3-2-1: Success, getting started, and the unnoticed good in the world

“The greatest rewards in life are often delayed. The financial benefits of work and investing. The emotional benefits of marriage and friendship. The psychological benefits of creating something that matters. Meaningful outcomes take a long time to grow and compound.

If you want your results to continue to grow, then you need relationships that last.

One of the essential ingredients for success is being pleasant and trustworthy because it allows whatever you are building—a business, a relationship, a project—to continue. Many relationships disintegrate before the rewards accumulate.”

“Your first step is just that: the first of many steps. For so long I would stand still, afraid to move in any direction because I wasn’t sure which was the course I wanted to follow for the rest of my life. Finally, someone explained to me that my first steps did not necessarily determine one path for all my tomorrows. There would be more decisions, and more opportunities to make a shift should I need to do so.”

“It is important to remember that the viciousness and wrongs of life stick out very plainly but that even at the worst times there is a great deal of goodness, kindness, and day-to-day decency that goes unnoticed and makes no headlines.”