January 5
Believe in yourself and your vision.
“Belief will have a creative efect … belief brings into being that which is believed.” – Viktor Frankl
“Hans Selye, the pioneer in the understanding of human stress, was often asked the following question: “What is the most stressful condition a person can face?” His unexpected response: “Not having something to BELIEVE in.”’ – from Hans Selye, From Dream to Discovery: On Being a Scientist
“All man are the same except for their belief in their own selves, regardless of what others may think of them.” – Miyamoto Musashi
“Driving back to Portland I’d puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I’d been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I’d despised it to boot. I’d been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I’d felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so diferent? Because, I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves.” – Phil Knight
“Nothing can resist a human will that will stake its existence on a purpose.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“What convinces is conviction. You simply have to believe in the argument you are advancing; if you don’t, you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there.” – Robert Caro
“How many things would you attempt If you knew you could not fail.” – Robert Frost
February 16
Be mindful to appreciate small moments.
“One of the things [Uncle Alex] found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, “If this isn’t nice, what is?” So I hope that you will do the same for the rest of your lives. When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, “If this isn’t nice, what is?””
– Kurt Vonnegut
“Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small oferings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift” –Maya Angelou
“The unhappy person is one who has his ideal, the content of his life, the fullness of his consciousness, the essence of his being, in some manner outside of himself. The unhappy man is always absent from himself, never present to himself. But one can be absent, obviously, either in the past or in the future. This adequately circumscribes the entire territory of the unhappy consciousness. … The unhappy one is absent… It is only the person who is present to himself that is happy.”
– Søren Kierkegaard
“Happiness, not in another place but this place...not for another hour, but this hour.” – Walt Whitman
“Every moment there are a million miracles happening around you: a fower blossoming, a bird tweeting, a bee humming, a raindrop falling, a snowfake wafting along the clear evening air. There is magic
March 16
Get sufcient rest. Take regular breaks and sabbaticals. Insufcient rest is stealing from your future self.
“To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious.”
– Samuel Butler
“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.” – Leonardo da Vinci
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds foat across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” –John Lubbock
“This thing of sleeping and eating with your business can easily be overdone; it is all well enough – usually necessary – in times of trouble, but as a steady diet it does not make for good business; a man ought now and then to get far enough away to have a look at himself and his afairs. Otherwise he gets lost in the details and forgets what he is really doing. One often sees that in foremen.” – Harvey Firestone
“He [Erik Erikson] taught us that the richest and fullest lives attempt to achieve an inner balance between three realms: work, love and play. And that to pursue one realm to the disregard of the other, is to open oneself to ultimate sadness in older age. Whereas to pursue all three with equal dedication, is to make possible a life flled not only with achievement, but with serenity.” – Doris Kearns Goodwin
“This is very important – to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you’re gonna lose everything...” – Charles Bukowski
May 2
Remain perpetually curious.
“The key to wisdom is this – constant and frequent questioning ... for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.” – Peter Abelard
“When I think of the wisest people I know, they share one defning trait: curiosity. They turn away from the minutiae of their lives-and focus on the world around them. They are motivated by the desire to explore the unfamiliar. They are drawn toward what they don’t understand.” – Dani Shapiro
“Uncurious people do not lead examined lives; they cannot see causes that lie deeper than the surface.” – Yvon Chouinard
“Upon this frst, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfed with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry.” – Charles S. Peirce
“If you can approach the world’s complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will fnd worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things.” –Daniel Dennett
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.” – Albert Einstein
July 5
Understand the true value of money. Wealth is about having options. Success is autonomy.
“Money’s greatest intrinsic value – and this can’t be overstated – is its ability to give you control over your time.” – Morgan Housel
“The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else – we are the busiest people in the world.” – Eric Hofer
“We know from the now-iconic 1970s Good Samaritan study that the single greatest predictor of uncaring, unkind, and uncompassionate behavior, even among people who have devoted their lives to the welfare of others, is a perceived lack of time – a feeling of being rushed. The sense of urgency seems to consume all of our other concerns – it is the razor’s blade that severs our connection to anything outside ourselves, anything beyond the task at hand, and turns our laser-sharp focus of concern onto the immediacy of the self alone.” – Maria Popova
“Use money to gain control over your time, because not having control of your time is such a powerful and universal drag on happiness. The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want to, pays the highest dividend that exists in fnance.”
– Morgan Housel
“Money will make you more of what you already are. If you’re not a nice person, money’s going to make you a despicable individual. If you’re a good person, money’s going to make you a better person.” –Bob Proctor
“More than your salary. More than the size of your house. More than the prestige of your job. Control over doing what you want, when you
September
7
Amor Fati (Love of Fate). Embrace what happens.
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be diferent, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“There is an important idea in Nietzsche, of Amor fati, the “love of your fate,” which is in fact your life. As he says, if you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unravelled the whole thing. Furthermore, the more challenging or threatening the situation or context to be assimilated and afrmed, the greater the stature of the person who can achieve it. The demon you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.” – Joseph Campbell
“One completely overcomes what one assimilates.” – André Gide
“Accept the fact that all events occur for a reason, and that it is within your capacity to see this reason as positive.” – Robert Greene
“Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called ‘the love of your fate.’ Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, ‘This is what I need.’ It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment-not discouragement-you will fnd the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to fow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a
October
24
Teach them how to communicate well.
“Once a human being has arrived on this earth, communication is the largest single factor determining what kinds of relationships he makes with others and what happens to him in the world about him.” – Virg inia Satir
“It makes little diference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.” – Norman Cousins
“I always advise young people to become good public speakers (top 25%). Anyone can do it with practice.” – Scott Adams
“Honest, open communication is the only street that leads us into the real world … We then begin to grow as never before. And once we are on this road, happiness cannot be far away.” – John Joseph Powell
“If you can’t communicate your ideas, it doesn’t matter how great they are, thus the huge importance of getting better at crafts like writing and public speaking.” – Jim O’Shaughnessy
“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” – George Orwell
“Invest in yourself. The one easy way to become worth 50 percent more than you are now at least is to hone your communication skills – both written and verbal. … You can have all the brainpower in the world, but you have to be able to transmit it. And the transmission is communication.” – Warren Bufett
“If people had the right skills and intention to communicate well, there would be no confict. The better we are at communicating, the better our lives will be.” – Yama Mubtaker
December
8
Death need not be feared.
“Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.” – Epicurus
“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are flled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a diferent way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.” – Chief Tecumseh
“I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and travelled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.” – Oliver Sacks
“As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.” – Leonardo da Vinci