Quotes About Growth

Your most creative years are generally in your late twenties and on into your forties. You can learn what you need through books, your own practice, and occasional advice from others, but the process is hit-and-miss.

You will know when your apprenticeship is over by the feeling that you have nothing left to learn in this environment.

Think of yourself as your own Zen Master. Such masters would beat their pupils and deliberately lead them to points of maximum doubt and inner tension, knowing such moments precede enlightenment.

If you work on yourself first, as Faraday did, developing a solid work ethic and organizational skills, eventually the right teacher will appear in your life.

The real purpose of the backward-glancing eye is to educate yourself constantly—you look at the past to learn from those who came before you.

The recurrence of this mirrors the recurrence in our own lives of the same problems and mistakes, forming negative patterns. It is hard to learn from experience

You must never disdain an apprenticeship with no pay. In fact, it is often the height of wisdom to find the perfect mentor and offer your services as an assistant for free.

Return to the harder or softer sides of your character that you have lost or repressed.

Know How Little You Know

Daily Law: Expand your knowledge to related fields. Pick an auxiliary skill and start practicing.

Daily Law: When it comes to the ideas and opinions you hold, see them as toys or building blocks that you are playing with. Some you will keep, others you will knock down, but your spirit remains flexible and playful. The Laws of Human Nature, 7: Soften People's Resistance by Confirming Their Self-Opinion—The Law of Defensiveness

People who cling to their delusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: A people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water. —James Baldwin

Commit harmless mistakes that will not hurt you in the long run but will give you the chance to ask for his help. Masters adore such requests.

Daily Law: You must see your attempt at attaining mastery as something extremely necessary and positive. Mastery, I: Discover Your Calling—The Life's Task

Ask more of them. Expect them to work like adults. Quietly alter the spirit with which things are done. Emphasize efficiency: anybody can be efficient (it isn't a question of talent), efficiency breeds success, and success raises morale. Once the spirit and personality of the group start to shift, everything else will fall into place.

Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay.

be aware of the Emotional Pitfalls—complacency, boredom, grandiosity, and the like—that continually threaten to derail or block our progress.

Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters decay

One of Cosimo's favorite expressions was, Envy is weed that should not be watered.

As children our minds were remarkably flexible. We could learn at a rate that far surpasses our adult capacities. We can attribute much of the source of this power to our feelings of weakness and vulnerability. Sensing our inferiority in relation to those older than us, we felt highly motivated to learn. We were also genuinely curious and hungry for new information. We were open to the influence of parents, peers, and teachers.

Perspective comes with time.

Mistakes and failures are precisely your means of education.

you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge

1658) REVERSAL