Letting Go and Moving On

"I don't think that we let go of anything, I think what we do is just wear things out"

-Charlotte J. Beck

Work

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

-Confucius

Identity-Based Conflict

"Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth."

"We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society."

- Alan Watts

"If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down."

- Eckhart Tolle

Context -> Emotions -> Trust

"But no, you don't need to add emotion when there is none, because to do so, you often have to sacrifice trust."

-Seth Godin

Personal Narrative

"Every so often in my personal life with friends, I’ll have somebody who will be telling me, it’s usually over a meal, about they’re in a relationship, and it’s in trouble and this trouble has been going on for some time, often years, and it’s now heading for a crisis. And it’s one of those things where you know sort of, even though they don’t verbalize it, they’re asking, “What do you think? What do you think I should do?”

And after listening to the narrative for a while, every so often, I’ll say, “What movie are you living now?” And it always produces the same response. The person is startled because it sounds initially like a trivial question. They’re usually telling the story with considerable agony, and so they kind of freeze like a deer. And then their eyes rotate, usually upwards to the right, which is where a lot of people go when they’re searching their memory bank, and then they’ll laugh.

That’s the important point of this, and they’ll laugh and say, “The Exorcist,” or something like that. And the laugh is a sign of recognition that the story they’ve been telling me has a recognizable structure, and once they give me that, they then usually laugh again and say something like, “Oh, my God.” I then say, as quietly as I can, “And where does the story go?” And that’s the advice I’ve given them."

- Howard Suber

Remembering

"People will forget what you SAID, People will forget what you DID, but people will never forget how you made them FEEL."

- Maya Angelou

Career

"Challenges at a company are normal, but my ability to address them is what determines if I can stay."

- Brian Hook

Trust

"Trust can only be built when both parties are committed in good faith to the success of the other"

-Dan Magaha

Time and Space

"We are deeply constrained in what we do by the time and place in which we live"

-George Friedman

Civilization

"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases... 'How can we eat?'... 'Why do we eat?'... 'Where shall we have lunch?"

-Douglas Adams

Fairness

"If you are a woman who isn’t beautiful, it is a social reality that you will have to work twice as hard to hold anyone’s attention. You can either linger on the unfairness of this or you can get with the program."

- Wesley Yang

Policy

"Obviously there are a lot of different companies with different philosophies, but the important thing is to have a philosophy..."

-Tomonobu Itagaki

Design

"If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said 'a faster horse'".

-Henry Ford

Feedback

"When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you."

-Randy Pausch

Apologies

"...Apologies are a sign of strength"

- Gary Chapman

Opportunistic Anger

"Anger in the oppressed is a response to perceived opportunity, NOT to injustice. And expressions of anger escalate NOT with more injustice, but with LESS injustice."

-Shelby Steele

Intentionality

"Every word, every silence, every action AND inaction serves an explicit intention with methodical precision... whether that intention be known or unknown is up to you."

-Goodwill, the Asshole Sage

Judicious Attraction

"Don't think about who you want. Think about the behaviors you want."

-Juli Lee

Judgement

"When you answer somebody's questions, then that is advice.

But if you give advice without being asked, then that is judgement."

- Matthew Hinsley

Information

"I believe attention is the most powerful tool of the human spirit. We can enhance or augment our attention with practices like meditation and exercise, diffuse it with technologies like email and Blackberries, or alter it with pharmaceuticals. In the end, though, we are fully responsible for how we choose to use this extraordinary tool."

-Linda Stone

Motivation

"A living being seeks above all else to discharge its strength. Life itself is will to power. Nothing else matters."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Perspective

"The happiest people are either very lucky or very flexible in their criteria for happiness."

-Matthew Y. Wong, Ph.D.

Sacrifice

"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.

Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find

a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause,

but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers

them unlimited opportunities for both."

-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (1951)

Balance

"To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium."

- Eric Hoffer, The Ordeal of Change (1963)

Strife

"Unlike the pattern which seems to prevail in the rest of life, in the human species the weak not only survive but often triumph over the strong. The self-hatred inherent in the weak unlocks energies far more formidable than those mobilized by an ordinary struggle for existence..."

"We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering. We need as much something to suffer for as something to live for."

- Eric Hoffer, On Nature and Human Nature