Dreams are difficult to build and easy to destroy.

Getting picked is fine if it happens to you. But it's not a plan. It's a version of waiting and hoping.

While you may have made money doing something a certain way yesterday, there's no reason to believe you'll succeed at it tomorrow.

If you hear my idea but don't believe it, that's not your fault; it's mine. If you see my new product but don't buy it, that's my failure, not yours. If you attend my presentation and you're bored, that's my fault too.

Marketing yourself to a new person often involves being charismatic, clever and quick-but most jobs and most relationships are about being consistent, persistent and brave.

Sometimes, we're so focused on being consistent that we also lower the bar on amazing. After all, the thinking goes, if we can't be amazing all the time, better to reset the expectation to merely good. Which robs us of the ability to (sometimes) be amazing.

The art of good decision making is looking forward to and celebrating the tradeoffs, not pretending they don't exist.