The world can feel very out of control, especially for younger people. And controlling your own body is a coping mechanism. Part of the solution, if there is one, is to educate about this. There's so much out there right now about diet culture, and no one is really talking about beauty culture in the same way.

At the same time, a lot of this would b... See more

Leading from good to great does not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.

My being an artist is not a question of being able to make artwork. It is a question of my willingness to make something imperfect, or ugly, and how much resilience I have to face that reality repeatedly.

New humanism is the philosophy of creative writing. It is a philosophy of disciplined individualism, of crafted authenticity.

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.

David Foster Wallace,

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The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It’s not about the formal credentials. It’s fundamentally about play.

I call these experiences our dark teachers. The lessons that hurt, scare, scar, wound, and almost destroy us are very often the things that make us who we are because they require us to muster what we thought we could not muster—courage, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, love, resilience, strength, generosity of spirit, ferocity of heart. The time... See more

Being trusted to figure things out is a big motivator: A 2014 Citigroup and LinkedIn survey found that nearly half of employees would give up a 20% raise for greater control over how they work.