#868 How does one become a linchpin?

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.

Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.
The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.

Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.

I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.

The job is not the work.  ~ Seth Godin

- How does Godin distinguish between a job and work?
- To what extent do you utilize 'your art' in the endeavors of your day?
- Where can you cultivate your personal attributes as a linchpin?

#867 Joy from cliffs of despair

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.  ~ John Keats

Joy and sorrow are inseparable. . . together they come and when one sits alone with you . . remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.  ~ Kahlil Gibran

Words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.  ~ Jodi Picoult

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.  ~ Mother Teresa

For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.  ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

- What beauty have you experienced recently which brought joy?
- How can you best balance the joys and sorrows of life?
- How can you cultivate some happiness even amidst despair?

#866 To accomplish great things

Make sure you visualize what you really want, not what someone else wants for you.  ~Jerry Gillies 

Visualization is daydreaming with a purpose.  ~Bo Bennett

Visualize this thing that you want, see it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blue print, and begin to build.   ~ Robert Collier
 
To accomplish great things we must first dream, then visualize, then plan... believe... act!..   ~ Alfred A. Montapert

See yourself confronting your fears in your mind’s eye and handling those fears like a champ.   ~Les Brown

Tags: quotes about visualize, visualizing, planning, goals, life 

- What do you really want?
- When have you used dreaming/visualization/planning/believing/acting to help accomplish goals?
- To what extent could you use visualization to help overcome one of your fears?

#865 Stretched by a new idea

One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

An idea is salvation by imagination.  ~Frank Lloyd Wright

Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.  ~Sam Walton

Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.  ~Alfred North Whitehead

Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin; it should make you jump up and do something.   ~ E. L. Simpson 

Tags: quotes about ideas, life

- What several ideas stretched your perspectives/understanding of life?
- In what ways have several ideas been liberating for you?
- What idea(s) could motivate you to act?

#864 Growing light

I will love the light for it shows me the way. Yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.  ~ Og Mandino

We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light.  ~ Mary Dunbar

There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.   ~ Edith Wharton

We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own.  ~Ben Sweetland

People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.  ~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross 

- How much light do you emanate?
- What shadows lurk in your life?
- How can you cultivate the light within?




#863 A little farther up the shore

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.  ~ Michael Caine

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.  ~ Cicero

When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange - my youth.  ~ Sara Teasdale

I never felt settled or calm. You can't really commit to life when you feel that.  ~ Angelina Jolie

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.  ~ Willa Cather

The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.  ~ Cyril Connolly

Tags: quotes about calm, life

- How vigorously are you paddling through life?
- What causes you some anxiety?
- To what extent do you try to seek harmony/balance through the turbulence?

#862 A new world every heart beat

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.  ~ William James

To be able to forget means sanity.  ~ Jack London

To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius. And easier. Because it's true. It's a new world every heart beat.  ~ Joyce Cary

Blessed are those who give without remembering and take without forgetting.  ~ Elizabeth Bibesco

- What incidents in your life are worth forgetting?
- How can forgetting past wrongs be liberating?
- In what situation(s) might you be able to give without remembering your good deeds?