When I was 19, I was in a horrific car accident, and it taught me that at the end of our life, we ask all these questions. And my questions, I discovered, were: Did I really live my life? Did I love? Did I matter? And I was unhappy with the answers.

Freedom requires responsibility to choose who we are above and beyond our immediate impulses, needs, and social pressures, so that we can genuinely express the type of person we want to be, live the life we truly want to live, leave the legacy we desire.

Ambition has to be joined with expectancy. A sense that you have a dream for yourself that you believe can happen.

People are remarkably bad at remembering long lists of goals. I learned this at a professional level when trying to get my high-performance coaching clients to stay on track; the longer their lists of to-dos and goals, the more overwhelmed and off-track they got. Clarity comes with simplicity.

A lot of people have the ambition, but they never ask themselves, Do I really believe I can do this?

People say, "I wish I had more motivation today, because then I would try something." But our thinking is backward. The way our brain works is that dopamine - the so-called feel-good chemical - is released the second we actually do something. So the motivation doesn't come before, it comes after.

I think we can all recognize in some way or another that we as a human species, have been granted an incredible gift of intentionality and of consciousness. Perhaps this gift is a hint to how we should conduct our lives.