No one wants to hear everything that's in your head. They just want you to live up to what comes out of your mouth.
Adam GrantRead
Successful givers secure their oxygen masks before coming to the assistance of others. Although their motives may be less purely altruistic, their actions prove more altruistic, because they give more.
Interpretation
One must prioritize their own well-being before helping others.
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-care and personal well-being in order to effectively assist others. It suggests that those who take care of their needs first are often able to provide more significant help to others, even if their intentions are not purely selfless.
In practice
In a motivational speech about teamwork.
No one wants to hear everything that's in your head. They just want you to live up to what comes out of your mouth.
In the eyes of many people, giving doesn't count unless it's completely selfless. In reality, though, giving isn't sustainable when it's completely selfless.
When you procrastinate, you're more likely to let your mind wander. That gives you a better chance of stumbling onto the unusual and spotting unexpected patterns.
We have many identities, and we can't be authentic to them all. The best we can do is be sincere in our efforts to earn the values we claim.
We all have thoughts and feelings that we believe are fundamental to our lives but that are better left unspoken.
You want people who choose to follow because they genuinely believe in ideas, not because they're afraid to be punished if they don't. For startups, there's so much pivoting that's required that if you have a bunch of sheep, you're in bad shape.
The constant reprimands made me hyperconscious of my own performance, and so instead of getting rid of self, I had become embedded in the egoism I was supposed to transcend. Now I was beginning to understand that a silence that is not clamorous with vexation and worried self-regard can become part of the texture of your mind, can seep into you, moment by moment, and gradually change you.
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
Strength instead of being the lusty child of passion, grows by grappling with and subduing them.
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."
Every woman I had ever met who walked through the world appraised and classified by an extraordinary physicality had also received the keys to an unbearable solitude. It was the coefficient of their beauty, the price they had to pay.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder, and that craves wary walking.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.