My Next Breath: A Memoir

by Jeremy Renner

Do it. Otherwise, nothing’s going to change, nothing’s going to get better for you or for the people around you. In the end, it doesn’t actually matter what you think or how you feel … everyone is a mass of feelings and emotions—some good, some bad. But emotions never built a bridge or fed the hungry or saved a life. I mean, who cares how you feel? Do something.

once I realized that knowledge defeated anxiety every time.

Information is what squelches fear. We are only afraid of the unknown. Ignorance, or lack of experience, is simply a lack of data. Not all information takes away fear, but any amount of it can dampen the insecurities and the killing unknowns of fear.

When you really know what you’re focused on, you can manifest what you truly want in your life. The trick is to get out of our own damn way.

Love, here on earth, is our only currency; it is our energy and our existence, and we take that energy with us into perpetuity.

In everything, we can always control our perspective. We’re all the authors of our own narrative. How we feel about things is down to us and how we perceive things—it’s our responsibility to control our perspective. We all have the capacity to captain our own ship. With permission to board the vessel, we now set our long course to press on with the simple task of capturing the next breath.

Eternal love cannot exist without suffering.

Stubbornness is my life force.

What I am truly afraid of are complacency and comfort. Our span of time on earth is so fleeting, why would we ever be complacent? What are we waiting for? If we’re waiting for things to come easy, then it’ll be a long wait.

Scar tissue sets in very quickly and can be forever damaging to the body’s mobility.

Pain is my bitch; I own it. It doesn’t own me or dictate my spirit.