"What should I do with my life"
Excerpts...
"He was skilled at minimizing his anguish over everyday struggles, but he still faces them routinely and fought his urges like any of us" pg 5
"We think about destiny sort of like how we feel about inheritance-we covet its fruit but it's sweeter if we earned it ourselves" pg 7
"She warned me that many people use the dream-job-or-nothing goal as a way of ensuring their dreams are never challenged by reality-by hoping for too much, they can preserve their dream as a perfect fantasy" pg 13
"As an ob-gyn she'd seen a lot of women lose their babies in labor. She'd held more dying newborns than she cared to remember. She'd brought a few back to life." Pg 15
"The Question is how we hold ourselves accountable to the opportunity were given. We live in a rich country, so rich that we're blessed with the ultimate privilege: to be true to our individual nature" pg 20
"In other words, if you don't like the question [So, what do you do for a living?] maybe its partly because you don't like the answer" pg 20
"...when you are passionate about what you do, time disappears. That's one of the consistent thing people I've met have been telling me. Time disappears. You don't watch the clock" pg 30
"People have this stupid fantasy that if you're the creator, or the inventor, or the artist, you hand over your creation to businessmen and cash the royalty checks. That's a fantasy. It's irresponsible to their gift. If you have a gift, you should take care of it" pg 42
"Of all the psychological stumbling blocks that keep people from finding themselves, the most common problem is that people feel guilty for simply taking the question seriously...So many people I interviewed around the country felt guilty for obsessing about what kind of work they should do. It felt self-indulgent. They would say things like, 'Poor people, they don't get to choose. And they're still happy. New immigrants, they're ecstatic to have any job at all. You don't see any of them stressing out about who they are. They want to do well' There was something terribly perverse with this mental logic: We should live like poor people? Why? Poor people sure don't want to live like poor people-shouldn't we take their word for it? Besides, I wasn't eve sure this oft-repeated assertion was true. Immigrants go through an enormous challenge to their identity, and the biggest blow to their esteem is getting knocked down several runs on the career ladder. Yes, most simply want to do well-anything that makes money is fine with them-but not all. Some care. Deeply." Pg 61
"To respect Ana's story, you have to understand how Cuban-American culture views social work, and how it views the family. Social work is highly distrusted. Their is nothing wrong with it, but as a system, it is easily corrupted. It hints of Castro. It is not regarded as a noble calling. Family, on the other hand, is more important than God...Ana descended from a line of prominent bankers in Cuba who lost everything to Castro." Pg 64
"Social work didn't make her happy, though. From one nonprofit to another, from city contracts to deferral agencies, she kept running into the same systemic problems. "Nonprofits require you to sell your soul to the politicians. You have to fight for money against other agencies," she said bitterly. "Then I find there is backstabbing everywhere. And they don't really care about the people. Keeping them poor is their business, as long as they keep them poor, they keep getting more grants or bigger budgets." pg 65
"It's a shame if people neglect what they can become" pg 71
"The democrats are traditionally the party of the common worker, but most of the staffers have never met one" pg 74
"Sorting out your vocation is a serious smatter. I've ignored it, because it's too hard. Well, of course it's hard! Serious things are hard!" pg 82
"Farming is a famously tough business...That's including the aid income from the government, which is more than half the total income on most farms" pg 100
"I've seen firsthand the good it can do. I put us into a program for experimental farms. The summer nights here were too hot to grow corn until Monsanto invented a strain for the mid-South. Our seeds are engineered to be worm resistant. Some aren't genetic hybrids, they have on gene scratched out" pg 105
"You can close one door behind you, and inevitably another opens up in front" pg 105
"But success is far more dangerous. If you're successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock in your forever. It is so, so much harder to leave a good thing" pg 114
"but did they have enough to quit and change their life? Sure. They wanted to. Ten times a day they'd fantasize about doing it. But they couldn't. Couldn't seem to cut off that pipeline of cash" pg 120
"As a leader, he's found that to move a mass of people, you absolutely must connect with their emotions. Only a small slice of the world can be persuaded by passionless arguments." pg 123
"There was nothing to stop him but himself" pg 148
"The real challenge is to overcome ones own weaknesses." pg 149
"They'd always given her carte-blanche support-'Whatever you need is fine, no matter whatever it is you need' - but consequently left her in a vacuum to figure this out by herself" pg 157
"In most companies, goals and objectives are set quarterly. These goals are highly measurable, and tied to compensation, but they're awfully short-term. Is it any wonder people jump from job to job in such a culture?" pg 162
"People have a natural tendency not to work on problems where they think they can't make a difference" pg 162
"Russel hasn't let minor setbacks get in his way. His backup do not lead to different destinations, such as 'If I don't get into business school, I'll be a school teacher' His backup plans lead to the same destination, and if you have to arrive late by the back road, that's fine." pg 164
"...change keeps any institution, and any individual, full of life" pg 168
"several times you've said things that make me think you're mistaking intensity for passion. It's a common mistake. Intensity is external; passion invokes something inside you" pg 175
"change on the horizon is not an excuse to avoid getting emotionally involved in the present" pg 180
"Am I avoiding the thing I love so that I can't fail at it?" pg 182
"He'd say 'You want to find yourself? Go look in the mirror. Now get back to work!'" pg 189
"I want my mind to be at ease with my place in the world." pg 211
"Because the hardest thing was not learning to write; the hardest thing was to never give up" pg 233
"At home, at work, at school, there are always a ton of external inputs coaxing you in the direction you're already going. Deadlines, parents chirping in your ear, friends wanting you to go out. Your life has a momentum. Traveling can take you away from all those influences, quiet their din, and allow you a kind of silence to consider who you are as an independent entity" pg 241
"None of this would have flowered if he hadn't challenged himself to write down the standards by which he wanted to live, then let that guide him" pg 244
"But Cambodia and Liberia did not stay democracies for very long" he said "They quickly fell back into the hands of warlords and the military. To the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and to Charles Taylor in Liberia. We learned that democracy cannot sustain itself without an economy, without people having a financial stake in it remaining free. Business is a huge democratizing force in India and northern Asia" pg 250
"Why was I bent on encouraging people to change their lives? Because I've watched my generation stop reading books, stop reading the newspaper, stop voting in local elections? Because I've watched money/salary become a proxy for respect, and then a synonym for respect, and then the only kind of respect that counts? Because I have seen us judge books we have not read, politicians we have not heard, musicians we have not listened to, referendums we have not debated, and fellow citizens we have not met? Because I have seen us torn apart by jealousy for what others our age have accomplished, rather than celebrating those accomplishments?" pg 261
"They appreciate seniority and respect people who've put in the time" pg 264
"Maybe I didn't agree with it, but I found some empathy for what Mark was saying. I'd been on both sides. My ex-wife was from Tacoma, Washington. She had a West Coast feminist mentality. When I introduced her, it was important not to label her as "my wife," because that made her feel like a piece of property. She was her own person. I bought into that philosophy of equals and learned my way around those minefields, but after we got divorced, I was in another universe with Michele, who's from Texas and has very different expectations of how a woman should be treated. It's disrespectful to her if I don't make it clear she is the most important person in my life when I introduce her. I always say, "This is my wife, Michele" pg 265
"Dual ambitions will tear many relationships apart, inevitably, but no couple wants to accept that possibility" pg 266
"Do not wait for the clarity that comes with epiphanies. In the nine hundred plus stories I heard in my research, almost nobody was struck with an epiphany. It was one of my biggest surprises. Most people had a slim notion or a slight urge that they slowly nurtured until it grew into a faint hope which barely stayed alive for years until it could mature into a vision" pg 268
"Nancy's friends can't believe she enjoys going home with the same guy she works with, sees him all day, every day, and doesn't get sick of him. But that probably says something about her friends, and their husbands" pg 278
"That first year stripped him of every notion he'd learned at Yale. "At Yale, we were taught that people in poor cities are poor because of factors outside their control. I used to think that inner-city kids only needed to connect. They needed love and understanding. And so if they were disorderly in class, I would let it go as a way of making them my friend, currying their favor. And they kicked my ass. They abused me. If I gave an inch, they would take a mile. I couldn't connect with them. They did not respond to kindness, they took advantage of it. My class would be continuously disrupted. I learned the hard way. What they need is someone to teach them habits that lead to success later in life. They need someone to tell them they've done something wrong. Kids face a thousand choices, and they need someone to teach them to make the right choices. How to act in social situations, how to take responsibility and not make excuses. I've become much more conservative by working here. It's the last thing I expected. It's much more like how my father raised me, with tough love." pg 288
"It was like his son was sent to him to teach him to pay attention and treasure the moment" pg 316
"He needed the pressure, needed to be pushed, needed rules and standards that were enforced" pg 328
"But in the absence of knowledge, we try to craft theories" pg 331
"Status games and competition for competition's sake were largely the make-work of young people looking to prove something to themselves. If you know your own worth, its easier to handle. I was simply not interested in competing with anyone else" pg 339
"His was a very narrow life. He hadn't learned anything new in several years" pg 348
"...It doesn't require genius or heroics. You'll discover something if you keep looking" pg 351
"He realized that everyone in the sixties who wanted to help Indians was, in fact, making them dependant. When a check shows up every month in your mailbox, you're the one who loses, because you lose your own survival skills. The handout system had turned Indians into eunuchs." pg 354
"Deni walked out of those mountains determined to write a new curriculum that embraced his ethnic identity and emphasized self-reliance. He wrote a business plan that set out his objectives for the next twenty years of his life. He would train himself for five years in four different areas: education, business and banking, indigenous government, and international relations. "I had to learn the white man's ways to save the non-white man's ways," He explained. He stuck to his plan marvelously, five years in each skill set." pg 355
"Deni reinforced so many of the lessons I'd learned during my research. Patience, long-term planning, resilience. That when you embrace your true identity, you will discover a productive power you never imagined. That no Big Picture is too big." pg 358
"But I'd rather help than watch. I'd rather have a heart than a mind. I'd rather expose too much than too little. I'd rather say hello to strangers than be afraid of them. I would rather know all this about myself than have more money than I need. I'd rather have something to love than a way to impress you." pg 360
" 'They want to find work they're passionate about. Offering benefits and incentives are mere compromises. Educating people is important but not enough- far too many of our most educated people are operating at quarter-speed, unsure of their place in the world, contributing too little to the productive engine of modern civilization, still feeling like observers, like they haven't come close to living up to their potential. Our guidance needs to be better. We need to encourage people to find their sweet spot. Productivity explodes when people love what they do. We're sitting on a huge potential boom in productivity, which we could tap into if we got all the square pegs into square holes and the round pegs into round holes. It's not something we can measure with statistics, but it's a huge economic issue. It's a great natural resource that we're ignoring.' The tone in the room shifted. To my surprise, people agreed with me. The value in their companies came from the employees who were passionate about being there. The extra effort came from them. The new ideas came from them. I didn't tell this audience anything they didn't know. I only reminded them of it. In other words, with the wind now at our faces, it's impractical to settle for less than a life we love" pg 364