Jessica

“Still, I also had grasped enough of the West’s views of such fatalism—that it made of us primitives, naïfs, and fools—to keep such beliefs to myself. In the West, it was believed that attitude and ambition saved you. In Africa, we had learned no one was immune to capricious tragedy. What I didn’t know then was that ignoring my own southern African knowledge was its own kind of mischief: it rendered me speechless when I should have spoken, helpless when I was profoundly capable, and broken when in fact the very places inside me that had been damaged and snapped were their own kind of strength. I saw the landscape around us as tattooed with death, fraught with the possibility of unrecovered land mines and undetonated ordnance.”
― Alexandra Fuller, Leaving Before the Rains Come

“We know the world only through the window of our mind. When our mind is noisy, the world is as well. And when our mind is peaceful, the world is, too. Knowing our minds is just as important as trying to change the world.”
― Haemin Sunim, The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World

“The tool is called “Inner Authority.” This means just what it says. It’s not an authority that comes from the approval of anyone outside you; it’s the authority you can get only when you’re speaking from your inner self.”
― Phil Stutz, The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower--and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion

“The secret killer of innovation is shame. You can’t measure it, but it is there. Every time someone holds back on a new idea, fails to give their manager much needed feedback, and is afraid to speak up in front of a client you can be sure shame played a part. That deep fear we all have of being wrong, of being belittled and of feeling less than, is what stops us taking the very risks required to move our companies forward. If you want a culture of creativity and innovation, where sensible risks are embraced on both a market and individual level, start by developing the ability of managers to cultivate an openness to vulnerability in their teams. And this, paradoxically perhaps, requires first that they are vulnerable themselves. This notion that the leader needs to be “in charge” and to “know all the answers” is both dated and destructive. Its impact on others is the sense that they know less, and that they are less than. A recipe for risk aversion if ever I have heard it. Shame becomes fear. Fear leads to risk aversion. Risk aversion kills innovation.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead