No matter how bad things are, you can always make things worse.

When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a very bad place to be. Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care.

Anybody can get chewed out. It's the rare person who says, oh my god, you were right. As opposed to, no wait, the reason is... We've all heard that

You will not find your passion in things and you will not find your passion in money. The more things and the more money you have, the more you will look around and use that as the metric and there will be someone with more.

Everyone has to contribute to the common good. To not do so can be described in one word: selfish.

A lot of people want a shortcut. I find the best shortcut is the long way, which is basically two words: work hard.

Another way to be prepared is to think negatively. Yes, I'm a great optimist. but, when trying to make a decision, I often think of the worst case scenario. I call it 'the eaten by wolves factor.' If I do something, what's the most terrible thing that could happen? Would I be eaten by wolves? One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist, is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose. There are a lot of things I don't worry about, because I have a plan in place if they do.