My Best of July

1.  Three qualities that have nothing to do with talent or intelligence, but can make a dramatic impact on your results:
   • Cheerful: You are pleasant to work with and generally raise the energy level in the room.
   • Accountable: You feel personally responsible for what you want to accomplish. It is not someone else's job. It's your job.
   • Adaptable. You can find alternate paths to success. You don't need things to be a certain way to be happy.
2. Start with the best opportunity available to you. If you make the most of what you have in front of you right now, better opportunities will become available as you go along.
3. Whenever you are stuck searching for the optimal plan, remember: Getting started changes everything
4. Strangely, life gets harder when you try to make it easy. Exercising might be hard, but never moving makes life harder. Mastering your craft is hard, but having no skills is harder. Uncomfortable conversations are hard, but avoiding every conflict is harder. Easy has a cost.
5. Be forgiving with your past self. What's done is done. Take the lessons with you and release the guilt. Be strict with your present self. Win the moment in front of you right now. Be flexible with your future self. There are many paths to success. You don't need life to be a certain way to live well.
6. f I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it
7. After a lifetime of blaming others, it is exceedingly difficult for us to finally acknowledge that the only person who has consistently been in all the scenes of that long-running soap opera we call our life is us, and, as a necessary corollary, that we bear some large responsibility for how the drama is turning out
8. Chase your desired lifestyle, not your desired title. People are blinded by status and labels. Once you release the need for a specific title, there is almost always an easier path to living your preferred lifestyle
9. Take great care to avoid mistakes when the decision is hard to reverse. But! If you make a mistake that is hard to reverse, there is no sense beating yourself up about it. Your responsibility is to make the best next choice given your current position. You must always make the most of the situation you are in. Next play mentality
10. Many frustrations are the result of unspoken expectations. Before you get too annoyed, make sure you are clearly expressing your thoughts.