wisdom 4

Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work. If you don’t, the world will use you for its own purposes.”

~ H.L. Hunt

Don’t let the expectations and opinions of other people affect your decisions. It’s your life, not theirs. Do what matters most to you; do what makes you feel alive and happy. … If you let others tell you who you are, you are living their reality — not yours.” ~ Roy T. Bennett

Don’t waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy,” Roy T. Bennett

Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.” ~ Henry James

The only thing that belongs to us is the present. Even a man who has lived a long life and a man who dies young lose the same thing when they die: the present moment. Do not trade the only thing you own for a worry about a shadow.” ~ Marcus Aurelius

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”

― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most. Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment, for that is the only place where life is actually happening.” ~ Gautama Buddha

Your biggest problem today could be the biggest gift you’ve ever received because it may contain the lesson that will make you successful. If you stop looking for who’s to blame and you start looking for the lesson from your problem sometimes it can transform your life ~ Brian Tracy

When you feel overwhelmed, don’t think about everything you have to do. Pick one small victory and focus your energy on it. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Here are 33 lessons I’ve learned 👇🏾❤️

1. Success is rarely about doing more – it’s about deleting what doesn’t matter.
2. The people you love will always be your best investment.
3. Failure isn’t the opposite of success – it’s the tuition fee.
4. Your biggest opportunities will show up dressed as problems.
5. Growth feels a lot like loss at first.
6. The first thought you have is often the truest. Trust it more.
7. Your health is the foundation under every ambition. Without it, nothing stands.
8. Anger is often just fear in disguise.
9. Discipline is easier than regret.
10. You become unstoppable the day embarrassment stops being a price you fear.
11. Most arguments are two people defending their childhood wound.
12. Confidence is just keeping promises to yourself.
13. There’s no such thing as balance – only priorities.
14. If you want to know what someone values, look at their calendar.
15. Hard conversations compound like investments. Avoiding them compounds like illness.
16. The person you marry is the most important career decision you’ll ever make.
17. Regret is always louder than rejection.
18. Don’t just chase goals. Chase environments that make those goals inevitable.
19. If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it deeply
20. The people who win are the ones who can suffer boredom.
21. Your childhood is an explanation, not a justification.
22. Most timeframes and delays people give you are fake – it’s just “how it’s always been done”. Your job is to push on them to see if they’re made of concrete or paper.
23. The most talented person rarely wins. The most consistent one does.
24. If it costs your peace, it’s too expensive.
25. Do not let the internet tell you how hard you should or shouldn’t work.
26. You don’t rise to your goals. You fall to your systems.
27. Your energy introduces you before your words do. Get right with yourself.
28. Great work is just good work repeated. Be consistent, not perfect.
29. Protecting your time is the highest form of self-care and self-respect.
30. Everything is figure-out-able if you’re willing to look stupid.
31. Fear shrinks when you move toward it.
32. If you can’t change it, change how you see it.
33. Mind your own business.

We are all under a sentence of death, with indefinite reprieves. Why then do we act as if we had ten thousand years in our pocket? If you have a song to sing, sing it now, for the silence is patient and very long.” ~ Leo Tolstoy

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. To lose an hour is to lose a piece of your soul that you can never buy back, no matter how much gold you offer.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do. Nothing else. We are our choices, and every moment is an opportunity to choose differently.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision. One leads to a lesson, the other leads to the slow decay of the soul in a prison of ‘what if’.”

Once the decision is made, do not look back. A man who constantly questions his own choices is like a builder who tears down at night what he built during the day.” ~ Søren Kierkegaard

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. The art of living is the art of elimination.”

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The most important thing in life is to be able to give yourself to a cause that is greater than yourself. If you do not have a hierarchy of values, you will be a slave to your own impulses.” ~ Bertrand Russell

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re too old or too young to do something. Life is about the journey, not the destination, and every moment is an opportunity to start over.” ~ Sophia Loren

The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor. If you prioritize the mediocre, you will become mediocre. Time is the fire in which we burn.” ~ Vince Lombardi

The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood. For your time is the only thing you truly own, and if you spend it in bitterness, you have paid a price that no amount of gold can recover.” ~ Voltaire

I am grateful for my life, even the bits that were difficult. It is a miracle to be here at all, and I think we forget that. We should spend more time being astonished and less time being annoyed.” ~ Judi Dench