Robert O’Neill is one of the most decorated combat veterans of our generation. He is a former Navy SEAL, speaker, and the author of The New York Times best-selling memoir, “The Operator“.

The death of Osama bin Laden is one of the most talked-about events after 9/11. There is a movie about that night, and it’s talked about in schools today. It’s easy to remember the headlines and celebrate a historic victory. But while that night ended one chapter of history, it also changed the life of Robert O’Neill, the man who fired those three shots that were heard around the world.

Robert O’Neill is the boy from Butte, Montana, who couldn’t swim.

Few people thought he had any shot at being accepted into BUDS – Rob included. But there’s something about a person who is willing to push himself beyond any limits he once believed he could endure. That person cannot be dissuaded from any goal. That person will take the pain and channel it into a purpose that will get him through one moment, into the next, and then do it all over again. Robert O’Neill is one such person.

“It’s not about getting from one year to ten years,” says Rob. “It’s about getting from breakfast to lunch, and can I make it to dinner?” Eating an elephant one bite at a time, and so on.

That’s how he worked 12 hours a day 4 days a week, shoveling crushed rock at a copper mine before delivering pizzas at night when he was still a teenager. It’s how he emerged from a basketball camp in his junior year of high school, as MVP. And it’s how he made it through one mission after another to emerge from his military career as one of the most widely recognized Navy SEALS of this generation.

“If you want to get better at doing pull-ups, do more pull-ups,” he writes in his book, “The Operator,” which pretty much sums up his simplistically badass approach to whatever challenge lies before him.

Robert O’Neill is not the first Navy SEAL to write a book and he won’t be the last. Plenty of people condemn him for writing his. But when you’re the man who fired three of the most infamous shots of all time, your story will be told with or without you, so it may as well be told by you.

Robert O’Neill is both quick to defend his telling of the story and even quicker to note it’s not his story, alone.

“People from over 80 countries were killed in both towers, so it’s the world’s story,” he says. “It wasn’t a war on lower Manhattan. It wasn’t a war on Shanksville PA or the Pentagon. It was a war on modern society and if people want to hear the story they should hear the story.”

He’s also consistent about breaking the operation down to illustrate all the men and women who were integral to its success. From the intelligence community to the leaders who pulled the team together, to the pilots and the airmen, and every man he served alongside that night, Rob notes it came down to him being the eighth person in line when the men before and behind him peeled off to engage other targets or sweep other rooms.