Careers Positive Quotes

Your comfort zone is a place where you keep yourself in a self-illusion and nothing can grow there but your potentiality can grow only when you can think and grow out of that zone.

Never let your fear of the unknown and things being too difficult make your choices for you in life. One of the saddest lessons in life is finding out that your fear made the situation worse than what it was and a braver person stole the dream you gave up on.

May you reach that level within, where you no longer allow your past or people with toxic intentions to negatively affect or condition you.

Don't ever stop believing in your own transformation. It is still happening even on days you may not realize it or feel like it.

You do not become a ''dissident'' just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.

God has a way of picking a “nobody” and turning their world upside down, in order to create a “somebody” that will remove the obstacles they encountered out of the pathway for others.

Here's a glorious thought: You don't have to settle. Ever. In life, in love, in your career…ANYWHERE!

I honor you for every time this year you: got back up vibrated higher shined your light and loved and elevated beyond —the call of duty.

Success is not just about what you achieve, but also about how you impact others. Be a leader, inspire those around you, and leave a lasting legacy.

Positive energy is your priceless life force. Protect it. Don't allow people to draw from your reserves; select friends who recharge your energies . . . I'm not asking you to cut people out of your life, but I am asking you to invest your time with people who will push you to be your best. Winners love to see other people win.

So many people think that they are not gifted because they don’t have an obvious talent that people can recognize because it doesn’t fall under the creative arts category—writing, dancing, music, acting, art or singing. Sadly, they let their real talents go undeveloped, while they chase after fame. I am grateful for the people with obscure unremarked talents because they make our lives easier---inventors, organizers, planners, peacemakers, communicators, activists, scientists, and so forth. However, there is one gift that trumps all other talents—being an excellent parent. If you can successfully raise a child in this day in age to have integrity then you have left a legacy that future generations will benefit from.

Your VISION and your self-willingness is the MOST powerful elements to conquer your goal

When it comes to your career, you must always try and allow the positive aspects of your character to dictate what happens to you. Be led by your talent, not by your self-loathing; those other things you just have to manage.

In the modern workplace, you gotta be a jack-of-all-trades. Mastering your career is all about being adaptable, versatile, and always learning.

Chasing after the highest paid position is pointless. Service to others is the highest calling.

Want to make waves in the business world? Then you gotta be bold, take risks, and always be ready to pivot.

I don't really care if people forget me. My legacy wasn't about me. It was about everything I could do for another. When that sinks in...well you try a little harder. You dream a little broader. Your heart stretches a little farther and you find that you can't go back to the same place and make it fit. You become a person of ideas and seek out your own kind. And then it happens: One day you discover that staying the same is scary and changing has become your new home.

First LEARN...then remove the 'L

When you make the decision to start something new, first figure out the jobs you want to do. Then position yourself to play where no one else is playing.

Continuing to confuse career development with attaining specific positions will only limit the growth that both employees and organizations need.

Morpheus snatches both of my necklaces from my fingers, holding the delicate links taut enough that I can’t struggle without breaking them. “Were he to pay more attention to you instead of his precious career”—he drapes the charms over a palm and, using his gloved forefinger and thumb, positions the tiny key in place atop the heart’s keyhole—“perhaps then he would be attuned to your needs and desires.” Holding my gaze, he makes a show of how the key’s teeth aren’t the right shape for the heart’s opening. “As it stands, he’s just not the right fit.

I'm grateful to my readers. Readers who buy and support authors, especially career authors, are the patrons who fund art, genius, innovation, and creativity. Out of all the books published, there will emerge the next Plato, Socrates, Einstein, Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Edison, Churchill, Tolstoy, and Tolkien. My readers help with my creative process because they help create the positive and supportive environment that allows me to keep writing the books and series my readers love. Thank You!" - Kailin Gow, Strong.

When climbing and moving are positioned as the only way to really develop, the message that employees get is “step up or stagnate.

They say that success is a journey, not a destination. But let's be real, the destination is pretty sweet - especially if it comes with a six-figure salary and a company car.

Don't just climb the corporate ladder, master it! And if anyone tries to push you off, show them who's boss and climb even higher.

Success is not just about hard work, it's about working smart. So, take a break from the grind and strategize like a pro.

They say that the first step to success is setting clear goals. Well, I've got plenty of goals - like finally getting that corner office with a view, and firing my most annoying colleague.

It is through strength of character, not luck, do we form the predictable path of our future.

For too long, careers have been measured against major markers, points in time, and the artificial yardstick of new positions or titles.

At its core, macromanagement is a development strategy that allows you to position others to learn more, do more, and be more.

Chasing after the highest-paid position is pointless. Service to humanity is the highest calling.

To achieve career mastery, you must first master yourself. Take the time to assess your strengths, weaknesses, and goals, and then chart a course for success.

If you want to achieve career mastery, then you need to be willing to put in the work. But don't worry, the view from the top is totally worth it.

If you're not driving business growth and profitability, then you might as well be a houseplant. So get out there and make some money, honey!

Professional development is important, but let's not forget about the most important kind of development - personal brand development. Because in the modern workplace, it's not what you know, it's who knows you.

Autumn is a momentum of the natures golden beauty…, so the same it’s time to find your momentum of life

The modern job market is like a game of musical chairs. You need to be the one with a chair when the music stops, or you're out of luck.

The workplace is like a battlefield, and you need to be a warrior to survive. So arm yourself with knowledge and fight for your place in the corporate world.

At the highest levels of the medical cartel, vaccines are a top priority because they cause a weakening of the immune system. I know that may be hard to accept, but its true. The medical cartel, at the highest level, is not out to help people, it is out to harm them, to weaken them. To kill them. At one point in my career, I had a long conversation with a man who occupied a high government position in an African nation. He told me that he was well aware of this. He told me that WHO is a front for these depopulation interests

If you want to be happy you have to study people who are happy. You have to hang out with people that are happy. Life won't go in the direction you want, by simply trying to stay positive in a life you're not happy with. You have to know what you want and why you truly want it so badly. When you figure that out then you need to change your current identity, in order to fit the type of person you envision would make those dreams come true. Happiness is not reliant on the actions or inactions of other people. It is your “courage in motion” toward your dreams.

Most of the people I know who are having trouble finding their life work are somewhat passive in style. They wait for something good to happen to them rather than make strong positive moves.

What one skill, if I developed and did it in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my career?

How you think and create your inner world that you gonna become in your outer world. Your inner believe manifest you in the outside

Maybe I should let my faithful manservant answer the rest of your questions, since he seems to have all the answers." "I'm saving her time," Bodie replied. "She brings you a redhead, you'll give her grief. Look for women with class, Annabelle. That's most important. The sophisticated types who went to boarding schools and speak French. She has to be the real thing because he can spot a phony a mile away. And he likes them athletic." "Of course he does," she said dryly. "Athletic, domestic, gorgeous, brilliant, socially connected, and pathologically submissive. It'll be a snap." "You forgot hot." Heath smiled. "And defeatist thinking is for losers. If you want to be a success in this world, Annabelle, you need a positive attitude. Whatever the client wants, you get it for him. First rule of a successful business." "Uh-huh. What about career women?" "I don't see how that would work." "The kind of potential mate you're describing isn't going to be sitting around waiting for her prince to show up. She's heading a major corporation. In between those Victoria's Secret modeling gigs." He lifted an eyebrow. "Attitude, Annabelle. Attitude.

Your traditional EDUCATION is not going to CHANGE your life but the life you are experiencing that can change you. Choose a POSITIVE life STYLE with positive ATTITUDE which could bring you a life with HAPPINESS and WISDOM

But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with the system. You have to look like what the officers above you think that officers should look like. You have to think in ways that they are comfortable with. The result was that you ended up with a command structure that was top-heavy with guys who looked good in uniform and talked right and did well enough not to embarrass themselves, while the really good ones quietly did all the serious work and bailed out their superiors and got blamed for errors they had advised against until they eventually got out. That was the military.

There is no need for comparison. Be happy with yourself and find satisfaction in your work.

Your every positive action in your life will increase your self-esteem and this self-esteem will boost you for more positive action to take you on success

Being the only woman on a nontechnical team, providing customer support to software developers, was like immersion therapy for internalized misogyny. I liked men—I had a brother. I had a boyfriend. But men were everywhere: the customers, my teammates, my boss, his boss. I was always fixing things for them, tiptoeing around their vanities, cheering them up. Affirming, dodging, confiding, collaborating. Advocating for their career advancement; ordering them pizza. My job had placed me, a self-identified feminist, in a position of ceaseless, professionalized deference to the male ego.

If you are not EXCITED enough at your present life its mean your future is not EXITING. Excitement will give you ENTHUSIASM and enthusiasm will give you a positive energetic LIFE STYLE which could give you a successful exiting life…

I’M LOSING FAITH IN MY FAVORITE COUNTRY Throughout my life, the United States has been my favorite country, save and except for Canada, where I was born, raised, educated, and still live for six months each year. As a child growing up in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, I aggressively bought and saved baseball cards of American and National League players, spent hours watching snowy images of American baseball and football games on black and white television and longed for the day when I could travel to that great country. Every Saturday afternoon, me and the boys would pay twelve cents to go the show and watch U.S. made movies, and particularly, the Superman serial. Then I got my chance. My father, who worked for B.F. Goodrich, took my brother and me to watch the Cleveland Indians play baseball in the Mistake on the Lake in Cleveland. At last I had made it to the big time. I thought it was an amazing stadium and it was certainly not a mistake. Amazingly, the Americans thought we were Americans. I loved the United States, and everything about the country: its people, its movies, its comic books, its sports, and a great deal more. The country was alive and growing. No, exploding. It was the golden age of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American dream was alive and well, but demanded hard work, honesty, and frugality. Everyone understood that. Even the politicians. Then everything changed. Partly because of its proximity to the United States and a shared heritage, Canadians also aspired to what was commonly referred to as the American dream. I fall neatly into that category. For as long as I can remember I wanted a better life, but because I was born with a cardboard spoon in my mouth, and wasn’t a member of the golden gene club, I knew I would have to make it the old fashioned way: work hard and save. After university graduation I spent the first half of my career working for the two largest oil companies in the world: Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell. The second half was spent with one of the smallest oil companies in the world: my own. Then I sold my company and retired into obscurity. In my case obscurity was spending summers in our cottage on Lake Rosseau in Muskoka, Ontario, and winters in our home in Port St. Lucie, Florida. My wife, Ann, and I, (and our three sons when they can find the time), have been enjoying that “obscurity” for a long time. During that long time we have been fortunate to meet and befriend a large number of Americans, many from Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation.” One was a military policeman in Tokyo in 1945. After a very successful business carer in the U.S. he’s retired and living the dream. Another American friend, also a member of the “Greatest Generation”, survived The Battle of the Bulge and lived to drink Hitler’s booze at Berchtesgaden in 1945. He too is happily retired and living the dream. Both of these individuals got to where they are by working hard, saving, and living within their means. Both also remember when their Federal Government did the same thing. One of my younger American friends recently sent me a You Tube video, featuring an impassioned speech by Marco Rubio, Republican senator from Florida. In the speech, Rubio blasts the spending habits of his Federal Government and deeply laments his country’s future. He is outraged that the U.S. Government spends three hundred billion dollars, each and every month. He is even more outraged that one hundred and twenty billion of that three hundred billion dollars is borrowed. In other words, Rubio states that for every dollar the U.S. Government spends, forty cents is borrowed. I don’t blame him for being upset. If I had run my business using that arithmetic, I would be in the soup kitchens. If individual American families had applied that arithmetic to their finances, none of them would be in a position to pay a thin dime of taxes.

Nobody ever got started on a career as a writer by exercising good judgment, and no one ever will, either, so the sooner you break the habit of relying on yours, the faster you will advance. People with good judgment weigh the assurance of a comfortable living represented by the mariners’ certificates that declare them masters of all ships, whether steam or sail, and masters of all oceans and all navigable rivers, and do not forsake such work in order to learn English and write books signed Joseph Conrad. People who have had hard lives but somehow found themselves fetched up in executive positions with prosperous West Coast oil firms do not drink and wench themselves out of such comfy billets in order in their middle age to write books as Raymond Chandler; that would be poor judgment. No one on the payroll of a New York newspaper would get drunk and chuck it all to become a free-lance writer, so there was no John O’Hara. When you have at last progressed to the junction that enforces the decision of whether to proceed further, by sending your stuff out, and refusing to remain a wistful urchin too afraid to beg, and you have sent the stuff, it is time to pause and rejoice.

The one thing that I like to share with journalists is that we are not in competition with each other. We are here to support one another.

CONFIDENCE is not showing off your VANITY, it’s about to be HUMBLED and KIND to others what are you truly SKILLED and PROFESSIONAL about…

the goal of an apprenticeship is not money, a good position, a title, or a diploma, but rather the transformation of your mind and character—the first transformation on the way to mastery. You enter a career as an outsider. You are naïve and full of misconceptions about this new world. Your head is full of dreams and fantasies about the future. Your knowledge of the world is subjective, based on emotions, insecurities, and limited experience. Slowly, you will ground yourself in reality, in the objective world represented by the knowledge and skills that make people successful in it. You will learn how to work with others and handle criticism. In the process you will transform yourself from someone who is impatient and scattered into someone who is disciplined and focused, with a mind that can handle complexity. In the end, you will master yourself and all of your weaknesses.

On a deeper level, the film [Seven Days in May] displays several themes that are important to my father throughout his career. Prime among these is not succumbing to fear born of ignorance. In the nuclear age, he seems to be telling us, we can't throw up our hands in helplessness over the enormity of the problem. With the stakes as dire as they are, we must all work positively to change things for the better. I think that is why he believes so firmly in the idea of the United Nations. As in 'Twilight Zone's' "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", my dad is warning us that the greatest threat we face is if a potential enemy uses our fears to get us to start destroying ourselves.

When our brains constantly scan for and focus on the positive, we profit from three of the most important tools available to us: happiness, gratitude, and optimism. The role happiness plays should be obvious—the more you pick up on the positive around you, the better you’ll feel—and we’ve already seen the advantages to performance that brings. The second mechanism at work here is gratitude, because the more opportunities for positivity we see, the more grateful we become. Psychologist Robert Emmons, who has spent nearly his entire career studying gratitude, has found that few things in life are as integral to our well-being.11 Countless other studies have shown that consistently grateful people are more energetic, emotionally intelligent, forgiving, and less likely to be depressed, anxious, or lonely. And it’s not that people are only grateful because they are happier, either; gratitude has proven to be a significant cause of positive outcomes. When researchers pick random volunteers and train them to be more grateful over a period of a few weeks, they become happier and more optimistic, feel more socially connected, enjoy better quality sleep, and even experience fewer headaches than control groups.

The sad news is, nobody owes you a career. Your career is literally your business. You own it as a sole proprietor. You have one employee: yourself. You are in competition with millions of similar businesses: millions of other employees all over the world. You need to accept ownership of your career, your skills and the timing of your moves. It is your responsibility to protect this personal business of yours from harm and to position it to benefit from the changes in the environment. Nobody else can do that for you.

It is often said that what sets Shakespeare apart is his ability to illuminate the workings of the soul and so on, and he does that superbly, goodness knows, but what really characterizes his work - every bit of it, in poems and plays and even dedications, throughout every portion of his career - is a positive and palpable appreciation of the transfixing power of language. A Midsummer Night's Dream remains an enchanting work after four hundred years, but few could argue that it cuts to the very heart of human behaviour. What it does is take, and give, a positive satisfaction in the joyous possibilities of verbal expression.

when you become addict in to MATERIAL things in life then the TRUE natural life start to run away from you, YES! it's can give you certain pleasure in the society but in the same time it will sabotage your true HAPPINESS of life which we could have simply with GRATITUDE and FORGIVENESS

I know we built our career almost on being a positive influence on people. But the truth is, that's not always the way I feel. And I'm tired of being afraid of what people are going to think if I don't write that way. I want to write about what's really happening in the world. And in me.

People hate thinking systematically about how to optimize their relationships. It is normal to hear someone say: “I will just wait for something to happen naturally” when talking about one of the most important aspects of their life while genuinely believing that this approach has reasonable odds of success. Imagine if people said the same thing about their careers. It would sound truly bizarre for someone to expect a successful career to “just happen naturally” and yet it is entirely normalized to expect that good relationships will. People pay tens of thousands of dollars to receive degrees in computer science, marketing, and neuroscience. They make tough sacrifices with the understanding that the skills and knowledge they build in these domains will dramatically affect their quality of life. Ironically, people spend very little time systematically examining mating strategies—despite the fact that a robust understanding of the subject can dramatically affect quality of life. We will happily argue that your sexual and relationship skills matter more than your career skills. If you want to be wealthy, the fastest way to become so is to marry rich. Nothing makes happiness easier than a loving, supportive relationship, while one of the best ways to ensure you are never happy is to enter or fail to recognize and escape toxic relationships. If you want to change the world, a great partner can serve as a force multiplier. A draft horse can pull 8000 pounds, while two working together can pull 24,000 pounds. When you have a partner with whom you can synergize, you gain reach and speed that neither you nor your partner could muster individually. Heck, even if you are the type of person to judge your self-worth by the number of people with whom you have slept, a solid grasp of mating strategies will help you more than a lifetime of hitting the gym (and we say this with full acknowledgment that hitting the gym absolutely helps). A great romantic relationship will even positively impact your health (a 2018 paper in Psychophysiology found that the presence of a partner in a room lowered participants’ blood pressure) and increase your lifespan (a 2019 paper in the journal Health Psychology showed individuals in happy marriages died young at a 20% lower rate). 

So what's your doll's name?" Boo asked me. "Barbie," I said. "All their names are Barbie." "I see," she said. "Well, I'd think that would get boring, everyone having the same name." I thought about this, then said, "Okay, then her name is Sabrina." "Well, that's a very nice name," Boo said. I remember she was baking bread, kneading the dough between her thick fingers. "What does she do?" "Do?" I said. "Yes." She flipped the dough over and started in on it from the other side. "What does she do?" "She goes out with Ken," I said. "And what else?" "She goes to parties," I said slowly. "And shopping." "Oh," Boo said, nodding. "She can't work?" "She doesn't have to work," I said. "Why not?" "Because she's Barbie." "I hate to tell you, Caitlin, but somebody has to make payments on that town house and the Corvette," Boo said cheerfully. "Unless Barbie has a lot of family money." I considered this while I put on Ken's pants. Boo started pushing the dough into a pan, smoothing it with her hand over the top. "You know what I think, Caitlin?" Her voice was soft and nice, the way she always spoke to me. "What?" "I think your Barbie can go shopping, and go out with Ken, and also have a productive and satisfying career of her own." She opened the oven and slid in the bread pan, adjusting its position on the rack. "But what can she do?" My mother didn't work and spent her time cleaning the house and going to PTA. I couldn't imagine Barbie, whose most casual outfit had sequins and go-go boots, doing s.uch things. Boo came over and plopped right down beside me. I always remember her being on my level; she'd sit on the edge of the sandbox, or lie across her bed with me and Cass as we listened to the radio. "Well," she said thoughtfully, picking up Ken and examining his perfect physique. "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I remember this moment so well; I can still see Boo sitting there on the floor, cross- legged, holding my Ken and watching my face as she tried to make me see that between my mother's PTA and Boo's strange ways there was a middle ground that began here with my Barbie, Sab-rina, and led right to me. "Well," I said abruptly, "I want to be in advertising." I have no idea where this came from. "Advertising," Boo repeated, nodding. "Okay. Advertising it is. So Sabrina has to go to work every day, coming up with ideas for commercials and things like that." "She works in an office," I went on. "Sometimes she has to work late." "Sure she does," Boo said. "It's hard to get ahead. Even if you're Barbie." "Because she wants to get promoted," I added. "So she can pay off the town house. And the Corvette." "Very responsible of her," Boo said. "Can she be divorced?" I asked. "And famous for her commercials and ideas?" "She can be anything," Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled face so solemn, as if she knew she was the first to tell me. "And so can you.

Boys are suffering, in the modern world. They are more disobedient—negatively—or more independent—positively—than girls, and they suffer for this, throughout their pre-university educational career. They are less agreeable (agreeableness being a personality trait associated with compassion, empathy and avoidance of conflict) and less susceptible to anxiety and depression,172 at least after both sexes hit puberty.173 Boys’ interests tilt towards things; girls’ interests tilt towards people.174 Strikingly, these differences, strongly influenced by biological factors, are most pronounced in the Scandinavian societies where gender-equality has been pushed hardest: this is the opposite of what would be expected by those who insist, ever more loudly, that gender is a social construct. It isn’t. This isn’t a debate. The data are in.

{Colonel Carr's testimony of Colonel Robert Ingersoll at his funeral} He was the boldest, most aggressive, courageous, virile, and the kindest and gentlest and most considerate and loving man I ever knew. His was a nature that yielded to no obstacles, that could not be moved nor turned aside by the allurements of place or position, the menaces of power, the favors of the opulent, or the enticing influences of public opinion. Entering upon his career in an age of obsequiousness and time-serving, when the values of political and religious views were estimated by what they would bring from the ruling party and from the church, in offices and emoluments and benefices, he assailed the giant evils of the times with the strength and power of Hercules and ground them to dust under his trip-hammer blows. Throughout his whole active life, there has been no greater and more potential influence than the personality of this sublime character in breaking the shackles of the slave, and in freeing men and women and children from the bonds of ignorance and superstition.

If college admissions officers are going to encourage kids to take the same AP math class, why not statistics? Almost every career (whether in business, nonprofits, academics, law, or medicine benefits from proficiency in statistics. Being an informed, responsible citizen requires a sound knowledge of statistics, as politicians, reporters, and bloggers all rely on "data" to justify positions. [p.98]

I found myself with dozens more hours in the week, heaps more energy, £23,000 more money over four years, deepened friendships, revived family relationships, better skin, a tighter body, tanned legs for the first time ever, the ability to sleep for eight uninterrupted hours, a bone-deep sense of well-being, a totally turned-around positive outlook and an infinitely more successful career. What’s not to like?!

Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you. This mindset is how most people approach their working lives. There are two reasons why I dislike the passion mindset (that is, two reasons beyond the fact that, as I argued in Rule #1, it’s based on a false premise). First, when you focus only on what your work offers you, it makes you hyperaware of what you don’t like about it, leading to chronic unhappiness. This is especially true for entry-level positions, which, by definition, are not going to be filled with challenging projects and autonomy—these come later. When you enter the working world with the passion mindset, the annoying tasks you’re assigned or the frustrations of corporate bureaucracy can become too much to handle. Second, and more serious, the deep questions driving the passion mindset—“Who am I?” and “What do I truly love?”—are essentially impossible to confirm. “Is this who I really am?” and “Do I love this?” rarely reduce to clear yes-or-no responses. In other words, the passion mindset is almost guaranteed to keep you perpetually unhappy and confused, which probably explains why Bronson admits, not long into his career-seeker epic What Should I Do With My Life? that “the one feeling everyone in this book has experienced is of missing out on life.

Don’t strive to be a well-rounded leader. Instead, discover your zone and stay there. Then delegate everything else. Admitting a weakness is a sign of strength. Acknowledging weakness doesn’t make a leader less effective. Everybody in your organization benefits when you delegate responsibilities that fall outside your core competency. Thoughtful delegation will allow someone else in your organization to shine. Your weakness is someone’s opportunity. Leadership is not always about getting things done “right.” Leadership is about getting things done through other people. The people who follow us are exactly where we have led them. If there is no one to whom we can delegate, it is our own fault. As a leader, gifted by God to do a few things well, it is not right for you to attempt to do everything. Upgrade your performance by playing to your strengths and delegating your weaknesses. There are many things I can do, but I have to narrow it down to the one thing I must do. The secret of concentration is elimination. Devoting a little of yourself to everything means committing a great deal of yourself to nothing. My competence in these areas defines my success as a pastor. A sixty-hour workweek will not compensate for a poorly delivered sermon. People don’t show up on Sunday morning because I am a good pastor (leader, shepherd, counselor). In my world, it is my communication skills that make the difference. So that is where I focus my time. To develop a competent team, help the leaders in your organization discover their leadership competencies and delegate accordingly. Once you step outside your zone, don’t attempt to lead. Follow. The less you do, the more you will accomplish. Only those leaders who act boldly in times of crisis and change are willingly followed. Accepting the status quo is the equivalent of accepting a death sentence. Where there’s no progress, there’s no growth. If there’s no growth, there’s no life. Environments void of change are eventually void of life. So leaders find themselves in the precarious and often career-jeopardizing position of being the one to draw attention to the need for change. Consequently, courage is a nonnegotiable quality for the next generation leader. The leader is the one who has the courage to act on what he sees. A leader is someone who has the courage to say publicly what everybody else is whispering privately. It is not his insight that sets the leader apart from the crowd. It is his courage to act on what he sees, to speak up when everyone else is silent. Next generation leaders are those who would rather challenge what needs to change and pay the price than remain silent and die on the inside. The first person to step out in a new direction is viewed as the leader. And being the first to step out requires courage. In this way, courage establishes leadership. Leadership requires the courage to walk in the dark. The darkness is the uncertainty that always accompanies change. The mystery of whether or not a new enterprise will pan out. The reservation everyone initially feels when a new idea is introduced. The risk of being wrong. Many who lack the courage to forge ahead alone yearn for someone to take the first step, to go first, to show the way. It could be argued that the dark provides the optimal context for leadership. After all, if the pathway to the future were well lit, it would be crowded. Fear has kept many would-be leaders on the sidelines, while good opportunities paraded by. They didn’t lack insight. They lacked courage. Leaders are not always the first to see the need for change, but they are the first to act. Leadership is about moving boldly into the future in spite of uncertainty and risk. You can’t lead without taking risk. You won’t take risk without courage. Courage is essential to leadership.

Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how very pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself! It would mean that I was positively defined, it would mean that there was something to say about me. “Sluggard”—why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career. Do not jest, it is so.

But each of us comes to marriage with a disordered inner being. Many of us have sought to overcome self-doubts by giving ourselves to our careers. That will mean we will choose our work over our spouse and family to the detriment of our marriage. Others of us hope that unending affection and affirmation from a beautiful, brilliant romantic partner will finally make us feel good about ourselves. That turns the relationship into a form of salvation, and no relationship can live up to that. Do you see why Paul introduces the subject of marriage with a summons to love one another “out of the fear of Christ”? We come into our marriages driven by all kinds of fears, desires, and needs. If I look to my marriage to fill the God-sized spiritual vacuum in my heart, I will not be in position to serve my spouse. Only God can fill a God-sized hole. Until God has the proper place in my life, I will always be complaining that my spouse is not loving me well enough, not respecting me enough, not supporting me enough.

You’ve seen for yourself that when a sad person enters a room, the mood in the room drops. And when you talk to a cheerful person who is full of energy, you automatically feel a boost. I’m suggesting that by becoming a person with good energy, you lift the people around you. That positive change will improve your social life, your love life, your family life, and your career. When I talk about increasing your personal energy, I don’t mean the frenetic, caffeine-fueled, bounce-off-the-walls type of energy. I’m talking about a calm, focused energy. To others it will simply appear that you are in a good mood. And you will be.

Having a brain does not make you a thinker. Having a student does not make you a teacher. Having a class does not make you a scholar. Having a degree does not make you a master. Having a sword does not make you a warrior. Having a following does not make you a leader. Having a position does not make you a ruler. Having an army does not make you a conqueror. Having a job does not mean you have a career. Having a servant does not mean you have a helper. Having a mom does not mean you have a nurturer. Having a girlfriend does not mean you have comforter. Having a coach does not mean you have a trainer. Having a class does not mean you have a teacher. Having a son does not mean you have a successor. Having a daughter does not mean you have an inheritor. Having a wife does not mean you have a lover. Having a spouse does not mean you have an admirer. Having a friend does not mean you have a partner. Having a dad does not mean you have a father. Having a professor does not mean you have a teacher. Having a teammate does not mean you have a collaborator. Having an ally does not mean you have a protector. Having a dependent does not mean you have a supporter.

The true impact of an action depends on what happens because of that action, not on what happens, period. When we work hard and see positive results, it’s often easy to neglect the fact that some portion of those results would have occurred anyway, or that someone else might have filled our role just as well as we did. There is often a gap between true impact and ‘tangible impact’ – the immediate results of our actions – and understanding that gap is crucial to finding the places where you can make a real difference.

Sometimes the defeat can have even more severe consequences. If a dominant lobster is badly defeated, its brain basically dissolves. Then it grows a new, subordinate’s brain—one more appropriate to its new, lowly position.8 Its original brain just isn’t sophisticated to manage the transformation from king to bottom dog without virtually complete dissolution and regrowth. Anyone who has experienced a painful transformation after a serious defeat in romance or career may feel some sense of kinship with the once successful crustacean.

David Perkins,12 a Harvard psychologist who has devoted his career to improving reasoning, found the same thing. He says that thinking generally uses the “makessense” stopping rule. We take a position, look for evidence that supports it, and if we find some evidence—enough so that our position “makes sense”—we stop thinking. But at least in a low-pressure situation such as this, if someone else brings up reasons and evidence on the other side, people can be induced to change their minds; they just don’t make an effort to do such thinking for themselves.

In the course of your life you will be continually encountering fools. There are simply too many to avoid. We can classify people as fools by the following rubric: when it comes to practical life, what should matter is getting long term results, and getting the work done in as efficient and creative a manner as possible. That should be the supreme value that guides people’s action. But fools carry with them a different scale of values. They place more importance on short-term matters – grabbing immediate money, getting attention from the public or media, and looking good. They are ruled by their ego and insecurities. They tend to enjoy drama and political intrigue for their own sake. When they criticize, they always emphasize matters that are irrelevant to the overall picture or argument. They are more interested in their career and position than in the truth. You can distinguish them by how little they get done, or by how hard they make it for others to get results. They lack a certain common sense, getting worked up about things that are not really important while ignoring problems that will spell doom in the long term. The natural tendency with fools is to lower yourself to their level. They annoy you, get under your skin, and draw you into a battle. In the process, you feel petty and confused. You lose a sense of what is really important. You can’t win an argument or get them to see your side or change their behavior, because rationality and results don’t matter to them. You simply waste valuable time and emotional energy. In dealing with fools you must adopt the following philosophy: they are simply a part of life, like rocks or furniture. All of us have foolish sides, moments in which we lose our heads and think more of our ego or short-term goals. It is human nature. Seeing this foolishness within you, you can then accept it in others. This will allow you to smile at their antics, to tolerate their presence as you would a silly child, and to avoid the madness of trying to change them. It is all part of the human comedy, and it is nothing to get upset or lose sleep over.

It is often difficult to recognize the connection between early-life feelings of imprisonment, and our subsequent need for space and distance in our adult lives. This can be manifest in many different ways: non-committal relationships, career indecision, a perpetual need to live alone, social avoidance, perpetual mistrust of the world etc. For a time, these manifestations can actually serve a counter-balancing purpose, as our spirits breathe a healthy sigh of relief after years entrapped. If all you know is engulfment, it is essential that you have a taste of safety and spaciousness. But, taken too far, our escape hatches can actually become a prison of their own, one that deepens our isolation and prevents us from forming positive associations with the world. Any imbalanced reality has an imprisoning quality. Just because our early-life environment felt like a prison doesn’t mean that we can’t create a different reality-one that is rooted in healthy connectiveness.

The way you are self-sabotaging: Not promoting your work in a way that would help move you forward. What your subconscious mind might want you to know: You’re not creating the best possible work you can, and you sense it. The reason why you’re holding back is a fear of judgment, but that wouldn’t exist if you weren’t already judging yourself. You have to create things you are proud to share, and when sharing them in a positive way that helps grow your business or career feels natural and authentic, you will know that you are doing the work that is at the best of your ability or potential.

I don't know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is the refuse of a philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a position of power, even of love. I can't understand why more intelligent people don't take it as a career--learn to do it well and reap its benefits. A good servant has absolute security, not because of his master's kindness, but because of habit and indolence...He'll keep a bad servant rather than change. But a good servant, and I am an excellent one, can completely control his master, tell him what to think, how to act, whom to marry, when to divorce, reduce him to terror as a discipline, or distribute happiness to him, and finally be mentioned in his will...My master will defend me, protect me. You have to work and worry. I work less and worry less. And I am a good servant. A bad one does not work and does no worrying, and he still is fed, clothed, and protected. I don't know any profession where the field is so cluttered with incompetents and where excellence is so rare.

Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself. Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how very pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself! It would mean that I was positively defined, it would mean that there was something to say about me. ‘Sluggard’—why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career. Do not jest, it is so. I should then be a member of the best club by right, and should find my occupation in continually respecting myself. I knew a gentleman who prided himself all his life on being a connoisseur of Lafitte. He considered this as his positive virtue, and never doubted himself. He died, not simply with a tranquil, but with a triumphant conscience, and he was quite right, too. Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should have been a sluggard and a gluteton, not a simple one, but, for instance, one with sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful. How do you like that? I have long had visions of it. That ‘sublime and beautiful’ weighs heavily on my mind at forty But that is at forty; then—oh, then it would have been different! I should have found for myself a form of activity in keeping with it, to be precise, drinking to the health of everything ‘sublime and beautiful.’ I should have snatched at every opportunity to drop a tear into my glass and then to drain it to all that is ‘sublime and beautiful.’ I should then have turned everything into the sublime and the beautiful; in the nastiest, unquestionable trash, I should have sought out the sublime and the beautiful.

This creature's career could produce but one result, and it speedily followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister's son became an engineer. The doctor's and the post-master's sons became 'mud clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a barkeeper on a boat; four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge, became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary—from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay. Two months of his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year. Now some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river—at least our parents would not let us.

In the center of the movement, as the motor that swings it onto motion, sits the Leader. He is separated from the elite formation by an inner circle of the initiated who spread around him an aura of impenetrable mystery which corresponds to his “intangible preponderance.” His position within this intimate circle depends upon his ability to spin intrigues among its members and upon his skill in constantly changing its personnel. He owes his rise to leadership to an extreme ability to handle inner-party struggles for power rather than to demagogic or bureaucratic-organizational qualities. He is distinguished from earlier types of dictators in that he hardly wins through simple violence. Hitler needed neither the SA nor the SS to secure his position as leader of the Nazi movement; on the contrary, Röhm, the chief of the SA and able to count upon its loyalty to his own person, was one of Hitler’s inner-party enemies. Stalin won against Trotsky, who not only had a far greater mass appeal but, as chief of the Red Army, held in his hands the greatest power potential in Soviet Russia at the time. Not Stalin, but Trotsky, moreover, was the greatest organizational talent, the ablest bureaucrat of the Russian Revolution. On the other hand, both Hitler and Stalin were masters of detail and devoted themselves in the early stages of their careers almost entirely to questions of personnel, so that after a few years hardly any man of importance remained who did not owe his position to them.

This, to be sure, is not the entire truth. For there were individuals in Germany who from the very beginning of the regime and without ever wavering were opposed to Hitler; no one knows how many there were of them—perhaps a hundred thousand, perhaps many more, perhaps many fewer—for their voices were never heard. They could be found everywhere, in all strata of society, among the simple people as well as among the educated, in all parties, perhaps even in the ranks of the N.S.D.A.P. Very few of them were known publicly, as were the aforementioned Reck-Malleczewen or the philosopher Karl Jaspers. Some of them were truly and deeply pious, like an artisan of whom I know, who preferred having his independent existence destroyed and becoming a simple worker in a factory to taking upon himself the “little formality” of entering the Nazi Party. A few still took an oath seriously and preferred, for example, to renounce an academic career rather than swear by Hitler’s name. A more numerous group were the workers, especially in Berlin, and Socialist intellectuals who tried to aid the Jews they knew. There were finally, the two peasant boys whose story is related in Günther Weisenborn’s Der lautlose Aufstand (1953), who were drafted into the S.S. at the end of the war and refused to sign; they were sentenced to death, and on the day of their execution they wrote in their last letter to their families: “We two would rather die than burden our conscience with such terrible things. We know what the S.S. must carry out.” The position of these people, who, practically speaking, did nothing, was altogether different from that of the conspirators. Their ability to tell right from wrong had remained intact, and they never suffered a “crisis of conscience.” There may also have been such persons among the members of the resistance, but they were hardly more numerous in the ranks of the conspirators than among the people at large. They were neither heroes nor saints, and they remained completely silent. Only on one occasion, in a single desperate gesture, did this wholly isolated and mute element manifest itself publicly: this was when the Scholls, two students at Munich University, brother and sister, under the influence of their teacher Kurt Huber distributed the famous leaflets in which Hitler was finally called what he was—a “mass murderer.

Don't look for knowledge, look for wisdom. Don't look for opinions, look for facts. Don't look for theories, look for evidence. Don't look for speculation, look for certainties. Don't look for certificates, look for competance. Don't look for degrees, look for diligence. Don't look for position, look for influence. Don't look for jobs, look for a career. Don't look for skills, look for talents. Don't look for approval, look for individuality. Don't look for validation, look for self acceptance. Don't look for empires, look for happiness. Don't look for popularity, look for excellence. Don't look for acclaim, look for performance. Don't look for conquests, look for brilliance. Don't look for followers, look for friends. Don't look for muscles, look for courage. Don't look for appearance, look for character. Don't look for body, look for heart. Don't look for sexmates, look for helpmates. Don't look for vengance, look for mercy. Don't look for fate, look for opportunity. Don't look for luck, look for destiny. Don't look for fate, look for opportunity. Don't look for wealth, look for health. Don't look for today, look for tomorrow. Don't look for miracles, look for faith. Don't look for religion, look for love. Don't look for messiahs, look for peace. Don't look for temples, look for truth. Don't look for angels, look for God.

As I was editing this chapter, a survey of more than thirty-five hundred Australian surgeons revealed a culture rife with bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment, against women especially (although men weren’t untouched either). To give you a flavor of professional life as a woman in this field, female trainees and junior surgeons “reported feeling obliged to give their supervisors sexual favours to keep their jobs”; endured flagrantly illegal hostility toward the notion of combining career with motherhood; contended with “boys’ clubs”; and experienced entrenched sexism at all levels and “a culture of fear and reprisal, with known bullies in senior positions seen as untouchable.”68 I came back to this chapter on the very day that news broke in the state of Victoria, Australia, where I live, of a Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission report revealing that sexual discrimination and harassment is also shockingly prevalent in the Victorian Police, which unlawfully failed to provide an equal and safe working environment.69 I understand that attempts to identify the psychological factors that underlie sex inequalities in the workplace are well-meaning. And, of course, we shouldn’t shy away from naming (supposedly) politically unpalatable causes of those inequalities. But when you consider the women who enter and persist in highly competitive and risky occupations like surgery and policing—despite the odds stacked against them by largely unfettered sex discrimination and harassment—casual scholarly suggestions that women are relatively few in number, particularly in the higher echelons, because they’re less geared to compete in the workplace, start to seem almost offensive. Testosterone

At first glance, the stewardess appears to have been a reflection of conservative postwar gender roles—an impeccable airborne incarnation of the mythical homemaker of the 1950s who would happily abandon work to settle down with Mr. Right. A high-flying expert at applying lipstick, warming baby bottles, and mixing a martini, the stewardess was popularly imagined as the quintessential wife to be. Dubbed the “typical American girl,” this masterful charmer—known for pampering her mostly male passengers while maintaining perfect poise (and straight stocking seams) thirty thousand feet above sea level—became an esteemed national heroine for her womanly perfection. But while the the stewardess appears to have been an airborne Donna Reed, a closer look reveals that she was also popularly represented as a sophisticated, independent, ambitious career woman employed on the cutting edge of technology. This iconic woman in the workforce was in a unique position to bring acceptance and respect to working women by bridging the gap between the postwar domestic ideal and wage work for women. As both the apotheosis of feminine charm and American careerism, the stewardess deftly straddled the domestic ideal and a career that took her far from home. Ultimately, she became a crucial figure in paving the way for feminism in America.

I had a strong bias in favor of Russian scientists; many can be put to active use as chess coaches (I also got a piano teacher out of the process). In addition, they are extremely helpful in the interview process. When MBAs apply for trading positions, they frequently boast “advanced” chess skills on their résumés. I recall the MBA career counselor at Wharton recommending our advertising chess skills “because it sounds intelligent and strategic.” MBAs, typically, can interpret their superficial knowledge of the rules of the game into “expertise.” We used to verify the accuracy of claims of chess expertise (and the character of the applicant) by pulling a chess set out of a drawer and telling the student, now turning pale: “Yuri will have a word with you.

THE RIGHT AND WRONG PICTURE OF A DREAM I’ve studied successful people for almost forty years. I’ve known hundreds of high-profile people who achieved big dreams. And I’ve achieved a few dreams of my own. What I’ve discovered is that a lot of people have misconceptions about dreams. Take a look at many of the things that people pursue and call dreams in their lives: Daydreams—Distractions from Current Work Pie-in-the-Sky Dreams—Wild Ideas with No Strategy or Basis in Reality Bad Dreams—Worries that Breed Fear and Paralysis Idealistic Dreams—The Way the World Would Be If You Were in Charge Vicarious Dreams—Dreams Lived Through Others Romantic Dreams—Belief that Some Person Will Make You Happy Career Dreams—Belief that Career Success Will Make You Happy Destination Dreams—Belief that a Position, Title, or Award Will Make You Happy Material Dreams—Belief that Wealth or Possessions Will Make You Happy If these aren’t good dreams—valid ones worthy of a person’s life—then what are? Here is my definition of a dream that can be put to the test and pass: a dream is an inspiring picture of the future that energizes your mind, will, and emotions, empowering you to do everything you can to achieve it.

For instance, have you ever been going about your business, enjoying your life, when all of sudden you made a stupid choice or series of small choices that ultimately sabotaged your hard work and momentum, all for no apparent reason? You didn’t intend to sabotage yourself, but by not thinking about your decisions—weighing the risks and potential outcomes—you found yourself facing unintended consequences. Nobody intends to become obese, go through bankruptcy, or get a divorce, but often (if not always) those consequences are the result of a series of small, poor choices. Elephants Don’t Bite Have you ever been bitten by an elephant? How about a mosquito? It’s the little things in life that will bite you. Occasionally, we see big mistakes threaten to destroy a career or reputation in an instant—the famous comedian who rants racial slurs during a stand-up routine, the drunken anti-Semitic antics of a once-celebrated humanitarian, the anti-gay-rights senator caught soliciting gay sex in a restroom, the admired female tennis player who uncharacteristically threatens an official with a tirade of expletives. Clearly, these types of poor choices have major repercussions. But even if you’ve pulled such a whopper in your past, it’s not extraordinary massive steps backward or the tragic single moments that we’re concerned with here. For most of us, it’s the frequent, small, and seemingly inconsequential choices that are of grave concern. I’m talking about the decisions you think don’t make any difference at all. It’s the little things that inevitably and predictably derail your success. Whether they’re bone-headed maneuvers, no-biggie behaviors, or are disguised as positive choices (those are especially insidious), these seemingly insignificant decisions can completely throw you off course because you’re not mindful of them. You get overwhelmed, space out, and are unaware of the little actions that take you way off course. The Compound Effect works, all right. It always works, remember? But in this case it works against you because you’re doing… you’re sleepwalking.

It had personally pained Trump not to be able to give it to him. But if the Republican establishment had not wanted Trump, they had not wanted Christie almost as much. So Christie got the job of leading the transition and the implicit promise of a central job—attorney general or chief of staff. But when he was the federal prosecutor in New Jersey, Christie had sent Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, to jail in 2005. Charlie Kushner, pursued by the feds for an income tax cheat, set up a scheme with a prostitute to blackmail his brother-in-law, who was planning to testify against him. Various accounts, mostly offered by Christie himself, make Jared the vengeful hatchet man in Christie’s aborted Trump administration career. It was a kind of perfect sweet-revenge story: the son of the wronged man (or, in this case—there’s little dispute—the guilty-as-charged man) uses his power over the man who wronged his family. But other accounts offer a subtler and in a way darker picture. Jared Kushner, like sons-in-law everywhere, tiptoes around his father-in-law, carefully displacing as little air as possible: the massive and domineering older man, the reedy and pliant younger one. In the revised death-of-Chris-Christie story, it is not the deferential Jared who strikes back, but—in some sense even more satisfying for the revenge fantasy—Charlie Kushner himself who harshly demands his due. It was his daughter-in-law who held the real influence in the Trump circle, who delivered the blow. Ivanka told her father that Christie’s appointment as chief of staff or to any other high position would be extremely difficult for her and her family, and it would be best that Christie be removed from the Trump orbit altogether.

Dr Singh’s general attitude towards corruption in public life, which he adopted through his career in government, seemed to me to be that he would himself maintain the highest standards of probity in public life, but would not impose this on others. In other words, he was himself incorruptible, and also ensured that no one in his immediate family ever did anything wrong, but he did not feel answerable for the misdemeanours of his colleagues and subordinates. In this instance, he felt even less because he was not the political authority that had appointed them to these ministerial positions. In practice, this meant that he turned a blind eye to the misdeeds of his ministers. He expected the Congress party leadership to deal with the black sheep in his government, just as he expected the allies to deal with their black sheep. While his conscience was always clear with respect to his own conduct, he believed everyone had to deal with their own conscience.

One way to get a life and keep it is to put energy into being an S&M (success and money) queen. I first heard this term in Karen Salmansohn’s fabulous book The 30-Day Plan to Whip Your Career Into Submission. Here’s how to do it: be a star at work. I don’t care if you flip burgers at McDonald’s or run a Fortune 500 company. Do everything with totality and excellence. Show up on time, all the time. Do what you say you will do. Contribute ideas. Take care of the people around you. Solve problems. Be an agent for change. Invest in being the best in your industry or the best in the world! If you’ve been thinking about changing professions, that’s even more reason to be a star at your current job. Operating with excellence now will get you back up to speed mentally and energetically so you can hit the ground running in your new position. It will also create good karma. When and if you finally do leave, your current employers will be happy to support you with a great reference and often leave an open door for additional work in the future. If you’re an entrepreneur, look at ways to enhance your business. Is there a new product or service you’ve wanted to offer? How can you create raving fans by making your customer service sparkle? How can you reach more people with your product or service? Can you impact thousands or even millions more? Let’s not forget the M in S&M. Getting a life and keeping it includes having strong financial health as well. This area is crucial because many women delay taking charge of their financial lives as they believe (or have been culturally conditioned to believe) that a man will come along and take care of it for them. This is a setup for disaster. You are an intelligent and capable woman. If you want to fully unleash your irresistibility, invest in your financial health now and don’t stop once you get involved in a relationship. If money management is a challenge for you, I highly recommend my favorite financial coach: David Bach. He is the bestselling author of many books, including The Automatic Millionaire, Smart Women Finish Rich, and Smart Couples Finish Rich. His advice is clear-cut and straightforward, and, most important, it works.

Reading a newspaper account of one young woman's fatal accident on a midsummer morning a few years ago got me thinking about how I would have liked to have departed before my time if that had been my destiny. If I'd had to die young, hers is the death I would have chosen. She was twenty-two, the story disclosed, bright, talented, beautiful, her future spread before her like a brilliant, textured tapestry. She'd just graduated from a prestigious eastern university, had accepted a communications position with a New York television network, and would depart the following day on a four-week holiday in Europe before embarking on her promising career and the rest of her exciting life. On that golden summer day, the young woman had just finished her morning run. She had sprinted the last half mile, then stopped abruptly to catch her breath. She was bent at the waist, hands on her knees, eyes on the ground, her mind a world away, perhaps in Barcelona or Tuscany or Rome, exulting in the enchanting sights she would soon see, the splendid life she would have. It was then that the train hit her. Unaware, unthinking, oblivious to everything but the beguiling visions in her head, she had ended her run on the railroad tracks that wound through the center of her small Oregon town, one moment in the fullest expectancy of her glorious youth, adrenaline and endorphins coursing through her body, sugarplum visions dancing in her head, the next moment gone, the transition instantaneous, irrevocable, complete.

When Lee arrived to pick me up, I introduced Diana simply as Diana Spencer. They exchanged a few brief words while I kissed Patrick good-bye, and off we went. As we struggled through the southbound traffic in Lewes, Lee and I had a conversation about Diana that seems both remarkable and humorous in retrospect. I started out by saying, “Lee, you’ll never believe who my nanny is.” Then I told him about Diana’s title and background and how amazed and grateful I was that she was looking after Patrick so sweetly and carefully. Lee and I agreed that she was awfully pretty and down to earth. I mentioned that she did not appear to have a steady boyfriend, and perhaps Lee might want to give her a call. Lee had a very respectable background—a good public school, university, solid career prospects, and a father who’d retired from the foreign service. Lee chuckled at my naiveté and explained that in England the social gulf between the daughter of an earl and a commoner was so great that he would never presume to ask Diana out. He reiterated that her social position and lineage were as exalted as they could possibly be. “In fact,” he added, “with her background, she’d be a suitable match for Prince Andrew.” Direct as usual, I replied, “Forget about Prince Andrew. If her background’s as impeccable as you say, she ought to be a match for Prince Charles. She’d be perfect as the next queen of England!” Then touching on a critical qualification for any future queen, I added, “And I’d bet my life on her virtue.

POLLARD had known better, but instead of pulling rank and insisting that his officers carry out his proposal to sail for the Society Islands, he embraced a more democratic style of command. Modern survival psychologists have determined that this “social”—as opposed to “authoritarian”—form of leadership is ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions must be made quickly and firmly. Only later, as the ordeal drags on and it is necessary to maintain morale, do social leadership skills become important. Whalemen in the nineteenth century had a clear understanding of these two approaches. The captain was expected to be the authoritarian, what Nantucketers called a fishy man. A fishy man loved to kill whales and lacked the tendency toward self-doubt and self-examination that could get in the way of making a quick decision. To be called “fishy to the backbone” was the ultimate compliment a Nantucketer could receive and meant that he was destined to become, if he wasn’t already, a captain. Mates, however, were expected to temper their fishiness with a more personal, even outgoing, approach. After breaking in the green hands at the onset of the voyage—when they gained their well-deserved reputations as “spit-fires”—mates worked to instill a sense of cooperation among the men. This required them to remain sensitive to the crew’s changeable moods and to keep the lines of communication open. Nantucketers recognized that the positions of captain and first mate required contrasting personalities. Not all mates had the necessary edge to become captains, and there were many future captains who did not have the patience to be successful mates. There was a saying on the island: “[I]t is a pity to spoil a good mate by making him a master.” Pollard’s behavior, after both the knockdown and the whale attack, indicates that he lacked the resolve to overrule his two younger and less experienced officers. In his deference to others, Pollard was conducting himself less like a captain and more like the veteran mate described by the Nantucketer William H. Macy: “[H]e had no lungs to blow his own trumpet, and sometimes distrusted his own powers, though generally found equal to any emergency after it arose. This want of confidence sometimes led him to hesitate, where a more impulsive or less thoughtful man would act at once. In the course of his career he had seen many ‘fishy’ young men lifted over his head.” Shipowners hoped to combine a fishy, hard-driving captain with an approachable and steady mate. But in the labor-starved frenzy of Nantucket in 1819, the Essex had ended up with a captain who had the instincts and soul of a mate, and a mate who had the ambition and fire of a captain. Instead of giving an order and sticking with it, Pollard indulged his matelike tendency to listen to others. This provided Chase—who had no qualms about speaking up—with the opportunity to impose his own will. For better or worse, the men of the Essex were sailing toward a destiny that would be determined, in large part, not by their unassertive captain but by their forceful and fishy mate.

Do you like Phil Collins? I've been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn't understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where Phil Collins' presence became more apparent. I think Invisible Touch was the group's undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Christy, take off your robe. Listen to the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument. Sabrina, remove your dress. In terms of lyrical craftsmanship, the sheer songwriting, this album hits a new peak of professionalism. Sabrina, why don't you, uh, dance a little. Take the lyrics to Land of Confusion. In this song, Phil Collins addresses the problems of abusive political authority. In Too Deep is the most moving pop song of the 1980s, about monogamy and commitment. The song is extremely uplifting. Their lyrics are as positive and affirmative as anything I've heard in rock. Christy, get down on your knees so Sabrina can see your asshole. Phil Collins' solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way. Especially songs like In the Air Tonight and Against All Odds. Sabrina, don't just stare at it, eat it. But I also think Phil Collins works best within the confines of the group, than as a solo artist, and I stress the word artist. This is Sussudio, a great, great song, a personal favorite.

Those are the moments I’m proud of. The times I saw through them. The times I made them work to break me, even though I knew they would. The times I questioned the lies being fed to me, though everyone around me believed. I learned early that if everyone around you has their head bowed, their eyes shut tight—keep your eyes open and look around. I’m reflexively suspicious of anyone who stands on a soapbox. Tell me you have the answers and I’ll know you’re trying to sell me something. I’m as wary of certainty as I am of good vibes and positive thinking. They’re delusions that allow you to ignore reality and lay the blame at the feet of those suffering. They just didn’t follow the rules, or think positively enough. They brought it on themselves. I don’t have the answers. Maybe depression’s the natural reaction to a world full of cruelty and pain. But the thing I know about depression is if you want to survive it, you have to train yourself to hold on; when you can see no reason to keep going, you cannot imagine a future worth seeing, you keep moving anyway. That’s not delusion. That’s hope. It’s a muscle you exercise so it’s strong when you need it. You feed it with books and art and dogs who rest their head on your leg, and human connection with people who are genuinely interested and excited; you feed it with growing a tomato and baking sourdough and making a baby laugh and standing at the edge of oceans and feeling a horse’s whiskers on your palm and bear hugs and late-night talks over whiskey and a warm happy sigh on your neck and the unexpected perfect song on the radio, and mushroom trips with a friend who giggles at the way the trees aren’t acting right, and jumping in creeks, and lying in the grass under the stars, and driving with the windows down on a swirly two-lane road. You stock up like a fucking prepper buying tubs of chipped beef and powdered milk and ammo. You stock up so some part of you knows and remembers, even in the dark, all that’s worth saving in this world. It’s comforting to know what happens next. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that no one fucking knows. And it’s terrifying. I don’t dream of a home and a family, a career and financial stability. I dream of living. And my inner voice, defective though it may be, still tells me happiness and peace, belonging and love, all lie just around the next corner, the next city, the next country. Just keep moving and hope the next place will be better. It has to be. Just around the next bend, everything is beautiful. And it breaks my heart.

We had been out for one of our evening rambles, Holmes and I, and had returned about six o’clock on a cold, frosty winter’s evening. As Holmes turned up the lamp the light fell upon a card on the table. He glanced at it, and then, with an ejaculation of disgust, threw it on the floor. I picked it up and read: CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON, Appledore Towers, Hampstead. Agent. “Who is he?” I asked. “The worst man in London,” Holmes answered, as he sat down and stretched his legs before the fire. “Is anything on the back of the card?” I turned it over. “Will call at 6:30--C.A.M.,” I read. “Hum! He’s about due. Do you feel a creeping, shrinking sensation, Watson, when you stand before the serpents in the Zoo, and see the slithery, gliding, venomous creatures, with their deadly eyes and wicked, flattened faces? Well, that’s how Milverton impresses me. I’ve had to do with fifty murderers in my career, but the worst of them never gave me the repulsion which I have for this fellow. And yet I can’t get out of doing business with him--indeed, he is here at my invitation.” “But who is he?” “I’ll tell you, Watson. He is the king of all the blackmailers. Heaven help the man, and still more the woman, whose secret and reputation come into the power of Milverton! With a smiling face and a heart of marble, he will squeeze and squeeze until he has drained them dry. The fellow is a genius in his way, and would have made his mark in some more savoury trade. His method is as follows: He allows it to be known that he is prepared to pay very high sums for letters which compromise people of wealth and position. He receives these wares not only from treacherous valets or maids, but frequently from genteel ruffians, who have gained the confidence and affection of trusting women. He deals with no niggard hand. I happen to know that he paid seven hundred pounds to a footman for a note two lines in length, and that the ruin of a noble family was the result. Everything which is in the market goes to Milverton, and there are hundreds in this great city who turn white at his name. No one knows where his grip may fall, for he is far too rich and far too cunning to work from hand to mouth. He will hold a card back for years in order to play it at the moment when the stake is best worth winning. I have said that he is the worst man in London, and I would ask you how could one compare the ruffian, who in hot blood bludgeons his mate, with this man, who methodically and at his leisure tortures the soul and wrings the nerves in order to add to his already swollen money-bags?” I had seldom heard my friend speak with such intensity of feeling.

One other thing. And this really matters for readers of this book. According to official Myers–Briggs documents, the test can ‘give you an insight into what kinds of work you might enjoy and be successful doing’. So if you are, like me, classified as ‘INTJ’ (your dominant traits are being introverted, intuitive and having a preference for thinking and judging), the best-fit occupations include management consultant, IT professional and engineer.30 Would a change to one of these careers make me more fulfilled? Unlikely, according to respected US psychologist David Pittenger, because there is ‘no evidence to show a positive relation between MBTI type and success within an occupation…nor is there any data to suggest that specific types are more satisfied within specific occupations than are other types’. Then why is the MBTI so popular? Its success, he argues, is primarily due to ‘the beguiling nature of the horoscope-like summaries of personality and steady marketing’.31 Personality tests have their uses, even if they do not reveal any scientific ‘truth’ about us. If we are in a state of confusion they can be a great emotional comfort, offering a clear diagnosis of why our current job may not be right, and suggesting others that might suit us better. They also raise interesting hypotheses that aid self-reflection: until I took the MBTI, I had certainly never considered that IT could offer me a bright future (by the way, I apparently have the wrong personality type to be a writer). Yet we should be wary about relying on them as a magic pill that enables us suddenly to hit upon a dream career. That is why wise career counsellors treat such tests with caution, using them as only one of many ways of exploring who you are. Human personality does not neatly reduce into sixteen or any other definitive number of categories: we are far more complex creatures than psychometric tests can ever reveal. And as we will shortly learn, there is compelling evidence that we are much more likely to find fulfilling work by conducting career experiments in the real world than by filling out any number of questionnaires.32