Thank you for sharing this, Maria. It’s from Jane Hirshfield’s “The Weighing”.
Ambition
“Ambition is a noble passion which may legitimately take many forms… but the noblest ambition is that of leaving behind something of permanent value.”
– G.H. Hardy
Small
“Small is not just a stepping-stone. Small is a great destination itself”
― Jason Fried
Error Message
“If you build software, every error message is marketing”
― Jason Fried
Pain is Energy
“When you feel pain, simply view it as energy. Just start seeing these inner experiences as energy passing through your heart and before the eye of your consciousness. Then relax. Do the opposite of contracting and closing. Relax and release. Relax your heart until you are actually face-to-face with the exact place where it hurts. Stay open and receptive so you can be present right where the tension is. You must be willing to be present right at the place of the tightness and pain, and then relax and go even deeper. This is very deep growth and transformation. But you will not want to do this. You will feel tremendous resistance to doing this, and that’s what makes it so powerful. As you relax and feel the resistance, the heart will want to pull away, to close, to protect, and to defend itself. Keep relaxing. Relax your shoulders and relax your heart. Let go and give room for the pain to pass through you. It’s just energy. Just see it as energy and let it go.”
― Michael A. Singer
From the Untethered Soul
Don’t Close
“The only thing you have to know is that opening allows energy in, and closing blocks it out. Now you have to decide whether or not you want this energy. How high do you want to get? How much love do you want to feel? How much enthusiasm do you want to have for the things you do? If enjoying a full life means experiencing high energy, love, and enthusiasm all the time, then don’t ever close.”
― Michael A. Singer
From the Untethered Soul
Thoughts
“The mind is a place where the soul goes to hide from the heart.”
– Michael Singer
From the Untethered Soul
One Basic Decision
“People tend to burden themselves with so many choices. But, in the end, you can throw it all away and just make one basic, underlying decision: Do you want to be happy, or do you not want to be happy? It’s really that simple. Once you make that choice, your path through life becomes totally clear.”
― Michael A. Singer
From the Untethered Soul
The Bosses We Remember
The bosses we remember:
1 provided safe space to grow
2 opened career doors
3 defended us when we needed it
4 recognized and rewarded us
5 developed us as leaders
6 inspired us to stretch higher
7 led by example
8 told us our worked mattered
9 forgave us when we made mistakes
(via Farbod Saraf)
Holding Things Together
“We are constantly trying to hold it all together. If you really want to see why you do things, then don’t do them and see what happens.”
― Michael A. Singer
From the Untethered Soul, a book that is changing my life.
Creativity
“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.”
— Albert Einstein
(via ode to things)
Missing From Your Job Description
– Add energy to every conversation
– Ask why
– Find obsolete things on your task list and remove them
– Treat customers better than they expect
– Offer to help co-workers before they ask
– Feed the plants
– Leave things more organized than you found them
– Invent a moment of silliness
– Highlight good work from your peers
– Find other great employees to join the team
– Cut costs
– Help invent a new product or service that people really want
– Get smarter at your job through training or books
– Encourage curiosity
– Surface and highlight difficult decisions
– Figure out what didn’t work
– Organize the bookshelf
– Start a club
– Tell a joke at no one’s expense
– Smile a lot.
As someone who runs companies with a high level of trust and as someone who cares about people stepping into their own, this list of missing items from your job description makes my heart sing. Thank you Seth Godin.
What you Resist, Persists
What you resist, persists. That is because, by your continued attention to it in a negative way, you continue to place it there.
— Neale Donald Walsch (@realNDWalsch) April 7, 2018
I saw this in Jocelyn’s Newsletter today. Blogged it. Then realized that she found it on my blog. Full circle. LOVE.
Don’t Close Your Heart
“Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it.”
— Michael A. Singer
The Perogative of Adulthood
“We aren’t in relationships to suffer in silence or fury; we may have come from unhappy muzzled childhoods, but it is the prerogative of adulthood to be able to complain; we simply need to give ourselves the space and compassion to learn to do so successfully, which means, with an absence of sarcasm or rage.”
Greatness
“There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.”
– Leo Tolstoy
Crisis
“Crisis takes place when the old has not died and the new has still not been born.”
– Bertolt Brecht
From my current favorite Instagram account / website called Nitch.
My Own Self
“I am the architect of my own self, my own character and destiny. It is no use whingeing about what I might have been, I am the things I have done and nothing more.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre
Beginning
“The beginning is the most important part of the work.” – – Plato
How We End Things
“If you can change one thing about yourself then please be kinder and change how you end things because it matters way more than how you begin them.”
– Sartaj Anand
How We End Things, by Sartaj Anand
The Tickle of a Feather
“If you’re open to learning, you get your life-lessons delivered as gently as the tickle of a feather. But if you’re defensive, if you stubbornly persist in being right instead of learning the lesson at hand, if you stop paying attention to the tickles, the nudges, the clues—boom! Sledgehammer.”
― Gay Hendricks
From the book The First Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery
Beer Can
“This seems to be an era of gratuitous inventions and negative improvements. Consider the beer can. It was beautiful – as beautiful as the clothespin, as inevitable as the wine bottle, as dignified and reassuring as the fire hydrant. A tranquil cylinder of delightfully resonant metal, it could be opened in an instant, requiring only the application of a handy gadget freely dispensed by every grocer. Who can forget the small, symmetrical thrill of those two triangular punctures, the dainty pfff, the little crest of suds that foamed eagerly in the exultation of release? Now we are given, instead, a top beetling with an ugly, shmoo-shaped tab, which, after fiercely resisting the tugging, bleeding fingers of the thirsty man, threatens his lips with a dangerous and hideous hole. However, we have discovered a way to thwart Progress, usually so unthwartable. Turn the beer can upside down and open the bottom. The bottom is still the way the top used to be. True, this operation gives the beer an unsettling jolt, and the sight of a consistently inverted beer can might make people edgy, not to say queasy. But the latter difficulty could be eliminated if manufacturers would design cans that looked the same whichever end was up, like playing cards. What we need is Progress with an escape hatch.”
– Jon Updike
Originally appeared in The New Yorker (Jan. 18, 1964).
(via Clay)
Several Kinds of Love
“There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-improtance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you – of kindness and consideration and respect – not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.”
– John Steinbeck
Read the full letter. It’s delightful.
Do Not Choose The Lesser Life
Nayyirah Waheed’s poems get me in heart. Always.