“Where is the fuel to keep us going? Anger gets you only so far, and then it destroys you. Jealousy might get you started, but it will fade. Greed seems like a good idea until you discover that it eliminates all of your joy. The path forward is about curiosity, generosity, and connection. These are the three foundations of art. Art is a tool that gives us the ability to make things better and to create something new on behalf of those who will use it to create the next thing.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 255)
“No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.”
Zen saying, via Sunbeams (Page 84)
“Just remember, we’re all in this alone.”
Lily Tomlin, via Sunbeams (Page 83)
“Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turn before we have learned to walk.”
Cyril Connolly, via Sunbeams (Page 83)
“Income taxes are not the only taxes you pay in life. They are just the financial form. Everything we do has a toll attached to it. Waiting around is a tax on traveling. Rumors and gossip are the taxes that come from acquiring a public persona. Disagreements and occasional frustration are taxes placed on even the happiest of relationships. Theft is a tax on abundance and having things that other people want. Stress and problems are tariffs that come attached to success. And on and on and on. There are many forms of taxes in life. You can argue with them, you can go to great—but ultimately futile—lengths to evade them, or you can simply pay them and enjoy the fruits of what you get to keep.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 117)
“No one can possibly do a better job of being you than you can. And the best version of you is the one who has committed to a way forward. Your work is never going to be good enough (for everyone). But it’s already good enough (for someone). Committing to a practice that makes our best better is all we can do.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 246)
“Ultimately, the goal is to become the best in the world at being you. To bring useful idiosyncrasy to the people you seek to change, and to earn a reputation for what you do and how you do it. The peculiar version of you, your assertions, your art.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 226)
“Of course, at first, all work is lousy. At first, the work can’t be any good—not for you and not for Hemingway. But if you’re the steam shovel that keeps working at it, bit by bit, you make progress, the work gets done, and more people are touched. There’s plenty of time to make it better later. Right now, your job is to make it.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 203)
“Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard, and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask.”
Oscar Wilde, via Sunbeams (Page 82)
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our inner most being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
Joseph Campbell, The Power Of Myth, via Sunbeams (Page 82)
“‘Letting go’ is only possible for short periods. We need some discipline to bring us to ‘letting be.’ We must walk a spiritual path. Ego must wear itself out like an old shoe, journeying from suffering to liberation.”
Chögyam Trungpa, via Sunbeams (Page 82)
“The first step… shall be to lose the way.”
Galway Kinnell, via Sunbeams (Page 82)
“The things that some people manage to be experts in: fantasy sports, celebrity trivia, derivatives and commodities markets, thirteenth-century hygiene habits of the clergy. We can get very good at what we’re paid to do, or adept at a hobby we wish we could be paid to do. Yet our own lives, habits, and tendencies might be a mystery to us.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 116)
“If you want to complain that you don’t have any good ideas, please show me all your bad ideas first. Befriending your bad ideas is a useful way forward. They’re not your enemy. They are essential steps on the path to better.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 191)
“We have unlimited reasons to hide our work and only one reason to share it: to be of service.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 190)
“You are not your work. Your work is a series of choices made with generous intent to cause something to happen. We can always learn to make better choices.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 181)
“When we stop worrying about whether we’ve done it perfectly, we can focus on the process instead. Saturday Night Live doesn’t go on at 11:30 p.m. because it’s ready. It goes on because it’s 11:30. We don’t ship because we’re creative. We’re creative because we ship. Take what you get and commit to a process to make it better.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 171)
“Don’t overdress your thought in fine language.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, via The Daily Stoic (Page 115)
“If you run a marathon, you’re going to get tired. It would make no sense to hire a coach and say, ‘I want you to help me train so I don’t get tired when I run a marathon.’ The only difference between the tens of thousands of people who finish the marathon and those that don’t is that the finishers figured out where to put their tired.”
Seth Godin, The Practice (Page 169)