Bear Grylls: If you could edit your past, what would you change?

If you could edit your past, what would you change?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Bear Grylls said elsewhere, not written here

My failures have taught me more than the successes, so not much.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 October 2015 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 203 →

Burt Reynolds American actor

I wouldn’t have done the naked centrefold in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1972.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 November 2015 source ↗

Jenna Coleman English actress

I would take away fear.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 February 2019 source ↗

Steve Jobs Co-founder and chief executive of Apple; co-founder of NeXT; chief executive of Pixar

But the market was changing. The industry was changing. The scale was changing. And in the end we knew we would be either the last company to make it or the first to not make it. We were right on the edge. We thought we would be the last one that made it, but we were wrong. We were the first one that didn't. We put an end to the companies that tried to do that. We certainly made our fair share of mistakes, but in the end I think we should have taken a bit longer to realize the world was changing and just gone on to be a software company right off the bat.

Recorded Daniel Morrow, Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories, for the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program, 20 April 1995 source ↗

Adwoa Aboah British fashion model

Nothing. Everything’s got me to this point and I had to learn lots of things. Maybe I just wouldn’t have been so terrified all the time and I would have got up a bit earlier – I missed quite a few mornings.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 March 2019 source ↗