I wrote this list of values, beliefs, and reminders to myself. Maybe you will find it helpful too:
Inertia is the strongest force in the universe. Actively seek renewal or succumb to it. Keep learning, keep expanding, keep playing the infinite game. You have more to give than you can possibly imagine [1].
Identity is plastic. Shape it with action, even when you don't believe yourself yet [2].
Be forgiving of your past self and generous to your future self. You're on the same team.
Follow the romantic scent (Steve Jobs). You've got to trust yourself on what that means. But don't lose your sense of smell.
Don't be the best. Be the only (Kevin Kelly); The race is long and in the end, it’s only with yourself. (Mary Schmich)
Inspiration is on the other side of that door: beginning.
Do one thing at a time. Attention is the only thing we have.
Take a walk (evergreen—especially at golden hour).
Slow down around green things. They have much to say [3].
Proximity rules in relationships. Almost all relationships require proximity and intention to keep growing. There are exceptions, but they are much rarer than you think.
You are who you spend time with. This is even more true than you believe it is.
Long-term friends multiply life's riches.
There is no one so charming as a curious old person.
Charisma is much less about you than how you make others feel about themselves.
Everyone has something to offer[4]. Search for the thing that makes their eyes light up. If you're bored with someone, it's because you haven't asked the right question (Matt Mullenweg).
When you have bad news, call. Better yet, tell them in person.
Find friends who can tell you the thing you don't want to hear—especially when it's explicitly against their interest. That is true friendly love, and they're the only ones in the world who can do it.
With others: there is a time for fixing. But first, they just need you to be there.
There is no gift like agency. Make people feel like things are possible. Pull creative people forward.
The true friend of time is integrity. Among all things that compound, integrity is the most underrated and perhaps the most scarce.
Logic doesn't scale, but stories do.
Most great things involve paradox. Hold both sides at once. Sit with them. Enjoy the mess. This is life.
Courtesy and kindness cost nothing, except for the time it takes to shift your attention away from yourself.
When you worship yourself the world fades out. Don't succumb to the void—get out from under yourself. How? Simply bear witness to another: try to see them a bit more clearly. Better yet: ask how you might serve them. The cage of the mind is broken by acts of service [5].
You know less than you think you do. Blindspots abound. This is water.
Focus on the fundamentals. Not easy, but simple.
Meaning is made. The ingredients are all around you, but they're just that—so stop waiting and choose meaning [6].
It all comes down to love and gratitude. Happiness is love, full stop (Harvard Grant Study).
Tomorrow isn't real. Life is just a bunch of todays (Janis Joplin).
This is the good part. It's all the good part [7].
Thanks to Andrew for inspiring me to write these down.
"Life is an endless unfolding, and if we wish it to be, an endless process of self-discovery, an endless and unpredictable dialogue between our own potentialities and the life situations in which we find ourselves. By potentialities I mean not just intellectual gifts but the full range of one's capacities for learning, sensing, wondering, understanding, loving and aspiring... There's something I know about you that you may or may not know about yourself. You have within you more resources of energy than have ever been tapped, more talent than has ever been exploited, more strength than has ever been tested, more to give than you have ever given." - John W. Gardner, Personal Renewal
"For me a discursive view of the self means giving up the endeavor of finding oneself altogether. It’s the thought that we don’t need the self in order to pursue the things that matter to us, and that this pursuit is the best indicator of who we are." - Nico Chilla, On Rejecting Narrative Identity
"If your mind were only a slightly greener thing, we’d drown you in meaning." - Powers-The Overstory. More on that wonderful novel here.
“Perhaps I’m not interesting, but I am the only thing I have to offer, and I want to offer something. And by offering myself in a true way I am doing a great service to the world, because it is rare and it will help.” - Charlie Kaufman
"The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day." - David Foster Wallace, This is Water
"Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account." - John W. Gardner, Personal Renewal
“You should enjoy the little detours to the fullest. Because that's where you'll find the things more important than what you want.” - Yoshihiro Togashi, Hunter x Hunter
