January 11 Sometimes an inclination becomes clear through a particular activity that brings with it a feeling of heightened power. As a child, Martha Graham felt intensely frustrated by her inability to make others understand her in a deep way; words seemed inadequate. Then one day, she saw her first dance performance. The lead dancer […]

January 10 The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Coco Chanel What do we say about masters? “They’re one of a kind.” There’s never been a Steve Jobs ever before. There’s never been a Warren Buffett. There’s never been an Albert Einstein. They’re unique. They embraced what made them different. Yes, it […]

January 9 As a young boy growing up in North Carolina, John Coltrane felt different and strange. He was much more serious than his schoolmates; he experienced emotional and spiritual longings he did not know how to verbalize. He drifted into music more as a hobby, taking up the saxophone and playing in his high […]

January 8 As a child growing up in Madras, India, in the late 1950s, V. S. Ramachandran knew he was different. In his loneliness he would often wander along the beach, and soon he became fascinated by the incredible variety of seashells that washed up on shore. He began to collect them and study the […]

January 7 For many people, the pursuit of money and status can supply them with plenty of motivation and focus. Such types would consider figuring out their calling in life a monumental waste of time and an antiquated notion. But in the long run this philosophy often yields the most impractical of results. We all […]

January 6 In dealing with your career and its inevitable changes, you must think in the following way: You are not tied to a particular position; your loyalty is not to a career or a company. You are committed to your Life’s Task, to givingit full expression. It is up to you to find it […]

January 5 The contemporary anthropologist-linguist Daniel Everett grew up on the California-Mexico border, in a cowboy town. From a very early age, he found himself drawn to the Mexican culture around him. Everything about it fascinated him—the sound of the words spoken by the migrant workers, the food, the manners that were so different from […]

January 4 Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this something as a signal calling in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. […]

January 3 The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within. – Abraham Maslow From the time I was young, I was entranced with words. I can […]

January 2 When Marie Curie, the future discoverer of radium, was four years old she wandered into her father’s study and stood transfixed before a glass case that contained all kinds of laboratory instruments for chemistry and physics experiments. She would return to that room again and again to stare at the instruments, imagining all […]