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Determination vs. desperation
At some point in your life, you will need to cut off your options and make a critical decision. You send a message out to yourself, and to everyone else, that you are committed to follow through. There’s no other option for you. All the epic metaphors come to mind—you are making a leap of…
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Write a new future today
50 Cent’s favorite rappers are KRS-One and Kool G Rap. Still, he hasn’t patterned his career after theirs. He asks in Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter, “What would be the point of that? They were both incredible in their moment, but I’ve always been more concerned about creating my own moments rather than copying theirs.” In…
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Practice, audition, and performance
These are three very different experiences with different goals. When you practice, the goal is to improve. It’s as much a safe space to try new work and techniques, as it is a space to refine your current techniques. Having fun and gaining energy is critical to maintaining a good practice. At this stage, you…
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Read your old journals
Writing a journal is nice, but it’s just as rewarding—maybe even moreso—to go back and read it. It’ll give you hints—or direct advice—when you feel confused. I highly recommend adding your own old journals to your reading list. One helpful technique is to combine sources—for example, you can look at a journal entry from 10…
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When you’re switching careers, don’t rush to a resolution
There’s a great piece of advice that Herminia Ibarra writes in Working Identity, which is to allow for a transition period between holding on to an old identity, and letting go of it and taking on a new one. She writes, “Better to live the contradictions than to come to a premature resolution.” This assurance…
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Say what needs to be said
It took Wattpad co-founder Allen Lau decades to learn to speak up, instead of stopping himself when something needed to be said. He writes, “For me, I kept telling myself I needed to err on the side of speaking up too much. Trust me, even with that, the end result is that on many occasions…
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“I’m already doing that, though!”
When someone gives you advice, or when you apply a best practice, you may not actually be doing it the way that person intended. In other words, if an expert watched you practice your work or apply your approach, they might say, “Hey, wait—that’s not what I meant.” That moment is a gift. There’s a…
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Choosing how you feel
My friend Peter has been running Barrel, which has grown into Barrel Holdings, for 18 years. In the past, he’d constantly feel the worries of what could go wrong the following week, even on holidays. If you’re an entrepreneur or independent, you’ll know exactly what Peter means—when the buck stops with you, you’re ultimately responsible…
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You made it!
There’s a popular post circulating online that suggests men shouldn’t celebrate their birthdays because they—we!—should celebrate achievements, not existence. While I could relate to it, and I felt incredibly surprised as my perspective is the exact opposite, the main point I want to make is this: If you manage to make it another year around…
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Derrick White and confidence
I wouldn’t call myself much of a sports fan, and still there is a lot to like about this piece profiling professional basketball player Derrick White. The most outstanding story, to me, is about White’s initial wavering confidence to keep shots up after a couple of misses—perhaps due to a transition moving from San Antonio…