But too often, we proceed like this . . . A flash of inspiration: I want to do the best and biggest ______ ever. Be the youngest ______. The only one to ______. The firstest with the mostest. The advi...
But there is no reason to live and no limit to our miseries if we let our fears predominate. —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 13.12b
Booker T. Washington tells an anecdote told to him by Frederick Douglass, about a time he was traveling and was asked to move and ride in the baggage car because of his race. A white supporter rushed...
Blessings and burdens are not mutually exclusive. It’s a lot more complicated. Socrates had a mean, nagging wife; he always said that being married to her was good practice for philosophy.
Blank spaces, begging to be filled in with thoughts, with photos, with stories. With what we’re going to do, with what things should or could be like, what we hope will happen. Technology, asking you,...
Bill Walsh says, Almost always, your road to victory goes through a place called ‘failure.
Best of all, an honest understanding of what is within our control provides real clarity about the world: all we have is our own mind. Remember that today when you try to extend your reach outward—tha...
Being trapped is just a position, not a fate. You get out of it by addressing and eliminating each part of that position through small, deliberate actions—not by trying (and failing) to push it away w...
Before he became the most brilliant and famous man in the ad business, David Ogilvy sold ovens door-to-door. Because of that, he never forgot that advertising is just a slightly more scalable form of...
Because of the way that blogging is structured—from the way bloggers are paid by the pageview to the way blog posts must be written to catch the reader’s attention—this was all very easy to do. The sy...
Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.
August 21st DON’T BE MISERABLE IN ADVANCE It’s ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its o...
Atreus: Who would reject the flood of fortune’s gifts? Thyestes: Anyone who has experienced how easily they flow back. —SENECA, THYESTES, 536
Aspiration leads to success (and adversity). Success creates its own adversity (and, hopefully, new ambitions). And adversity leads to aspiration and more success. It’s an endless loop.
Ask yourself the following first thing in the morning: What am I lacking in attaining freedom from passion? What for tranquility? What am I? A mere body, estate-holder, or reputation? None of these th...
As we first succeed, we will find ourselves in new situations, facing new problems.
As the philosopher and writer Paul Valéry explained in 1938, A poet’s function . . . is not to experience the poetic state: that is a private affair. His function is to create it in others. That is, h...
As a young basketball player, Bill Bradley would remind himself, When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.
Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, outlined when he described what happens to businesses in tumultuous times: Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are impr...
Andrew Carnegie famously put it. There’s nothing shameful about sweeping. It’s just another opportunity to excel—and to learn. But you, you’re so busy thinking about the future, you don’t take any pri...