Vocation

The old and honorable idea of ‘vocation’ is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted.

Wendell Berry

But that was the pearl

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

The Bright Field, RS Thomas 

All is not lost

…all is not lost. As the earth responds and shows us daily the folly of our ways, there is a growing movement of people who recognize that we have gone very far off course. Increasingly people are realizing that another way is not only possible but necessary for our very survival.

Jacqueline Patterson – Director, NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program

Deepening our own self-understanding

Those of us who attempt to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening our own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. We will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of our own obsessions, our aggressivity, our ego-centered ambitions, our delusions about ends and means.

Thomas Merton

Song

We all have our individual “song”, our unique mission or opportunity in life, whether or not we accept it. As we travel on our journey, that inner song is either released, progressively, or it is further imprisoned. When it is fully expressed, we at last know ourselves, and our purpose. It is joyful. Travelling in the other direction is a journey to obscurity, alienation and misery.

Anthony Seldon, Beyond Happiness

You don’t ever know

They are not new lessons. Never owe any money you can’t pay tomorrow morning. Never let the markets dictate your actions. Always be in a position to play your own game. Never take on more risks than you can handle…Good businesses, good management, plenty of liquidity, always having a loaded gun; if you play by those principles you will do fine no matter what happens. And you don’t ever know what’s going to happen…

Warren Buffett

Say “No” Politely

Getting Better at Saying No Saying “no” can be very difficult for some people, but it is essential. You cannot take on an endless number of commitments and still focus on your priorities. Say “No” Politely, but Firmly and Without Apologizing Remember that saying “no” to less important requests is a way of saying “yes” to what really matters. The time you recoup is worth more than the initial discomfort of saying “no.”

The Daily Startup

A rat race is for rats

A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts, and, before you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat pack. The price is too high.

Jimmy Reid

Something you need

I think if you’re going to start a business, build it around something that you’re interested in and something that you think the world needs because it’s something you need, rather than around something you think will make you money.

Alan Schaf

Values

Values are really important with people who want to make any kind of change. That’s because values operate like a form of compass, which can help us navigate uncertain or new territory.

Rob Archer

Our systemic failure to fail

If I had to sum up the challenge, I’d put it like this. A decade into the 21st century, it has never been clearer that not letting yesterday’s institutions, products, services, “business models,” roles, tasks, assumptions, and beliefs fail — that our endemic, systemic failure to fail — is a titanic roadblock standing in the way of a more authentic, enduring prosperity.

Umair Haque

We are not given a short life but we make it short

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.

Seneca

It’s about balance

Sport provides people with a way of living intensely. For some people, intense living becomes a compulsion… It’s about balance. Without intensity, life has no savour, but without safety, life becomes, for most of us, unliveable. Sport fills the 21st-century shortfall in intensity.

Simon Barnes

Without outside capital

Without outside capital, we have to make do with less … Constraints are a beautiful thing because they force creativity and precision. We don’t have the resources to throw after hit-or-miss hires or strategies. Bootstrapping a business requires a different mentality. It’s taught us to be frugal, hire slowly, and exercise caution as we grew the business. While companies that take funding can do those things, people have a tendency to behave differently when it’s not their money on the line.

Bryan Johnson

Design is the fundamental soul

In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

Steve Jobs

The paradox of happiness

John Stuart Mill once remarked: “Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some other object.” This is the paradox of happiness – if you try too hard to reach it, you’ll never arrive. Henry David Thoreau noticed the same paradox, suggesting that happiness was like a butterfly: “The more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”

Jules Evans

Change can be dangerous

If you’re lucky enough to become an agent of change, it’s incredibly frustrating when other people fail to grasp your ideas – even worse when they reject them out of hand. But you can see why it happens. Change can be dangerous. Often, the bigger you are, the slower you move, the more dangerous change becomes

Richard Branson