the Ripening

Notes & Quotes: Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

The following are my favorite quotes from J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

Too many young men immune to hard work. Good jobs impossible to fill for any length of time. And a young man with every reason to work—a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way—carelessly tossing aside a good job with excellent health insurance. More troublingly, when it was all over, he thought something had been done to him. There is a lack of agency here—a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself. This is distinct from the larger economic landscape of modern America.
Class and family affect the poor without filtering their views through a racial prism.
At Mamaw Blanton’s, we’d eat scrambled eggs, ham, fried potatoes, and biscuits for breakfast; fried bologna sandwiches for lunch; and soup beans and cornbread for dinner.
In 1960, of Ohio’s ten million residents, one million were born in Kentucky, West Virginia, or Tennessee.
I couldn’t believe that mild-mannered Papaw, whom I adored as a child, was such a violent drunk. His behavior was due at least partly to Mamaw’s disposition. She was a violent nondrunk. And she channeled her frustrations into the most productive activity imaginable: covert war. When Papaw passed out on the couch, she’d cut his pants with scissors so they’d burst at the seam when he next sat down. Or she’d steal his wallet and hide it in the oven just to piss him off. When he came home from work and demanded fresh dinner, she’d carefully prepare a plate of fresh garbage. If he was in a fighting mood, she’d fight back. In short, she devoted herself to making his drunken life a living hell.
Mamaw told Papaw after a particularly violent night of drinking that if he ever came home drunk again, she’d kill him. A week later, he came home drunk again and fell asleep on the couch. Mamaw, never one to tell a lie, calmly retrieved a gasoline canister from the garage, poured it all over her husband, lit a match, and dropped it on his chest. When Papaw burst into flames, their eleven-year-old daughter jumped into action to put out the fire and save his life. Miraculously, Papaw survived the episode with only mild burns.
As jobs disappear in a given area, declining home values trap people in certain neighborhoods. Even if you’d like to move, you can’t, because the bottom has fallen out of the market—you now owe more than any buyer is willing to pay. The costs of moving are so high that many people stay put. Of course, the people trapped are usually those with the least money; those who can afford to leave do so.
Mamaw and Papaw ensured that I knew the basic rules of fighting: You never start a fight; you always end the fight if someone else starts it; and even though you never start a fight, it’s maybe okay to start one if a man insults your family. This last rule was unspoken but clear.
I remember sitting in that busy courtroom, with half a dozen other families all around, and thinking they looked just like us. The moms and dads and grandparents didn’t wear suits like the lawyers and judge. They wore sweatpants and stretchy pants and T-shirts. Their hair was a bit frizzy. And it was the first time I noticed “TV accents”—the neutral accent that so many news anchors had. The social workers and the judge and the lawyer all had TV accents. None of us did. The people who ran the courthouse were different from us. The people subjected to it were not.
I told every person I could that I was headed to California in the summer and, what was more, flying for the first time. The main reaction was disbelief that my uncle had enough money to fly two people—neither of whom were his children—out to California. It is a testament to the class consciousness of my youth that my friends’ thoughts drifted first to the cost of an airplane flight.
All of this talk about Christians who weren’t Christian enough, secularists indoctrinating our youth, art exhibits insulting our faith, and persecution by the elites made the world a scary and foreign place.
I broached this issue with Mamaw, confessing that I was gay and I was worried that I would burn in hell. She said, “Don’t be a fucking idiot, how would you know that you’re gay?” I explained my thought process. Mamaw chuckled and seemed to consider how she might explain to a boy my age. Finally she asked, “J.D., do you want to suck dicks?” I was flabbergasted. Why would someone want to do that? She repeated herself, and I said, “Of course not!” “Then,” she said, “you’re not gay. And even if you did want to suck dicks, that would be okay. God would still love you.”
Most of all I thought about Papaw and me. I thought about the hours we spent practicing increasingly complex math problems. He taught me that lack of knowledge and lack of intelligence were not the same. The former could be remedied with a little patience and a lot of hard work. And the latter? “Well, I guess you’re up shit creek without a paddle.”
“The measure of a man is how he treats the women in his family.”
When Mom came home a few months later, she brought a new vocabulary along with her. She regularly recited the Serenity Prayer, a staple of addiction circles in which the faithful ask God for the “serenity to accept the things [they] cannot change.” Drug addiction was a disease, and just as I wouldn’t judge a cancer patient for a tumor, so I shouldn’t judge a narcotics addict for her behavior. At thirteen, I found this patently absurd, and Mom and I often argued over whether her newfound wisdom was scientific truth or an excuse for people whose decisions destroyed a family. Oddly enough, it’s probably both: Research does reveal a genetic disposition to substance abuse, but those who believe their addiction is a disease show less of an inclination to resist it.
The more harried a customer, the more they purchased precooked or frozen food, the more likely they were to be poor. And I knew they were poor because of the clothes they wore or because they purchased their food with food stamps.
In her more compassionate moments, Mamaw asked if it made any sense that our society could afford aircraft carriers but not drug treatment facilities.
I’d blame large businesses for closing up shop and moving overseas, and then I’d wonder if I might have done the same thing. I’d curse our government for not helping enough, and then I’d wonder if, in its attempts to help, it actually made the problem worse.
During my junior year of high school, our neighbor Pattie called her landlord to report a leaky roof. The landlord arrived and found Pattie topless, stoned, and unconscious on her living room couch. Upstairs the bathtub was overflowing—hence, the leaking roof. Pattie had apparently drawn herself a bath, taken a few prescription painkillers, and passed out. The top floor of her home and many of her family’s possessions were ruined. This is the reality of our community. It’s about a naked druggie destroying what little of value exists in her life. It’s about children who lose their toys and clothes to a mother’s addiction.
This was my world: a world of truly irrational behavior. We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being. We spend to pretend that we’re upper-class. And when the dust clears—when bankruptcy hits or a family member bails us out of our stupidity—there’s nothing left over. Nothing for the kids’ college tuition, no investment to grow our wealth, no rainy-day fund if someone loses her job. We know we shouldn’t spend like this. Sometimes we beat ourselves up over it, but we do it anyway.
Every time the drill instructor screamed at me and I stood proudly; every time I thought I’d fall behind during a run and kept up; every time I learned to do something I thought impossible, like climb the rope, I came a little closer to believing in myself. Psychologists call it “learned helplessness” when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life. From Middletown’s world of small expectations to the constant chaos of our home, life had taught me that I had no control. Mamaw and Papaw had saved me from succumbing entirely to that notion, and the Marine Corps broke new ground. If I had learned helplessness at home, the Marines were teaching learned willfulness.
To laugh and joke with the people I loved most as they scarfed down the meal that I’d provided gave me a feeling of joy and accomplishment that words can’t possibly describe.
I’ve seen far too many people awash in a genuine desire to change only to lose their mettle when they realized just how difficult change actually is.
In the Marines, giving it your all was a way of life.
There’s something powerful about realizing that you’ve undersold yourself—that somehow your mind confused lack of effort for inability.
His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he’s made, and his life will improve only through better decisions. But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask tough questions about himself. There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day.
Social mobility isn’t just about money and economics, it’s about a lifestyle change. The wealthy and the powerful aren’t just wealthy and powerful; they follow a different set of norms and mores. When you go from working-class to professional-class, almost everything about your old life becomes unfashionable at best or unhealthy at worst. At no time was this more obvious than the first (and last) time I took a Yale friend to Cracker Barrel. In my youth, it was the height of fine dining—my grandma’s and my favorite restaurant. With Yale friends, it was a greasy public health crisis.
Nothing compares to the fear that you’re becoming the monster in your closet.
Consider, for instance, Mom’s revolving door of father figures. No other country experiences anything like this. In France, the percentage of children exposed to three or more maternal partners is 0.5 percent—about one in two hundred. The second highest share is 2.6 percent, in Sweden, or about one in forty. In the United States, the figure is a shocking 8.2 percent—about one in twelve—and the figure is even higher in the working class.
Ostensibly, the caseworkers were there to protect me, but it became very obvious, very early in the process, that they were obstacles to overcome. When I explained that I spent most of my time with my grandparents and that I’d like to continue with that arrangement, they replied that the courts would not necessarily sanction such an arrangement. In the eyes of the law, my grandmother was an untrained caretaker without a foster license. If things went poorly for my mother in the courts, I was as likely to find myself with a foster family as I was with Mamaw. The notion of being separated from everyone and everything I loved was terrifying. So I shut my mouth, told the social workers everything was fine, and hoped that I wouldn’t lose my family when the court hearing came.
As Brian Campbell, another Middletown teacher, told me, “When you have a large base of Section 8 parents and kids supported by fewer middle-class taxpayers, it’s an upside-down triangle. There’re fewer emotional and financial resources when the only people in a neighborhood are low-income. You just can’t lump them together, because then you have a bigger pool of hopelessness.” On the other hand, he said, “put the lower-income kids with those who have a different lifestyle model, and the lower-income kids start to rise up.” Yet when Middletown recently tried to limit the number of Section 8 vouchers offered within certain neighborhoods, the federal government balked. Better, I suppose, to keep those kids cut off from the middle class.
Wherever I fell on the American socioeconomic ladder as a child, others occupy much lower rungs: children who cannot depend on the generosity of grandparents for Christmas gifts; parents whose financial situations are so dire that they rely on criminal conduct—rather than payday loans—to put today’s hot toys under the tree.
I assumed that rich people celebrated Christmas just like us, perhaps with fewer financial worries and even cooler presents. Yet I noticed after my cousin Bonnie was born that Christmastime at Aunt Wee’s house had a decidedly different flavor. Somehow my aunt and uncle’s children ended up with more pedestrian gifts than I had come to expect as a child. There was no obsession with meeting a two- or three-hundred-dollar threshold for each child, no worry that a kid would suffer in the absence of the newest electronic gadget. Usha often received books for Christmas. My cousin Bonnie, at the age of eleven, asked her parents to donate her Christmas gifts to Middletown’s needy. Shockingly, her parents obliged: They didn’t define their family’s Christmas holiday by the dollar value of gifts their daughter accumulated.
Public policy can help, but there is no government that can fix these problems for us.
I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.

If you enjoyed the quotes, give it a read!

Notes & Quotes: The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson

The following are my favorite quotes from Jeff Olson's The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness:

I didn't change who I am, because no matter what the gurus and therapists might tell you, I don't believe any of us can really do that. I mean, we are who we are.
For things to be different, I had to do something different.
The shift in my life began happening when I stopped taking it for granted that just because I was an average guy, that meant I was doomed to no more than average results.
You already know how to do everything it takes to make you an outrageous success. That's how you've survived up to this point. And if you can survive, then you can succeed.
Simple productive actions, repeated consistently over time. That, in a nutshell, is the slight edge.
No matter how much information there is, and no matter how good that information is, if the person consuming it doesn't have the right catalyst, the catalyst that will allow them to apply that information effectively, then success will still elude their grasp.
What you need to transform your life is not more information.
There are two prevalent types of attitudes: entitled and value-driven. A value-driven attitude says, "What can I do to help you?" An entitled attitude says, "What have you done for me lately?" An entitled attitude says, "Pay me more, and then maybe I'll work harder." A value-driven attitude says, "I'll work harder, and then I expect you'll pay me more."
Successful people fail their way to the top.
It's never too late to start. It's always too late to wait.
The things you do every single day, the things that don't look dramatic, that don't even look like they matter, do matter. That they not only make a difference -- they make all the difference.
Jim Rohn: The simple things that lead to success are all easy to do. But they're also just as easy not to do.
We're all doing simple things anyway. Unsuccessful people just choose what they think is the path of least resistance.
Read just ten pages of a good book, a book aimed at improving your life, every day.
Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.
Will power is vastly overrated..
There is a natural progression in life: you plant, then you cultivate, and finally you harvest.
In three to five years you can put virtually anything in your life solidly onto the right track.
Waiting for "some day" is no strategy for success, it's a cop-out.
Your ship's not coming -- it's already here. Docked and waiting. You already have the money. You already have the time. You already have the skill, the confidence. You already have everything you need to achieve everything you want. You just can't see it. Why not? Because you're looking in the wrong place. You're looking for the breakthrough, the quantum leap. You're looking for the winning lottery ticket in a game that isn't a lottery.
Any time you see what looks like a breakthrough, it is always the end result of a long series of little things, done consistently over time. No success is immediate or instantaneous; no collapse is sudden or precipitous. They are both products of the slight edge.
Our entire health crisis is nothing but one set of little decisions, made daily and compounded daily, winning out over another set of little decisions, made daily and compounded daily.
Liberty in the modern world (assuming you don't live in North Korea or some other pocket of political oppression) means finances. If you don't have money handled, you don't live free. Financial health gives you freedom; freedom to follow your passions, chase your pursuits, develop your skills and talents and gifts, to fulfill the promises of life itself.
Once you do what it takes to raise your everyday level of happiness, then you will become more successful, then you'll become healthier, then you'll find that relationship. The more you raise your own happiness level, the more likely you'll start achieving all those things you want to achieve.
If you take a pair of average, loving parents and tell them, "I can make your child more personally developed, or I can make your child rich -- which would you prefer?" most likely they would say, "Rich." But if you say, "I can make your child either rich, or happy," then nine times out of ten they'd immediately choose happiness.
Comparing happiness, which virtually everyone wants, and personal development, which only 1 out of 10 at best are really interested in, at the heart of it we're really talking about the same thing. When you read all the research about what it takes to raise your level of happiness, you begin to realize that these scientists are describing exactly the same kinds of behaviors that all the personal development teachers have been advocating for decades, just applied in a slightly different context.
Your attitude is the thing that translates your abstract understanding (philosophy) into your concrete actions. It's like a gigantic synapse, where a nerve impulse has to make a biochemical leap from one nerve ending to another -- and your attitude is what determines the quality of that leap.
Another word for attitude is emotions, that is, how you feel.
Shawn Achor's five happy habits:

Each morning write down three new things you're grateful for.
Journal for two minutes a day about a positive experience from the past 24 hours.
Meditate daily for a few minutes.
At the start of each day, write an email to someone praising or thanking them.
Get fifteen minutes of simple cardio exercise a day.

Even if I was surrounded by people who were more talented than I was, I knew I could surpass them just by consistently showing up and doing the work.
Everyone wants to know that they make a difference in the world -- that their lives matter.
Jerry Wilson describes how he based his revolutionary "exceptional customer service" strategy on a single earthshaking statistic he'd discovered in marketing research: the average customer will tell three people about a positive experience with a business or product, but will talk about a negative experience to thirty-three people.
When you don't take responsibility, when you blame others, circumstances, fate, or chance, you give away your power.
Don't complain about what you allow.
It seems most people live with one foot in the past, saying, "If only things had been different, I would be successful." And the other foot in the future saying, "When this or that happens, I will be happy and successful." And they completely ignore the present -- which is the only place where life actually occurs.
Review the past, but only for the purpose of making a better plan. Review it, understand and take responsibility for the errors you've made, and use it as a tool to do differently in the future.
Our world can be harsh on people who talk about an improved reality. Visions and visionaries make people uncomfortable.
The size of the problem determines the size of the person. You can gauge the limitations of a person's life by the size of the problems that get him or her down. You can measure the impact a person's life has by the size of the problems he or she solves...the size of your income will be determined by the size of the problems you solve, too.
There are only two possibilities. Either you let go of where you are and get to where you could be, or you hang onto where you are and give up where you could be. You are either going for your dreams or giving up your dreams. Stretching for what you could be, or settling for what you are. There is simply no in-between.
Being contrary for contrary's sake is just another type of conformity: you're still a slave to the majority, only expressed in oppositional terms.
Have you ever seen a statue erected for a critic?
At the average funeral, I read, about ten people cry. I couldn't believe it. I had to read the paragraph over again to make sure I'd gotten it right. "Ten people -- that's it? You mean I go through my entire life, spend years enduring all those trials and tribulations and achievements and joys and heartbreaks -- and at the end of it there are only ten people in the world who care enough to show up and cry?" I went on to the next paragraph. It got worse. Once those ten (or fewer) people had yanked their hankies and honked their schnozzes and my funeral was over, the number one factor that would determine how many people would go on from the funeral to attend the actual burial would be... the weather. The weather? Yes. It if happened to be raining 50% of the people who attended my funeral would decide maybe they wouldn't go on to attend my burial after all, and just head home.
Mastery begins the moment you step onto the path. Failure begins the moment you step off the path.
If you are one the 58% who never picks up a book once high school is behind you, what's the difference between you and the billion souls around the world who couldn't read that book even if they did pick it up? No difference at all.
The question is, though, are you developing yourself? Are you building your dream, or only your boss's?
In the course of my businesses I'm often approached by people wanting to know the secret to success, the magic formula. "What's the one thing I can do," they'll say, "to guarantee my success?" My answer is always the same. "Be here, actively immersed in the process, one year from now."
Let's say you were able to match an Apollo rocket's degree of accuracy in the pursuit of your own goals: that would mean you'd be perfectly on target and on course no more than ten days in any given year. The next time you're giving yourself a hard time because you feel like you've gotten off track, think about the Apollo program, and give yourself a break.
You, through the power of your own thoughts, are the most influential person in your life. Which means there is nobody more effective at undermining your success -- and nobody more effective at supporting your success.
The principle aim in self-investment is to train how you think and what you think.
The wisest investment you can make is to invest in your own continuous learning and development.
Find someone else who already achieved mastery in the area you're looking at, and model your behavior based on their experience.
The quickest and surest path to raising the quality of your life is to start handing out with people who have been there and done that.
You can define a society by the heroes it admires. You can also define a person by the heroes he or she aspires to emulate.
Become acutely aware of who you are modeling.
We are all either building our own dreams or building somebody else's. To put a sharper point on it, we're either building on our dreams -- or building our nightmares.
Longevity experts are now telling us that keeping a positive outlook is just as critical a factor to health and long life as diet and exercise!
The best thing I can do to serve the world around me is to keep myself in a state where I can best contribute -- and I can't do that if I'm being dragged down by an environment of cynicism and self-pitying complaint. I want to spend my time with people who have an infectiously positive attitude, who bring energy and vitality to the table and who brighten the room.
Casual relationships deserve casual time -- not quality time.
It's far more effective to take one business-building action every day for a week, than to take seven, or ten, or even two dozen all at once and then take the rest of the week off. People who do the first, week in and week out, build a successful business; people who do the second, don't -- even if they actually take a greater number of those business-building actions than the first group.
Each and every incomplete thing in your life or work exerts a draining force on you, sucking the energy of accomplishment and success out of you as surely as a vampire stealing your blood.
Give fifteen minutes to completing something every day.
Here's a powerful exercise: Instead of writing down what you're going to do (chances are you've been doing that your whole adult life anyway, and it doesn't make you any better at doing them), write down at the end of the day what you did do that day. What actions did you take today that made you successful? Did you read ten pages of a good book? Did you eat healthy food and get some good exercise? Did you engage in positive associations? Did you do the things you need to do to be successful in your business? Did you tell somebody, "I appreciate you?"
It's tough to get rid of the habit you don't want by facing it head on. The way to accomplish it is to replace the unwanted habit with another habit that you do want.
According to Woody Allen, 80% of success is showing up. That's a philosophy I subscribe to wholeheartedly -- but I would add two words: 80% of success is showing up every day.
If you will commit to showing up consistently, every day, no matter what, then you have already won well more than half the battle. The rest is up to skill, knowledge, drive, and execution.
People who consistently practice seeing opportunities instead of problems, who focus on the best in a situation rather than the worst, who notice other people's better qualities and look past their weaker ones, who see the glass as at least half-full in every circumstance, are happier, more creative, earn more money, have more friendships, have better immune response, have less heart disease and strokes, have better and longer-lasting marriages, live longer, and are more successful in their careers.
Attitude creates actions create results create destiny.
Of all the factors possibly influencing health, vitality, and longevity, [Dan] Buettner and his team compiled a list of nine. The people:

Live an active life.
Cultivate purpose and a reason to wake up every morning.
Take time to de-stress.
Stop eating when they are 80% full.
Eat a diet emphasizing vegetables, especially beans.
Have moderate alcohol intake (especially dark red wine.)
Play an active role in a faith-based community.
Place a strong emphasis on family.
Are part of a like-minded social circles with similar habits.

Showing up is essential. Showing up consistently is powerful. Showing up consistently with a positive outlook is even more powerful. But doing all that for a week...is just doing it for a week.
No matter what you're trying to accomplish, you need to ask yourself, am I willing to put in 10,000 hours or more to get what I want?
Anything worth having is worth paying that price for.
There aren't many millionaires who bowl over 100. Why not? Because they left the bowling league behind to build their fortunes.
Whatever price you pay, there's a bigger price to pay for not doing it than the price for doing it. The price of neglect is much worse than the price of discipline. In fact, no matter what price you pay for success, the price for failure is brutal by comparison. It may take five years and 10,000 hours to put your success on track, but it takes a lifetime to fail.
The aspect of integrity that is most applicable to the slight edge is this: what you do when no one is watching.
Here are seven powerful, positive slight edge habits:

Show up: be the frog who jumps off the lily pad.
Show up consistently: keep showing up when others fade out.
Cultivate a positive outlook: see the glass as overflowing.
Be committed for the long haul: remember the 10,000-hour rule.
Cultivate a burning a desire backed by faith: not hoping or wishing -- knowing.
Be willing to pay the price: sometimes you have to quit the softball team.
Practice slight edge integrity: do the things you've committed to doing, even when no one else is watching.

For a goal to come true: You must make it specific, give it a deadline, and write it down. You must look at it every day. You must have a plan to start with.
Someday...the day that never comes.
The point is not to come up with the brilliant blueprint that is guaranteed to take you all the way to the finish line. The point is simply to come up with a plan that will get you out of the starting gate.
You have to start with a plan, but the plan you start with will not be the plan that gets you there.
If you start with a plan, and you practice those simply daily disciplines, then one plan leads to the next plan, which leads to the next plan, which leads to the next.
What one simple, single, easy-to-do activity can you do, day in and day out, that will have the greatest impact on your health, your happiness, your relationships, your personal development, your finances, your career, and your impact on the world?
They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. I don't know about that, but I do know this: it is the way to his destiny. That is perhaps your most important choice, day by day and hour by hour: whether to let your eating and physical activity build your fondest dreams -- or dig your grave.
Your happiness is effected by:

Your outlook, that is, how you choose to view the events and circumstances of your everyday life.
Specific actions with positive impact -- things like writing down three things you're grateful for, or sending appreciative emails, doing random acts of kindness, practicing forgiveness, meditating, and exercising.
Where you put your time and energy, and especially investing more time into important relationships and personally meaningful pursuits.

Your income will never long exceed your own level of personal development.
James Allen put it this way: You will become as small as your controlling desire, or as great as your dominant aspiration.
What kind of goal would you set for one hundred years from now? What kind of impact can you imagine yourself having on the world that will last long after your own life has run its course? What will people remember you for after you have come and gone? What do I want my life to mean?
Abraham Lincoln spoke about taking twice as long to sharpen the axe as to hack at the tree. In your life, you are the axe; the slight edge is how your sharpen it. Sharpen yourself and pursue your path through those simple, small, easy disciplines, and compounded over time, they will take you to the top.
Do one simple daily discipline in each of these seven key areas of your life -- your health, your happiness, your relationships, your personal development, your finances, your career, and your impact -- that forwards your success in each of those areas.
Make a habit of doing some sort of daily review of these slight edge activities, either through keeping a journal, a list, working with a slight edge buddy, a coach, or some other regular, consistent means.
Spend high-quality time with men and women who have achieved goals and dreams similar to yours; in other words, model successful mentors, teachers, and allies, and do it daily, weekly and monthly...

Notes & Quotes: Life's Little Instruction Book by H. Jackson Brown

The following are my favorites from H. Jackson Brown's Life's Little Instruction Book: Simple Wisdom and a Little Humor for Living a Happy and Rewarding Life.

Compliment three people every day.
Remember other people's birthdays.
Overtip breakfast waitresses.
Life is short. Eat more pancakes and fewer rice cakes.
Learn to make great chili.
Drive inexpensive cars, but own the best house you can afford.
Be forgiving of yourself and others.
Ask for a raise when you feel you've earned it.
Teach some kind of class; be a student in some kind of class.
Plant a tree on your birthday.
Donate two pints of blood every year.
Treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated.
Don't postpone joy.
Write thank-you notes promptly.
Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen every day.
Don't waste time learning the "tricks of the trade." Instead, learn the trade.
Buy vegetables from truck farmers who advertise with handlettered signs.
Surprise loved ones with little unexpected gifts.
Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for every area of your life.
Never mention being on a diet.
Admit your mistakes.
Use your wit to amuse, not abuse.
Be brave. Even if you're not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.
Demand excellence and be willing to pay for it.
Give to charity all the clothes you haven't worn during the past three years.
Never hire someone you wouldn't invite home to dinner.
Choose a charity in your community and support it generously with your time and money.
Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with the big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts.
Don't take good health for granted.
Forget the Joneses.
When you want to teach a lesson, tell a story.
Refill ice cube trays.
Never invest more in the stock market than you can afford to lose.
Make it a habit to do nice things for people who'll never find out.
Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it's just a daisy in a jelly glass.
Think big thoughts, but relish small pleasures.
Lend only those books you never care to see again.
Never start a business with someone who has more troubles than you.
Learn how to read a financial report.
Use credit cards only for convenience, never for credit.
Take a brisk thirty-minute walk every day.
Learn to identify local wildflowers, birds, and trees.
Keep a fire extinguisher in your kitchen and car.
Don't buy expensive wine, luggage, or watches.
Learn to listen. Opportunity sometimes knocks very softly.
Wear audacious underwear under the most solemn business attire.
Never deprive someone of hope, it might be all they have.
When people are relating important events that happened to them, don't try to top them with a story of your own. Let them have the stage.
When starting out, don't worry about not having enough money. Limited funds are a blessing, not a curse. Nothing encourages creative thinking in quite the same way.
Don't buy cheap tools.
Keep a flashlight and extra batteries under the bed and in the glove box of your car.
Skip one meal a week and give what you would have spent to a homeless person.
Get acquainted with a good lawyer, accountant, and plumber.
Talk slow but think quick.
Strive for excellence, not perfection.
Avoid negative people.
Don't waste time responding to your critics.
Be original.
Never take action when you're angry.
Read carefully anything that requires your signature. Remember, the big print giveth and the small print taketh away.
Give people a second chance, but not a third.
When you're proud of your children, let them know it.
Be your wife's best friend.
Do battle against prejudice and discrimination wherever you find it.
Wear out, don't rust out.
A person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.
Never criticize the person who signs your paycheck. If you are unhappy with your job, find another one.
Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.
Determine the quality of a neighborhood by the manners of the people living there.
Look for ways to make your boss look good.
Show respect for all living things.
Choose work that is in harmony with your values.
Give your best to your employer. It's one of the best investments you can make.
Commit yourself to constant self-improvement.
When complimented, a sincere "thank you" is the only response required.
Spend less time worrying who's right and more time deciding what's right.
Praise in public; criticize in private.
Don't major in minor things.
Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret.
Never tell anyone they look tired or depressed.
Never pay for work before it's completed.
Keep a daily journal.
Teach your children the value of money and the importance of saving.
Remember the three R's: respect for self, respect for others; responsibility for all your actions.
Respect tradition.
Never cut what can be untied.
Hire people smarter than you.
Never ask a lawyer or accountant for business advice. They are trained to find problems, not solutions.
Take family vacations whether you can afford them or not. The memories will be priceless.
When meeting people for the first time, resist asking what they do for a living. Enjoy their company without attaching any labels.
Every day show your family how much you love them with your words, with your touch, and with your thoughtfulness.
Beware of the person who has nothing to lose.
Leave everything a little better than you found it.
Arrive at work early and stay beyond quitting time.
When facing a difficult task, act as though it is impossible to fail. If you're going after Moby Dick, take along the tartar sauce.
Fill your gas tank when it falls below one-quarter full.
Don't expect money to bring you happiness.
Remember that overnight success usually takes about fifteen years.
When paying cash, ask for a discount.
Never underestimate your power to change yourself. Never underestimate your power to change others.
Practice empathy. Try to see things from other people's point of view.
Discipline yourself to save money. It's essential to success.
Get and stay in shape.
Find some other way of proving your manhood than by shooting defenseless animals and birds.