“No matter how much time I save, I have only now.”
— James Richardson
(via Jocelyn)
I Have Only Now
The Trap of Early Feedback
“If you’ve created something that will delight and astound 10% of the marketplace, there’s a 90% chance that the first person who encounters your work will dislike it. He might even hate it. In fact, if you do the math, you’ll see that there’s more than a 70% chance that the first THREE people will hate it. And if you give up then, you’ve just walked away from serving the people you set out to serve.”
To Wonder at Beauty
To wonder at beauty,
Stand guard over Truth
Look up to the noble
Resolve on the Good.This leadeth man truly
To purpose in living,
To right in his doing,
To peace in his feeling,
To light in his thinking.And teaches him trust,
In the working of God,
In all that there is,
In the width of the world,
In the depth of the Soul.— Rudolf Steiner
(Thanks for sharing, Sam)
What A Ride!
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”
― Hunter S. Thompson,
You’ll Be Criticized Anyway
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right —
for you’ll be criticized anyway.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Flourishing Needs
“The big prediction for the coming century is that enormous opportunities will open up for businesses that can skilfully address our Flourishing Needs. Technology, the wealth of nations and the shift in public taste will make this very likely. A great many of the multi-billion dollar companies of the future will be those focused on the fulfilment of flourishing needs: our need for self-knowledge around love, our desire for a satisfying social life, or our need for resilience. Bits of the tech sector are already nibbling at the borderline between Comfort and Flourishing needs, a trend aided by the forthcoming development of Artificial Emotional Intelligence. This, rather than the economies of developing nations, are what constitute the truly ‘emerging markets’ of the future.”
Be Soft
“Be soft, without being weak,
be strong, without being violent.”
— Imam Ali
Action
“Action comes from tension, desire and fear.”
— Seth Godin
Taken from this blog post: Getting the Word Out.
Amplification
Obama’s female staffers employed “amplification” in meetings:
“When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution — and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.”
I. Will. Start. Doing. This.
Come Alive
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.”
— Harold Whitman
Addictions
“Addictions embody repetition without progress. They produce incapacity as a payoff.”
— Steven Pressfield
Love
“The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it’s in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I’m caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.”
— Ram Dass
Silence
“We have forgotten the power of silence.”
– Bobette Buster
Jason Fried
“We have no goals. We have no revenue targets, no financial goals other than to be profitable, and no growth goals, no user growth. None of that stuff… We should be doing our best work anyway, so let’s just do that.”
“Venture capital money kills more businesses than it helps,” says Basecamp CEO Jason Fried
(via Bailey)
What We Love
“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”
– Goethe
Inward Thought
“All that a person does outwardly is but the expression and completion of inward thought. To work effectively, we must think clearly; to act nobly, we must think nobly.”
— William Ellery Channing
Emotions
“Emotions are always showing us how we relate to life and people.
Positive emotions come from integrations and seeing events and people as connected to us.
Negative emotions come from a focus on separation, and how things should be different than they are.
Se all things as connected, trust the process and watch negative transform into positive.
Connection = positive emotion.”
Courage
“To create one’s world … takes courage.”
— Georgia O’Keeffe
Love Words
“Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.”
— Susan Sontag
Change
“Make friends with change.”
— Ram Dass
True Action
“True action, good and radiant action, my friends, does not spring from activity, from busy bustling, it does not spring from industrious hammering. It grows in the solitude of the mountains, it grows on the summits where silence and danger dwell.”
– Hermann Hesse
Dreams Are Maps
“The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.”
— Carl Sagan