Markers Of Success Quotes

Failure, loss and defeat are just mile markers on the road to success.

Because you were foolish enough to love one place, now you are homeless, an orphan in a succession of shelters. You did not prepare yourself sufficiently. Before your eyes, two people were becoming old; I could have told you two deaths were coming. There has never been a parent kept alive by a child’s love. Now, of course, it’s too late – you were trapped in the romance of fidelity. You kept going back, clinging to two people you hardly recognized after what they’d endured. If once you could have saved yourself, now that time’s past: you were obstinate, pathetically blind to change. Now you have nothing: for you, home is a cemetery. I’ve seen you press your face against the granite markers – you are the lichen, trying to grow there. But you will not grow, you will not let yourself obliterate anything.

Labels. I stuck them on everything. 'Good.' 'Bad.' 'Right.' 'Wrong.' 'Square.' 'Hip.' 'Queer.' 'Normal.' 'Friend.' 'Enemy.' 'Success.' 'Failure.' They're easy to use. They save you the bother of thinking. Those labels stay stuck. They proliferate. They become a habit. Soon, they're covering everything, and everybody, up. You start thinking reality is the labels. Simple labels, written in permanent marker. The trouble is, reality's the opposite. Reality is nuanced, paradoxical, shifting. It's difficult. It's many things at once. That's why we're so crummy at it. People harp on about freedom. All the time. It's everywhere. There are riots and wars about what freedom is and who it's for. But the Queen of Freedoms is this: to be free of labels.

Time utilization and effectiveness is a major marker for success

A shift in class values occurs in black life when integration comes and with it the idea that money is the primary marker of individual success, not how one acquires money. Adopting that worldview changed the dynamics of work in black communities. Black men who could show they had money (no matter how they acquired it) could be among the powerful. It was this thinking that allowed hustlers in black communities to be seen as just as hardworking as their Wall Street counterparts.

Instead of viewing money and position as the sole or even chief markers of success, women also tend to place a high value on the quality of their lives at work and the impact of their contributions. Enjoying co-workers and clients, having some degree of control over their time, and believing that their work makes a positive difference in the world are key motivators for many successful women.

From the outside, Cory’s life looked perfect—money, fame, beautiful girlfriend, millions of adoring fans—but I guess his same old demons were still there, raising as much mental and emotional hell as they always had. Maybe even more, now that everything was supposed to be okay. I think this is a common misconception about fame, or any kind of marker of “success” in life, be it landing your dream job, getting married, or having a kid: people think that you achieve these goals, you check off certain boxes, and all of a sudden life’s perfect and you don’t have any problems. That’s not true. You’re still going to wake up every morning, and your problems will still be there unless you figure out a way to make them go away. And more often than not, new ones will show up in their place. I

I’ve wondered why not. But then, women are in sync with nature. Our cycles are linked to the moon, to the tides. Like them, we change two dozen times over, every month. What do men do? They don’t get to experience much of life. We gestate the babies and bring them into existence while the men try not to faint. It’s why they’re obsessed with extrinsic markers of success. And war! Taking life to feel some speck of the power we get from making life. You have to hand it to men, they’ve managed to convince us that the things that make women powerful are weaknesses.

When it came to "getting away from it all," there really weren’t many places quite like the top of the tallest mountain in the world. He glanced around the summit, noting the other reason why he enjoyed coming up here. It was tradition for every expedition to the top of Everest to leave something behind—a small token or marker indicating their successful climb to the famous peak. Each one was different and each one seemed to reflect the personality of the party it represented: small flags and banners with the hand-written names of climbers past, a used oxygen canister, a spare glove, even a small metal lunchbox with (Clark noted with a small smile) a picture of Superman on the cover. To Clark, each of these markers indicated the pinnacle of human achievement, the fulfilled promise of the best the human race had to offer. And today, it represented something else as well: man’s ability to conquer the harsh reality of nature… a point in stark contrast to the previous night’s activities. This set were Sherpa prayer flags, each displaying a symbol, not of a distant god or mythological beast, but denoting some aspect of the enlightened human mind: compassion, perfect action, fearlessness. His thoughts turned to another example of the peak of human achievement, of what one man with drive, desire and dedication could accomplish without the benefit of superpowers or metagene enhancement. One that held a much more personal meaning to Clark. Bruce.

Labels. I stuck them on everything. “Good”. “Bad”. “Right”. “Wrong”. “Square”. “Hip”. “Queer”. “Normal”. “Friend”. “Enemy”. “Success”. “Failure”. They’re easy to use. They save you the bother of thinking. Those labels stay stuck. They proliferate. They become a habit. Soon, they’re covering everything, and everybody, up. You start thinking reality is the labels. Simple labels, written in permanent marker. The trouble is, reality’s the opposite. Reality is nuanced, paradoxical, shifting. It’s difficult. It’s many things at once. That’s why we’re so crummy at it. People harp on about freedom. All the time. It’s everywhere. There are riots and wars about what freedom is and who it’s for. But the Queen of Freedoms is this: to be free of labels. Here endeth today’s lesson. You’re giving me a funny look.

Almost immediately after jazz musicians arrived in Paris, they began to gather in two of the city’s most important creative neighborhoods: Montmartre and Montparnasse, respectively the Right and Left Bank haunts of artists, intellectuals, poets, and musicians since the late nineteenth century. Performing in these high-profile and popular entertainment districts could give an advantage to jazz musicians because Parisians and tourists already knew to go there when they wanted to spend a night out on the town. As hubs of artistic imagination and experimentation, Montmartre and Montparnasse therefore attracted the kinds of audiences that might appreciate the new and thrilling sounds of jazz. For many listeners, these locations leant the music something of their own exciting aura, and the early success of jazz in Paris probably had at least as much to do with musicians playing there as did other factors. In spite of their similarities, however, by the 1920s these neighborhoods were on two very different paths, each representing competing visions of what France could become after the war. And the reactions to jazz in each place became important markers of the difference between the two areas and visions. Montmartre was legendary as the late-nineteenth-century capital of “bohemian Paris,” where French artists had gathered and cabaret songs had filled the air. In its heyday, Montmartre was one of the centers of popular entertainment, and its artists prided themselves on flying in the face of respectable middle-class values. But by the 1920s, Montmartre represented an established artistic tradition, not the challenge to bourgeois life that it had been at the fin de siècle. Entertainment culture was rapidly changing both in substance and style in the postwar era, and a desire for new sounds, including foreign music and exotic art, was quickly replacing the love for the cabarets’ French chansons. Jazz was not entirely to blame for such changes, of course. Commercial pressures, especially the rapidly growing tourist trade, eroded the popularity of old Montmartre cabarets, which were not always able to compete with the newer music halls and dance halls. Yet jazz bore much of the criticism from those who saw the changes in Montmartre as the death of French popular entertainment. Montparnasse, on the other hand, was the face of a modern Paris. It was the international crossroads where an ever changing mixture of people celebrated, rather than lamented, cosmopolitanism and exoticism in all its forms, especially in jazz bands. These different attitudes within the entertainment districts and their institutions reflected the impact of the broader trends at work in Paris—the influx of foreign populations, for example, or the advent of cars and electricity on city streets as indicators of modern technology—and the possible consequences for French culture. Jazz was at the confluence of these trends, and it became a convenient symbol for the struggle they represented.

45. No Plan Survives First Contact With The Enemy No matter how well you have prepared for something in advance - whether it’s an expedition, an exam, a marriage or a race - when you find yourself in the thick of the action, however good your plan, things happen. Adventure is unpredictable, and you had better learn to be flexible and to swing with the punches, or you will get beaten - it’s as simple as that. Mike Tyson famously once said: ‘Everyone has a plan…until they get punched in the face!’ If the adventure is an exciting one, you can bet your bottom dollar you will get hit by the occasional punch in the face. So prepare for the unexpected, and remember that forewarned is forearmed. Knowing that things will and do go wrong in the heat of battle is actually half the battle. It means that when it happens you are ready for it - you can react fast, stay nimble and you can survive the barrage. We used to say in the military that when things took a turn for the worse you have to ‘improvise, adapt and overcome.’ IAO. It is a good one to remember. It gives us a road map to deal with the unexpected. Being caught out, being caught off guard often makes people freeze - it is a human reaction to shock. But freezing can cost you the edge. So learn to anticipate the unexpected, and when it happens, smile to yourself and treat it as a solid marker that you are doing something right on your road to success. If nothing ever goes wrong then you haven’t been ambitious enough! I also like to say that the real adventure begins in earnest when things go a little bit wrong. It is only then that you get to pit yourself against the worst the wild has to throw at you. When all is going to plan, with all the kit working perfectly and the weather benign, then it isn’t really a test of character. It is easy to be the hero when all is going your way. But when it all goes wrong and life feels like a battle, it is then that we can see what sort of people we have around us. It is only through the hardships that our character becomes forged. Without struggle there can be no growth - physically or emotionally. So embrace the unexpected, feed off it, train yourself to be a master of the curve ball, and you will have built yourself another solid ‘character’ rung on the ladder to success.

A finish line is never an end, it’s a marker that proves your dreams can become realities.

Success is remaining faithful to the process God has laid out for you. Certainly there are significant and enjoyable mile markers along the way. But success is not the mile marker. Success is not the raise, promotion, recognition, Christian home, or wonderful children. Those are simply enjoyable mile markers along the way. Success is staying faithful to the process that contributed to those things becoming a reality. Unfortunately, we often don’t consider ourselves successful until we experience the rewards.

Rule #1: People pay me for the value I create. In other words, if I create value, people will be more than happy to pay me for it. Rule #2. The more I make, the more value I can create. I can invest back into the business, by building systems, creating technology, and hiring new people. Rule #3. Money is a marker that I’m doing the right thing. We’re going to avoid fake proxies of success, like how many people like my Facebook page. Instead, we’ll focus on the ultimate sign that you’ve created something the world wants: Sales.

Whether those who worried were concerned about too many babies or too few babies, women living in poverty or women enjoying power, they all seemed to return to the same conclusion: Marriage must be reestablished as the norm, the marker and measure of female existence, against which all other categories of success are weighed.

Faith does not operate on ultimatums of providing pre-markers to convince you to be courageous on pursuing something; all you have are choices, and its up to you to choose where to invest your faith.

It always came back to the cards, and the cards had predicted Death. Sure enough, Death was all around me, shimmering in the night. The cards had been right on the money, in fact—first the exploding Tower, then the Magician, then Death. All of them appearing in rapid succession, each more alarming than the last. The only card left was—the Devil. What did the Devil card mean this night? More lies, more deceit? Or was its appearance simply a marker, a warning that I was about to head into the underbelly of society, down the well-trod rabbit hole of crime, prostitution, drugs, and death? Maybe. Or maybe I’d soon be enjoying Devil’s Food cake. I voted for Option B.

2. Don't Listen to the Dream-Stealers. The very next thing that will happen, once you write your goals down and start to talk to people about them, is that you will meet those all-too-common cynics who will look at you and smirk. I call them the dream-stealers. Beware: they are more dangerous to mankind than you might ever imagine. In life, we will never be short of people who want to knock our confidence or mock our ambitions. There are lots of reasons why people might want to rain on your parade: perhaps they’re a little jealous that you want more out of life than they might hope for, or they’re worried your success will make them feel inferior. It might be that their motives come from a better place and they just want to spare you the failure, heartache and tears. Either way, the results are the same: you get dissuaded from achieving your dreams and from fulfilling your potential. The key is not to listen to them too hard. Hear them, if you must--out of respect--but then smile and push on. Remember, the key to your future success is going to be embracing the very same thing those dream-stealers are warning you about: the failure, the heartache and the tears. All those things will be key stepping stones on the road to success, and are actually good solid markers that you are doing something right.

we also encounter the issue of accumulation through dispossession. As all of this is going on, producers, workers, peasants, and so forth, are displaced from their own means of production, which is why we see the growth, enormous growth, of slum populations around the world. These are people being thrown off the land. These are people being deprived of their means of subsistence and production. As capital takes over resources, whether those are land resources or other resources, people are displaced. This becomes part of the refugee stream that we see, in addition to conflict and war and so forth. But these processes of accumulation through dispossession are entailing the planet’s population in the capitalist sphere, whether they are directly, as I say, exploited by capitalism or not. C. Wright Mills in his book The Power Elite describes a phenomenon that he calls “the higher immorality,” in which, he says, “in a civilization so thoroughly business-penetrated as America,” money becomes “the one unambiguous marker of success, the sovereign American value” (Mills 1956) You can begin to see how this operates. We become a society, as Mills argues, of organized irresponsibility, where the legal often supplants the moral. We see this in US society and in other places, where litigiousness is a marker of how the society works. Whether something is right or wrong is not nearly as relevant as whether it’s legal or illegal, and sometimes illegality doesn’t even really matter that much. But the idea that we bump up against—this whole notion of morality versus legality—is derived from, as at least Wright Mills argues, this notion of higher immorality.

One of the reasons it is so hard to change careers—or why we change, only to end up in the same boat—is that we can so fully internalize our institutional identities, relying on them to convey our worth and accomplishments to the outside world. Even when we can honestly admit that the external trappings of success—titles, perks, and other markers of prestige—don’t matter much, we can, like Harris, hide from the need for change by telling ourselves how much the company needs us. Like Dan, who postponed vacations and overrode family obligations when the organization needed him, most working adults organize at least some portion of their working lives according to the principle that self-sacrifice is OK when it’s for the good of the institution. Since basic assumptions tend to exist in interlocking clusters, what may often appear to be a work-life balance problem, or an inability to extricate ourselves from unrewarding or overly political working relationships, is in fact our inability to separate our commitment to an organization from being the organization.

Other narratives in the same constellation with the Laffer curve sprang up around the same time. The terms leveraged buyouts and corporate raiders also went viral in the 1980s, often in admiring stories about companies that responded well to true incentives and that produced high profits as a result. One marker for such stories is the phrase maximize shareholder value, which, according to ProQuest News & Newspapers and Google Ngrams, was not used until the 1970s and whose usage grew steadily until the twenty-first century. The phrase maximize shareholder value puts a nice spin on questionable corporate raider practices, such as saddling the company with extreme levels of debt and ignoring implicit contracts with employees and stakeholders. Maximize suggests intelligence, science, calculus. Shareholder reminds the listener that there are people whose money started the whole enterprise, and who may sometimes be forgotten. Value sounds better, more idealistic, than wealth or profit. Use of the three words together as a phrase is an invention of the 1980s, used to tell stories of corporate raiders and their success. The term maximize shareholder value is a contagious justification for aggressiveness and the pursuit of wealth, and the narratives that exploited the term are most certainly economically significant.

Migraine, like my patient Sarah had, also correlates closely to poor metabolic health. In the ENT otology clinic, we often saw this condition and had limited success in treating it. Sufferers of this debilitating neurological disease—about 12 percent of people in the United States—tend to have higher insulin levels and insulin resistance. A comprehensive review of fifty-six research articles identified links between migraine and poor metabolic health, pointing out that “migraine sufferers tend to have impaired insulin sensitivity.” The review supports the “neuro-energetic” theory of migraine. Additionally, evidence suggests that micronutrient deficiencies in key mitochondrial cofactors may also be a contributing factor of migraine. Research has suggested that migraines could be treated by restoring levels of vitamins B and D, magnesium, CoQ10, alpha lipoic acid, and L-carnitine. Vitamin B12, for instance, is involved in the electron transport chain responsible for the final steps of ATP generation in the mitochondria, and studies have indicated that high doses of B12 can help prevent migraine. These micronutrients usually have fewer side effects than other drugs used to treat migraines, making them a promising option for relief, which can be obtained through a diet rich in these micronutrients, or supplementation. Having high markers of oxidative stress, a key Bad Energy feature, is associated with a significantly higher risk of migraine in women, with some studies suggesting that migraine attacks are a symptomatic response to increased levels of oxidative stress. Less painful and more common tension-type headaches are also linked to high variability (excess peaks and crashes) in blood sugar. Hearing Loss The same story of metabolic ignorance in the ENT department unfolded for auditory problems and hearing loss, one of the most common issues presented to our ENT clinic. We’d typically tell our patients that their auditory decline was inevitable, due to aging and loud concerts in their youth, and we would suggest interventions like hearing aids. Yet insulin resistance is a little-known link to hearing problems. If you have insulin resistance, you are more likely to lose hearing as you age because of poor energy production in the delicate hearing cells and blockage of the small blood vessels that supply the inner ear. One study showed that insulin resistance is associated with age-related hearing loss, even when controlling for weight and age. The likely mechanism for this is that the auditory system requires high energy utilization for its complex signal processing. In the case of insulin resistance, glucose metabolism is disturbed, leading to decreased energy generation. The impact of Bad Energy on hearing is not subtle: A study showed that the prevalence of high-frequency hearing impairment among subjects with elevated fasting glucose levels was 42 percent compared to 24 percent in those with normal fasting glucose. Moreover, insulin resistance is associated with high-frequency mild hearing impairment in the male population under seventy years of age, even before the onset of diabetes. These papers suggest that assessing early metabolic function and levels of insulin resistance is essential in the ENT clinic and counseling individuals on the potential warning signs is paramount.

Anticipatory joy drives work addiction—a tendency to work excessively and compulsively. Research6 by Michael Treadway has shown that people who work hard release greater amounts of dopamine (neurotransmitters that are markers of pleasure) in reward areas of the brain.

The moment you announce that bedtime is drawing near, your kids will collectively lose their minds. Successfully getting four little sets of teeth brushed, bodies bathed, pajamas on, and rpm down is about as manageable as simultaneously riding four bucking broncos. Anyone who tells you different is a liar. Progress you make on one front is immediately challenged by at least one child revolting and undoing all your work. At some point someone will inevitably be running down the hall with underwear on her head, wearing a pair of her mom’s high heels. Who just wrote on the wall with that marker, and where did you get that cookie?

What if an A student was a compliant one rather than a learned one? What if the premise that high grades were a predictor of success in life was faulty? What if grades, as the marker of success in school, were a flawed, or worse yet, meaningless

The significant relationships of early adulthood are thus construed as the means to an end of individual achievement, and these "transitional figures" must be cast off or reconstructed following the realization of success. If in the process, however, they become, like Dido, an impediment to the fulfillment of the Dream, then the relationship must be renounced, "to allow the developmental process" to continue. This process is defined by Levinson explicitly as one of individuation: "throughout the life cycle, but especially in the key transition periods . . . the developmental process of individuation is going on." The process refers "to the changes in a person's relationships to himself and to the external world," the relationships that constitute his "Life Structure" (p. 195). If in the course of "Becoming One's Own Man," this structure is discovered to be flawed and threatens the great expectations of the Dream, then in order to avert "serious Failure or Decline," the man must "break out" to salvage his Dream. This act of breaking out is consummated by a "marker event" of separation, such as "leaving his wife, quitting his job, or moving to another region" (p. 206). Thus the road to mid-life salvation runs through either achievement or separation.

If times or ages are mentioned in any activity, please take that as a guideline only. Children will learn the activity as it comes naturally to them. A thirty minute activity may take your child forty minutes. If the suggested age is four, but you have a three year old that can grasp the concepts do not let the recommendations hinder you. This information has not been provided for all activities. This is for a couple of reasons. One being that some of these activities span broader age ranges. The other is that while I find that sometimes it is useful to have an idea of where to start your child, it is better to look at your child in terms of ability and readiness rather than number of years. If times are included, they are meant for assistance in planning your day only. They are not in any way intended to be a marker for your child’s success. The activities have been divided up into the instructional areas of language, mathematics, sensory development and practical life skills. Many of these activities can serve as crossovers, allowing you to introduce multiple concepts at once. Some subjects such as cultural studies or science are included in practical life skills, since at this age that is primarily what those subjects encompass. Where applicable, additional skill areas have been included

In later years a team of geneticists would discover a particular DNA marker (on chromosome 15q) that was responsible for human empathy. A subsequent study would determine that successful heads of state, corporate CEOs, and avid weekend cyclists were missing this particular marker in a much higher proportion than the rest of society.

How did the West produce the intense world of visual signs? What were the underlying forces that favored the multiplication of signs? It is generally understood that there is close relationship between capitalism and Christianity. Especially through the Protestant Reformation the Christian faith produced a huge shift to the individual, a man or woman separated out before God. Sociologists and historians recognize that by means of this ideological transition the individual no longer existed within a containing order of duties and rights controlling the distribution of wealth. Wealth instead became a marker of individual divine blessing. Thus the Reformation led to the typical figure of the righteous business man, the mill-owner who made big profits during the week and with them endowed a church for giving thanks on Sunday. More recently we have the emergence of the ‘prosperity gospel’ which applies the same basic formula to everyone. As they say in these churches, ‘prayed for and paid for’, neatly chiming relationship to God and personal financial success. Thus Christianity has underpinned the multiplication of material wealth for individuals. But a consequence of this is the thickening of the world of signs. Prosperity is a sign of God’s favor, and this is shown, signified, by the actual goods, the houses, clothes, cars, etc. Against this metaphysical background, however, the goods very quickly attain their own social value and produce the well-known contours of the consumer world. Once they were declared divinely willed and good they could act as self-referential signs in and for themselves. People don’t have to give any thought to theological justification to derive meaning from the latest car model, from the good-life associations of household items, refrigerators, fitted kitchens, plasma T.V.s, and now from the plugged-in cool of the digital world, computers, cell phones, iPods, G.P.S. and so on. So it is that our Western culture has developed a class of signs with a powerful inner content of validated desire. You

Or we may feel successful but not be perceived that way by others. Most of us go through life borrowing someone else’s definition of success rather than coming up with our own! Through repeated media exposure, we find it easy to begin using cultural success markers.

Research6 by Michael Treadway has shown that people who work hard release greater amounts of dopamine (neurotransmitters that are markers of pleasure) in reward areas of the brain. Overachievers live off the fleeting high that comes from responding to that one extra e-mail, getting that additional project out of the way, or checking one last thing off the to-do list. Work addiction—unlike addictions involving alcohol or other substances—is rewarded by our culture (with promotions, bonuses, praise, awards, and so on) and therefore considered a good thing despite its long-term negative impact on well-being.7

Now that we have familiarized ourselves with the interface, next up are the PokéStops. PokéStops are points of interest on your map and can be found at historical markers, monuments and other important places near you. They are indicated with blue floating cubes. When you approach a PokéStop, it will change its look. When it’s within the radius of your character, tap the PokéStop to interact with it. Note that when the PokéStop is no longer in range you can no longer interact with it. For instance this could be the case if you are traveling in a vehicle.   After you have successfully opened up the PokéStop, swipe to use it. It will then give you multiple items covered in bubbles. Tap the bubbles to collect your items. You may also exit the PokéStop and you will be given your items instantly.   If you are below level 5, you will receive three to four items consisting of Poké Balls and Pokémon Eggs when activating a PokéStop. When you surpass level 5, PokéStops may give you up to six Poké Balls (including different types of Balls), as well as Revives and Potions. Once you have collected your items, the PokéStop will turn purple on your map and it cannot be used again for at least five minutes.   If you’re near or even right at your maximum capacity when interacting with a PokéStop, you will still receive experience and items and exceed your limit. You’ll now be above your maximum capacity and can no longer use PokéStops.

Givers tend to use more powerless speech, talking with tentative markers like these: • Hesitations: “well,” “um,” “uh,” “you know” • Hedges: “kinda,” “sorta,” “maybe,” “probably,” “I think” • Disclaimers: “this may be a bad idea, but” • Tag questions: “that’s interesting, isn’t it?” or “that’s a good idea, right?” • Intensifiers: “really,” “very,” “quite

adding markers of tentative talk such as hedges, tag questions, and intensifiers earns greater respect and influence.

It’s those subtle moments that make up the greatest grief and joy in life; the lingering in bed a little longer; the laughter with my friends when I should be training; the deep, aching grief I felt when our dog died; the painful vulnerability of loving deeply, of truly and honestly valuing a friendship over some arbitrary marker of success; the shame or guilt I feel when I know I messed up; the courage to admit it and try to repair it. All the things that remind me that I’m not a machine.

Don't get me wrong—leaving the first half of life is scary. Most of us have the first-half-of-life hustle down. The thing is, I'm just never, ever homesick for the first half of my life when I walk away from it. I'm fearful about leaving the rules I understand and the markers for success that I've established for my life. But I don't miss it. Maybe I'm not homesick for the first half of life because it's really never been my true home.

No matter how educated, talented, rich, or cool you think you are, it’s how you treat people that define you in the end. Your true character isn’t measured by your degrees, your intelligence, your bank account, or your style—it’s revealed in the way you interact with others. Kindness, respect, and empathy are the real markers of greatness. You can have all the success, but in the end, it’s not your resume or your wardrobe that people remember—it’s the way you made them feel.

There’s another level at which attention operates, this has to do with leadership, I argue that leaders need three kinds of focus, to be really effective, the first is an inner focus, let me tell you about a case that’s actually from the annals of neurology, there was a corporate lawyer, who unfortunately had a small prefrontal brain tumour, it was discovered early, operated successfully, after the surgery though it was a very puzzling picture, because he was absolutely as smart as he had been before, a very high IQ, no problem with attention or memory, but he couldn’t do his job anymore, he couldn’t do any job, in fact he ended up out of work, his wife left him, he lost his home, he’s living in his brother spare bedroom and in despair he went to see a famous neurologist named Antonio Damasio. Damasio specialized in the circuitry between the prefrontal area which is where we consciously pay attention to what matters now, where we make decisions, where we learn and the emotional centers in the midbrain, particularly the amygdala, which is our radar for danger, it triggers our strong emotions. They had cut the connection between the prefrontal area and emotional centers and Damasio at first was puzzled, he realized that this fellow on every neurological test was perfectly fine but something was wrong, then he got a clue, he asked the lawyer when should we have our next appointment and he realized the lawyer could give him the rational pros and cons of every hour for the next two weeks, but he didn’t know which is best. And Damasio says when we’re making a decision any decision, when to have the next appointment, should I leave my job for another one, what strategy should we follow, going into the future, should I marry this fellow compared to all the other fellows, those are decisions that require we draw on our entire life experience and the circuitry that collects that life experience is very base brain, it’s very ancient in the brain, and it has no direct connection to the part of the brain that thinks in words, it has very rich connectivity to the gastro- intestinal tract, to the gut, so we get a gut feeling, feels right, doesn’t feel right. Damasio calls them somatic markers, it’s a language of the body and the ability to tune into this is extremely important because this is valuable data too - they did a study of Californian entrepreneurs and asked them “how do you make your decisions?”, these are people who built a business from nothing to hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, and they more or less said the same strategy “I am a voracious gatherer of information, I want to see the numbers, but if it doesn’t feel right, I won’t go ahead with the deal”. They’re tuning into the gut feeling. I know someone, I grew up in farm region of California, the Central Valley and my high school had a rival high school in the next town and I met someone who went to the other high school, he was not a good student, he almost failed, came close to not graduating high school, he went to a two-year college, a community college, found his way into film, which he loved and got into a film school, in film school his student project caught the eye of a director, who asked him to become an assistant and he did so well at that the director arranged for him to direct his own film, someone else’s script, he did so well at that they let him direct a script that he had written and that film did surprisingly well, so the studio that financed that film said if you want to do another one, we will back you. And he, however, hated the way the studio edited the film, he felt he was a creative artist and they had butchered his art. He said I am gonna do the film on my own, I’m gonna finance it myself, everyone in the film business that he knew said this is a huge mistake, you shouldn’t do this, but he went ahead, then he ran out of money, had to go to eleven banks before he could get a loan, he managed to finish the film, you may have seen

hunger lust drives many personalities to stand out from the crowd. Members of the new generation seek celebrity status regardless of the cost. We have each engaged in or witnessed someone else’s feeble attempts to define their personal strand of uniqueness derived through acquisitions, nationalism, body piercings, serving as rabid fans of various conglomeration’s sports teams, or by participating in other cult-like activities. Fervently engaging in these or similar misguided identity markers is laughable. Our real identity marker comes from engagement in a succession of character building experiences that integrate the conscious and unconscious mind into a coherent whole. A person defines the contours of their life through a series of life affirming actions, many of which choices initially seem disjointed from any functional significance beyond meeting the needs of our immediate family and mollifying our own selfishness. Akin to silent film actors of yesteryear, we must each play some worthwhile role in the symposium of life which staccato orchestra of spring beauty embraces every nook and cranny of planet Earth.

out-of-bounds marker or the game is hard to play. One of the leading causes of small-business failure is success

One of the key markers that separates childhood from adulthood is in accepting personal responsibility. Becoming an adult says that no one else but you is fully responsible for accepting the consequences that follow your decisions, actions and reactions to events. You are in control of all the consequences, whether positive or negative. Personal responsibility is a crucial skill for learning how to care for yourself and others, as well as living a successful, harmonious existence. It’s a sign and indication that you take 100% ownership of every single aspect of your life, and that you are ready, willing and able to handle all and anything that comes your way.

The negative view of self may not always penetrate conscious awareness and may even masquerade as its opposite: high self-regard. Some people encase themselves in an armored coat of grandiosity and denial of any shortcomings so as not to feel that enervating shame. That self-puffery is as sure a manifestation of self-loathing as is abject self-deprecation, albeit a much more normalized one. It is a marker of our culture’s insanity that certain individuals who flee from shame into a shameless narcissism may even achieve great social, economic, and political status and success

How she had struggled with the language but learned all the while something completely unexpected and equally precious: another way of seeing the world. It was as if material things no longer had any value except as markers of memory; all the familiar concepts of wealth, ambition, power, success, had seemed to fade away, irrelevant. She had been dipped into a rough poetry of everyday life and come out not exactly speaking Russian but versed in an idiom of pleasure in simple things, in sudden friendship, in an almost mystical perception of something deeper and inexplicably vital.

a politics based on cultural values and symbolism rather than bread-and-butter interests. When politics is waged on these grounds, elections are won by those who are most successful at “priming” our latent cultural and psychological markers, not those who best represent our economic interests.

starlings’ cohesion is built on relentless attention to a small set of signals. Basically, each starling tracks the six or seven birds closest to it, sending and receiving cues of direction, speed, acceleration, and distance. That shared habit of intensive, up-close watching, amplified through the flock, allows the group to behave as one. In other words, the reason starling flocks can behave so intelligently has nothing to do with telepathy or magic and everything to do with a simpler ability: to pay focused attention to a small handful of key markers.

The Beatitudes are an insider’s guide to the Christian life, inasmuch as they describe what it’s like to be on mission in the world. Every customary marker of success, Jesus suggests, is wrong—and what appears to be difficult may in fact be a sign of fidelity to building God’s kingdom.

The vision is an inspirational view of the future and lets everyone know toward what goal they are working. The road map provides specific directions for how to transition from a bleak present to a bright future; it outlines specific tasks, milestones, and markers of the path ahead.

How could there possibly be one cookie-cutter definition of success in so many diverse circumstances? And yet, that is the standard we too often apply when we use only external markers to define and measure success. What you need to remember is that it is your unique situation, and God’s will for you in it, that will define what God considers success — both for you personally and for the church, ministry, or team you lead. The challenge every leader and team must face is undertaking the slow and painstaking discernment work to identify precisely what that is for you at any given point in time.

If the forest were covered with ten times the number of blue markers I had seen on my hike, the probability of my getting lost would certainly be reduced. One could imagine the markers organized in a more symbolic shape—say a real arrow, instead of a cryptic linear marker. And if we wish to go that far, why not just paint the more explicit text, "This way," on the rocks in 100-point Helvetica so there's no ambiguity whatsoever? Yet at some point, with the successive addition of more sophisticated elements, the true value of the untainted forest suddenly vanishes.

I enjoy the use of metaphors in my story telling. In weaving them into the narrative structure of my works, I hope coax an active reading experience and to stimulate further discussion among readers as to what they might mean. How those metaphors affect the trajectory of the characters and how they contribute to an engaging experience overall are important markers for a successful story.

If our life isn’t where we want it, it’s because we have experienced an emotional marker that fires repeatedly and has created a system that is working against us.

What might change in your context if you were to define success not by the numbers but as radically doing God’s will? What are the markers of success to which God is calling you and your team? What fears or anxieties are you aware of as you even consider such questions?

birthdays like huge personal successes rather than markers of time.

How do we define our own personal success markers? It boils down to this: what makes us feel that we’ve done our very best?

Now I’d graduated, unsure what I was supposed to do next—continue striving for markers of mainstream success, or retreat to the more comfortable fringes, setting aside the costume of professionalism that still felt ill-fitting, tailored for someone else?