes You

Here’s what I keep coming back to as I watch my son walk into this: saying goodbye to a version of yourself isn’t loss. It’s the price of growth. The Marine Corps makes this explicit — it’s built into the design. But the truth applies to all of us.

We all have versions of ourselves worth letting go of. The one that plays small. The one that leads with ego instead of service. The one that mistakes a title for authority and authority for leadership. Releasing those versions is rarely comfortable — it doesn’t come without some screaming, some exhaustion, some 4 a.m. moments where you wonder what you were thinking.

But on the other side of that goodbye is someone worth saying hello to.

Service teaches this better than anything else I’ve encountered. When you commit to something larger than yourself — a mission, a team, a standard — you stop asking “What do I get?” and start asking “What can I give?”  That shift changes everything. It changed me. I’m betting it changes Judge, too.

We don’t all need to go to OCS. But we could all stand to learn something from the people who do.

What’s Next: A Six-Week Series

Over the next six weeks, while Judge is away becoming a Marine officer, I’ll be writing more about the leadership principles that military training embodies at its best — principles that are just as relevant in a boardroom, on a healthcare floor, or in any organization asking more of its people.

If you know someone who would benefit from this blog, please forward it. The more people who understand what real leadership looks like — the kind forged under pressure, not handed out with a title — the better.

Go get ‘em, Judge.