Background Image

...

Leadership Is Scarce Because Few People Are Willing To Go Through The Discomfort Required To Lead. This Scarcity Makes Leadership Valuable...it's Uncomfortable To Stand Up In Front Of Strangers. It's Uncomfortable To Propose An Idea That Might Fail. It's Uncomfortable To Challenge The Status Quo. It's Uncomfortable To Resist The Urge To Settle...if You're Not Uncomfortable In Your Work As A Leader, It's Almost Certain You're Not Reaching Your Potential As A Leader.

-Seth Godin

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Leadership Is Scarce Because

Seth Godin

...

Leadership Is Scarce Because Few People Are Willing To Go Through The Discomfort Required To Lead. This Scarcity Makes Leadership Valuable...it's Uncomfortable To Stand Up In Front Of Strangers. It's Uncomfortable To Propose An Idea That Might Fail. It's Uncomfortable To Challenge The Status Quo. It's Uncomfortable To Resist The Urge To Settle...if You're Not Uncomfortable In Your Work As A Leader, It's Almost Certain You're Not Reaching Your Potential As A Leader.

Views: 8

Topic

More From Seth Godin

It's Not About You, It's About The Next Person. The Single Best Use Of A Business Book Is To Help Someone Else. Sharing What You Read, Handing The Book To A Person Who Needs It... Pushing Those Around You To Get In Sync And To Take Action-that's The Main Reason It's A Book, Not A Video Or A Seminar. A Book Is A Souvenir And A Container And A Motivator And An Easily Leveraged Tool. Hoarding Books Makes Them Worth Less, Not More.

If It Scares You, It Might Be A Good Thing To Try.

The Only Way To Consistently Grow In B2b Is To Be Better Than Very Good.

The World Is Begging For You To Lead.

Most People Are Searching For A Path To Success That Is Both Easy And Certain. Most Paths Are Neither.

The Industrial Age Brought Compliance And Compliance Brought Fear And Fear Brought Us Mediocrity.

The Answer To The Question "where Do Good Ideas Come From" Is Always The Same, The Come From Bad Ideas. If You Come Up With 20 Bad Ideas You Get One Good One.

The Sooner We Realize That The World Has Changed, The Sooner We Can Accept It And Make Something Of What We've Got. Whining Isn't A Scalable Solution.

Mind Your Own Business

Content Marketing Is All The Marketing That's Left.

Content Marketing

If You Think Your Organization Needs A Bigger Marketing Budget, Maybe You Just Need To Be Less Average Instead.

You Can't Fool All The People, Not Even Most Of The Time. And People, Once Unfooled, Talk About The Experience.

I Learned That A Long Walk And Calm Conversation Are An Incredible Combination If You Want To Build A Bridge.

Art Is A Human Act, A Generous Contribution, Something That Might Not Work, And It Is Intended To Change The Recipient For The Better, Often Causing A Connection To Happen.

The Problem With The Race To The Bottom Is That You Might Win

Action Or Inaction Are Both Forms Of Leadership And Standard Setting.

Strategic Quitting Is The Secret Of Successful Organizations

Leadership, On The Other Hand, Is About Creating Change You Believe In.

Whining Isn't A Scalable Solution.

Black Friday Is A Media Trap, An Orchestrated Mass Hallucination Based On Herd Dynamics And The Media Cycle.

Letting Your Customers Set Your Standards Is A Dangerous Game, Because The Race To The Bottom Is Pretty Easy To Win. Setting Your Own Standards--and Living Up To Them--is A Better Way To Profit. Not To Mention A Better Way To Make Your Day Worth All The Effort You Put Into It." -

You Have Brilliance In You, Your Contribution Is Valuable, And The Art You Create Is Precious. Only You Can Do, And You Must.

If You Want To Be A Leader, Go Lead

This Notion That It Is Up To Each Person To Innovation In Some Way Flies In The Face Of The Industrial Age, But You Know What, The Industrial Age Is Over.

Don't Scale Because You Think There's A Pot Of Gold Over That Rainbow. Scale Because You're Ready And Eager To Do Heroic Work, Every Day, Forever.

There Are Lots Of Good Reasons To Abandon A Project. Having A Little Competition Is Not One Of Them.

Decide, Before You Start, That You're Going To Change Three Things About What You Do All Day At Work. Then, As You're Reading, Find The Three Things And Do It. The Goal Of The Reading, Then, Isn't To Persuade You To Change, It's To Help You Choose What To Change.

Successful People Are Successful For One Simple Reason: They Think About Failure Differently.

I Think That The Economics Of Book Publishing Favor Hits With Long Book Runs. You Make All Your Money On The Last Bunch Of Books, Not The First.

And It Doesn't Matter To Me Whether You're Running A Coffee Shop Or You're An Intellectual Or You're In Business Or Flying Hot Air Balloons. People Who Can Spread Ideas, Regardless Of What Those Ideas Are, Win. But Consumers, They Got Way More Choices Than They Used To And Way Less Time.

Too Often, The Person Who Wrecks Our Work Is Us.

Popular Is Not The Same Important, Or Often, Not The Same As Good.

If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Well.

Worth Waiting For

Chinese Proverb

This Might End Up In Crying. If You're Not Prepared To Cry About It, I'm Not Sure You're Making Art. And If You're Not Prepared To Dance In Anticipation, You're Definitely Not Making Art.

Remarkable Visions And Genuine Insight Are Always Met With Resistance. And When You Start To Make Progress, Your Efforts Are Met With Even More Resistance. Products, Services, Career Paths... Whatever It Is, The Forces For Mediocrity Will Align To Stop You, Forgiving No Errors And Never Backing Down Until It's Over

You Can Game The Social Media In The Short Run, But Not For Long.

Just Start. Start Now. Fail Often. Enjoy The Ride.

Now For The First Time, You Can Choose Yourself. You Can Be Responsible For What You Do And How You Do It. You Have To Do The Hard Work Of Finding And Pleasing An Audience.

It Always Feels Too Soon To Leap. But You Have To. Because That's The Moment Between You And Remarkable.

Yes, I Think It's Okay To Abandon The Big, Established, Stuck Tribe. It's Okay To Say To Them, "you're Not Going Where I Need To Go, And There's No Way I'm Going To Persuade All Of You To Follow Me. So Rather Than Standing Here Watching The Opportunities Fade Away, I'm Heading Off. I'm Betting Some Of You, The Best Of You, Will Follow Me.

Two Different Things: A Crowd Is A Tribe Without A Leader. A Crowd Is A Tribe Without Communication. Most Organizations Spend Their Time Marketing To The Crowd. Smart Organizations Assemble The Tribe.

You Don't Win An Olympic Gold Medal With A Few Weeks Of Intensive Training. There's No Such Thing As An Overnight Opera Sensation. Great Law Firms Or Design Companies Don't Spring Up Overnight... Every Great Company, Every Great Brand, And Every Great Career Has Been Built In Exactly The Same Way: Bit By Bit, Step By Step, Little By Little.

Everyone Will Think It's Stupid!" "everyone Says It's Impossible." Guess What? Everyone Works In The Balloon Factory And Everyone Is Wrong.

Living And Breathing An Authentic Story Is The Best Way To Survive In A Conversation-rich World.

Art Is What We're Doing When We Do Our Best Work.

If You Hesitate To Map Out Your Future, To Make A Big Plan Or To Set A Goal, You've Just Gone Ahead And Mapped Your Future Anyway.

The First Step To Getting Good Is Admitting That You Aren't (yet).

If You Measure It, It Will Improve.

If You Love Writing Or Making Music Or Blogging Or Any Sort Of Performing Art, Then Do It. Do It With Everything You've Got. Just Don't Plan On Using It As A Shortcut To Making A Living.

In Our Desire To Please Everyone, It's Very Easy To End Up Being Invisible Or Mediocre.

Most People Don't See That They Have Options Beyond What Society Tells Them To Do. That's The Biggest Problem. They Honestly Believe That Compliance Is The Shortcut To Success.

The Only Thing Worse Than Starting Something And Failing... Is Not Starting Something.

Developing Expertise Or Assets That Are Not Easily Copied Is Essential; Otherwise You're Just A Middleman.

So By Giving People A Tool That They Can Share And Benefit From, It's A Form Of Media That Isn't Controlled By Rupert Murdoch Or The Guys At Viacom. It Is A Form Of Media That Is Earned Every Single Time It Spreads.

There Are Always Limits, And Opportunities. The Ones We Rehearse And Focus On Are The Ones That Shape Our Future.

The Definition Of A Revolution: It Destroys The Perfect And Enables The Impossible.

You Don't Make Art After You Become An Artist. You Become An Artist By Ceaselessly Making Art.

It Takes Confidence And Guts To Intentionally Create Tension.

Anything Worth Achieving In Life Has A Dip

I Have Something To Say. I Know How To Do Something. I’m Doing It. If You Want Me To Do It With You, Raise Your Hand.

Isn't The Drawing Board The Place Where All The Best Work Happens? It's Not A Bad Thing To Go Back There. It's The Entire Point.

The Instinct To Produce Great Work Doesn't Require A Fancy Notebook.

Not Only Must You Be An Artist, Must You Be Generous, And Must You Be Able To See Where You Can Help But You Must Also Be Aware. Aware Of Where Your Skills Are Welcomed.

I'm Not Proposing That You Let The Crowd Dictate, Or That You Work Hard To Fit In. Far From It. I'm Proposing That You Know The Impact Your Choices Are Having And Act Accordingly.

The People That Are Doing Work That Matters Aren't Doing Work Thats Popular. They're Just Doing Work That Changes Some People.

Faced With The Opportunity To Become The Category Of One, We Almost Always Hesitate, Almost Always Compromise, Almost Always Dumb It Down To Play It A Little Bit Safer

As The Amount Of Inputs Go Up, As The Number Of People And Ideas That Clamor For Attention Continue To Increase, We Do What People Always Do: We Rely On The Familiar, The Trusted And The Personal. The Incredible Surplus Of Digital Data Means That Human Actions, Generosity And Sacrifice Are More Important Than They Ever Were Before.

Art Is The Act Of Doing Work That Matters While Dancing With The Voice In Your Head That Screams For You To Stop.

If You Think Cat Food Is For Cats, How Come It Doesn't Come In Mouse Flavor?

The Enemy Of Fear Is Creativity.

Go For The Edges. Challenge Yourself And Your Team To Describe What Those Edges Are, And Then Test Which Edge Is Most Likely To Deliver The Marketing Results You Seek.

Take The Long Way. Do The Hard Work, Consistently And With Generosity And Transparency. And Then You Won't Waste Time Doing It Over.

Tell Your Lizard (brain) To Shut Up.

Being A Leader Gives You Charisma. If You Look And Study The Leaders Who Have Succeeded, That's Where Charisma Comes From, From The Leading.

Creating Art Is A Habit, One That We Practice Daily Or Hourly Until We Get Good At It

There's No Map For Being An Artist.

Being An Artist

Most People Have Bosses Who Hire Them To Fill A Slot In The Work Chart And To Do What They Are Told. And Most People Who Are Doing What They Are Told Feel Safe; It Feels Reliable.

Your Art Is The Act Of Taking Personal Responsibility, Challenging The Status Quo, And Changing People.

Art Is A Personal Gift That Changes The Recipient. The Medium Doesn't Matter. The Intent Does.

Cheap Is The Last Refuge Of A Product Developer Or Marketer Who Is Out Of Great Ideas.

The Innovator Creates A Business Where They Are Making Money, Even When They Sleep.

A Customer Is Never Out Of Warranty, Even If His Product Is.

It's Not An Accident That Successful People Read More Books.

If It's Worth Listening To, It's Worth Questioning Until You Understand It.

Bullhorns Are Overrated: Having Ten Times As Many Twitter Followers Generates Approximately Zero Times As Much Value.

Habits Are More Powerful Than Fears.

Either You Defend The Status Quo, Or You Invent The Future.

The Resistance Is The Voice In Your Head Telling You To Use Bullets In Your Powerpoint Slides...it’s The Voice That Tells You To Leave Controversial Ideas Out Of The Paper You’re Writing, Because The Teacher Won’t Like Them. The Resistance Pushes Relentlessly For You To Fit In.

Great Leaders Create Movements By Empowering The Tribe To Communicate. They Establish The Foundation For People To Make Connections, As Opposed To Commanding People To Follow Them.

The Future Isn't So Much About Absorbing Or Tolerating Change, It's About Making Change.

Marketing Yourself To A New Person Often Involves Being Charismatic, Clever And Quick-but Most Jobs And Most Relationships Are About Being Consistent, Persistent And Brave.

If It Were Any Other Way, It Would Be Easy. And If It Were Any Other Way, Everyone Would Do It And Your Work Would Ultimately Be Devalued. The Yin And Yang Are Clear: Without People Pushing Against Your Quest To Do Something Worth Talking About, It's Unlikely It Would Be Worth The Journey. Persist.

Getting Picked Is Fine If It Happens To You. But It's Not A Plan. It's A Version Of Waiting And Hoping.

Do You Know What People Want More Than Anything? They Want To Be Missed. They Want To Be Missed The Day They Don't Show Up. They Want To Be Missed When They're Gone.

Go Ahead And Act As If Your Decisions Are Temporary. Because They Are. Be Bold, Make Mistakes, Learn A Lesson, And Fix What Doesn't Work. No Sweat, No Need To Hyperventilate.

If You Could Do Tomorrow Over Again, Would You?

The Status Quo Is Persistent And Resistant. It Exists Because Everyone Wants It To. Everyone Believes That What They've Got Is Probably Better Than The Risk And Fear That Come With Change.

Competence Is The Enemy Of Change!

That The Horrible Zika Virus Or Hiv, We Can Look At What It Means To Be Patient Zero, What It Means To Need Not Much Contact To Spread, And All Of Those Things Follow Into The Way Ideas Spread.

A Book Is A Souvenir Of An Idea.

As Creators, Our Pursuit Of Perfection Might Be Misguided, Particularly If It Comes At The Expense Of The Things That Matter.

If You Hear My Idea But Don't Believe It, That's Not Your Fault; It's Mine. If You See My New Product But Don't Buy It, That's My Failure, Not Yours. If You Attend My Presentation And You're Bored, That's My Fault Too.

The Competitive Advantages The Marketplace Demands Is Someone More Human, Connected, And Mature. Someone With Passion And Energy, Capable Of Seeing Things As They Are And Negotiating Multiple Priorities As She Makes Useful Decisions Without Angst. Flexible In The Face Of Change, Resilient In The Face Of Confusion. All Of These Attributes Are Choices, Not Talents, And All Of Them Are Available To You.

Sooner Or Later, The Ones Who Told You That This Isn't The Way It's Done, The Ones Who Found Time To Sneer, They Will Find Someone Else To Hassle. Sooner Or Later, They Stop Pointing Out How Much Hubris You've Got, How You're Not Entitled To Make A New Thing, How You Will Certainly Come To Regret Your Choices. Sooner Or Later, Your Work Speaks For Itself. Outlasting The Critics Feels Like It Will Take A Very Long Time, But You're More Patient Than They Are.

In A Digital World, The Gift I Give You Almost Always Benefits Me More Than It Costs.

Waiting For Perfect Is Never As Smart As Making Progress.

I Hope I'm Better Looking Than Yoda, But - I'm Really Interested In People Who Have Something To Say, A Change They Want To Make And Can't Figure Out Why They Can't Make It Spread.

If You Can’t State Your Position In Eight Words, You Don’t Have A Position.

Nobody Says, 'yeah, I'd Like To Set Myself Up For Some Serious Criticism!' And Yet, The Only Way To Be Remarkable Is To Do Just That.

Instead Of Working So Hard To Prove The Skeptics Wrong, It Makes A Lot More Sense To Delight The True Believers. They Deserve It, After All, And They're The Ones That Are Going To Spread The Word For You.

The Easier It Is To Quantify, The Less It's Worth.

It's Almost Impossible To Have Fun Playing Ping Pong With Someone Who Doesn't Care, Won't Try Or Isn't Any Good.

Believe That Giving Up Is The Same Thing As Being Realistic.

Playing The Game Is A Form Of Winning The Game. In Those Competitions, We Win By Being Resilient.

Please Stop Waiting For A Map. We Reward Those Who Draw Maps, Not Those Who Follow Them.

If You're Going To Buy A Real Book, A Paper Book, There Better Be A Good Reason. Perhaps Scarcity Is One Of Those Reasons.

Art Is The Work Of A Human Being – Something A Person Does With Generosity To Touch Someone Else To Make A Change For The Better.

What Is School For? If You're Not Asking That, You're Wasting Time And Money.

Way More Productive, I Think, To Push Yourself To Be More In The World, Not To Encourage Yourself To Hide.

'good Enough' Stopped Being Good Enough A Long Time Ago. So Why Not Be Great?

Incrementalism Ceases To Be A Good Strategy When There's A Cliff On The Route.

Art Is The Work Of A Human, An Individual Seeking To Make A Statement, To Cause A Reaction, To Connect. Art Is Something New, Every Time, And Art Might Not Work, Precisely Because It's New, Because It's Human And Because It Seeks To Connect.

Remarkable Work Often Comes From Making Choices When Everyone Else Feels As Though There Is No Choice.

What We Most Need In Our Lives, Though, Is Something Worth Doing, Worth It Because We Care.

Personalizatio N Wasn't Supposed To Be A Cleverly Veiled Way To Chase Prospects Around The Web, Showing Them The Same Spammy Ad For The Same Lame Stuff As Everyone Else Sees. No, It Is A Chance To Differentiate At A Human Scale, To Use Behavior As The Most Important Clue About What People Want And More Important, What They Need.

Great Work Is The Result Of Seeking Out Tension, Not Avoiding It.

The Biggest Takeaway For Anyone Seeking To Write Is This: Don't Go Looking For The Way Other Authors Do Their Work. You Won't Find Many Who Are Consistent Enough To Copy, And There Are Enough Variations In Approach That It's Obvious That It's Not Like Hitting Home Runs Or Swinging A Golf Club. There Isn't A Standard Approach, There's Only What Works For You (and What Doesn't).

Why Do We Value Leadership, Connection And Grace? Because It's Scarce, And That Scacity Creates Value.

Every Voice Doesn't Matter--only The Voices That Move Your Idea Forward, That Make It Better, That Make You Better, That Make It More Likely You Will Ship Work That Benefits Your Tribe.

You Don't Launch A Popular Blog, You Build One.

Go Do Something Interesting. Ask If You Need Help.

Repeating Easy Tasks Again And Again Gets You Not Very Far. Attacking Only Steep Cliffs Where No Progress Is Made Isn’t Particularly Effective Either. No, The Best Path Is An Endless Series Of Difficult (but Achievable) Hills.

Marketing Is The Way Your People Answer The Phone, The Typesetting On Your Bills And Your Return Policy.

Leadership Is The Art Of Giving People A Platform For Spreading Ideas That Work.

If You Can't Make Money From Attention, You Should Do Something Else For A Living.

Every Great Company, Brand, Career Has Been Built In Exactly The Same Way: Bit By Bit, Step By Step, Little By Little.

The Problem With Competition Is That It Takes Away The Requirement To Set Your Own Path, To Invent Your Own Method, To Find A New Way.

Here's The Fascinating Part, Call It The Golden Shoulder: We Have No Idea In Advance Who The Great Contributors Are Going To Be. We Know That There's A Huge Cohort Of People Struggling Outside The Boundaries Of The Curated, Selected Few, But We Don't Know Who They Are.

What I Learned: Shun Nonbelievers. Ignore Critics. Do Your Best For People Who Want To Dance With You.

I Do Not Think You Can Get Rid Of The Fear... But You Can Dance With It.

The Only Thing Leaders Have In Common Is The Shared Decision To Lead.

If You're Not Willing To Get Your 'worst One Ever' Out Of The Way, How Will You Possibly Do Better Than That?

A One-hit Wonder Is A Legend Who Stopped Early.

As You've Probably Discovered, Great Work Makes Us Uncomfortable.

Instead Of Wondering When Your Next Vacation Is, Maybe You Should Set Up A Life You Don't Need To Escape From.

For Most Modern Marketers, Quantity Isn't The Point. What Matters Is To Matter. Lives Changed. Work That Made An Actual Difference. Connection.

Deadlines Have A Lousy Name. Call Them Live-lines Instead. That´t What They Are.

Who Gets To Decide What You Want?

If Failure Is Not An Option, Neither Is Success. Innovation Is Just Repeated Failure Till You Come Up With Something That Works.

Kings Fear Change. Leaders Crave It.

The Brand Of The Future...is Patient, Consistent, Connected, And Trusted. The New Brand Is Based On The Truth That Only Comes From Experiencing The Product, Not Just Yelling About It. Word Of Mouth Is More Important (by A Factor Of 20) Than Tv Advertising, And The Remarkability Word Of Mouth Demands Comes From What We Experience, Not From Spin Or Taglines Or A Campaign Slogan.

If You're Not Upsetting Anyone, You're Not Changing The Status Quo.

Some People Read Business Books Looking For Confirmation. I Read Them In Search Of Disquiet. Confirmation Is Cheap, Easy And Ineffective. Restlessness And The Scientific Method, On The Other Hand, Create A Culture Of Testing And Inquiry That Can't Help But Push You Forward.

Gifts Are Not Favors. If You Expect Something In Return, It's Not A Gift.

When You Are Trusted Because You Care, It's Quite Likely The Revenue Will Take Care Of Itself

A Dialogue Leads To Connection, Which Leads To Trust Which Leads To Engagement

The Person Who Fails The Most Wins.

Our Job Is To Make Change. Our Job Is To Connect To People, To Interact With Them In A Way That Leaves Them Better Than We Found Them, More Able To Get Where They'd Like To Go. Every Time We Waste That Opportunity, Every Page Or Sentence That Doesn't Do Enough To Advance The Cause Is Waste.

The Reason Social Media Is So Difficult For Most Organizations: It’s A Process, Not An Event.

Saying No To Loud People Gives You The Resources To Say Yes To Important Opportunities.

Success Comes From Doing The Hard Part. When The Hard Part Is All You've Got, You're More Likely To Do It. And This Is Precisely Why It's Difficult To Focus. Because Focusing Means Acknowledging That You Just Signed Up For The Hard Part.

Here's The Thing: The Book That Will Most Change Your Life Is The Book You Write.

The First Step Toward Becoming Extraordinary Is, Of Course, To Stop Being Ordinary.

Make More Decisions. That's The Only Way To Get Better At It.

What People Are Afraid Of Isn't Failure. It's Blame. Criticism.

No, Everything Is Not Going To Be Okay. It Never Is. It Isn't Okay Now. Change, By Definition, Changes Things

It's Uncomfortable To Resist The Urge To Settle.

Traditional Corporations, Particularly Large-scale Service And Manufacturing Businesses Are Organized For Efficiency. Or Consistency. But Not Joy. Joy Comes From Surprise And Connection And Humanity And Transparency And New...if You Fear Special Requests, If You Staff With Cogs, If You Have To Put It All In A Manual, Then The Chances Of Amazing Someone Are Really Quite Low.

Every Activity Worth Doing Has A Learning Curve.

We Need To Care Enough To Connect, To Put Ourselves At Emotional Risk And Play One Note Worth Hearing.

It Takes Three Years To Be An Overnight Success, Sometimes More.

Every Day I Meet People Who Have So Much To Give But Have Been...frighten Ed Enough To Hold It Back. It's Time To Stop Complying With The System And Draw Your Own Map. You Have Brilliance In You, Your Contribution Is Essential, And The Art You Create Is Precious. Only You Can Do It, And You Must.

It Will Take You Less Time And Effort To Do A Thing The Difficult Way Than It Will To Buy, Try And Discard All The Shortcuts.

Many People Are Starting To Realize That They Work A Lot And That Working On Stuff They Believe In (and Making Things Happen) Is Much More Satisfying Then Just Getting A Paycheck And Waiting To Get Fired (or Die).

The Best Time To Start Promoting Your Book Is Three Years Before It Comes Out. Three Years To Build A Reputation, Build A Permission Asset, Build A Blog, Build A Following, Build Credibility And Build The Connections You'll Need Later.

Taking Delight In The Journey Takes Confidence. It Pushes The Envelope Of Design.

Choose Your Customers, Choose Your Future.

The Only Path To Amazing Runs Directly Through Not-yet-amazing

You Can't Lose. Go, Go, Go!

Traditional Sales And Marketing Involves Increasing Market Shares, Which Means Selling As Much Of Your Product As You Can To As Many Customers As Possible. One-to-one Marketing Involves Driving For A Share Of Customer, Which Means Ensuring That Each Individual Customer Who Buys Your Product Buys More Product, Buys Only Your Brand, And Is Happy Using Your Product Instead Of Another To Solve His Problem. The True, Current Value Of Any One Customer Is A Function Of The Customer's Future Purchases, Across All The Product Lines, Brands, And Services Offered By You.

If You Have No Wish, How Can It Possibly Come True?

Who You Hang Out With Determines What You Dream About And What You Collide With. And The Collisions And The Dreams Lead To Your Changes. And The Changes Are What You Become. Change The Outcome By Changing Your Circle.

Positive Thinking Is Hard. Worth It, Though.

When You Walk Around Braced For Impact, You're Dramatically Decreasing Your Chances. Your Chances To Avoid The Outcome You Fear, Your Chances To Make A Difference, And Your Chances To Breathe And Connect.

Making A Difference

If You Set Your Bar At 'amazing' It's Awfully Difficult To Start. Your First Paragraph, Sketch, Formula, Sample Or Concept Isn't Going To Be Amazing. Your Tenth One Might Not Be Either. Confronted With The Gap Between Your Vision Of Perfect And The Reality Of What You've Created, The Easiest Path Is No Path. Shrug. Admit Defeat. Hit Delete. One More Reason To Follow Someone Else And Wait For Instructions. Of Course, The Only Path To Amazing Runs Directly Through Not-yet-amazing. But Not-yet-amazing Is A Great Place To Start, Because That's Where You Are.

It's Human Nature To Quit When It Hurts. But It's That Reflex That Creates Scarcity.

The Only Reason To Buy A Paper Book Any Longer Is To Own It And Cherish It And Remember It And Tell A Story About It.

The Easiest Way To Thrive As An Outlier Is To Avoid Being One. At Least Among Your Most Treasured Peers. Surround Yourself With People In At Least As Much Of A Hurry, At Least As Inquisitive, At Least As Focused As You Are.

All Good Ideas Are Terrible... Until People Realize They Are Obvious. If You're Not Willing To Live Through The Terrible Stage, You'll Never Get To The Obvious Part.

We Are Leaving The Industrial Economy And Entering The Connection Economy.

Where Do You Put The Fear When You Choose To Innovate? The Fear Is There, But You Have To Find A Place To Put It.

The Way You Make Something Happen Is To Do Something That A Fool Could Screw Up.

It's Much Easier To Spend A Lot Of Time Making Your Microphone Louder Than It Is Working On Making Your Message More Compelling.

The Devil Doesn't Need An Advocate. The Brave Need Supporters, Not Critics

We're Going To Spend Our Entire Future Living In Tomorrow-investing Now, When It's Difficult, Is The Single Best Moment.

Seizing New Ground, Making Connections Between People Or Ideas, Working Without A Map-these Are Works Of Art, And If You Do Them, You Are An Artist, Regardless Of Whether You Wear A Smock, Use A Computer, Or Work With Others All Day Long.

Inspirational Life

The Danger Of The Web Is That You Can Go From Idea To Public Announcement In Under Ten Minutes.

We've Greatly Exaggerated The Risk Of Sinking, Without Celebrating The Value Of Swimming.

In Fact, Most Of The Time, People With Similar Information, Similar Beliefs And Similar Apparent Choices Will Choose Similar Actions. So If You Want To Know Why Someone Does What They Do, Start With What They Know, What They Believe And Where They Came From. Dismissing Actions We Don't Admire Merely Because We Don't Care Enough To Have Empathy Is Rarely Going To Help Us Make The Change We Seek. It Doesn't Help Us Understand, And It Creates A Gulf That Drives Us Apart.

Someone Can Always Do Your Job A Little Better Or Faster Or Cheaper Than You Can.

I'm Not A Psychopath-i'm Wearing A Tie!

Trending Author

Category