loving the process

This journey from naming what you want to achieving it isn't accidental. It follows a path that, in many ways, mirrors training for a marathon. And just like with marathon training, each phase requires different skills, different mindsets, and different kinds of courage.

Listen to what Shannon said about hanging out with the tricksters and the rascals and the artists — make sure to stay with those who are in on the joke, the delight, the wild creativity of this place.

The end game was never convenience but a texture-rich life that challenges and rewards us. Not happiness as a frictionless state, but satisfaction earned through the friction itself.

So much of getting good at anything is just pure labor: figuring out how to try and then offering up the hours...

...Pleople always assume I'm interested in the end result-the wonderful thing they've made-when what I'm really interested in is the process. How did you get this way and why? I'm curious about the ugliness of trying, the years and years... See more

Most of the time, bad habits are simply a way of dealing with stress and boredom.

Part of me wishes these essays were completed already, so I could feel the relief that comes with getting them all out. Another part of me wants to spend 20 years getting them all perfect. I suppose the solution is to do both

Having 'potential' in your mind, feels better than failure in reality. This ego-cushion prevents millions from creating their life's work. Once you feel it- physically- that cushion becomes painful, like a tumor you have to remove. And you only get it out one way. By identifying not with goals, but with output. You should feel dead inside if you... See more

Only that nothing works out the way you plan, which is a blessing every hour. Life always takes a different form, if only because life will always be more imaginative — deeper, wiser, more surprising — than you are.