"The greatest predictor of success for leaders is not their charisma, influence, or power. It is not personality, attractiveness, or innovative genius," the pair write. Instead it's a quality called "relational energy." Having it can help your company be up to four times more successful.

“Reflection matters because it is continuous with practice. How you think about what you are doing affects how you do it, or whether you do it at all. It may direct your research, or your attitude to people who do things different, or indeed your whole life.”

It was not fun to walk around with my ghosts, despite what my positive memories wanted me to believe. I think this is because inherent in “revisiting” is the palpable reality that everything ends, the reminder that soon the way you are experiencing your present moment will be the past; it too will end.

All these people you’ve known and loved – “they suffered and struggled so much, and then life is over,” said Scorsese. “You get to the point of saying, ‘Well, what does it all mean?’ It doesn’t matter what it means. You have to live it. And if you choose not to live it, you choose not to live it; that’s up to you. But you are existing and you live ... See more

Philosopher and author Arthur Schopenhauer on the importance of reflection and contemplation rather than mere reading and research:

“You may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing e... See more

Allowances — for grief, for pain, for childbirth, for illness — have been so hard to come by, I think, because we discount the body. Worse, we hold it in contempt compared to the mind, a proxy for religious spirit, so that the reality and risk of cruelty and brutalization are minimized and ignored.

"Do not ask your children

to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry

when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of... See more

“Nothing is permanent,” she says. “So I’m very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I’ve had it taken away from me before. There is one thing I’ve learned: My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art.” She considers. “But I’ve also learned there’s no ... See more

The little things you do for others that remind you both of who you are, matter. They’re what define the thread count of the human experience