When you walk around braced for impact, you're dramatically decreasing your chances. Your chances to avoid the outcome you fear, your chances to make a difference, and your chances to breathe and connect.

By being remarkable, being genuine, you can be worth connecting with. And you don't have to have it figured out perfectly the first time - you can adjust.

Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.

Art is what we're doing when we do our best work.

Canoeing was hard and scary, and the wind could blow you across the lake if you did it wrong. After a year of not doing it right, I could talk to people and get them to sit up straight, take different kinds of chances, to breathe differently, to engage in the moment in the boat. And I changed them, and I changed me in the process.

Positive thinking is hard. Worth it, though.

The question isn’t whether or not you should wait to be picked, the question is whether you care enough to pick yourself.