Who makes your decisions?
Reflecting on major past decisions reveals how often our choices were influenced by others—friends, partners, family. To avoid immediate discomfort, we sometimes make choices that cause future unhappiness. This pattern, once established, of living life on others' terms, is hard to break.
Forcing yourself to swim
When you first learn the fundamentals of swimming, you’re in the shallow end. It’s scary at first because of how new the sensation is, but you get comfortable eventually. You know it’s safe. Maybe you can do this in any area of your life...
You don’t need permission
Time and time again, someone will explain one of their lifelong dreams to me, then casually dismiss it as “unrealistic” or “way too hard.” People are making excuses because they think they need permission from somebody to accomplish their goals. It’s nonsense.
The importance of curiosity
My curiosity has gotten me farther than anything else — more than skill, more than my degree, and more than knowing “the right people.” So don’t ever tell your kids that curiosity killed the cat. At least the cat was happy.
No idols
If I asked all of you to make a list of the ten people who should be idolized due to their tremendous accomplishments and impact on the human race, I’m willing to bet many of you would put Einstein on your list. Yet he emphasizes that no man should be idolized.
Great people vs. Everyone else
Here's my favorite quote from Michael Gerber’s “The E-Myth Revisited” — a book that a few people have recommended to me. Finally got around to it.
“What you’ll wish you’d known”
My buddy Jeff Widman sent me this article the other day. It’s a rejected high school graduation speech that Paul Graham wrote. While a few of his points are overly simplistic, it’s definitely worth reading. But if you don’t have time to read it, here are some notable excerpts:
What you should do with your life
A clichéd question people my age hear is, “Have you decided what you want to do with your life?” Very rarely does anyone have a good answer for this, because no one really knows. Here is the most solid method I've discovered for figuring this out...
