Former Navy SEAL and one of the most influential Americans of 2013.
Eric Greitens is a former Navy SEAL who wrote the best-selling book The Heart and the Fist, a book that tracked the author’s evolution from a humanitarian aid worker to a Navy SEAL. Greitens is a unique hero because he is so obviously an idealist (NF for my Myers-Briggs lovers) and few NFs make it in the Navy SEALs. But Greiten’s can-do attitude makes anything seem possible, even easy. After his humanitarian aid work in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Bolivia, he became a SEAL, participating in peacekeeping efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and helping to capture an Al Queda operative in Malaysia. After retiring from the SEALs, he started up a one-of-a-kind organization that showed injured veterans how to continue serving their country by running non-profit organizations within their communities. It’s no wonder Time Magazine named Greitens among the 100 Most Influential People of 2013.
I’m delighted to hear that Eric Greitens has a new book in the works. According to Publisher’s Weekly, the topic of his spring 2015 release will be “resilience.” In his new book, Greitens will draw on lessons he has learned from poets and philosophers, combined with his own experiences as a SEAL, a worker in refugee camps, and an advocate for wounded veterans. The book will be based on letters Greitens wrote to a SEAL in distress, and it will explore “how anyone can adapt to hardship to become wiser, stronger, and happier.” This is one hero I would really love to meet in person. His humanitarian aid work gave me the idea of pairing a Navy SEAL with a female humanitarian aid worker in my next book, DANGER CLOSE, slated for May, 2014 release.