We live in a paradox: connected electronically but disconnected interpersonally. However, when you recognize the problem, you can take steps to correct it. You can create an emotionally connected environment anywhere if you try hard enough.

No work is "most important." Or, put differently, all work is important but work done poorly becomes most important.

Fear shuts people down. When you feel safe, your brain is free to soar. When you feel in danger, your brain goes into survival mode, not peak performance mode. Too many people feel unsafe at work, under toxic pressures, and stretched too thin. They are literally about to snap. Within an atmosphere of trust and what I call connection, a supervisor can create conditions under which people's brains can set aside fear and fly high.

Modern loneliness is an extraverted loneliness, in which the person is surrounded by many people and partakes of much communication but feels unrecognized and more alone and, although connected technically, isolated and even estranged emotionally.

Young people beginning a career need to realize that there are lots of "buses" in life. More often than not, selecting which one to be on determines success or failure, joy or despair.

It is the greatest feeling in the world. When we shine, we defy death for the moment. We enter into a state of immersion in the craft we ply, a state in which we become one with what we do.

I would suggest that excellence occurs in direct proportion to necessary suffering, but in inverse proportion to unnecessary suffering or toxic stress. Connection is the best antidote to unnecessary suffering.