"Stoics recommend that when we experience a setback, we make a point of consciously framing it as a kind of test. Allow ourselves to get frustrated, and we get a low grade; allow ourselves to become angry or despondent—or even worse, regard ourselves as victims—and we fail. Ideally, the setback won’t give rise to negative emotions within us, not because we are successfully concealing our distress but because we have no distress to conceal."
-- William B Irvine
"No matter how you find your passion, early on, pursue it with a white-hot flame, dedicating it to the good of the world. But hold your success lightly—be ready to change as your abilities change. Even if your worldly prestige falls, lean into the changes. Remember, every change of circumstances is a chance to learn, grow, and create value."
-- Arthur C. Brooks
"There is a natural progression to success: plant, cultivate, harvest—and the central step, cultivate, can only happen over the course of time. No genuine success in life is instant. Life is not a clickable link."
-- Jeff Olson
"She said: “We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we’re so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you won’t be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth —nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow.”"
-- Elizabeth Gilbert
"In a world increasingly complex and uncertain, where we can’t depend on answers from the past, our most important skill is asking the best questions of ourselves and others. I think of inquiry as the antidote to uncertainty. This is the practical skill that will characterize the most successful leaders and organizations in the future.”
-- Marilee Adams
"Success takes time, yes, more time than most people are willing to wait. But not as much as you’d think. And once the momentum of the slight edge starts to kick in it becomes unstoppable, and you reach a point where results do indeed start to happen very fast indeed."
-- Jeff Olson
"We are all born with gifts. Some find them when they are young, like J. S. Bach, who made his mark as an adolescent, playing pieces on the organ at fifteen that others swore were impossible and going on to fame as a composer by his twenties. Some find their calling later, like so many of my students, who get their groove after many years of college and graduate school. Others find them only after realizing they were going in the wrong direction for a while, like a house builder I interviewed, who found his passion for building after completing a fancy education in science. Or like me—totally convinced that music was my calling until it was ripped from my grasp and I had to look elsewhere, finding it in the world of social science."
-- Arthur C. Brooks
"“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.…”"
-- Theodore Roosevelt's
"Be the master of your attention. The price of freedom is to be permanently alert. Remember that wherever your attention may wander, your emotions and energy will also go. Where you place your attention will always make it more real for you."
-- Mario Alonso Puig
"“Some day my prince will come.…” Good old Walt Disney. Well, that may have worked out for Snow White. Back here on Earth, it’s a recipe for disappointment. In flesh-and-blood life, waiting for “some day” is no strategy for success, it’s a cop-out. What’s more, it’s one that the majority follow their whole lives."
-- Jeff Olson
