A lot of those soft skills – working with groups of people who I’ve never met before to accomplish a mission, adapting to personality types – those are skills I’ve learned outside the SEAL time. Jonny Kim Read Quote
The SEALs were very good in teaching me hard skills – that means resilience, pushing past your mental and physical boundaries; and having an enormously high threshold for pain. Jonny Kim Read Quote
I know certainly that my parents sacrificed a lot to come to America, and to… start a new life for their family and their future families. At least with first-generation Asian-American immigrants, parents put so much risk in work and to provide the best for their children. Jonny Kim Read Quote
I was a really low-confident kid. I did have friends from playing sports – I played water polo and I swam. But at the heart of it, I was really scared of talking to people, and making friends, and making relationships. Jonny Kim Read Quote
Going into the Navy was the best decision I ever made in my life because it completely transformed that scared boy who didn’t have any dreams to someone who started to believe in himself. Jonny Kim Read Quote
High school was interesting. For a lot of people, high school was just a big social experiment, and I think the value of high school was not so much learning how to be a great student… but I think it’s learning how to interact with people and be social. I would say that in that endeavor, I completely failed. Jonny Kim Read Quote
My father was the classic epitome of a very hard immigrant-worker. He made up for his lack of education by working really hard… He worked six days a week for as long as I can remember. Jonny Kim Read Quote
I fundamentally believed in the NASA mission of advancing our space frontier, all the while developing innovations and new technologies that would benefit all of humankind. Jonny Kim Read Quote
I never want my children to ever feel like they need to be a SEAL, or that they need to go into medicine, or be an astronaut in order to please me – because I don’t think that’s very fair. I just want them to live their own lives. I don’t hesitate at every opportunity to remind my children of that. Jonny Kim Read Quote
My kids, I love it when they tell me, ‘Abba, I want to be an artist.’ And I say, that is awesome… I just want you to be happy and to follow your heart. Jonny Kim Read Quote
