Heather

“In other words, we want to believe that Mark Spitz was born to swim in a way that none of us were and that none of us could. We don’t want to sit on the pool deck and watch him progress from amateur to expert. We prefer our excellence fully formed. We prefer mystery to mundanity.”
― Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

“Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.”
― Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

“As soon as possible, experts hungrily seek feedback on how they did. Necessarily, much of that feedback is negative. This means that experts are more interested in what they did wrong—so they can fix it—than what they did right. The active processing of this feedback is as essential as its immediacy.”
― Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

“years: You. Your spouse. Your child. Your friends. The people who love you. The people who hate you. Terrorists in the Middle East. The politicians raising your taxes and making bad policies. The teacher who gave your son a bad grade. The couple who didn’t invite you to a dinner. I have gone down this mental path when things have upset me. I find it puts life in perspective. It can be a good thing, to remember that there is very little that truly matters. A bad grade. A dumb politician. A social slight. Unfortunately, there are things that do matter. Things that can ruin what little time we have here. Things that cannot be done over or remedied. These are the things that we regret. And regret is more devious than guilt. It is more corrosive than envy. And it is more powerful than fear.”
― Wendy Walker, All Is Not Forgotten