“Potential is not a matter of where you start, but of how far you travel. We need to focus less on starting points and more on distance traveled. For every Mozart who makes a big splash early, there are multiple Bachs who ascend slowly and bloom late.”
“Character is more than just having principles. It’s a learned capacity to live by your principles. Character skills equip a chronic procrastinator to meet a deadline for someone who matters deeply to them, a shy introvert to find the courage to speak out against an injustice, and the class bully to circumvent a fistfight with his teammates before a big game.”
“It’s not about the traits you have—it’s what you decide to do with them. Wherever you are today, there’s no reason why you can’t grow your character skills starting now.”
“Being polite is withholding feedback to make someone feel good today. Being kind is being candid about how they can get better tomorrow.”
“Beating yourself up doesn’t make you stronger—it leaves you bruised. Being kind to yourself isn’t about ignoring your weaknesses. It’s about giving yourself permission to learn from your disappointments. We grow by embracing our shortcomings, not by punishing them.”
“Making progress isn’t always about moving forward. Sometimes it’s about bouncing back. Progress is not only reflected in the peaks you reach—it’s also visible in the valleys you cross. Resilience is a form of growth.”
“Collective intelligence is best served by a different kind of leader. The people to promote are the ones with the prosocial skills to put the mission above their ego—and team cohesion above personal glory. They know that the goal isn’t to be the smartest person in the room; it’s to make the entire room smarter.”
“So, you need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience . . . and that experience reveals little about your potential. The key question is not how long people have done a job. It’s how well they can learn to do a job.”
“We all know that performance depends on more than ability—it’s also a function of degree of difficulty. How capable you appear to be is often a reflection of how hard your task is.”
“Success is more than reaching our goals—it’s living our values. There’s no higher value than aspiring to be better tomorrow than we are today. There’s no greater accomplishment than unleashing our hidden potential.”