Dollar for dollar there is no better investment in the world than a book.
Am I saying this because I want to prove how smart I am or am I saying this because it needs to be said?
Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.
Discipline in perception lets you clearly see the advantage and the proper course of action in every situation – without the pestilence of panic or fear.
There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.
We decide what we will make of each and every situation. We decide whether we’ll break or whether we’ll resist.
Our first idea is a grand opening, a big launch, a press release, or major media coverage. We default to thinking we need an advertising budget. Our delusion is that we should be Transformers and not The Blair Witch Project.
Ordinary people shy away form negative situations, just as they do with failure. They do their best to avoid trouble. What great people do is the opposite. They are their best in these situations. They turn personal tragedy or misfortune – really anything, everything – to their advantage.
Failure shows us the way – by showing us what isn’t the way.
What I’ve learned most clearly from blogs is that the majority of them write about the problems from the outside for a reason – because they are missing the abilities that allow people to move to the inside.
Problems are rarely as bad as we think-or rather, they are precisely as bad as we think.
Great times are great softeners.
When intelligent people read, they ask themselves a simple question: What do I plan to do with this information?
What is known can’t jerk us around unwittingly. Before anything can be resolved, the implicit must be made into the explicit.
Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.
And that’s what is so insidious about talk. Anyone can talk about himself or herself. Even a child knows how to gossip and chatter. Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.
Think progress, not perfection.
Those who have subdued their ego understand that it doesn’t degrade you when others treat you poorly; it degrades them.
Almost universally, the kind of performance we give on social media is positive. It’s more “Let me tell you how well things are going. Look how great I am.” It’s rarely the truth: “I’m scared. I’m struggling. I don’t know.
Most successful people are people you’ve never heard of. They want it that way. It keeps them sober. It helps them do their jobs.