Creating a myth of self that is at odds with your true self is a recipe for anxiety.
To live an extraordinary life, do not satisfy yourself with plans, intentions, and dreams: act boldly.
It is remarkable how often the disciples of every faith seriously screw up the brand.
The Great Ones are for most of their lives very much like the rest of us.
It is easier to dream than to do.
“Benevolent Dictator” is an oxymoron. Choice is like oxygen to our souls.
Semantics cannot be essential to the transcendent.
We are terribly bad—with ourselves and with others—at identifying the true intentions behind most of our actions.
Even real heroes get it wrong sometimes.
A fear carefully observed loses its power.
Human differentiation is key to our species’ adaptability to unforeseen shifts in our world.
Relationships
Contrary to what your insecurities whisper in your ear, you will be amazed at how people will step TOWARD you when you say "I apologize. I was wrong.”
Reputation is not free, and there is no respect on credit.
Denial is a stubborn anchor that prevents the boat from leaving a bad harbor; you have to pull it up so that you can sail on.
Where uncommon ability intersects common utility, extraordinary power asymmetries emerge.
“I love you” is code. Take the time to decode it for your loved ones.
It is a shame to miss out on countless potential connections because fear or pride prevents us from asking for help.
Learning is proceeding from not knowing toward knowing, so admitting one’s ignorance is the first step on the path to increasing one’s knowledge.
True friendship does not happen to you; you build it.
Decision-making
If wisdom were as simple as a recipe, any damn fool could live like Solomon.
It is not the efficiency of a strategy under the ideal scenario that matters, rather its effectiveness through the inevitable Big Surprises.
Ideas are like soufflés: every fully-baked amazing one was at some point half-baked and dubious.
More is always better in a vacuum, but life is not a vacuum.
Powerful meditation is an intentional re-organization and re-iteration of the beliefs that have emerged from your personal lived experience.
Correlation is not causality. Form follows substance, not the other way around.
Balance and equilibrium are not the same thing.
Parents and Children
There is life after failure, but only those who have failed know this truth.
Nothing our children hear us SAY will change the mental templates they build as they watch what we DO.
Parents are not biological Xerox machines, spinning out poor copies of poor copies of long-forgotten originals.
“Benevolent Dictator” is an oxymoron. Choice is like oxygen to our souls.
If they never see you struggle with something difficult, your kids will likely conclude that something is wrong with THEM.
The Meaning of Life
If someone else’s life is enlarged because of your life, that is the evidence of your significance. That is the meaning of your life.
Life is signal in a universe of noise.
Significant individuals tame part of the chaos for the rest of us, reminding us that we no longer live in Hobbes’ everyone-for-himself chaotic state of nature.
The future is our canvas, and other people are both our media and our collaborators.
As the ocean waves at a surf break reveal the structure of the ocean floor beneath, so too do the waves of life reveal a complex map of a person’s character.
We have won the galactic lottery: simply to exist, here in this moment, with the opportunity to create anything at all. We should not take this gift lightly.
