Continuing my “Best of the Newsletter” while I’m on vacation, below are the best quotes I’ve used as ledes. Some are meant to inspire and others to shake up your thinking a bit.
Please highlight the ones you like best. (To do this, you need to be on the Medium version.)
Purpose
Starting, of course, with purpose. To what end are you reading a self-improvement newsletter? You need a purpose.
“It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.”
~ Abraham Maslow
“I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft.”
~ Cornel West
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born... and the day you find out why.”
~ Mark Twain
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
~ Norman Cousins
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most people dread it.”
~ George Bernard Shaw
Positive impact
“If you want to do this, if you want to play big, if you want to really impact lives, you’ve got to face yourself. You’ve got to be courageous and willing to go all in and address everything about you that is uncomfortable.”
~ Harry Lopez
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
“We should care as much about well-doing as well-being. I want to live in a world that values purpose as much as pleasure, contribution as much as contentment, honesty as much as excitement, and justice as much as joy.”
~ Adam Grant
“You cannot do kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I’m here to contribute. We all depend on each other. I depend on people in generations prior to me. People in generations after me will depend on me.”
~ Bryan Nwafor
“Meaning is about making a difference, not having an audience.”
~ Adam Grant
“I don’t see why we have to say ‘I will die,’ because I can already see myself in you, in other people, and in future generations.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”
~ Dalai Lama
The courage to be the best version of yourself
“You don’t have to become something you’re not to be better than you were.”
~ Sidney Poitier
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”
~ Laozi
“Always be a first version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.”
~ Judy Garland
“Too many people spend money they earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people that they don’t like.”
~ Will Rogers
“We’re only envious of those already doing what we were made to do. Envy is a giant, flashing arrow pointing us toward our destiny.”
~ Glennon Doyle Melton
“The idea says get in the car. Don’t worry, I’m driving. Sometimes I’m shotgun, sometimes I’m in the trunk. The idea takes you where it wants to go.”
~ Dave Chapelle
“I increasingly encounter a strain of critique … arguing that we strive toward arbitrary fitness goals, or feel compelled to carefully document a dinner on Instagram, or race to finish reading the latest hot novel, because we’ve internalized a culture of production designed to ultimately help the capitalists exploit our labor.”
~ Cal Newport
“And I feel like that [idea of] like hard work, if you’re not suffering and eating sh*t and you’re not happy, then you’re not doing anything good for society. I feel like that is the biggest load of bullsh*t. It’s the biggest lie that young people get fed.”
~ Joey Santore
“Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.”
~ Gretel Ehrlich
“The place to find who you are is where you stand.”
~ George Mumford
“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”
~ Paulo Coelho
Focus
“If you want more time, freedom, and energy, start saying no.”
~ Unknown
“If a window of opportunity appears, don’t pull down the shade.”
~ Tom Peters
“I will have to remember ‘I am here today to cross the swamp, not to fight all the alligators.”
~ From The Art of Possibility by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander
Recognize your enormous potential
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
~ Robert A. Heinlein
“I think a singular identity isn’t very interesting, and I’m a little bit more multifaceted as a person than that.”
~ Catherine Opie
Habits
“A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.”
~ Erasmus
“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
~ Warren Buffett
“A year from now you may wish you had started today.”
~ Karen Lamb
“Self-discipline is doing what’s right instead of doing what you feel like doing. That’s the meaning of self-disciple.”
~ Eliud Kipchoge
“We want to be great at the things that happen a lot.”
~Unknown
“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” ~ Archilochus
“Don’t dream of winning, train for it!”
~ Mo Farah
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
~ James Clear
“The quality of our life on planet earth depends on the choices we make every day.” ~ BJ Fogg
Work hard…
“I didn’t get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it.”
~ Estée Lauder
“More work than you want, less than you fear.”
~ Coach Tony
“Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”
~ Teller
… but it’s more important to work smart.
“What gets measured gets done, what gets measured and fed back gets done well, what gets rewarded gets repeated.”
~ Unknown
“You are not responsible for your first thought, but you are responsible for your second thought.”
~ Raquel Smith
“There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.”
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
“One learns from books and reels only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.”
~ Children of Dune
“Good advice helps you find the solution to your problem. Great advice helps you find you were solving the wrong problem.”
~ Merlin Mann
“My definition of being properly educated is being right when the professor is wrong.”
~ Charlie Munger
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