We don't know where we'll end up, but making moments matter - taking a step back to see something from a different vantage point and investing in your core values - can lead to a world of surprises.
We have our core values as a family, and we've kept them, that's our number one priority is making sure our kids know that so they also will have the same values, no matter what circumstances come your way.
Making something secret makes it too important, elevates it to the point where it runs your life from the shadows. If you hide what's at your core from other people for too long, sooner or later you end up hiding it from yourself and waking up with no idea of who you are.
On stage, everyone stays put; the vantage point is always the vantage point, and you have to play to the size of the house. And of course, on film, there's different angles, different shots, so that determines how animated or how still you must be.
Forget about willpower. It's time for why-power. Your choices are only meaningful when you connect them to your desires and dreams. The wisest and most motivating choices are the ones aligned with that which you identify as your purpose, your core self, and your highest values. You've got to want something, and know why you want it, or you'll end up giving up too easily.
Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point.
One of the core values of the startup world is that you must have a list of core values. Like all abstract ideas, they're easy to dream up and tricky to implement.
When you are a child, your father is God to you. Then, as you grow up, you have different gods. You change. But does it really matter? All of the roads lead to the same place, and if you are going in the right direction, it doesn't matter what you are taking - a jet plane or a cart pulled by a donkey.
The most important step of all is the first step. Start something! What if that idea you have in the back of your head is a really good one, one that might end up helping tens of thousands of people? You owe it to the world ot act. Or maybe it will help only a few people: The same advice applies. If you don't do it, you are missing out on something big, and so are the people who could have been helped.
If you divide the world into them and us, and history into ours and theirs, or if you think of history as something only you and your affiliates possess, then no matter what you know, no matter how noble your intentions, you have taken one step toward the destruction of the world.
Well, there's a great Marlon Brando quote that to do something well you have to spiritually marry your director. You have to be making the same movie they are in that you have to try to help their imagination be better, and more full, and more fully realized, but you can't have a different imagination because then you end up - and you see this a lot in movies - where it feels like they were making five different films.
The secret of the world is this: the world is entirely circular and you will go round and round endlessly, never finding what you want, unless you have found what you really want inside yourself. When you follow a star you know you will never reach that star; rather it will guide you to where you want to go. Its a reference point, not an end in itself, even though you seem to be following it. So it is with the world. It will only ever lead you back to yourself. The end of all your exploring will be to cease from exploration and know the place for the first time.
We all have those dreams of going back in time and seeing what it was like when our parents were younger. Maybe we don't all have that dream. I don't know. Getting to role play or step back to a different moment in time and see things through a different lens is something that resonated with me, for sure. We don't get to do that, generally, but when the right neurological disorder lines up with the right unstable woman, that moment presents itself. Getting to know where we come from is a really profound way of getting to look at who we are.
I was in a prayer meeting yesterday. You gotta appreciate how scared, how scares folks on that side of the equation are. From their vantage point -- I really shouldnt say their -- cause its mine too, we are nearly at the end of time and from our vantage point, were going to be I think maybe Chinese Water torture is going to be the means the method, once Prop 8 gets instated and once preachers are held at gunpoint and forced to marry the homosexuals, Im pretty sure that that will be the signal for Jesus to come on back.
My vantage point on the world is the operating room where I see my patients.
The world of Islam is a world completely distinct from ours. Muslims have a different set of values. They look at the world through the contorted mirror of Islam and everything they see is warped. That is the only reality they know. Islam is their only point of reference. Therefore when they commit the most dastardly acts such as murder of school children, they genuinely don't know that what they are doing is evil.
People always ask me, how do you teach core values? The answer is, you don't. The goal is not to get people to share your core values. It's to get people who already share your core values.