I DON'T STOP WHEN I'M TIRED I STOP WHEN I'M DONE.

“You can always keep going.” (SEAL)

The books Living With a SEAL by Jesse Itzler and City Of Glass by Cassandra Clare are very different when first looked at. Living With a SEAL is about a 45-year-old man asking a navy SEAL to live with him and train him for a month. This memoir tells not only real events, but events that are impossible to imagine. City Of Glass is the third book in the Mortal Instruments sci-fi series. This fiction based story is about a world where vampires, werewolves, and demons all exist, and star the people who fight them. This book takes you on a serious adventure through all different kind of dimensions following a girl shadow hunter and a boy shadow hunter who fall in love in a very complicated situation. City Of Glass is 100% crazy, imaginative, unreal, drama where the main character’s mother is kidnapped and put under a sleep-spell by the first chapter. Living With a SEAL follows SEAL who doesn’t believe in messing with unnecessary drama and yet spend his time challenging himself and working out and surpassing ridiculous expectations. Although these books are very different and talk about many very different issues through four very different main characters, the same theme can be applied to both books. Through character motivations and actions, these books teach a very similar, and simple, lesson. If you want something, don’t give up until you can give yourself exactly that - work.

“If you can see yourself doing something, you can do it. If you can’t see yourself doing something, usually you can’t achieve it.” (SEAL)

ALWAYS believe in yourself and create your own outcome. If you want to achieve something, it is really difficult to be successful if you doubt your every move. “Believing in yourself” not only sounds incredibly cliche but is surprisingly difficult, yet SEAL never stops doing it. When circumstances are rough and it seems almost impossible for him to do something - like run in pitch black at 2am on the side of an iced over mountain in shorts - he tells himself it is “70 degrees and sunny” and he runs six miles on the side of an iced over mountain in the dark. He tells himself what his limits are and he believes himself, he believes in himself. SEAL goes to incredibly lengths to push his body, mind and limits and once he has conquered one obstacle he moves to fight the next, and he never stops telling himself he can do it. In City Of Glass, Alec has a boyfriend and there is kind of an unspoken rule against being a gay shadow hunter. He really wants to tell his parents but he doesn’t know how to bring himself to do until the very end of the third book. Alec questions everything he believes about himself and about his community and he second guesses every move he makes because he isn’t confident and he doesn’t feel supported by anyone, including himself. He wants to be open about who he is, but with all the doubt and negative thoughts and fears he can’t bring himself to actually tell his parents. In result he almost loses his boyfriend and feels constant depression and self-doubt and even at one point tries to convince himself he is not gay at all. It is so important to believe in yourself and create your own limits, your own fate. because without your own support and belief, it is almost impossible to get anyone else's.

 “Know what’s important to you and protect it at all costs.” (SEAL)

NEVER give up on yourself, or the people you love. I know this is beginning to sound like a Hallmark card, but sometimes the easiest way to process and accept important lessons are through mushy-gushy simple words. City Of Glass tells the story of Clary and her mother who are shadowhunters, yet Clary was raised in the human world without being told any truth of her history or family. Clary finds out practically her entire backstory while her mother is kind of in a coma and yet, she doesn’t react the way a normal teenage girl would. Clary immediately looks into ways to save her mother and people who could help her find her mother, rescue her mother, and wake her mother out of the spell. Clary fights on her mother's behalf while her mother can’t. Clary does everything in her power, breaking laws, fighting very powerful demons, befriending vampires and werewolves, all to get her mother back to her instead of resenting her mother and her decision to keep everything about who Clary is from her. Clary’s one objective is to save her mother - so she works and works until finally she wakes her mother up. Clary never throws away the idea of her mother being ok because she knows she is working as hard as she can to ensure it. Clary never gives up on her mother, just like Jace never gives up on Clary while she drags him through hell and high water trying to find her mother, and Alec never gives up on Jace who drags him around looking for a girl’s mother he never even cared about. Each of them care for the other and they will do anything for them, no matter what, because they love them and have vowed to themselves as long as that connection is alive to never give up or doubt the other. Clary and SEAL are very similar in this way that they will do anything and everything to accomplish what they want to be done. Yet Jesse and Jace tend to give up easier, which is why the relationships between these characters are so similar.  

”If you want to be pushed by your limits, you have to train to your limits.” (SEAL)

ALWAYS work and fight for what you want and believe you deserve. Believing in yourself and never giving up on the people around you are two very important aspects to life, but when you want something it is a fact that you can believe and stay loyal as much as you want but you are not going to actually achieve anything by doing nothing. SEAL and Clary know this and they teach Jesse and Jace to think like this as well. Clary’s best friend is taken by vampires and she sets out to get him back. With no training or knowledge of real vampires, she risks her life as she marches head first into a vampire's lair. Jace immediately tries to stop her because it is a ridiculous plan, and he suggests they give the challenge to the Clave (their government and leaders) and forget about it. Clary flips. She trots right into the lair anyway and brings Jace with her to show him that it may be difficult and it may be an inconvenience, but she is going to get her friend back right that very second and it honestly changes his view on his job and his life. SEAL is training Jesse and he believes that you get to decide your own limits and you work, and work, and work until you can meet them. Then you create new limits. Jesse gives up before he has even starts his run because his shorts are making it slightly uncomfortable - SEAL adds an extra three miles. Jesse wants to watch TV all night because he had a long run that morning and believes he deserves a break, but SEAL knows Jesse asked SEAL all the way out to Manhattan for a month to train him and he makes Jesse do a 6-mile run in central park at 3a.m. SEAL takes a challenge and rips it apart, Jesse finds one and digs a hole to avoid having to confront it. Yet after a month of living with SEAL, Jesse runs 12-miles every day and he wants to work harder for the approval of SEAL.. That is another place Jesse goes wrong, he works hard for others approval.

“I don’t do sh*t for applauses. I don’t do sh*t for fanfare. I do sh*t for me.” (SEAL)

NEVER let other people be the reason you push yourself and never let other people tell you what you can and can’t do. SEAL knows what he wants and knows what he likes and if someone tells him he is crazy or that he can’t do it, it will just push him to work even harder until he gets what he wants and can prove the others wrong. Jesse is instructed to do 1,000 push ups in one day and he does it. He works and pushed himself and he does 1,000 push ups in one day. But he does it so that he can make SEAL proud and so that he might not have to try again the next day. SEAL does 1,000 push ups and maybe even more because he likes a challenge and invited effort and sweat and he does it because he wants to impress himself, and he doesn’t care if anyone else even notices. Clary and Jace are hopelessly in love and yet refuse to admit to each other or anyone else. There is a huge barrier blocking them from being with one another and they thought there always would be. So, because people thought it was unnatural and strange they let that get in the way of feeling happy and being together. They put the opinions and requests of others to make everyone else feel comfortable before their own needs and wants, and not only is that unhealthy, but it is demeaning and wrong. Jace and Clary eventually found a way to be together but only because what they thought was holding them apart turned out to be a lie. So sure they eventually got what they had wanted after three books, but only because people decided it was okay for them to be together and they needed the approval so bad they were willing to be in pain and put the other in pain for it.

“I don’t think about yesterday. I think about today and getting better.” (SEAL)

Believe, stay loyal, work hard, and do it for you and no one else. Wanting something that seems impossible is such an easy moment for people to give up right then and there. And without someone encouraging you or maybe having someone doubt you, makes it even harder to imagine being able to accomplish what you want or even need. But SEAL and Clary are loyal as hell and they never ever think for a second that something can’t be done if they really want it to get done, and they work so furiously that it makes others believe that SEAL and Clary really can do anything. These two characters, one fake and one real, are inspirations. They inspired Jesse and Jace to start pushing themselves and trying to solve seriously challenging situations. Although these two books are written about incredibly unrealistic and not every-day incidents, this can be applied to everyone’s everyday life. If you have an essay due for school and you really don’t want to write it or you want to do something else, instead of avoiding it or walking away and complaining, you just have to sit down and write until you are finished. Then you can do whatever else needs to be done. If you want to run a marathon, you can’t do it by just getting on the track and running, you have to practice and work and tell yourself all the time that it is possible. If you are trying to do anything, and someone stops you because they think it isn’t best for you, or they think you can’t handle the challenge, you tell them to get out of your way and you do what you believe is best for you. You can’t give up on something you want and something you love, or else you really won’t achieve a thing to make you happy.

“I don’t stop when I’m tired. I stop when I'm done.” (SEAL)