When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Recorded Alex Honnold said elsewhere, not written here
And you know, then you can just take that breath and be like, okay, time to--time to reset, you know, like, relax your grip a little bit, take in what you're doing and start again.

Adam Grant, Re:Thinking with Adam Grant, TED, 20 September 2022 source ↗

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Brian Eno Composer, record producer and visual artist
My favorite method is stopping everything for a moment. It’s amazing how difficult I find it these days to simply sit quietly.
Recorded Max Dax, Eno's London studio, 2011, Telekom Electronic Beats, 1 January 2011 source ↗
Henry R. Kravis Financier; co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
You have to do something like that to get rid of the tension, take your mind off what you are doing.
Recorded Academy of Achievement, 12 February 1991 source ↗
Katie Taylor Irish professional boxer; Olympic champion 2012
There are days when I wake up and don't want to move, but you must show up!
Recorded RTÉ, 7 July 2025 source ↗

More from Alex Honnold

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Question What is your greatest fear? Identity & self
I think when I was younger, I had a lot of the fears that, that you expect from people. Like I was kind of afraid of spiders and things like that. And I think with, you know, years of dealing with fear nonstop, they've all sort of fallen away. I, I mean, I guess my greatest fear is like public embarrassment or public performance, or like what I said earlier about opera singing I'm like, that is still for sure that would be a nightmare. And like, yeah, I could do it. But I would be so bummed.
Recorded Adam Grant, Re:Thinking with Adam Grant, TED, 20 September 2022 source ↗
Question Which writers or artists most influenced your work? Taste & recommendation
I didn’t have a lot of mentors when I – I mean I kind of just grew up in the gym, just climbing a lot. So I didn’t really have mentors. I mean I definitely had people that I looked up to and people in the climbing community, but that’s just sort of the typical hero worship style, you know. Like Peter Croft was a really prominent soloist from the generation before me and I was like, “Oh, Peter’s the man!”
Recorded Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show, The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss, 1 January 2018 source ↗
Question What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore? Time & hindsight
Well, 20 is still slightly too old, but like my 18-year-old self, I would just tell to – I would say to just not bother going to college at all. Because like the year that I spent at Berkeley was a total waste of my time, basically. Not because there’s anything wrong with Berkeley, but because I just wasn’t passionate about what I was studying, and there’s no – there was no point in me like grinding out a year of studies that I didn’t care about.
Recorded Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show, The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss, 1 January 2018 source ↗

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