Bear Grylls Quotes

In every potential sponsor’s eyes, I was a nobody. And soon I had notched up more rejection letters than is healthy for any one man to receive.
I tried to think of an entrepreneur and adventurer that I admired, and I kept coming back to Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin.
I wrote to him once, then I wrote once more. In all, I sent twenty-three letters.
No response.
Right, I thought, I’ll find out where he lives and take my proposal there myself.
So I did precisely that, and at 8:00 P.M. one cold evening, I rang his very large doorbell. A voice answered the intercom, and I mumbled my pitch into the speakerphone.
A housekeeper’s voice told me to leave the proposal — and get lost.
It’s not clear quite what happened next: I assume that whoever had answered the intercom meant just to switch it off, but instead they pressed the switch that opened the front door.
The buzzing sound seemed to last forever — but it was probably only a second or two.
In that time I didn’t have time to think, I just reacted…and instinctively nudged the door open.
Suddenly I found myself standing in the middle of Sir Richard Branson’s substantial, marble-floored entrance hall.
“Uh, hello!” I hollered into the empty hall. “Sorry, but you seem to have buzzed the door open,” I apologized to the emptiness.
The next thing I knew, the housekeeper came flying down the stairs, shouting at me to leave.
I duly dropped the proposal and scarpered.
The next day, I sent around some flowers, apologizing for the intrusion and asking the great man to take a look at my proposal. I added that I was sure, in his own early days, he would probably have done the same thing.
I never got a reply to that one, either.

Three words that are the beating heart behind why many explorers or adventurers do what they do. ‘Because it’s there.

I remember, one week, we all started playing strip poker.
This is more like it, I thought.
It wasn’t really even poker, but was more like: pick an ace and lose an item of clothing. I tried one night to rig the cards so that I could end up naked with Stephie, this girl I really fancied.
I carefully counted out the cards and the aces, and rather unsubtly made sure I was sitting next to her, when we started playing. Annoyingly, she then swapped places when someone else came to join us and I ended naked next to Mick, embarrassed and self-conscious. (That will teach me to cheat.)
Most of the time my attempts to get a girl fell pretty flat.
In fact, whenever I really liked a girl I would always end up losing her to someone else, mainly because I found it so hard to make my feelings known and to pluck up the courage just to ask her out.
I remember a friend coming down to the island to stay at the end of one summer, and within twenty-four hours he was in bed with the girl I had been chasing all holidays!
I couldn’t believe it. What the hell did he have that I didn’t?
I noticed that he wore these brown suede cowboy boots, so I went out and bought a secondhand pair, but I just looked stupid in them. To make matters worse, this friend then went on to describe to me in great detail what they had got up to in that bed.
Aarrgh.
It kind of summed up my attempts at womanizing.

That fine line between bravery and stupidity is endlessly debated – the difference really doesn’t matter.

Fear shrinks when you face it.
Fear grows when you run.
The only way out is through.
NGU!

Through all these times and formative young years, Lara, my sister, was a rock to me. My mother had suffered three miscarriages after having Lara, and eight years on she was convinced that she wasn’t going to be able to have more children. But Mum got pregnant, and she tells me she spent nine months in bed to make sure she didn’t miscarry.
It worked. Mum saved me.
The end result, though, was that she was probably pleased to get me out, and that Lara finally got herself a precious baby brother; or in effect, her own baby. So Lara ended up doing everything for me, and I adored her for it.
While Mum was a busy working mother, helping my father in his constituency duties and beyond, Lara became my surrogate mum. She fed me almost every supper I ate — from when I was a baby up to about five years old. She changed my nappies, she taught me to speak, then to walk (which, with so much attention from her, of course happened ridiculously early). She taught me how to get dressed and to brush my teeth.
In essence, she got me to do all the things that either she had been too scared to do herself or that just simply intrigued her, such as eating raw bacon or riding a tricycle down a steep hill with no brakes.
I was the best rag doll of a baby brother that she could have ever dreamt of.

But the winners are those who know that when things get really hard and others start to fall away, that is the time to dig deep and give that little bit extra.

One layer of protection is never enough. In survival and in life, always have a backup plan.

99% of fear lives in the future.
Stay in the present moment and it has no power over you.

When my parents were away, I would often be sent to spend the night in the house of an older lady who I didn’t know, and who didn’t seem to know me, either. (I assume it was a friendly neighbor or acquaintance, or at least hope it was.)
I hated it.
I remember the smell of the old leather photo frame containing a picture of my mum and dad that I would cling to in the strange bed. I was too young to understand that my parents would be coming back soon.
But it taught me another big lesson: Don’t leave your children if they don’t want you to.
Life, and their childhood, is so short and fragile.

The lesson is, the rewards in life don't always go to the biggest, or the bravest, or the smartest. The rewards go to the dogged; and when your going though hell, to the person who just keeps going.

The difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary is so often just simply that little word - extra. And for me, I had always grown up with the belief that if someone succeeds it is because they are brilliant or talented or just better than me… and the more of these words I heard the smaller I always felt! But the truth is often very different… and for me to learn that ordinary me can achieve something extra-ordinary by giving that little bit extra, when everyone else gives up, meant the world to me and I really clung to it…

Winston Churchill (him again!) once said words to the effect that everyone gets the chance to make their fortune once, but not everybody takes it.

You are wonderfully and powerfully made. In other words: it is no accident you are good at certain things!

50. Keep Grounded

When was the last time you ventured into the great outdoors? I mean really ventured, where you set out into the unknown with just a map and compass, backpack and sleeping bag - the sort of venturing that makes your heart beat faster.

Have you experienced the hypnotic patter of rain on your tent, the clear call of an owl or the rustling of the wind through the leaves at night? It’s a feeling of absolute freedom and belonging - a chance to reconnect with both ourselves and planet Earth.

At night in the outdoors is also a reminder that the best things in life aren’t things.

Money can’t buy the quiet calm that comes from sitting beside a mountain stream as it ‘tinkles’ through the rock and heather.

Money can’t buy the inspiration that you feel sat on a clifftop above the pounding of the ocean surf as it hits the rocks far below.

You can’t bottle feelings like that.

And sitting around a campfire under a sky of stars is the most ancient and wonderful of human activities. It reminds us of our place in the world, and in history - and it’s hard not to be humbled.

These sorts of simple activities cost so little yet they give us precious time to be ‘still- - time to reconnect, to clear our heads of the dross, to remind ourselves of our dreams and to see things in the perspective they often require.

We all need that regularly in our lives - more than you might imagine.