Resilience is distinct from mere survival, and more than mere endurance. Resilience is often endurance with direction.
Eric Greitens
Of course fear does not automatically lead to courage. Injury does not necessarily lead to insight. Hardship will not automatically make us better. Pain can break us or make us wiser. Suffering can destroy us or make us stronger. Fear can cripple us, or it can make us more courageous. It is resilience that makes the difference.
Everyone needs resilience. It's a virtue essential to growth and essential to happiness.
Every entrepreneur has to deal with hardship, but if we're tough enough and thoughtful enough, we can find a way to make hard things make us better.
Our firefighters, they show up every day to fight fires. If, God forbid, there's a situation where they have to fight cancer, they shouldn't have to fight bureaucrats to get the care they deserve.
I think there are a couple of key lessons that come from Judaism that shaped my life. One of them is the idea we have a duty to repair the world, and all of us should play a role in our lives in trying to repair the world and to make the world better for the next generation.
We are fighting to bring more jobs to the people of Missouri.
We are not going to use money from the people of the state of Missouri for what I believe is corporate welfare. We've got far too many core priorities of government that have to be invested in.
The fact is, Missouri's budget is broken. For decades, insiders, special interests, lobbyists and prior politicians have made a mess of our budget.
I'm running for Governor because we need a political outsider to move Missouri forward.
I'm proud that many of Missouri's lawmakers stood strong to protect the lives of the innocent unborn and women's health.
Our state's world famous motto, 'Show me,' reminds us that Missourians don't much value big talk.
To be very clear, I have completely ruled out state funding for stadiums.
If you want to start or grow a business in the state of Missouri and hire more people with good jobs, I will be your friend and ally.
Whenever we love or care for anything in our lives we're willing to respond with care and with compassion, but if something that we love or someone we love is threatened, we're also willing to respond with courage.
I don't think that we need to raise tuition on our students. I don't think that our students should be made to pay for the mistakes of our past politicians and the promises they made.
Trial lawyers can sue people in the state of Missouri, and because of how broken the system is, if they win just one dollar for their client, they still get paid huge legal fees. For too long in this state, trial lawyers have picked our people's pockets.
Tort reform is important. We need to prevent trial lawyers from killing good jobs.
So Hell Week is considered to be the hardest week of the hardest military training in the world. It is a week of continuous military training during which most classes sleep for a total of two to five hours over the course of the entire week.
I was raised to stand up for the little guy, for working families and the middle class.
I believe that you have to live a life that involves both courage and compassion.
In Missouri, we built the steamships that plied the Mississippi. It was people of Missouri who believed that a human being could fly across the Atlantic Ocean alone. And it was Missourians who built the capsule in which an American first orbited the earth.
For too long, Missouri has been run by career politicians, owned by corrupt consultants, high-paid lobbyists and special interests.
The fact is, I was elected governor of the state of Missouri to bring more jobs to the state of Missouri.
I did a lot of humanitarian work before I joined the military.
Both Sheena and I are working parents, and we know how hard it is to balance work and parenting.
Success means eliminating Al Qaeda's ability to launch terrorist attacks against the United States and our allies.
People know if you care about them. How do you show people that you care? By caring for them. By putting their needs first. By sacrificing for them. By serving them. Do that, and you'll build a great team.
I came to see that it wasn't enough just to care about people. You also had to build systems in which you could ensure that there are results and accountability.
The more I thought about myself, the weaker I got. The more I recognized that I was serving a purpose larger than myself, the stronger I got.
When people have jobs in a thriving economy, it solves a lot of problems.
I'm proud to be Jewish.
We need to protect every life and that we need to defend the lives of the unborn.
Teach your children early not to pass the blame or make excuses, but to take responsibility for their actions.
People understand the tremendous sacrifices that veterans have made - and they instinctively want to do something for them. And that sometimes leads people to give veterans an excuse: Oh, you didn't show up for work on time. It must be that you have posttraumatic stress disorder. Oh, you're disabled. Don't even try.
Defeating a terrorist organization is like fighting a forest fire; there's never a clear moment of victory, and even after you've won, you have to watch carefully.
There is no room for anti-Semitism in the Republican Party, and the leaders need to show that.
Before I became a SEAL, I'd done humanitarian work around the world - with refugee families in Bosnia, with unaccompanied children in Rwanda, with kids who lost limbs to land mines in Cambodia.
The best way to honor the legacy of a person who's passed is to find a way to support the living.
When we make these decisions that we're going to commit ourselves to making a difference in the life of one person every single day, what happens is we actually build a whole generation of citizen leaders.
As the Obama administration negotiates with the Karzai government and with Pakistan, we may be tempted to make commitments that, in the name of nation-building, restrict our ability to fight terrorists. If we must involve the Afghan government in every night raid, our operations will slow and targets will escape.
It's only in the act of pushing yourself, challenging yourself to make a contribution to your community, to your family, to your country, that you actually realize your full self, you know?
Young men often seek tests and trials, and to me, BUD/S training - basic underwater demolition/SEAL - seemed like the ultimate test.
I've never been in politics before, but even in the brief time that I've been running for governor, I've been exposed to some of the worst people I've ever known. Liars, cowards, sociopaths.
The more successful Navy SEALs there are, the more glory it reflects on the community and the better it is for our country.
It's very important for us as a group of Navy SEALs, to make sure that the message that we send to the country is that we're ready to serve any commander in chief, the elected head of the armed forces, that the people of the United States elect. That is our mission, that's our duty, as Navy SEALs.
It's oftentimes the case that relief workers, people who've been involved in development projects and foreign assistance, have a real understanding of foreign cultures that the military desperately needs if we're going to be able to work effectively.
We need a modern government that allows people to do more on-line instead of making them wait in line.
After four tours of duty as a Navy SEAL officer, I came home from Iraq and watched the VA - the second-biggest bureaucracy in the country - fail my friends. The VA was broken and my friends were suffering. And yet, time and again, the only 'solution' I heard from liberals was to spend more money. It made me angry.
In any leadership, whenever you're facing a tough challenge, find ways to bring people together and get them to serve together.
