1. The performance artist Marina Abramović puts it directly: “If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.”
2. Facts are better than dreams.
3. Think about this the next time you face that choice: Do I need this? Or is it really about ego? Are you ready to make the right decision? Or do the prizes still glitter off in the distance?
To be or to do—life is a constant roll call.
4. “It is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows,” Epictetus
5. Today, books are cheaper than ever. Courses are free. Access to teachers is no longer a barrier—technology has done away with that. There is no excuse for not getting your education, and because the information we have before us is so vast, there is no excuse for ever ending that process either.
6. There is an old saying, “Say little, do much.”
7. No matter how confident and famous Robinson became, he never spit on fans. He never did anything that undermined his legacy. A class act from opening day until the end, Jackie Robinson was not without passion. He had a temper and frustrations like all of us do. But he learned early that the tightrope he walked would tolerate only restraint and had no forgiveness for ego.
8. Living clearly and presently takes courage. Don’t live in the haze of the abstract, live with the tangible and real, even if—especially if—it’s uncomfortable. Be part of what’s going on around you. Feast on it, adjust for it.
9. Our imagination—in many senses an asset—is dangerous when it runs wild. We have to rein our perceptions in.
10. Pride is a masterful encroacher. John D. Rockefeller, as a young man, practiced a nightly conversation with himself. “Because you have got a start,” he’d say aloud or write in his diary, “you think you are quite a merchant; look out or you will lose your head—go steady.”
