A Quote by Colin Powell

In the army we are drilled into execution and then supervision, to make sure everything goes the way you planned it. But there is another thing that we do in the military, that I think perhaps isn't done enough in corporate life: As soon as you have made that decision, you start on the contingency planning. Because there is, as we like to say, a thinking, breathing enemy out there, who is not going to let you do just what you want.
Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.
Make a decision and then make it right. There just are no wrong decisions. You could go this way, or that way, and either way will eventually get you to where you want to be. But in the moment you start complimenting yourself on the decision you've made, in that moment, you come back into vibrational alignment with who-you-really-are.
If you think that there are actually covers that we haven't done on 'Glee' that I could then put on an album... We've done everything! Pretty soon we're just going to have to start doing opera and stuff on the show.
I'll listen to certain things that I made back then, and I'm like, 'I wish I could have done this, I would've done that'. When you start out making music, you just want to make something that people will like.
I had arrived years ago in Paris and just wanted to be famous, fast. When you're pretentious like that, and you think you've planned everything perfectly, it's then that everything goes in the opposite way.
I got a chance to have my dream come true, and I wanted to make sure I made the decision as to when I dropped my last album. If I don't feel like this album is an incredible piece of work, then I'm cool with the albums I've done. I don't have to put out another album.
You're playing and you think everything is going fine. Then one thing goes wrong. And then another. And another. You try to fight back, but the harder you fight, the deeper you sink. Until you can't move... you can't breathe... because you're in over your head. Like quicksand.
Most actors don't know what they're going to do next, so you get into this thing where you have to force yourself to have another life outside of acting. And then, as soon as you start something in this sort of normal life that you're trying to live, you get a job. So you have this constant struggle because you want to be able to commit to things and to finish things in your life, but then you also want to be able to act.
So much working, reading, thinking, living to do. A lifetime is not long enough. Nor youth to old age long enough. Immortality and permanence be damned. Sure I want them, but they are nonexistent, and won't matter when I rot underground. All I want to say is: I made the best of a mediocre job. It was a good fight while it lasted. And so life goes.
I've done a bunch of collaborations where it goes well and you finish it, but then you're kind of like, "I just don't like it." And it sits there. It can be awkward, but a real musician understands that you're not always going to make what you want it to be. You can't just polish everything into perfection.
I like the fact that I like to think out-of-the-box. Thinking out-of-the-box goes along with dressing out-of-the-box and living out-of-the-box. If you want to come up with a really original design idea and you want to capture a whole new design direction, perhaps the best way to arrive at that is not by acting and thinking and doing like everybody else. That's all.
[A]s soon as you try and take a song from your mind into piano and voice and into the real world, something gets lost and it's like a moment where, in that moment you forget how it was and it's this new way. And then when you make a record, even those ideas that you had, then those get all turned and changed. So in the end, I think, it just becomes it's own thing and really I think a song could be recorded a million different ways and so what my records are, it just happened like that, but it's not like, this is how I planned it from the very beginning because I have no idea, I can't remember.
It is important to stop being critical and judging ideas as good or bad because I think if somebody doesn't have a lot of experience you worry their idea is going to be bad, it's not going to be good enough, if not going to be active enough and so you can start to think critically about people's suggestions or what they bring to it but once you get out of that and think whatever they come up with is the right thing right now and so I'm just going to build on it just makes everything so much easier and better.
I think, for the good of the country and the fact that you don't want a question coming up every time there's a decision made, [Donald Trump] should basically take himself out of it and just be a passive participant in the sense that he has no decision-making, no involvement and no decisions get made separate from him. Which is the way the way it's done for more Cabinet offices. Or I think all Cabinet offices.
I'm pretty good at thinking about everything - all of my consequences - before I make a decision, and I think about everything that's going to happen because of that decision. I'm a Libra, and I'm very strategic.
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.
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