Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you.

Over time I learned that there are two very different satisfactions that you can have in your life. One is the satisfaction of becoming skilled at something. It almost doesn't matter what the terrain is. There is a deep, soul-feeding resonance in mastery itself, whether in teaching, writing a complicated software program, coaching a baseball team, or marshalling a group of people to start a new business.

Our ideas of what our priorities are shift as we come face-to-face with some of the struggles.

You may not control life's circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them.

The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one's life.

What about regular professionals, who just want to do what they do as well as they can?

We always hope for the easy fix: the one simple change that will erase a problem in a stroke. But few things in life work this way. Instead, success requires making a hundred small steps go right - one after the other, no slipups, no goofs, everyone pitching in.