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    “Your emotional commitment to what you are doing will be translated directly into your work.   If you go at your work with half a heart, it will show in the lackluster results and in the laggard way in which you reach the end.  If you are doing something primarily for money and without a real emotional commitment, it will translate into something that lacks a soul and that has no connection to you.  You may not see this, but you can be sure that the public will feel it and that they will receive your work in the same lackluster spirit it was created in.  If you are excited and obsessive in the hunt, it will show in the details.  If your work comes from a place deep within, its authenticity will be communicated.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery

      “The road to mastery requires patience.  You will have to keep your focus on five or ten years down the road, when you will reap the rewards of your efforts.  The process of getting there, however, is full of challenges and pleasures.  Make your return to the path a resolution you set for yourself, and then tell others about it.  It becomes a matter of shame and embarrassment to deviate from this path.  In the end, the money and success that truly last come not to those who focus on such things as goals, but rather to those who focus on mastery and fulfilling their Life’s Task.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery

        “In dealing with your career and its inevitable changes, you must think in the following way: You are not tied to a particular position; your loyalty is not to a career or a company.  You are committed to your Life’s Task, to giving it full expression.  It is up to you to find it and guide it correctly.  It is not up to others to protect or help you.  You are on your own.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery

          “The misery that oppresses you lies not in your profession but in yourself!  What man in the world would not find his situation intolerable if he chooses a craft, an art, indeed any form of life, without experiencing an inner calling?  Whoever is born with a talent, or to a talent, must surely find in that the most pleasing of occupations!  Everything on this earth has its difficult sides!  Only some inner drive—pleasure, love—can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path, and lift us out of the narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existences!” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, via Mastery

            “You are born with a particular makeup and tendencies that mark you as a piece of fate.  It is who you are to the core.  Some people never become who they are; they stop trusting in themselves; they conform to the tastes of others, and they end up wearing a mask that hides their true nature.  If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become—an individual, a Master.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery

              “You possess a kind of inner force that seeks to guide you toward your Life’s Task—what you are meant to accomplish in the time that you have to live.  In childhood this force was clear to you.  It directed you toward activities and subjects that fit you natural inclinations, that sparked a curiosity that was deep and primal.  In the intervening years, the force tends to fade in and out as you listen more to parents and peers, to the daily anxieties that wear away at you.  This can be the source of your unhappiness—your lack of connection to who you are and what makes you unique.  The first move toward mastery is always inward—learning who you really are and reconnecting with that innate force.  Knowing it with clarity, you will find your way to the proper career path and everything else will fall into place.  It is never too late to start this process.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery

                “Knowing what you want out of life, and who you want in it, means nothing if you can’t also say no to everything but those people and things.  Until you cultivate the ability to say no to the things that fill your life but not your soul, you’ll never have the space to bring into it the things you desperately want to say yes to.” ~ Jonathan Fields, How To Live A Good Life

                  “It is so easy to make a life and a career out of sitting in the bleachers… There are people who have amazing gifts, who could make the world an incredibly better place, who won’t put their work out there for [fear of judgement].  And that’s a loss.  And whether we know what that work was or not, we miss it and grieve it every day.   There are songs that we need to hear, there are stories that need to be told, that we’ll never see or know because there are so many people out there who are so reflectively cynical and critical and mean-spirited.  I don’t like it.” ~ Brené Brown, via How To Live A Good Life