Be forgiving with your past self

Be forgiving with your past self. What's done is done. No sense in beating yourself up about it. Be strict with your present self. Win the moment in front of you right now. Be flexible with your future self. There are many paths to success. You don't need life to be a certain way to live well.

Already enough

Show up every day. Work hard. Do it with joy. Care more about others than we do ourselves. A lovely blend: Always reaching. Already enough.

Compete against yourself

Compete against yourself. When you look outside your rivals, your industry, and your luck, there is always something to blame. When you look inside your process, your effort, your rate of learning, there is always something to improve. Average looks out. Elite looks in.

Art is a verb

If a machine makes a painting that no one ever sees, it might be well-crafted or match some objective form of beauty, but it’s not art. Decoration is important. Beauty matters. But decoration and beauty are insufficient to create art. Music, images, tastes, and words become art when a transformation happens. No change, no art. Art changes the creator and the viewer. Art requires participation. Art is a verb.

What if everything goes wrong

If we’re starting with what if everything goes wrong, you’re playing defense and you’ve lost before you’re even out of the gates.

The impulses for all of our bad habits

The impulses for all of our bad habits travel along the same path, a straight shot to immediate gratification through what I call the lower channel. Lower channel functioning is a disaster. When the pleasure is over, we’re left with nothing.

Professionals know how to talk about it

We evolved words on top of our primordial ability to have feelings. Words allow us to be specific, to understand a situation more completely, and to teach. Our hunches and feelings still matter, but professionals choose to be able to talk about their work. Learn the words and then make the choice to use them.