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Eric Greitens Quotes

Total quotes: 20
“When we're struggling, we don't need a book in our hands. We need the right words in our minds. When things are tough, a mantra does more good than a manifesto.”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Philosophy, Psychology
“Standing at sea level, an ax in your hand feels like a feather. At twelve thousand feet, hours from the summit, an extra pound in your pack feels like an anvil. In the same way, words have value. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“The naive mind imagines effortless success. The cowardly mind imagines hardship and freezes. The resilient mind imagines hardship and prepares. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“How do you know the difference between acknowledging pain and wallowing in it? There's no precise test. But if talking about or "explaining" or "understanding" your pain has become an excuse you use to avoid doing what you need to do, then you are probably wallowing.”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“A masterful warrior carries everything she needs and no more, just as a masterful painter uses all of the paint that she needs and no more, and a master chef uses all of the ingredients that she needs and no more. In the same way, a masterful philosopher will use all of the words that she needs and no more. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“Culture was originally a word for the tilling and tending of the land. Later, people made an analogy and suggested that you could cultivate yourself. So culture also came to mean the things that you could see, listen to, read, learn, try and practice in order to make yourself better and to live a fuller life. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“"When we accept what we cannot change – that some pain cannot be avoided, that some adversities cannot be overcome, that tragedy comes to every one of us – we are liberated to direct our energy toward work that we can actually do. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Pleasures will never make you whole.”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“What you work on, works on you. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“David Burns is a psychiatrist who's pioneered a new way of treating depression. Rather than taking the patient's negative emotions for granted, he challenges them. Rather than using drugs, he uses reason. He finds that many of the painful things we believe about ourselves are wrong, or at least exaggerated. Over time, through deliberate action and thought, we can change how we feel. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“The patient looks around frantically. She is sobbing, panicking, overwhelmed by anxiety. She says she can't breathe; her lungs are about to collapse; her heart is about to stop. She feels like she is going to die. 

The doctor asks: "Do you think you could exercise strenuously right now?" 

She doesn't know, she just feels so bad. "Why don't we find out?" The doctor asks her to try some jumping jacks.

"Could you do this if you were dying?" he asks the patient. "Can you see yourself in an emergency room doing jumping jacks?" Hesitantly, the patient begins to laugh. Soon she's belly laughing. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Today, people tell you, "Don't worry." That's usually friendly advice – and also unhelpful. It's better to tell people, "Worry productively." If you're going to spend time thinking about bad things that might happen, then use that energy for a purpose. Go ahead and visualize the worst that can happen. But instead of wallowing in your worries, imagine how you'll respond to them. Practice. Mentally rehearse what you'll do. Imagine and envision yourself making it through hardship. Your mind is built to prepare for problems. That's more than OK – it's good. The goal of mental rehearsal isn't to fill your head with happy thoughts about the future, but to prepare yourself to succeed in the real world. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Fear is a core emotion. A life without fear is an unhealthy life. 

If you take your kids to the creek to swim, you'll have a lot of fun, but you'll also be on alert. That's good. That's proper. Fear is fine. You need it. If someone came to you at the creek and offered you a pill so that you won't worry as much about your kids, you'd tell 'em to shove the pill.

Proper fear is part of the package of responsible, adult living. Today, too many doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and well-intentioned do-gooders want to reduce anxiety or eliminate fear from decision making. 

They've got it backwards. Focus not on wiping out your anxiety, but on directing your anxiety to worthy ends. Focus not on reducing your fear, but on building your courage – because, as you take more and more responsibility for your life, you'll need more and more courage. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“You will never find your purpose. You will never find your purpose for the simple reason that your purpose is not lost. If you want to live a purposeful life, you will have to create your purpose. How do you create your purpose? You take action. You try things. You fail. You pursue excellence in your endeavors and you endure pain. The pursuit of excellence forces you beyond what you already know, and in this way you come to better understand the world. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Yet even after being so close to misery in so many different places, on some level I still thought of most people's struggles as man against the world, rather than man against the self. But when you're in bed and not tired and it's bright outside and you can't seem to get your feet on the floor, you start to see that a lot of our most important battles are the ones we fight for self-mastery. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“I begin with humility. I act with humility. I end with humility. Humility leads to clarity. Humility leads to an open mind and a forgiving heart. With an open mind and a forgiving heart, I see every person as superior to me in some way; with every person as my teacher, I grow in wisdom. As I grow in wisdom, humility becomes ever more my guide. I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Human beings have produced wonders. We've cured diseases and reduced hunger, charted outer space, expanded the prospects for long and joyous lives. Were we to return to ancient Greece with all of our technology, we would indeed seem godlike.

But we are not gods, and fortune is not ours to direct. Idealists forget this, and they are more easily ambushed by life. Realists remember this, and realism often accompanies resilience. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Isaac Newton spent just as much time obsessively decoding biblical prophecies and predicting the end of the world as he did revolutionizing our understanding of physics. Florence Nightingale revolutionized the practice of health care even as she was racked with intense despair for much of her life. John Nash, the founder of game theory, was a paranoid schizophrenic.

I am not telling you to go out and contract a case of clinical depression or paranoid schizophrenia. I'm just reminding you that excellence is often irrational. Greatness is often strange. Beauty is often odd. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Imagine that a friend tells us, "I feel depressed every morning." Society has taught us that we're supposed to say, "I'm sorry you feel that way." And that's a fine thing to say. But then we're supposed to ask:

WHY: "Why do you feel depressed?" 
WHAT: "What makes you depressed?"
WHEN: "How long have you been depressed?"
WHO: "Have you talked to anyone about your depression?"
WHERE: "Is it only in your house? In bed? Do you feel better at work?" 

The question we almost never ask, however, is the one that really matters. 

HOW: "How do you do that? How do you make yourself depressed every morning?" ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
“Those who are cut off from the land, except as a place to relax and recreate are often afflicted with urban idealism. More and more people today live in a world of streets and houses and buildings and stadiums and schools. Stores and shops provide food. All of these have been built by man, and it can lead us to an unnatural conclusion, even if we are unaware of it: that man has the potential to create paradise. ”
— Eric Greitens, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life
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