Thoughts
Be in charge of you, and fewer people will feel the need to be.
You are not the things you create.
You are not your feelings.
You are more than just your body.
If authority came from capacity and expertise, then leadership would vary based on the situation, but it would always the best that it could be.
Don’t confuse information for understanding.
Sometimes getting close to a goal is still failing, sometimes it is a victory.
Judge what people create, not the person creating it.
What people do changes the world; why people do it changes the people in it.
Accept that you will make mistakes, and so will others. Allow them to, and you as well.
Don’t expect people to take your word for it; prove it.
How a team performs is more important than how its members perform.
Sometimes saying sorry is just to let people know you care about their feelings even though you stand by what was said or done.
Find what inspires you. Nurture it, cherish it and sip from it as often as possible.
People respond less to what you did and more to what they expected from you. So, what will you teach them to expect?
Our egos defend themselves, not necessarily us.
By keeping our voices to ourselves we put a valuable little slice of the world’s humanity out of reach and out of sight.
There is art in all things done with excellence.
All tools can be harmful. Learn how habits work against you and learn how to undo and create them.
People only have power you let them have.
Fear tells you to be careful when you go, not to stop going.
What deserves to be heard is your voice, because no one else has one like it. Find it, and then find a way to share it.
Teach yourself not to feel good in the moments that make your world worse; petty revenge, overindulgence, etc.
Ask more questions.
Always be building something.
History has proven that we seldom have the final answers, only the best solution based on the imperfect information we have at the moment.
Don’t hold others to a higher standard than you hold yourself.
Don’t give up on the people around you and the people you care about.
Help people get the things they want for themselves, not the things you want for them.
Keeping up is easier than catching up.
Find a way to live and work in the wonderful world of who you are.
Spend more time with who you are than with what want to be.
Be patient, some of us take longer to get where you are. But we’re all moving forward in our own way.
We relentlessly judge one another and ourselves, accept it and take ownership of it.
Don’t just try, strive.
A bad day makes the world seem like a bad place; don’t fall for it.
Feel sorry for miserable people, but don’t join them.
Patience is a skill much like playing an instrument; with practice your patience can bring beauty into this world.
Sympathy isn’t the same as respect, love or admiration, work towards earning those instead.
Believe that the more time you spend talking, the fewer opportunities there are for you to learn.
We get stronger while we rest, but only when we’ve been working hard.
Share your dreams with others, and then get to work making them real.
People need to learn their own takeaways from circumstances, not what we expect them to learn.
Most of the time you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for, but sometimes you’re not as clever as you think.
If we keep letting our egos get in the way, we will forever remain a shadow that pales in comparison to the truth of what we really are.
Get over yourself. Everyone else will.
None of us is quite how we perceive ourselves to be; we’re all much, much more; so try to discover as much of you as you can.
Fight for your share of the pie, but don’t take more than what you can eat.
Fight, take, create and defend what you need, and what is needed by the people around you.
Defend the less fortunate, even from yourself.
Be an inspiration for the best in others.
Practice being decisive, without being foolish.
Let your actions be considered and deliberate.
Even your habits should be conscious creations.
Allow others their moment to shine, or better yet, help them get there.
If you lose, try to lose better than the other person wins.
Argue less, prove yourself more.
Congratulate the winner, both publicly and sincerely.
Master your emotions but don’t think that you can control them.
The better person isn’t always the best one.
If it won’t matter a year from now, and you won’t remember it ten years from now, consider letting it go today.
Don’t limit yourself to the choices people give you.
You can always take better care of yourself, and you’re worth the time and effort.
Whatever that thing is that you know you should be doing, do it — better yet, do it today.
Strive to be excellent at something.
Choose to believe that you deserve to get only what you have earned.
You probably deserve to keep only what you take care of.
The high road is often the harder road, so if you find yourself on the easy path then it’s probably clear which road you’ve chosen.
Don’t point fingers unless you’re pointing them at you.
It’s not a game if you’re the only one enjoying it.
Give people something worth talking about.
If it isn’t getting done by others, do it yourself.
Be a leader, not a boss.
If you can’t function on your own, then you can’t contribute meaningfully to a team.
You can’t contribute meaningfully to a team, if you only act independently within one.
Practice being calm and clear when others cannot be.
Learn to recognize when others manipulate you and when you manipulate others.
People will push you to oversimplify things. If you choose to do so in your language, don’t also do so in your thinking.
Learn to recognize early the feeling that something isn’t quite right.
Sometimes later is already too late.
Be honest with yourself. Especially when you find it hard to be honest with others.
Always sleep on a big decision, even if you already know your answer.
Making fun of what makes people different encourages the people around you to be afraid of anything new, and that can keep them and you from being what makes us unique.
Just because you don’t like someone, doesn’t mean you don’t love them. We all have our moments.
Deal with things now when it costs less to do so.
It’s easier to see faults in others, but you can only ever fix your own, so spend more time asking for feedback and less time offering it unprompted.
Don’t confuse sexy with sexual.
Talk less, share more.
Be mindful of people’s feelings, but don’t take responsibility for them.
Be real.
You won’t always do the right thing, even when you know what the right thing to do is — and you’re not the only one.
People can’t always articulate what they want. Don’t expect them to.
Spend more time building the world that you want and not just the life you want to live.
Don’t rely on hope, rely on working to increase your chances.
Ideas can be great, but they have no value without execution.
Follow authority by choice and authority will not be able use you.
Being on time isn’t just an expression of personal power, its also an expression of your respect for the time of others.
Sometimes its ok to be wrong even when you’re right; because sometimes the cost of being right is just too high.
Planning is not doing, but it can feel like it. (Don’t be fooled.)
There is always an excuse to fail.