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The Man in the Arena
I recently received some neckties from my friend Xan’s soon-to-be-renamed clothing company, Buffalo & Company, and I found a card with this Teddy Roosevelt quote in the box: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done [...]
Conan O’Brien on Hard Work and Kindness
My friend David at Yeah Yeah Creative pointed me to Conan’s farewell during his last night of hosting The Tonight Show. His sincerity will surprise and inspire you: “If you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.”
What to do with Christmas money
Perhaps you remember—but hopefully you don’t—back in February when Ellen DeGeneres put a lock of Justin Bieber’s hair up for auction on eBay. Complete with plexiglass box, Justin Bieber’s signature, and a letter of authenticity signed by Ellen, the auction closed with a final bid of $40,668. Proceeds benefitted The Gentle Barn, a charitable organization [...]
Swashbuckling, or how to respond to failure
Back in November, I read these words from Seth Godin: “Learning from a failure is critical. Connecting effort with failure at an emotional level is crippling. … Early in our careers, we’re encouraged to avoid failure, and one way we do that is by building up a set of emotions around failure, emotions we try [...]
The Importance of Optimism – Part 2
Optimism is a choice. Events do not change us. Our perceptions of events change us. A man loses a child in a car wreck and shakes his fist at God: if God were good, then he never would have let this happen. The man’s wife instead sees a broken world where an unhappy stranger drinks [...]
The Importance of Optimism
In a recent post, I wrote about the importance of curiosity. Thomas Edison never would have gotten 1093 patents without a mountain of it. Another personality trait that I believe Edison must have had in abundance is optimism. I can’t speak for Edison’s day or his business colleagues, but I know more pessimists than optimists. [...]
The Importance of Curiosity
Of course, Thomas Edison’s perspiration wouldn’t have produced marketable incandescent light bulbs without some other factors. How did Thomas Edison keep that hard work effective even if he couldn’t have always been efficient? I think it’s safe to say that Edison worked very, very hard while building a team of brilliant, talented people. Or perhaps [...]