things you should remember

People Can Only Meet You As Deeply As They’ve Met Themselves.

Don’t take yourself seriously, but do take your work seriously. Do what you say you’re going to do. If you don’t, you’ll lose respect for yourself. And if you don’t respect yourself, you’ll find it effortless to trespass across your own boundaries and violate all that you value.

Good character is not about maximizing virtues but moderating them: to be sensitive without being fragile, confident without being cocky, steadfast without being stubborn, driven without being reckless, focused without being obsessed.

I know how to spot real confidence. Look for people who are fluid with status—who allow themselves to be the butt of a joke, or accept criticism, but also avoid false modesty, and inhabit the spotlight when it falls on them. One might call this a balance between dignity and humility. Pro tip: people who always cling to high status aren’t confident ... See more

At T-minus seven minutes to the meeting, I rushed my laptop up a flight of stairs to the desk of a secretary and huffed out a desperate plea: Please print this for me, seven copies. She looked up at what surely was a normal speed, but which I perceived as the pace of a snail emerging from a shell, and said,

“Just give me a second, dear.” She smiled.

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“The professional has learned, however, that too much love can be a bad thing. Too much love can make him choke. The seeming detachment of the professional, the cold-blooded character to his demeanor, is a compensating device to keep him from loving the game so much that he freezes in action.”

Humans are simpler than the instructions would have us believe. We’re all looking for the same things. To be seen. To be accepted. To connect. To matter. This is true for readers and writers and kids and strangers and the cast of Love Is Blind.

Feel your feelings, big dawg, but also zoom out so you can hold at once how they feel huge in the brain and are utterly meaningless to everyone who walks this earth.