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    “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

      “You must see your attempt at attaining mastery as something extremely necessary and positive.  The world is teeming with problems, many of them of our own creation.  To solve them will require a tremendous amount of effort and creativity.  Relying on genetics, technology, magic, or being nice and natural will not save us.  We require the energy not only to address practical matters, but also to forge new institutions and orders that fit our changed circumstances.  We must create our own world or we will die from inaction.” ~ Robert Greene, Mastery

        “Everyone holds his fortune in his own hands, like a sculptor the raw material he will fashion into a figure.  But it’s the same with that type of artistic activity as with all others: We are merely born with the capability to do it.  The skill to mold the material into what we want must be learned and attentively cultivated.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, via Mastery

          “Self-discipline is a form of freedom.  Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from the expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear and doubt.  Self-discipline allows a pitcher to feel his individuality, his inner strength, his talent.  He is the master of, rather than a slave to, his thoughts and emotions.” ~ Harvey Dorfman

            “Simple truth:  fast and busy are a choice.  We choose to go fast and be busy because we think it’ll get us what we want.  All too often, it doesn’t.  Fast and busy makes life brittle.  It makes us feel like every inch of space in life is locked in and there’s no room to move.  Instead of unlocking productivity and potential, it throttles both.  It deludes us into feeling like we’re getting more done faster, but in reality, we could get the same done in the same or less time with more grace by dialing it back, not forward.  In the end, we’re left feeling dissatisfied and helpless to extract ourselves from the process.  Except we’re not.  It’s all an illusion.” ~ Jonathan Fields, How To Live A Good Life

              “We all get dealt cards.  Some of us get better cards than others.  And while it’s easy to get hung up on our cards, and feel we got screwed over, the real game lies in the choices we make with those cards, the risk we decide to take, and the consequences we choose to live with.  People who consistently make the best choices in the situations they’re given are the ones who eventually come out ahead in poker, just as in life.  And it’s not necessarily the people with the best cards.” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck