“Busy is a decision… Of the many, many excuses people use to rationalize why they can’t do something, the excuse ‘I am too busy’ is not only the most inauthentic, it is also the laziest. I don’t believe in ‘too busy.’ Like I said, busy is a decision. We do the things we want to do, period. If we say we are too busy, it is shorthand for ‘not important enough.’ It means you would rather be doing something else that you consider more important… If we use busy as an excuse for not doing something what we are really, really saying is that it’s not a priority.”
“You don’t find the time to do something; you make the time to do things.”
“We are now living in a society that sees busy as a badge… The problem is this: if you let yourself off the hook for not doing something for any reason, you won’t ever do it. If you want to do something, you can’t let being busy stand in the way, even if you are busy. Make the time to do the things you want to do and then do them.”
“There is no shame in feeling shame… Almost everyone does.”
During one of her interviews with a guest named Dani Shapiro:
“… we started to talk about the role of confidence in success. She went on to state that she felt that confidence was highly overrated. I was instantly intrigued. She explained that she felt that most overly confident people were really annoying. And the most confident people were usually arrogant. She felt that overexuding that amount of confidence was a sure sign that a person was compensating for some type of internal psychological deficit...”
“… Dani declared that courage was more important than confidence. When you are operating out of courage, you are saying that no matter how you feel about yourself or your opportunities or the outcome, you are going to take a risk and take a step toward what you want. You are not waiting for the confidence to mysteriously arrive. I now believe that confidence is achieved through repeated success at any endeavor. The more you practice doing something, the better you will get at it, and your confidence will grow over time.”
“You don’t just find and get a great job. You find and win a great job against a pool of very competitive candidates who may want that job as much, if not more, than you do. Finding and winning a great job is a competitive sport that requires as much career athleticism and perseverance as making it to the Olympics… There is very little luck involved. Winning your great job is about hard work, stamina, grit, ingenuity, and timing. What might look like luck to you is simply hard work paying off.”
Questions to Ask Yourself:
Am I spending enough time on looking for, finding, and working toward winning a great job?
Am I constantly refining and improving my skills? What can I continue to get better and more competitive at?
Do I believe that I am working harder than everyone else? If not, what else can I be doing?
What are the people who are competing with me doing that I am not doing?
Am I doing everything I can – every single day – to stay in “career shape?” If not, what else should I be doing?
“No one cares if you are a people person. Have a point of view, and share it meaningfully, thoughtfully, and with conviction.”
“I do not believe in work-life balance. I believe that if you view your work as a calling, it is a labor of love rather than laborious. When your work is a calling, you are not approaching the amount of hours you are working with a sense of dread or counting the minutes until the weekend. Your calling can become a life-affirming engagement that can provide its own balance and spiritual nourishment. Ironically, it takes hard work to achieve this.”
“… if you are looking for work-life balance in your 20s or 30s, you are likely in the wrong career. If you are doing something you love, you don’t want work-life balance.”
“Avoid compulsively making things worse.”