Designing Your Future Quotes

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

Whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change - and change is what we're chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others' opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. And no more allowing anyone to pigeonhole you into useless categories of sex, race, economic status, and religion. Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what YOU will change. And then get started.

Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.

He ran a hand over his face and shook his head. "Lass, I have never lied to you. I adore you and there have never been any other women from the future here. And these"- he flung a tampon in the air- "cleaning swabs, I cannot fathom why they upset you so greatly, but I assure you I have never let the maids use them." Lisa's brow furrowed. No man could be so stupid. "Cleaning Swabs?" He snatched up a gun and jerked the barrel in her direction, and an unwrapped tampon shot out. It was coated with black from the slow corrosion of the steel. She eyed it for a moment, bent, and plucked it from the floor. "You clean your guns with these?" He lowered the gun. "Is that not the purpose for which they were designed? I vow I could not conceive of another." Didn't you read the box?" There were too many words I didn't understand!

Surround yourself with people who make you happy, folks who reliably care about you. They are the ones that are worthy of custody in your life.

Each Bullet Journal becomes another volume in the story of your life. Does it represent the life you want to live? If not, then leverage the lessons you've learned to change the narrative in the next volume.

when you’re sitting on a plane 40, 000 feet up in the air, looking out the window, dreaming of your future and how bright it appears to be, or maybe just watching the drops of rain being pushed into different designs from the force of air at 400 mph, well, life feels good. it feels safe, your seat belt is on and your feet are up. then the oxygen masks fall, the plane jumps, snaps and jolts. people start to scream, babies burst out crying, people start praying all in time to the overhead announcement that we’re gonna crash. right then, as your life flashes before your eyes, you hear yourself say, “god, if you get me outta this one, i’ll stop [insert lie here] forever.” right then the nose of the plane pulls up and the captain says, “wow, that was a close one, folks. we’re ok, we’ll be landing in thirty minutes and we’re all safe and sound, sorry for the scare…” that’s how getting hooked on junk is, and when the kick is over you can’t believe you ever got on that plane in the first place. the question is, will you ever fly again?

Whenever you start doubting yourself,” she said, turning back to the audience, “whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change—and change is what we’re chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others’ opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. And no more allowing anyone to pigeonhole you into useless categories of sex, race, economic status, and religion. Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.

You are the architect of your own future, so design your future with uncompromising sincerity.

Healing does not equate to overlooking the pain but rather to reframing your experience to add worth to your growth in life.

The more content you try to capture during a lecture or a meeting, the less you're thinking about what's being said. You burn through most of your attention parroting the source.

Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.

Never believe it, Hal. Never believe your own lies. Because superstition was a trap – that was what she had learned, in the years of plying her trade on the pier. Touching wood, crossing fingers, counting magpies – they were all lies, all of them. False promises designed to give the illusion of control and meaning in a world in which the only destiny came from yourself. You can't predict the future, Hal knew.

Be determined to embrace all that comes into your life. Learn the lessons required in every situation and search for blessings too.

Trauma changes us forever, so be kind and accepting of yourself; deliberate and plan all your healing. Prioritise your boundaries and implement your vision map to be the person you want to be.

Even in engineering-driven Silicon Valley, the buzzwords of the moment call for building a “lean startup” that can “adapt” and “evolve” to an ever-changing environment. Would-be entrepreneurs are told that nothing can be known in advance: we’re supposed to listen to what customers say they want, make nothing more than a “minimum viable product,” and iterate our way to success. But leanness is a methodology, not a goal. Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum. You could build the best version of an app that lets people order toilet paper from their iPhone. But iteration without a bold plan won’t take you from 0 to 1. A company is the strangest place of all for an indefinite optimist: why should you expect your own business to succeed without a plan to make it happen? Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.

Though it can be helpful to set an intention for the day, like Today I will not complain, it's important to remember not to set an expectation for your day, because that's out of your control.

To go beyond yourself, you must first be yourself.

You are never pre-qualified to live your dreams. You qualify yourself by doing the work. By committing—even overcommitting—to what you believe you should do.

But you can't design a future and expect it to just happen. Like art, you can only start with intent. Your hands build the rest." -Raffy

I’m not suggesting that you force yourself to become a chirpy Disney character with rainbows of perpetual optimism blasting out your nose.

We are always growing from the present into the future, and therefore always changing. With each change comes a new design. Life is not an outcome; it’s more like a dance.

You can imagine a career and a life that don't exist; you can build that future you, and as a result your life will change.

God knows what it is going to take to get the greatest results. He dress your past, your present, and your future. He has a remarkable design for your life and all you need to do is submit to His gentle hands. It is at that moment you become His masterpiece in motion.

Here’s the dirty little secret: Fiat currency is designed to lose value. Its very purpose is to confiscate your wealth and transfer it to the government. Each time the government prints a new dollar and spends it, the government gets the full purchasing power of that dollar.

Writing down Tasks serves a dual purpose. First, having a record of an open task makes it easier to remember even when you’re away from your journal, partly due to a phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik effect.

When we pray, we make tremendous power available, dynamic in its working, causing changes in our favour. Certain prayer sessions are specially designed by the Lord to help straighten out things in the spirit-realm regarding our immediate or later future as individuals, families or ministries.

And I love you." "Remember the night we sat here, and I fed you all the clues the future Em had given me to convince you I was legit? The bluegrass, the belly ring-" "The designated hitter?" "Yes." He grinned. "Hmph." "What else did I tell you?" "That you had a teddy bear named Rupert." He rolled his eyes. "About you, and the first time I saw you." Answering made me feel shy, but I did it anyway. "That I said I would take your breath away the first time you saw me." I was still holding his face, and he reached up to put his hands over mine. "You did it then. And you just did it again." His kiss was sweet, soft, and easy at first. I felt urgency stir just under the surface, but I refused to let the desire to hurry things interfere in the moment. I wanted to savor every single one. We had all the time in the world. My brother's voice floated down from the open window. "Emerson!" Well, as son as my grounding was over, we had all the time in the world.

Productivity is in large part a matter of consistency. Once you get it out of your head that you have to work at breakneck speed, you can focus on the process. Short of superhuman willpower, that’s the only way you’ll keep at it.

It's not about living a perfect life, an easy life, or getting things right all the time. It's not even about being happy, though joy often greets you along this path. Leading an intentional life is about keeping your actions aligned with your beliefs. It's about penning a story that you believe in and that you can be proud of.

There never has been, nor will there ever be, another like you. Your singular perspective may patch some small hole in the vast tattered fabric of humanity. Uniqueness alone, however, does not make you valuable. If you don’t do, if you don’t dare, then you rob the world—and yourself—of the chance to contribute something meaningful.

use your Daily Reflection as your daily digital detox window. After your PM Reflection, implement a “screens off” policy that lasts until you’ve completed your AM Reflection the following morning. It’s a simple way to get yourself into the habit of unplugging.

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. —ALLEN SAUNDERS

Your future is as bright as you want it to be.

Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. —WILLIAM MORRIS

When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.” — Thomas Monson

Ordinary people seek entertainment. Extraordinary people seek education and learning.

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. —ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

Abelman’s Dry Goods Kansas City, Missouri U.S.A. Mr. I. Abelman, Mongoloid, Esq.: We have received via post your absurd comments about our trousers, the comments revealing, as they did, your total lack of contact with reality. Were you more aware, you would know or realize by now that the offending trousers were dispatched to you with our full knowledge that they were inadequate so far as length was concerned. “Why? Why?” You are, in your incomprehensible babble, unable to assimilate stimulating concepts of commerce into your retarded and blighted worldview. The trousers were sent to you (1) as a means of testing your initiative (A clever, wide-awake business concern should be able to make three-quarter-length trousers a byword of masculine fashion. Your advertising and merchandising programs are obviously faulty.) and (2) as a means of testing your ability to meet the standards requisite in a distributor of our quality product. (Our loyal and dependable outlets can vend any trouser bearing the Levy label no matter how abominable their design and construction. You are apparently a faithless people.) We do not wish to be bothered in the future by such tedious complaints. Please confine your correspondence to orders only. We are a busy and dynamic organization whose mission needless effrontery and harassment can only hinder. If you molest us again, sir, you may feel the sting of the lash across your pitiful shoulders. Yours in anger, Gus Levy, Pres.

We must take it upon ourselves to grow. We grow by learning, and we learn by daring to take action. There will always be risk, because we can’t control the outcome. This is the way of life, and it’s unavoidable. What is avoidable, however, is being perpetually haunted by all the things that could have been if you had only dared. Begin by giving yourself permission to believe you’re worth the risk.

The path of destiny pulls you forward. It exhumes you from a state of being and propels you towards the juncture you were created for. A new frontier that you are forced to tread with a cross on your back, heavy as a boulder. When you fall to your knees at the hands of your betrayer, you can only hope to find the one sent to carry you burden- shoulder the journey towards your final punishment. Sometimes duplicity and treason are markers of the ememy, and sometimes, the failed intention of a masterful ally. But, nevertheless, as they burden you with a vexing brand of love, they become nothing more than the kisdd of Judas, pressing a crown of thorns into your flesh. Seemingly with out reason- vastly disappointing, Although I am submerged in violent water, I will rise above. My enemies, my friends, are incapable of derailing me from destiny’s design. So, I press forward-move-rely on the hope of the future- create the possible out of the impossible as I weave into life’s grand tapestry. I believe in the things that wait for me- my enemies, my friends- most of all love. It is the finish line I hunger for, the promise of love in all of its glory. I can endure all things in the hold name of love. And I will.

Rawls became famous for creating a new definition of justice, which boils down to this: a society is fair if it looks like something we would design before knowing how we would come into the world. He imagined a fictional “original position,” the position we would be in if we were told we were about to be born, but were not told about the circumstances we would be born into—how tall or short we would be, or of what race or nationality, or what resources or personal qualities we would have. This vision of justice is often compared to being asked how you would want a cake to be divided if you did not know which piece will be yours: equally, of course.

[B]e mindful about the people you surround yourself with, because they will shape you. Their strengths and weaknesses can have a tremendous influence on your own trajectory. ... Ask yourself: What can I learn from them? Is the world a bit of a better place because they’re in my life? Do they make me want to be a better person?

Don't resist when life needs to remove the "old" to make room for the the "new." The pain you're feeling isn't caused by letting things or people go, what's actually hurting you is swimming exhaustively against the natural flow that was intended to carry you. What's truly meant for you shouldn't feel forced, and your blessings are definitely on the way. So stop clinging to whatever needs to be purged... focus instead on freeing yourself to receive. What God has for you, is meant just for you... you'll never have to fight or compete with anyone for what's been divinely designated as yours.

The path of destiny pulls you forward. It exhumes you from a state of being and propels you towards the juncture you were created for. A new frontier that you are forced to tread with a cross on your back, heavy as a boulder. When you fall to your knees at the hands of your betrayer, you can only hope to find the one sent to carry you burden- shoulder the journey towards your final punishment. Sometimes duplicity and treason are markers of the enemy and sometimes, the failed intention of a masterful ally. But, nevertheless, as they burden you with a vexing brand of love, they become nothing more than the kiss of Judas, pressing a crown of thorns into your flesh. Seemingly without reason— vastly disappointing. Although I am submerged in violent water, I will rise above. My enemies, my friends, are incapable of derailing me from destiny’s design. So, I press forward-move-rely on the hope of the future- create the possible out of the impossible as I weave into life’s grand tapestry. I believe in the things that wait for me- my enemies, my friends- most of all love. It is the finish line I hunger for, the promise of love in all of its glory. I can endure all things in the hold name of love. And I will.

The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as “Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun to Be With.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as “a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes,” with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent. Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as “a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.

Courage is the root of change—and change is what we’re chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others’ opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. And no more allowing anyone to pigeonhole you into useless categories of sex, race, economic status, and religion. Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.

Design is applied ethics. Sometimes this connection is obvious: if you design razor wire, you’re saying that anyone who tries to contravene someone else’s right to private property should be injured. But whatever the medium or material, every act of design is a statement about the future.

Winning a war such as this was not about planting flags or defending territory or building fancy villas. It was not about titles or promotions or offices. It was not about democracy or jihad, freedom or honor. It was about resisting the categories chosen for you; about stubbornness in the face of grand designs and schemas. About doing what you had to do, whether they called you a terrorist or an infidel. To win a war like this was to master the ephemeral, to plan a future while knowing that it could all be over in an instant. To comfort your children when the air outside throbs in the middle of the night, to squeeze your spouse’s hand tight when your taxi hits a pothole on an open highway, to go to school or the fields or a wedding and return to tell about it. To survive.

Right now, your company gets the results—good or bad—that it was designed to get. If your vision of the future differs from your current situation, if you want to get better results, then you must change the way you do things. If you don’t, how can you expect results that are any different from what you’ve already achieved?

Over recent years, [there's been] a strong tendency to require assessment of children and teachers so that [teachers] have to teach to tests and the test determines what happens to the child, and what happens to the teacher...that's guaranteed to destroy any meaningful educational process: it means the teacher cannot be creative, imaginative, pay attention to individual students' needs, that a student can't pursue things [...] and the teacher's future depends on it as well as the students'...the people who are sitting in the offices, the bureaucrats designing this - they're not evil people, but they're working within a system of ideology and doctrines, which turns what they're doing into something extremely harmful [...] the assessment itself is completely artificial; it's not ranking teachers in accordance with their ability to help develop children who reach their potential, explore their creative interests and so on [...] you're getting some kind of a 'rank,' but it's a 'rank' that's mostly meaningless, and the very ranking itself is harmful. It's turning us into individuals who devote our lives to achieving a rank, not into doing things that are valuable and important. It's highly destructive...in, say, elementary education, you're training kids this way [...] I can see it with my own children: when my own kids were in elementary school (at what's called a good school, a good-quality suburban school), by the time they were in third grade, they were dividing up their friends into 'dumb' and 'smart.' You had 'dumb' if you were lower-tracked, and 'smart' if you were upper-tracked [...] it's just extremely harmful and has nothing to do with education. Education is developing your own potential and creativity. Maybe you're not going to do well in school, and you'll do great in art; that's fine. It's another way to live a fulfilling and wonderful life, and one that's significant for other people as well as yourself. The whole idea is wrong in itself; it's creating something that's called 'economic man': the 'economic man' is somebody who rationally calculates how to improve his/her own status, and status means (basically) wealth. So you rationally calculate what kind of choices you should make to increase your wealth - don't pay attention to anything else - or maybe maximize the amount of goods you have. What kind of a human being is that? All of these mechanisms like testing, assessing, evaluating, measuring...they force people to develop those characteristics. The ones who don't do it are considered, maybe, 'behavioral problems' or some other deviance [...] these ideas and concepts have consequences. And it's not just that they're ideas, there are huge industries devoted to trying to instill them...the public relations industry, advertising, marketing, and so on. It's a huge industry, and it's a propaganda industry. It's a propaganda industry designed to create a certain type of human being: the one who can maximize consumption and can disregard his actions on others.

Gary Klein is a renowned and expert researcher on decision-making and cites the following aspects that experts have the ability to see which novices do not.196 1. Experts see patterns that novices do not detect. 2. Experts see anomalies—events that did not happen. 3. Experts see the big picture (situational awareness). 4. Experts create opportunities and improvisations. 5. Experts have the ability to predict future events using their previous experiences. 6. Experts see differences too small for novices to detect. 7. Experts know their own limitations. With an understanding of the differences between the experienced and the novice, we can begin to design a plan to overcome the shortfalls. Fortunately, understanding that it isn’t a “matter of intelligence, but a matter of experience” means that we can systematically set about gaining the experience necessary.

The Thirties had seen the first generation of American industrial designers; until the Thirties, all pencil sharpeners looked like pencil sharpeners—your basic Victorian mechanism, perhaps with a curlicue of decorative trim. After the advent of the designers, some pencil sharpeners looked as though they’d been put together in wind tunnels. For the most part, the change was only skin-deep; under the streamlined chrome shell, you’d find the same Victorian mechanism. Which made a certain kind of sense, because the most successful American designers had been recruited from the ranks of Broadway theater designers. It was all a stage set, a series of elaborate props for playing at living in the future.

Where you have been isn't half as important as where you are headed. Keep your sights and focus on the future.

Today, is the beginning of your future so be as creative as your heart desires in designing your life map.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. The Road Not Taken-

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. The Road Not Taken (- Robert Frost-)

Ulysses pact” is defined as “a freely made decision that is designed and intended to bind oneself in the future

The Bullet Journal will help you declutter your packed mind so you can finally examine your thoughts from an objective distance.

Clicking on "send" has its limitations as a system of subtle communication. Which is why, of course, people use so many dashes and italics and capitals ("I AM joking!") to compensate. That's why they came up with the emoticon, too—the emoticon being the greatest (or most desperate, depending how you look at it) advance in punctuation since the question mark in the reign of Charlemagne. You will know all about emoticons. Emoticons are the proper name for smileys. And a smiley is, famously, this: :—) Forget the idea of selecting the right words in the right order and channelling the reader's attention by means of artful pointing. Just add the right emoticon to your email and everyone will know what self-expressive effect you thought you kind-of had in mind. Anyone interested in punctuation has a dual reason to feel aggrieved about smileys, because not only are they a paltry substitute for expressing oneself properly; they are also designed by people who evidently thought the punctuation marks on the standard keyboard cried out for an ornamental function. What's this dot-on-top-of-a-dot thing for? What earthly good is it? Well, if you look at it sideways, it could be a pair of eyes. What's this curvy thing for? It's a mouth, look! Hey, I think we're on to something. :—( Now it's sad! ;—) It looks like it's winking! :—r It looks like it's sticking its tongue out! The permutations may be endless: :~/ mixed up! <:—) dunce! :—[ pouting! :—O surprise! Well, that's enough. I've just spotted a third reason to loathe emoticons, which is that when they pass from fashion (and I do hope they already have), future generations will associate punctuation marks with an outmoded and rather primitive graphic pastime and despise them all the more. "Why do they still have all these keys with things like dots and spots and eyes and mouths and things?" they will grumble. "Nobody does smileys any more.

O God in heaven, if you're so designed that you can listen to two voices blast at once from but one set of lips and find in them not noise but strife between the past and future, raise to you my coughing mind and plant its microbes where your light is cast. Divide among them with your mighty hand the sum of these convulsive thoughts and days. And leave the fraction of me left behind to triumph over silence then, at least.

If you want to see the beauty of any fish, throw it into the water, you will see how best it can swim because that is its source. Do you want to see the beauty in you? Don't look in the mirror, don't put on makeups, no jewelleries or expensive designer clothes, just go back and reconnect to your source and I bet, the best of you will show up. Until you return back to God, your best won't come out because He is your source.

I Not my best side, I'm afraid. The artist didn't give me a chance to Pose properly, and as you can see, Poor chap, he had this obsession with Triangles, so he left off two of my Feet. I didn't comment at the time (What, after all, are two feet To a monster?) but afterwards I was sorry for the bad publicity. Why, I said to myself, should my conqueror Be so ostentatiously beardless, and ride A horse with a deformed neck and square hoofs? Why should my victim be so Unattractive as to be inedible, And why should she have me literally On a string? I don't mind dying Ritually, since I always rise again, But I should have liked a little more blood To show they were taking me seriously. II It's hard for a girl to be sure if She wants to be rescued. I mean, I quite Took to the dragon. It's nice to be Liked, if you know what I mean. He was So nicely physical, with his claws And lovely green skin, and that sexy tail, And the way he looked at me, He made me feel he was all ready to Eat me. And any girl enjoys that. So when this boy turned up, wearing machinery, On a really dangerous horse, to be honest I didn't much fancy him. I mean, What was he like underneath the hardware? He might have acne, blackheads or even Bad breath for all I could tell, but the dragon-- Well, you could see all his equipment At a glance. Still, what could I do? The dragon got himself beaten by the boy, And a girl's got to think of her future. III I have diplomas in Dragon Management and Virgin Reclamation. My horse is the latest model, with Automatic transmission and built-in Obsolescence. My spear is custom-built, And my prototype armour Still on the secret list. You can't Do better than me at the moment. I'm qualified and equipped to the Eyebrow. So why be difficult? Don't you want to be killed and/or rescued In the most contemporary way? Don't You want to carry out the roles That sociology and myth have designed for you? Don't you realize that, by being choosy, You are endangering job prospects In the spear- and horse-building industries? What, in any case, does it matter what You want? You're in my way. - Not My Best Side

An easy place to start with any endeavor is simply taking your thoughts out of your head and organizing them on paper. In so doing, you’ve already crossed the starting line to realize that it’s just another moment.

Topic and page number, you capture your thoughts as short, objective sentences known as Bullets. Each Bullet is paired with a specific symbol to categorize your entry. We use Bullets not only because it takes less time,

Q. Would you repeat, Dr. Seldon, your thoughts concerning the future of Trantor? A. I have said, and I say again, that Trantor will lie in ruins within the next three centuries. Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one? A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty." Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth? A. I am. Q. On what basis? A. On the basis of the mathematics of psychohistory. Q. Can you prove that this mathematics is valid? A. Only to another mathematician. Q. ( with a smile) Your claim then is that your truth is of so esoteric a nature that it is beyond the understanding of a plain man. It seems to me that truth should be clearer than that, less mysterious, more open to the mind. A. It presents no difficulties to some minds. The physics of energy transfer, which we know as thermodynamics, has been clear and true through all the history of man since the mythical ages, yet there may be people present who would find it impossible to design a power engine. People of high intelligence, too. I doubt if the learned Commissioners— At this point, one of the Commissioners leaned toward the Advocate. His words were not heard but the hissing of the voice carried a certain asperity. The Advocate flushed and interrupted Seldon. Q. We are not here to listen to speeches, Dr. Seldon. Let us assume that you have made your point. Let me suggest to you that your predictions of disaster might be intended to destroy public confidence in the Imperial Government for purposes of your own! A. That is not so. Q. Let me suggest that you intend to claim that a period of time preceding the so-called ruin of Trantor will be filled with unrest of various types. A. That is correct. Q. And that by the mere prediction thereof, you hope to bring it about, and to have then an army of a hundred thousand available. A. In the first place, that is not so. And if it were, investigation will show you that barely ten thousand are men of military age, and none of these has training in arms. Q. Are you acting as an agent for another? A. I am not in the pay of any man, Mr. Advocate. Q. You are entirely disinterested? You are serving science? A. I am.

Pop culture is all about identity and feeling like you’re participating. It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future — it’s living in the present. I think the same is true of most people who write code for money.

To become the true architect of your life, you require the ability to adapt and evolve, to choose alternative ways and move forward in the knowledge that you are always arriving at the future that your past self has designed for you.

don’t think you can have any society without self-discipline, individual responsibility, some kind of property that you can call your own, some basis for identity, some system of moral values. Only emotional people cry, “Down with the middle classes,” or any other class. I think that we can design a better society, and we still have about the best society that’s around. The fact that we are discontented with its imperfections is not a bad thing in itself, but it is no justification to destroy it. And if we are to have a society in the future which is strong and healthy and stable, it will be based to a very considerable extent on the virtues that you’re talking about. But it cannot be based upon a rigid loyalty to structures.

In the Sixties, the hippies used to say, "Never trust anyone over 30." Now all the Sixties hippies are in their sixties, and they've gone quiet about that, but it's good advice for you: never trust anyone over 30 with the societal checkbook. You thought you were the idealistic youth of the Obama era, but in fact you're the designated fall-guys. You weren't voting for "the future," but to deny yourself the very possibility of one--like turkeys volunteering to waddle around with an "Audacity of Thanksgiving" bumper sticker on your tush. Instead of swaying glassy-eyed behind President Obama at his campaign rallies singing "We are the hopeychange," you should have been demanding that the government spend less money on small agencies with fewer employees on smaller salaries. Because if you don't, there won't be a future. "You can be anything you want to be"--but only if you first tell today's big spenders that, whatever they want to be, they should try doing it on their own dime.

whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change—and change is what we’re chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others’ opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. And no more allowing anyone to pigeonhole you into useless categories of sex, race, economic status, and religion. Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.

whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change and change is what we're chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others' opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. And no more allowing anyone to pigeonhole you into useless categories of sex, race, economic status, and religion. Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started."_Page.360


For one who sets himself to look at all earnestly, at all in purpose toward truth, into the living eyes of a human life: what is it he there beholds that so freezes and abashes his ambitious heart? What is it, profound behind the outward windows of each one of you, beneath touch even of your own suspecting, drawn tightly back at bay against the backward wall and blackness of its prison cave, so that the eyes alone shine of their own angry glory, but the eyes of a trapped wild animal, or of a furious angel nailed to the ground by his wings, or however else one may faintly designate the human 'soul,' that which is angry, that which is wild, that which is untamable, that which is healthful and holy, that which is competent of all advantaging within hope of human dream, that which most marvelous and most precious to our knowledge and most extremely advanced upon futurity of all flowerings within the scope of creation is of all these the least destructible, the least corruptible, the most defenseless, the most easily and multitudinously wounded, frustrated, prisoned, and nailed into a cheating of itself: so situated in the universe that those three hours upon the cross are but a noble and too trivial an emblem how in each individual among most of the two billion now alive and in each successive instant of the existence of each existence not only human being but in him the tallest and most sanguine hope of godhead is in a billionate choiring and drone of pain of generations upon generations unceasingly crucified and is bringing forth crucifixions into their necessities and is each in the most casual of his life so measurelessly discredited, harmed, insulted, poisoned, cheated, as not all the wrath, compassion, intelligence, power of rectification in all the reach of the future shall in the least expiate or make one ounce more light: how, looking thus into your eyes and seeing thus, how each of you is a creature which has never in all time existed before and which shall never in all time exist again and which is not quite like any other and which has the grand stature and natural warmth of every other and whose existence is all measured upon a still mad and incurable time; how am I to speak of you as 'tenant' 'farmers,' as 'representatives' of your 'class,' as social integers in a criminal economy, or as individuals, fathers, wives, sons, daughters, and as my friends and as I 'know' you?

Never believe it, Hal. Never believe your own lies. Because superstition was a trap—that was what she had learned, in the years of plying her trade on the pier. Touching wood, crossing fingers, counting magpies—they were lies, all of them. False promises, designed to give the illusion of control and meaning in a world in which the only destiny came from yourself. You can’t predict the future, Hal, her mother had reminded her, time and time again. You can’t influence fate, or change what’s out of your control. But you can choose what you yourself do with the cards you’re dealt. That was the truth, Hal knew. The painful, uncompromising truth. It was what she wanted to shout at clients, at the ones who came back again and again looking for answers that she could not give. There is no higher meaning. Sometimes things happen for no reason. Fate is cruel, and arbitrary. Touching wood, lucky charms, none of it will help you see the car you never saw coming, or avoid the tumor you didn’t realize you had. Quite the opposite, in fact. For in that moment that you turn your head to look for the second magpie, in the hope of changing your fortune from sorrow to joy—that’s when you take your attention away from the things you can change, the crossing light, the speeding car, the moment you should have turned back. The people who came to her booth were seeking meaning and control—but they were looking in the wrong place. When they gave themselves over to superstition, they were giving up on shaping their own destiny.

CHEMISTRY IS CHANGE, she wrote. Whenever you start doubting yourself, she said, turning back to the audience, whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change - and change is what we’re chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others’ opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. And no more allowing anyone to pigeonhole you into useless categories of sex, race, economic status, and religion. Do not allow your town slide dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.

They stood in the courtyard of Swangard Palace, too cold to be comfortable despite the sun, and they looked fully on one another, knowing that they were friends, and would always be. A lot of water under this bridge too, Mark thought, with something like awe. He was growing older. Old enough to feel the current of what had been flowing under him, leading to his future. Old enough to look back over his shoulder, and see his past behind him, and grieve for what was gone, and honour its memory. He felt, suddenly, how much it would hurt him if Val died; felt an echo of that pain, knowing that the Valerian he had known, fluffy and peering and hapless and altogether wonderful: this Valerian was already dying. Not physically, of course, but the man he remembered from that first night in Swangard Palace would be gone the next time they met, though his ghost would linger on in Val forever, and in their memories. Three cheers for ghosts, Mark thought. Three cheers for the dead. Of course Val would be much the same: better, even. As full of wonder and delight, with big pockets full of puzzles and fascinating stories about the lives of ants and ingenious designs for windmills that would do your washing. And they would still be friends, excellent friends. It could even be better next time. But it would never be the same.

Addiction begins in the interaction of these three lower bodies. Your mind builds images, stories and projections around the desires of the astral body, which set you on an addictive course of behaviour aimed at relieving the suffering. Because the mind functions across time, its main tendency is to base hope of happiness on the future rather than accepting the real conditions of the present moment. The external civilisation designed by humanity feeds the mind’s strategy of trying to escape suffering and find happiness in the future. It is designed by the Shadow for the Shadow, which is why it is so challenging to transcend the Shadow consciousness in everyday life.

Never believe it, Hal. Never believe your own lies. Because superstition was a trap—that was what she had learned, in the years of plying her trade on the pier. Touching wood, crossing fingers, counting magpies—they were lies, all of them. False promises, designed to give the illusion of control and meaning in a world in which the only destiny came from yourself. You can’t predict the future, Hal, her mother had reminded her, time and time again. You can’t influence fate, or change what’s out of your control. But you can choose what you yourself do with the cards you’re dealt. That was the truth, Hal knew. The painful, uncompromising truth. It was what she wanted to shout at clients, at the ones who came back again and again looking for answers that she could not give. There is no higher meaning. Sometimes things happen for no reason. Fate is cruel, and arbitrary. Touching wood, lucky charms, none of it will help you see the car you never saw coming, or avoid the tumor you didn’t realize you had. Quite the opposite, in fact. For in that moment that you turn your head to look for the second magpie, in the hope of changing your fortune from sorrow to joy—that’s when you take your attention away from the things you can change, the crossing light, the speeding car, the moment you should have turned back. The people who came to her booth were seeking meaning and control—but they were looking in the wrong place. When they

As soon as two people have resolved to give up their togetherness, the resulting pain with its heaviness or particularity is already so completely part of the life of each individual that the other has to sternly deny himself to become sentimental and feel pity. The beginning of the agreed-upon separation is marked precisely by this pain, and its first challenge will be that this pain already belongs separately to each of the two individuals. This pain is an essential condition of what the now solitary and most lonely individual will have to create in the future out of his reclaimed life. If two people managed not to get stuck in hatred during their honest struggles with each other, that is, in the edges of their passion that became ragged and sharp when it cooled and set, if they could stay fluid, active, flexible, and changeable in all of their interactions and relations, and, in a word, if a mutually human and friendly consideration remained available to them, then their decision to separate cannot easily conjure disaster and terror. When it is a matter of a separation, pain should already belong in its entirety to that other life from which you wish to separate. Otherwise the two individuals will continually become soft toward each other, causing helpless and unproductive suffering. In the process of a firmly agreed-upon separation, however, the pain itself constitutes an important investment in the renewal and fresh start that is to be achieved on both sides. People in your situation might have to communicate as friends. But then these two separated lives should remain without any knowledge of the other for a period and exist as far apart and as detached from the other as possible. This is necessary for each life to base itself firmly on its new requirements and circumstances. Any subsequent contact (which may then be truly new and perhaps very happy) has to remain a matter of unpredictable design and direction. If you find that you scare yourself.

This Collection serves as a menu of sorts, listing your potential futures. It can keep you focused and motivated, but even the greatest menu is useless if you don't order. the next step is to start nudging yourself toward action. Otherwise it's easy to hoard goals, waiting for just the right moment to get started. That moment will never come. We have to create our own opportunities, because life doesn't wait.

She does know Harrison prefers men, right?” “Let her have hope,” I said, smiling to myself. He turned his attention back to me. “Yes. Hope is good. Bianca, I-” He grinned wickedly. “I knew you’d give in sooner or later.” He put his hand on my knee and ran it smoothly up my thigh. “You’re finally going to admit that you love me, aren’t you?” I swatted his hand away. “First of all,” I began, “I don’t love you. I love my family and maybe even Casey and Jessica, but romantic love takes years upon years to develop. So I don’t love you. But I will admit, I’ve thought a lot about you lately and I definitely have feelings for you… feelings other than hatred for the most part. And maybe it’s possible-in the future-that I… could love you.” I hesitated, a little scared of the words that’d just left my mouth. “But I still want to kill you most of the time.

Ask questions, no, screech questions out loud - while kneeling in front of the electric doors at Safeway, demanding other citizens ask questions along with you - while chewing up old textbooks and spitting the words onto downtown sidewalks - outside the Planet Hollywood, outside the stock exchange, and outside the Gap. Grind questions onto the glass on photocopiers. Scrape challenges onto old auto parts and throw them off bridges so that future people digging in the mud will question the world, too. Carve eyeballs into tire treads and onto shoe leathers so that your every trail speaks of thinking and questioning and awareness. Design molecules that crystallize into question marks. Make bar codes print out fables, not prices. You can't even throw away a piece of litter unless it has a question mark stamped on it - a demand for people to reach a finer place

Expertise gives you enough insight to reinvent what everyone else assumes is the truth. Sure, it’s possible to randomly challenge the conventions of your field and luckily find a breakthrough. It’s far more likely, though, that you will design a great Web site or direct a powerful movie or lead a breakthrough product development if you understand the status quo better than anyone else. Beginner’s luck is dramatically overrated. Emotional

There is only so much one person may give before it exhausts your shallow well of courage and leaves you damned and dry. Before outrage becomes commonplace, and you grow used to the horrors of this life. They count on it, the Nazis—and other villains, too. Mussolini in Italy and Baky in Hungary, Ion Antonescu, purging the streets of Old Romania—and those who, in some future time when civilized people think themselves beyond the reach of moral failings, may rise to stand on foreign soil. They want you tired and distracted. They plan to burn this world down—our old ways of being. From the ashes they will build the world anew, after a fearful pattern, after their own bleak design. But the flames can only devour what we leave unguarded. So they will force you inward, if they can, to huddle over whatever small treasures the Lord has given you. When your back is turned, that’s when they’ll strike the match.

You are created to be an image of your Creator, my dear. That is a great honor. To be designed as Thea Reed, and signed by the mark of the Artist himself. You are a work of genius. But until you know that, your name, your roots, your past, and your future will be what you chase after. Like a leaf that blows in the wind. I would bid you all the best in catching it, only, if you do, it won’t satisfy. You will still wonder who Thea Reed is, long after your primary questions have been answered.

Quantum physics tells us that no matter how thorough our observation of the present, the (unobserved) past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities. The universe, according to quantum physics, has no single past, or history. The fact that the past takes no definite form means that observations you make on a system in the present affect its past. That is underlined rather dramatically by a type of experiment thought up by physicist John Wheeler, called a delayed-choice experiment. Schematically, a delayed-choice experiment is like the double-slit experiment we just described, in which you have the option of observing the path that the particle takes, except in the delayed-choice experiment you postpone your decision about whether or not to observe the path until just before the particle hits the detection screen. Delayed-choice experiments result in data identical to those we get when we choose to observe (or not observe) the which-path information by watching the slits themselves. But in this case the path each particle takes—that is, its past—is determined long after it passed through the slits and presumably had to “decide” whether to travel through just one slit, which does not produce interference, or both slits, which does. Wheeler even considered a cosmic version of the experiment, in which the particles involved are photons emitted by powerful quasars billions of light-years away. Such light could be split into two paths and refocused toward earth by the gravitational lensing of an intervening galaxy. Though the experiment is beyond the reach of current technology, if we could collect enough photons from this light, they ought to form an interference pattern. Yet if we place a device to measure which-path information shortly before detection, that pattern should disappear. The choice whether to take one or both paths in this case would have been made billions of years ago, before the earth or perhaps even our sun was formed, and yet with our observation in the laboratory we will be affecting that choice. In

October 29th CHARACTER IS FATE “Each person acquires their own character, but their official roles are designated by chance. You should invite some to your table because they are deserving, others because they may come to deserve it.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 47.15b In the hiring process, most employers look at where someone went to school, what jobs they’ve held in the past. This is because past success can be an indicator of future successes. But is it always? There are plenty of people who were successful because of luck. Maybe they got into Oxford or Harvard because of their parents. And what about a young person who hasn’t had time to build a track record? Are they worthless? Of course not. This is why character is a far better measure of a man or woman. Not just for jobs, but for friendships, relationships, for everything. Heraclitus put it as a maxim: “Character is fate.” When you seek to advance your own position in life, character is the best lever—perhaps not in the short term, but certainly over the long term. And the same goes for the people you invite into your life.

Five years from today. Where, exactly, do you want to be?" Her eyes lit up. Sadie loves that kind of question. "Ooh. Wow. Let me think. December, getting close to Christmas. I'll be twenty-one..." "Passed out under the tree with a fifth of Jack, half a 7-Eleven rotisserie chicken, and a cat who poops in your shoes." Frankie returned our startled glances with his lizard look. "Oh, wait. That's me. Sorry." I opted to ignore him. "Five years to the day,Sadie." She glanced quickly between Frankie and me. "Do we need a time-out here?" "Nope," I said. "Carry on." "Okay. Five years. I will be in New York visiting the pair of you because, while NYU is fab, I will be halfwau through my final year of classics at Cambridge, trying to decide whether I want to be a psychologist or a pastry chef. You," she said sternly to Frankie, "will be drinking appropriate amounds of champagne with your boyfriend, a six-three blond from Helsinki who happens to design for Tory Burch. Ah! Don't say anything. It's my future. You can choose a different designer when it's you go. I want the Tory freebies." She turned to me. "We will be sipping said champagne in the middle of the Gagosian Galley, because it is the opening night of your first solo exhibit. At which everything will sell." She punctuated the sentence by poking the air with a speared black olive. "I love you," I told her. Then, "But that wasn't really about you." "Oh,but it was," she disagreed, going back to her salad. "It's exactly where I want to be. Although" -she grinned over a tomato wedge- "I might have the next David Beckham in tow." "The next David Beckham is a five-foot-tall Welshman named Madog Cadwalader. He has extra teeth and bow legs." "Really?" Sadie asked. Frankie snorted. "No.Not really.

Musk, though, approaches everything from a Platonic perspective. As he sees it, all of the design and technology choices should be directed toward the goal of making a car as close to perfect as possible. To the extent that rival automakers haven’t, that’s what Musk is judging. It’s almost a binary experience for him. Either you’re trying to make something spectacular with no compromises or you’re not. And if you’re not, Musk considers you a failure. This position can look unreasonable or foolish to outsiders, but the philosophy works for Musk and constantly pushes him and those around him to their limits.

But it was while discussing SpaceX’s grandest missions that Shotwell really came into her own and seemed to inspire the interns. Some of them clearly dreamed of becoming astronauts, and Shotwell said that working at SpaceX was almost certainly their best chance to get to space now that NASA’s astronaut corps had dwindled. Musk had made designing cool-looking, “non–Stay Puft” spacesuits a personal priority. “They can’t be clunky and nasty,” Shotwell said. “You have to do better than that.” As for where the astronauts would go: well, there were the space habitats, the moon, and, of course, Mars as options. SpaceX has already started testing a giant rocket, called the Falcon Heavy, that will take it much farther into space than the Falcon 9, and it has another, even larger spaceship on the way. “Our Falcon Heavy rocket will not take a busload of people to Mars,” she said. “So, there’s something after Heavy. We’re working on it.” To make something like that vehicle happen, she said, the SpaceX employees needed to be effective and pushy. “Make sure your output is high,” Shotwell said. “If we’re throwing a bunch of shit in your way, you need to be mouthy about it. That’s not a quality that’s widely accepted elsewhere, but it is at SpaceX.” And, if that sounded harsh, so be it. As Shotwell saw it, the commercial space race was coming down to SpaceX and China and that’s it. And in the bigger picture, the race was on to ensure man’s survival. “If you hate people and think human extinction is okay, then fuck it,” Shotwell said. “Don’t go to space. If you think it is worth humans doing some risk management and finding a second place to go live, then you should be focused on this issue and willing to spend some money. I am pretty sure we will be selected by NASA to drop landers and rovers off on Mars. Then the first SpaceX mission will be to drop off a bunch of supplies, so that once people get there, there will be places to live and food to eat and stuff for them to do.

millions—often more than the budget of the movie itself—studios regularly write off major releases as complete washes. And when they do succeed, no one has any idea why or which of the ingredients were responsible for it. As screenwriter William Goldman famously put it, nobody knows anything—even the people in charge. It’s all a big gamble. Which is fine, because their system is designed to absorb these losses. The hits pay for the mistakes many times over. But there is a big difference between them and everyone else in the world. You can’t really afford for your start-up to fail; your friend has sunk everything into her new business; and I can’t allow my book to flop. We don’t have ten other projects coming down the pike. This is it.

Writing down Tasks serves a dual purpose. First, having a record of an open task makes it easier to remember even when you’re away from your journal, partly due to a phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik effect. Russian psychiatrist and psychologist Bluma Wulfovna Zeigarnik observed that the staff at her local restaurant was able to remember complex unfilled orders until they were filled, at which point they forgot the details. The friction of an unfinished Task actively engages your mind. Second, by logging Tasks and their state, you’ll also automatically create an archive of your actions. This becomes immensely valuable during Reflection (this page), or when you review your notebook days, months, or years from now. You’ll always know what you were working toward.

[...]Chaos extends its talons towards you, still uncertain if you will be its tool or an obstacle in its design. That which Chaos shows you in your dreams is this very uncertainty. Chaos is afraid of you, Child of Destiny. But it wants you to be the one who feels fear." There was a flash of lightning and a long rumble of thunder. Ciri trembled with cold and dread. "Chaos cannot show you what it really is. So it is showing you the future, showing you what is going to happen. It wants you to be afraid of the coming days, so that fear of what is going to happen to you and those closest to you will start to guide you, take you over completely. That is why Chaos is sending you those dreams. Now, you are going to show me what you see in your dreams. And you are going to be frightened. And then you will forget and master your fear.[...]

Our schools teach the opposite: institutionalized education traffics in a kind of homogenized, generic knowledge. Everybody who passes through the American school system learns not to think in power law terms. Every high school course period lasts 45 minutes whatever the subject. Every student proceeds at a similar pace. At college, model students obsessively hedge their futures by assembling a suite of exotic and minor skills. Every university believes in “excellence,” and hundred-page course catalogs arranged alphabetically according to arbitrary departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that “it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well.” That is completely false. It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN most interested in the question of what makes a house a home. What are the elements that move a house beyond its physical structure and provide the warmth that we all crave? In my fifteen years as a designer, I’ve come to understand that the answer is simple: It is about surrounding ourselves with things we love. (...) And in this case, the beauty comes from the owners’ love of books. Books are beautiful objects in their own right—their bindings and covers—and the space they fill on shelves or stacked on coffee tables in colorful piles add balance and texture to any room. And just like any other part of a home, books require maintenance: They need to be dusted, categorized, rearranged, and maintained. Our relationship with them is dynamic and ever changing. But our connection to them goes beyond the material. In each house we visited, the libraries were the heart of the home, meaningful to the collectors’ lives. In this book, we tried to capture what they brought to the home—the life and spirit books added. Some subjects have working libraries they constantly reference; others fill their shelves with the potential pleasures of the unread. When we visited the homes, many people could find favorite books almost by osmosis, using systems known only to themselves. (...) As we found repeatedly, surrounding yourself with books you love tells the story of your life, your interests, your passions, your values. Your past and your future. Books allow us to escape, and our personal libraries allow us to invent the story of ourselves—and the legacy that we will leave behind. There’s a famous quote attributed to Cicero: “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” If I suspected this before, I know it now. I hope you’ll find as much pleasure in discovering these worlds as we did.

The most insidious part of the traditional marketing model is that “big blowout launch” mythology. Of course, equally seductive is the “build it and they will come” assumption that too many people associate with the Web. Both are too simple and rarely effective. Remember what Aaron Swartz realized. Users have to be pulled in. A good idea is not enough. Your customers, in fact, have to be “acquired.” But the way to do that isn’t with a bombardment. It’s with a targeted offensive in the right places aimed at the right people. Your start-up is designed to be a growth engine—and at some point early on, that engine has to be kick-started. The good news is that we have to do that only once. Because the next step isn’t about getting more attention or publicity. The endless promotional cycle of traditional marketing is not our destiny. Because once we bring our first customers in, our next move is to set about turning them into an army.

Our memories are unreliable. We often trick ourselves into believing things about our experiences that are biased and inaccurate. Studies suggest that our recollection of how we felt can greatly differ from the way an experience actually made us feel. We can remember wonderful events in a negative way, and negative events in a positive way. Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert likens our memories to painted portraits instead of photographs, where our mind artistically interprets memory. 20 It’s important to keep an accurate record of how things actually happened, because we often make decisions based on our past experiences. If we operate entirely on memory, we’re apt to repeat our mistakes by fooling ourselves into believing that something had an effect it actually did not. Good or bad, big or small, jot it down. Over the days, months, and years, they will form a pretty accurate roadmap of your life. Understanding how we got to where we are today will allow us to make more informed decisions as we plot our course forward.

Noah Kagan, a growth hacker at Facebook, the personal finance service Mint.com (which sold to Intuit for nearly $170 million), and the daily deal site AppSumo (which has more than eight hundred thousand users), explains it simply: “Marketing has always been about the same thing—who your customers are and where they are.”5 What growth hackers do is focus on the “who” and “where” more scientifically, in a more measurable way. Whereas marketing was once brand-based, with growth hacking it becomes metric and ROI driven. Suddenly, finding customers and getting attention for your product are no longer guessing games. But this is more than just marketing with better metrics; this is not just “direct marketing” with a new name. Growth hackers trace their roots back to programmers—and that’s how they see themselves. They are data scientists meets design fiends meets marketers. They welcome this information, process it and utilize it differently, and see it as desperately needed clarity in a world that has been dominated by gut instincts and artistic preference for too long. But they also add a strong acumen for strategy, for thinking big picture, and for leveraging platforms, unappreciated assets, and new ideas.

ONLY IMAGINE   In his classic self-help book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill wrote, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, he can achieve.” His premise, and that of many others, is that once the human mind is programmed with a certain expectation, it will begin to fulfill that expectation. The Scriptures declared this principle long before Hill wrote his book. Faith believes and then sees. It is the expectation of a miracle before it occurs. The Aluminum Company of America coined an interesting word: imagineering. They combined the idea of imagining a product or service, with the idea that the dream would then be engineered into a reality. Throughout history we’ve seen this principle at work.   A primitive ancestor came up with the idea that it was easier to roll objects than drag them—and he carved a wheel from stone.   A man named Gutenberg imagined that letters might be set in metal and combined to create words, which then could be printed repeatedly with the application of ink. He set about to make such a machine.   Men designed cathedrals that took decades to build—but build them they did. Ideas and dreams you have today will directly influence your future. What you begin to believe for, and then how you act on that belief, will result in what you have, do, and are in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. Let your “faith imagination” soar today. Believe for God’s highest and best in your life. Then begin to live and work as if that miracle is on its way.   FAITH IS THE SUBSTANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR, THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN. HEBREWS 11:1 NKJV

In Romans 12:4-8, Paul writes about gifts: “For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.” “Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them.” Recognize that the gifts inside you are not only for you; just as the gifts inside other people around you are not only for them. We are meant to help each other. God designed us this way on purpose! All being members of one body, our successes are shared — there is no need to be threatened by another person’s gift. Use your gifts, and encourage the people in your life to use their gifts as well. You will be blessed as a result! Unfortunately, one thing that keeps us from asking for help or taking advantage of the talents in people around us is pride. Never allow pride to keep you from asking for counsel when it is needed! 1 Corinthians 12:20 is another passage about gifts: “now indeed there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’; nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ ” We need each other, and joining our gifts together will result in a much stronger body. If you have time, read 1 Corinthians 12:4-20. Reflect on how there can be unity in the diversity of gifts if we use our different gifts properly. Determine that you will not be threatened by anyone else’s gifts! Esther was not afraid of the gifts in the people around her. Let’s see how she responds to the wisdom of others today. And every day Mordecai paced in front of the court of the women’s quarters, to learn of Esther’s welfare and what was happening to her. Esther 2:11 Every day, Mordecai goes to the palace gates to inquire after Esther and learn of what was happening to her. He goes to the palace gates with purpose. He paces in front of the women’s court until he has learns the day’s news about Esther. Even though she is no longer under his roof, he stills feels a strong responsibility toward her, and acts accordingly. He is a faithful man, and has set a great example before Esther. The news that he hears concerning Esther daily must be good: her inward beauty and submission to authority are two of the many wonderful traits that God placed in her so that she will be effective in Persia. Even though Esther is in an unfamiliar place and experiencing “firsts” every day in the palace, God is making sure she has what she needs. Esther did not need to feel nervous! She needed wise counsel; it has been provided for her in Mordecai and Hegai. She needs a pleasant and patient personality; that has been being developed in her by the Lord for many years. In your own life, you are constantly undergoing change and growth as you are submitting to the Lord. Whether or not you can see it, God is continually preparing you for what lies ahead so that you will have what you need when you need it. The God who loves you so much knows your future, and He is preparing you today for what you will experience tomorrow. Esther is receiving what she needs as well. She is in the palace undergoing her beauty preparations — a twelve month process! Even through this extended period of time, Mordecai is still at the palace gates every day (the Bible does not say that he stopped his concern for her at any point). It is an entire