How Does One Become a Linchpin?

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.

Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.
The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.

Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.

I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.

The job is not the work.  ~ Seth Godin

- How does Godin distinguish between a job and work?
- To what extent do you utilize 'your art' in the endeavors of your day?
- Where can you cultivate your personal attributes as a linchpin? 

At 365 Quote Quest I provide quotes and questions such as the above for  reflection and enrichment.

Joy from Cliffs of Despair

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.  ~ John Keats


Joy and sorrow are inseparable. . . together they come and when one sits alone with you . . remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.  ~ Kahlil Gibran


Words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.  ~ Jodi Picoult

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.  ~ Mother Teresa

For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.  ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

To Accomplish Great Things

Make sure you visualize what you really want, not what someone else wants for you.  ~Jerry Gillies 

Visualization is daydreaming with a purpose.  ~Bo Bennett

Visualize this thing that you want, see it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blue print, and begin to build.   ~ Robert Collier
 
To accomplish great things we must first dream, then visualize, then plan... believe... act!..   ~ Alfred A. Montapert

See yourself confronting your fears in your mind’s eye and handling those fears like a champ.   ~Les Brown

Tags: quotes about visualize, visualizing, planning, goals, life

Stretched by a New Idea

One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

An idea is salvation by imagination.  ~Frank Lloyd Wright

Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.  ~Sam Walton

Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.  ~Alfred North Whitehead

Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin; it should make you jump up and do something.   ~ E. L. Simpson 


Tags: quotes about ideas, life

The Balance is Shifting

I have consolidated my several publications at Amazon through their Author Central.  This link provides a profile of the author, my two publications (both in paperback and e book Kindle edition), a link to this blog, and my Twitter feed. 

Here are several quotes, by the way, from Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon:

-We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better. 

-What's dangerous is not to evolve.

-I'm not saying that advertising is going away. But the balance is shifting. If today the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that's going to invert.

Growing Light

I will love the light for it shows me the way. Yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.  ~ Og Mandino

We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light.  ~ Mary Dunbar

There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.   ~ Edith Wharton

We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own.  ~Ben Sweetland

People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.  ~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross 




A Little Farther Up the Shore

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.  ~ Michael Caine

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.  ~ Cicero

When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange - my youth.  ~ Sara Teasdale

I never felt settled or calm. You can't really commit to life when you feel that.  ~ Angelina Jolie

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.  ~ Willa Cather

The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.  ~ Cyril Connolly

Tags: quotes about calm, life

A New World Every Heart Beat

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.  ~ William James

To be able to forget means sanity.  ~ Jack London

To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius. And easier. Because it's true. It's a new world every heart beat.  ~ Joyce Cary

Blessed are those who give without remembering and take without forgetting.  ~ Elizabeth Bibesco

Be Good for Something

We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.  ~ John Steinbeck

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and quite all the time.  ~ George Orwell

Blushing is the color of virtue.  ~ Diogenes

The excess of virtue is a vice.  ~ Greek proverb

Virtue is its own revenge.  ~ E. Y. Harburn

Do not be too moral.  You may cheat yourself out of much of life so.  Aim above morality.  Be not simply good; be good for something.  ~ Henry David Thoreau

Tags: quotes about virtue

To Be Alive

To be truly cultivated is to think reasonably, to live grandly, to love greatly, to shun pettiness, to condemn prejudice and cruelty. In short, to be cultivated is to be alive in the very largest sense. ~ Dorothy J. Farnan
 
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Every day is a good day to be alive, whether the sun's shining or not. ~ Marty Robbins

Take in Small Doses

Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.  ~ Russell Baker

For each ecstatic instant 
We must an anguish pay
In keen and quivering ratio
To the ecstasy.  ~ Emily Dickinson

A Richer Culture

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.   ~ Marcus Garvey


You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.  ~ Ray Bradbury

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.  ~ Albert Camus

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.  ~ Mahatma Gandhi

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.  ~ Arthur Miller

Real popular culture is folk art - coalminers' songs and so forth.  ~ Noam Chomsky

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.   ~Margaret Mead

Tags: quotes about culture 

When you Really Mean It

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.  ~ Dr. Seuss

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.  ~Joseph Addison

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.  ~ Mother Teresa

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.  ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

If you smile when you are alone, then you really mean it.  ~ Andy Rooney

Tags: quotes about smiles, life

A Measure of Darkness

Balance is the perfect state of still water. Let that be our model. It remains quiet within and is not disturbed on the surface.  ~ Confucius
 
Don't hold on too long, but don't let go too soon. Find a balance.  ~ Morrie Swartz

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.   ~ Albert Einstein

Balance is the enemy of art.   ~ Richard Eyre

As we look deeply within, we understand our perfect balance. There is no fear of the cycle of birth, life and death. For when you stand in the present moment, you are timeless.   ~ Rodney Yee

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.  ~ Carl Jung 

Tags: quotes about balance, life

Have Nothing to Do with It

The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.  ~ Publilius Syrus

Man imagines that it is death he fears, but what he fears is the unknown.  ~ Saint Exupéry

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.  ~ George Santayana

Be of good cheer about death and know this as a truth - that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.  ~ Socrates

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  ~ Dylan Thomas

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.  ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Tags: quotes about death, life, living

How did it get late so soon?

Go for it now.  The future is promised to no one.  ~ Wayne Dyer

Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.  ~ Allen Saunders

 The right person is the one that seizes the moment.  ~ Goethe

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.  ~ Henry David Thoreau

How did it get late so soon?
It's night before it's afternoon.
December is here before it's June.
My goodness how the time has flown.
How did it get so late so soon?  ~ Dr. Seuss

Tags: quotes on seize the moment, living life to the fullest

Make Facts Live

Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get em, get em right, or they will get you wrong.  ~ Thomas Fuller

Every man has a right to be wrong in his opinions. But no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.  ~ Bernard Baruch

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.  ~ Albert Einstein

The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.  ~ Arnold H. Glasow
 
The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live.  ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes


Tags: quotes about facts, opinion, truth

The Only Really Effective Weapon

Humanity takes itself too seriously.  It is the world's original sin.  If the cavemen had known how to laugh, history would have been different.  ~ Oscar Wilde

I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It's probably the most important thing in a person.  ~ Audrey Hepburn

If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.  ~ Robert Frost

There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.  ~ Charles Dickens

Life is worth living as long as there is a laugh in it.  ~ L. M. Montgomery

The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.  ~ Mark Twain

Tags: quotes about humor, laughter, life

One Rule of Practice

I expect to pass through life but once. If, therefore, there can be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again. ~ William Penn
 
Always be a little kinder than necessary. ~ James M. Barrie

Never look down on anyone unless you are helping him up.  ~ Jess Jackson
 
There is one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life - reciprocity. ~ Confucius
 
Tags: quotes about kindness, love, life

The Greatest of the Arts

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.  ~ Aristotle

A closed mind is a dying mind.  ~ Edna Ferber

The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one. ~ Malcolm Forbes

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. ~ John Steinbeck


Tags: quotes about the mind, tolerance, education, life

They were So Delicious

Never ruin an apology with an excuse.  ~ Benjamin Franklin

A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.  ~ Guilbert K. Chesterton

An apology is the superglue of life. It can repair just about anything.  ~Lynn Johnston

The most important trip you could take in life is meeting people halfway.  ~ Henry Boye

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.  ~ William Carlos Williams 

Tags: quotes about apology, forgiveness, life

The Main Thing in Life

The true human is infinitely deeper than the merely human.  ~Blaise Pascal

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself. ~ Henry David Thoreau 

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. ~ Horace Mann

My first world is humanity. My second world is humanism. And, I live in the third world being merely a human.  ~ Santosh Kalwar

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another. ~ Carl Sagan

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.  ~ George Orwell

The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human.  ~ Elizabeth Edwards

The main thing in life is not to be afraid to be human.  ~ Aaron Carter

Tags: quotes about being human, humanity, life

The Only Sure Road Out of Darkness

Healing comes only from that which leads the patient beyond himself and beyond his entanglements with ego. ~ Carl Jung

An egotist is a person more interested in himself than in me!  ~ Ambrose Bierce

Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space.  ~ Diana Black

Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.  ~ Thomas Carlyle

Egotism is usually subversive of sagacity. (insight)  ~ Marianne Moore

Loving is the only sure road out of darkness, the only serum known that cures self-centeredness.  ~ Roger McKuen 

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.   ~Rainer Maria Rilke

Tags: quotes about ego, life 

To Be Believed

One person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests.  ~John Stuart Mill

Man is what he believes.  ~ Anton Chekhov

If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything.  ~ Malcolm X

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.  ~ Abraham Lincoln

Some things have to be believed to be seen.  ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.  ~ Mitch Albom

Tags: quotes on belief