Reboot Jerry Colonna Quotes

the way to guide is to ask and not to tell.

one of the hallmarks of mental health is the ability to hold conflicting feelings.

If you could give up the need for measurable progress, if you give up the pursuit of purpose and meaning,” I continued, adding, quietly to myself—“and the need to build an exhaustible supply of lemon drops’’—“and then focused on doing what is right and true each day, it feels to me that you’d live in congruency with your truest self, where the meaning of your life was a function of the meaning of each day. And each day, an expression of your life.

Strong back and open heart. This is warrior stance, I tell him. The strong back of fiscal discipline. The strong back of clarity and vision, of drive and direction. The strong back of delegating responsibility and holding people accountable. The strong back of knowing right from wrong. But it’s also the open heart. It’s giving a shit about people, purpose, meaning. It’s working toward something greater than merely boosting your ego, greater than just soothing your worries and chasing your demons away. It’s leading from within, drawing on the core of your being, on all that has shaped you.

My co-founder, Ali Schultz, taught me the wisdom of horses. Horses, with their supernatural ability to use their limbic nervous systems to discern truth and congruency, do not base their choice of the leader of their herd on strength or intellectual wisdom. Nor is their choice based on which member might keep the herd safe from a predator wolf. They choose the one who feels the group best and who cares the most. They choose the horse—usually a mare—who is most capable of holding that care in a way that calms the whole group. They’re marked by the attunement to the inner and outer needs of those they have the honor to serve and lead.

Time and again I’ve watched hearts break open, so that true and authentic leaders can emerge. But that process depends on a brave first step: facing the reality of what is and not being deluded by the powerful, seductive dreams of what can be. Of course, this doesn’t mean there’s no role for dreams. We need dreams. But willfully ignoring what is true is not the same as dreaming. It’s delusion; and delusion leads to terrible decisions and, even worse, the destruction of trust. The first act of becoming a leader is to recognize this being so. From that place, we get to recognize what skills we need to develop and who we really are (and are not) as leaders, and to share our truth in a way that creates authentic, powerful relationships—with our peers, colleagues, and families. Grant us leaders who can do this and we just may create institutions that are less violent to the self, our communities, and our planet.

I was reminded of Joseph Campbell’s thought that the pursuit of purpose and meaning is really a pursuit of aliveness, of rapture.

Turning the pursuit of purpose, mission, and leadership into the means to discover the adult lurking within us requires that we show up with radical authenticity. That “we” includes me. To live up to the belief that the pursuit of leadership requires a pursuit of growing up, we must be willing to work with that which arises in the pursuit.

bird in his hand was worth more than the millions in the bush.

foreword, I was honored but uncertain. I asked, “Why not a mogul, a famous business success?” He replied that this wasn’t an ordinary business book—it reconfigures notions of success itself and ideas of who we are and what would make us happy. It teaches us how, above all things, to be real. The journey laid out is a path to equanimity, or peace, which is priceless. The book is genuinely a transmission, heart to heart. —Sharon Salzberg

This too shall pass,

My friend Brad Feld and I sat on his back porch while his golden retrievers vied for our affection. We spoke of big and small things. We reminisced. We recalled stories from two decades of friendship. We caught up on recent stories, present-day stories, of lives unfolding, hearts breaking, and the gravity that comes from becoming more and more ourselves. “I’m working harder than I’d like,” he tells me as we both nod, recognizing the tendency in each of us to do that. We know that neither of us will ever really stop working; for us, working means thinking, talking, connecting, and creating. “The difference now,” he says, referring to his fifty-something self, “the difference from earlier in my life is simple: I’m no longer striving.” Seat taken, he no longer needs to define himself by what he’s doing. Seat taken, he can allow the sadness of everyday heartbreak—his and that of those he loves—to wash over and through him. Seat taken, the gentle, openhearted warrior emerges, and we laugh and speak of our approaching elder-hood. Taking your seat leads to equanimity. Taking your seat means defining your life.

The goal of this book was to act on you as a coaching session might. The goal was to give you something more useful than answers: the ability to work with the questions, the uncertainties, and the doubts that spring from the dips in life. To show you that you could arrive at your own answers; answers that would be authentic and true to you. At some point you may find doubts arising. At some point, if you’re at all like the rest of us, you may ask yourself if you’re even able to participate in that true adventure of growth. If so, know that the answer is a resounding yes. But there’s a catch. It’s yes, but only if you’re willing to put your head up to the mouth of the demon. In this case, the demon is the underlying lack of belief in your capacity to lead. The demon’s teeth are powerful questions, the answers to which frighten and startle you, accelerating your growth.

Looking back, I see all those subway rides, all that motion, as an attempt to gather lemon drops. My twisted logic went like this: I didn’t have any lemon drops, and therefore felt exhausted and depleted and constantly battled migraines, because I wasn’t doing enough. The answer, therefore, was simple: Do more, faster.