People say ‘be yourself’ because they want you to resist the impulse to conform to what others want you to be. But you can’t be yourself if you don’t learn who are, and you can’t learn who you are unless you think about it.

"If you already live a comfortable life, then choosing to make more money but live a worse daily life is a bad trade.

And yet, we talk ourselves into it all the time. We take promotions that pay more, but swallow our free time. We already have a successful business, but we break ourselves trying to make it even more successful.

Too much focus on we... See more

Patience. By nature, I’m impatient – with myself, sometimes with others. I like to move forward. I like to get things done. When there’s a problem, I prefer to fix it now . That’s true both professionally and when it comes to interpersonal relationships. When I’m trying to close a deal, I’ll find myself thinking, “What can I do to make it happen fa... See more

Very few people really have their own opinion. Very often, their opinion is just the opinion of someone else. Perfectly prepared, warmed up and served medium well.

I'm not above this, and I'd argue not many people are. All our opinions are shaped by other peoples' opinion. It's how this all works. The question is just, how many opinions do I require

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A bigger problem than price inflation is expectations inflation: A constant increase in what you need to be satisfied.

It’s not that there’s some metaphysical concept of beauty that rules the world — beauty is a human experience. It’s something that has to do with how humans react to the world and perceive the world. And it’s notoriously thought to be subjective, but it’s not entirely subjective. There’s a very rich history of art objects and music and what people ... See more

I guess if we’re talking about joy, writing, and being a fully rendered person in the world, my main sources of liveliness are so human and obvious they might seem facile: 1) loving the people I love with full throttle abandon – my guy, our kids, my mom and dad, our gaggle of brothers, my army of girlfriends. So that’s advice, maybe: make as many g... See more

My sense is that what’s at stake here is really rethinking the human as a site of interdependency. And I think, you know, when you walk into the coffee shop ... and you ask for the coffee, or you, indeed, even ask for assistance with the coffee, you’re basically posing the question, do we or do we not live in a world in which we assist each other? ... See more