"By taking off the pressure of having to excel at or master an activity, we allow ourselves to live in the moment. You might think this sounds simple enough, but living in the present is also something most of us suck at. Think about how focused you become when you’re presented with something totally new to accomplish. Now, what happens when that task is no longer new but still taps into intense focus because we haven’t yet mastered it? You’re a novice, an amateur, a kook. You suck at it. Some might think your persistence moronic. I like to think of it as meditative and full of promise. In the words of the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki, 'In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.’ … By exposing ourselves to the experience of trying and failing we might develop more empathy. If we succeed in shifting from snap judgments to patience, maybe we could be a little more helpful to one another—and a whole lot more understanding. If we accept our failures and persevere nonetheless, we might provide a respite from the imperative to succeed and instead find acceptance in trying. Failing is O.K. Better still, isn’t it a relief?" — Karen Rinaldi New York Times, "(It’s Great to) Suck at Something"
"I envision the future version of myself that has transcended a difficult moment, that has figured out a tricky situation, that has the answer to a burning question. I imagine her out there waiting for me, and it’s a sort of comfort. Future me has gotten through this. ...Sometimes I’d arrive at that place up in the distance and realize I was the future me I had been looking at." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"Often the idea of change is more difficult than the change itself." — Sarah Marquis Wild by Nature: From Siberia to Australia, Three Years Alone in the Wilderness on Foot
"Well shit, at least you tried." — Unknown
"But there is this: They also won't tell you that you'll be strong. That you will rediscover what excites you, what breaks your heart, and how to love yourself again. And that by honoring yourself, you are honoring those who hold their own story close to themselves and cannot speak up. The paradox of resilience is that it provides you the strength and power to navigate through hardship, but it doesn't make you invulnerable to pain. Instead, resilience builds your capacity for radical compassion and hope." — Kathy Karlo
"The important thing is to go as far as possible despite the uncertainty, instead of wondering if it might have been possible after not even trying." — Kei Taniguchi Alpinist Magazine, Issue 68, "Pandora's Box" by Akihiro Oishi
"Or you could rise. That 'or' is always available to us, no matter how vehemently we pretend it’s not." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. ... Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." — Viktor Frankl Man’s Search for Meaning
"Fear can create a positive feedback loop. We are afraid, so we shrink and further invite the thing that scares us to occur. To beat the fear, to give ourselves a fighting chance at realizing the best possible outcome, we have to go all in and face it." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"You are refined, not defined, by defeat." — Aaron Eveland
"Whenever you fall, pick up something." — Oswald Theodore Avery
"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default." — JK Rowling Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination
"Failure is only failure if you fail to learn from it." — Unknown
"There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction." — John F. Kennedy
"Rational (or conscious) thought always lags behind the emotional reaction." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"Our brain loves to not decide things. We love to default, or revert to the mean, or do what we know." — Sara Boilen Powder Magazine, "Your Heart and Brain Are Working Against You in Avalanche Terrain"
"Art is work." — Unknown
"Clearly, what gets declared a crisis is an expression of power and priorities as much as hard facts. But we need not be spectators in all this: politicians aren’t the only ones with the power to declare a crisis. Mass movements of regular people can declare one too." — Naomi Kline This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
"To do good, you actually have to do something." — Yvon Chouinard American Express commercial
"You’re not gonna be able to reverse history—but you can change what the future looks like for sure." — Brandon Belcher For the Love of Climbing, Episode 17, "What We Know"
