2020 EOY Jumpoff
Compiled by Sean Legister. Written by you.
I often battle with my ego, asking myself how to impact more people. Do people even read the MML? Could I be doing more? Why do I continue doing this?
Your responses to the call of action were my answer. To be clear, this aint Instagram—it’s less about the “likes” and more about the action. Are yall reading and implementing? Is the MML stirring something inside of you that only you know? Have you read something in here (at any point) that caused you to reconsider something you held dear, or caused you to text that someone, or caused you to call that person who’s been on your mind?
I learned a whole lot in 2020 (blog post coming, eventually), but I keep coming back to gratitude. As much as I simultaneously continue to work on forgiveness, being gracious has allowed me to have conversations with people I never thought possible, learn things faster than I ever had before, and remain present, enjoying each moment on this beautiful planet called Earth.
This is the LONGER end of year MML—yall can see the comprehensive list of submitted quotes. I may have missed a couple (and if so, I apologize). Yet still, if there’s not at least one thing in this piece that resonates with you…well then you aint got a pulse.
The Warm-Up:
One love. 2021, year of _____. Only you can answer that!
*The initials next to each quote are those of the submitters for the EOY edition. I tried to get all of the submissions in between the regular edition and this EOY version.*
The Core:
PENG BLACK GIRLS REMIX [JD]
“Take the high road.” ~Gary Billings [PB]
“Action precedes motivation.” ~Robert McKain [PB]
“Nobody wrecks their life overnight.” ~Levi Lusko [PB]
“A leader is a dealer in hope.” ~Napoleon Bonaparte [PB]
“80 percent of success is showing up.” ~Woody Allen [PB]
“God cannot bless who you pretend to be.” ~Tim Karsliyev
“Purchased acceptance is still rejection.” ~Hart Ramsey [JG]
“Fools ignore complexity. Geniuses remove it.” ~Alan Perils [PR]
“Pressure is a privilege and champions adapt.” ~Billie Jean King [GE]
“You don’t need more time, you need more focus.” ~Shane Parrish [JD]
“Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” ~F. Scott Fitzgerald [PB]
“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.” ~Mary Oliver [GE]
“If you have time to consume, you have time to produce.” ~Jack Butcher [JD]
“What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.” ~Alice Walker [JD]
“Your attention is currency; be wary of who you spend it on.” ~Unknown [JG]
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” ~Lord Acton [PB]
“Either we agree on how to measure it, or it becomes politics.” ~Naval Ravikant [PR]
“You could be good today, but instead, you choose tomorrow.” ~Marcus Aurelius [JD]
“The older I get the more I realize that the things that cost nothing hold the most value.” ~Unknown [PH]
“You can become very hard to replace by simply doing what you say you’re going to do.” ~Jack Butcher [PR]
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ~C.G. Jung [SD]
“The fastest way to raise your level of performance: Cut your number of commitments in half.” ~James Clear [JD]
“Books for mindset. Quiet time to think for strategy. Conversations with successful peers for tactics.” ~James Clear [PR]
“Where to focus: For the beginner, execution. For the intermediate, strategy. For the expert, mindset.” ~James Clear [PR]
“Fight for the things that you care about but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” ~Ruth Bader Ginsburg [TM]
“I knew I was on the right path when I started feeling peace in situations where I would normally feel tension.” ~Yung Pueblo [PR]
“Some people will tell you to your face that it’s impossible, they are 100% right. It is impossible for them.” ~Joe Duncan [GE]
“One night, a moth was flying around a light bulb and he caught it and let it out the window. I said: ‘That’s it. He’s the guy.’” [JD]
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” ~Maya Angelou [JD]
“We think it can’t be as simple as making a little bit of progress each day, so we look for ways to make a lot and make none.” ~Jack Butcher [TM]
“Procrastination is the arrogant assumption that God owes you another opportunity to do what you had time to do.” ~Bishop Rosie O’Neal [JD]
“Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.” ~Joan Didion [JG]
“Promise me you’ll always remember: you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” ~Christopher Robin [JG]
“Building a personal brand is so high leverage because it increases your personal access to capital and decreases your cost of that capital.” ~Austin Rief [PR]
“You barely understand yourself, never assume you understand someone else. Learning to listen. That’s the secret of great relationships.” ~Orange Book [TM]
“Someone once said, ‘If you look at the people in your circle and don’t get inspired, then you don’t have a circle, you have a cage.’” ~Tim Karsliyev [GE]
“Just because you lost me as a friend doesn’t mean you gained me as an enemy. I’m bigger than that. I still wanna see you eat, just not at my table.” ~Tupac [JG]
“If you want to know who your tribe is, speak your truth. Then see who sticks around. Those are the people who get a spot in your blanket fort.” ~Nanea Hoffman [TM]
“Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.” ~Martin Luther King Jr. [PR]
“Most geniuses—especially those who lead others—prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities.” ~Andy Benoit [PR]
“The spread of palpably juvenile and thoughtless ‘ideas’ under the guise of social justice has shown the extent to which people value reputation over integrity.” ~Ayishat Akanbi [SD]
“You will never know your cup is overflowing when you have your eyes on someone else’s mug…Comparison kills contentment, keep your eyes on your own glass.” ~Levi Lusko [JG]
“So simple, yet so underrated: ‘Take a simple idea and take it seriously.’ ~Charlie Munger. Pay careful attention to the things that everyone knows but pays no attention to.” ~Shane Parrish [PR]
“You can hurt her, but it will be temporary. She knows how to love, but she also knows how to love herself. And if you cross that line where she has to choose, understand you will lose.” ~JM Storm [JD]
“Solve a problem ten times, figure out the process. Solve a problem twenty times, improve the process. Solve a problem thirty times, codify the process. Solve a problem forty times, productize the process.” ~Jack Butcher [PR]
“What looks like a talent gap is often a focus gap. The ‘all star’ is often an average to above average performer who spends more time working on what is important and less time on distractions. The talent is staying focused.” ~James Clear [PR]
“In the teenage world you win by perfect performance on easy tests (wearing just the right clothes, answering multiple-choice questions correctly), while in the adult world you win by adequate performance on hard tests.” ~Paul Graham [PR]
“Let yourself grow through patience. Let people go through their process. It’s okay to let things play themselves out sometimes…you don’t always have to be so quick to speak or act…Don’t let fear make you start forcing things.” ~Rob Hill Sr.
“Nobody wants to tell you why discipline is so important. Discipline is the strongest form of self-love. It is ignoring current pleasures for bigger rewards to come. It’s loving yourself enough to give yourself everything you’ve ever wanted.” ~Matt Gottesman [SD]
“Modeling a behavior is stronger than telling someone to act differently. Kids imitate the habits of their parents. Teammates match the competitive energy of one another. Employees learn to manage like their supervisor. Be the standard and others will raise their standards.” ~James Clear [PH]
“Women are emotional in order to feel the divine energy at the highest levels and be supreme healers and lovers and mothers. Not to drive men insane. Her deep spiritual connection to feelings is to inspire a man to his spiritual heights as well. She is not a nag, she is an oracle.” ~Raja Khan, Awake Spiritual [GE]
“My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: ‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awesome grace of God.’” ~Robert Kennedy (from the speech he gave after he heard MLK had been assassinated) [PB]
“On mountaintops, You stay the same/ In valleys low, You never change… You go, You go before me, To prepare a blessing, You makе a way, It’s more, Than I could imagine, More than I can fathom, Or comprehend.” ~Maverick City Music ft. UPPERROOM, Chandler Moore, Elyssa Smith, You Hold It All Together [TM]
“Every prophet has to come from civilization, but every prophet has to go into the wilderness. He must have a strong impression of a complex society and all that it has to give, and then he must serve periods of isolation and meditation. This is the process by which psychic dynamite is made.” ~Winston Churchill [PR]
“One of the great things about running is that, unlike so many complicated things in life, it rewards the effort you put into it almost immediately. And anyone who expands their comfort zone will quickly be capable of things that would have been impossible a few weeks before.” ~Joe Holder, The Track Is For Everyone [MM]
“Marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Choose your hard. Obesity is hard. Being fit is hard. Choose your hard. Being in debt is hard. Being financially disciplined is hard. Choose your hard. Communication is hard. Not communicating is hard. Choose your hard. Life will never be easy. It will always be hard. But we can choose our hard. Pick wisely.” ~Devon Brough [MM / SD]
“Innovations usually begin life with an attempt to solve a specific problem, but once they get into circulation, they end up triggering other changes that would have been extremely difficult to predict … An innovation, or cluster of innovations, in one field ends up triggering changes that seem to belong to a different domain altogether.” ~Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now [PR]
“For both men and women the first step in getting power is to become visible to others, and then to put on an impressive show… As women achieve power, the barriers will fall. As society sees what women can do, as women see what women can do, there will be more women out there doing things, and we’ll all be better off for it.” ~Ruth Bader Ginsburg, My Own Words [AT]
“When you make a choice and say, ‘come hell or high water, I am going to be this,’ then you should not be surprised when you are that. It should not be something that feels intoxicating or out of character because you have seen this moment for so long that…when that moment comes, of course it is here because it has been here the whole time because it has been in your mind the whole time.” ~Kobe Bryant [JD]
“Complexity is another door to interruption. It can produce higher returns. But the more knobs you have to fiddle with, the more levers you have to pull, the higher the odds that something, at some point, will cause you to second-guess yourself, or reveal a risk you hadn’t considered, or tempt your clients to leave – all of which stops the clock of compounding and can outweigh any return advantage you had when the strategy worked.” ~Morgan Housel, Last Man Standing [PR]
“There are people in the world who think only about themselves. They don’t care what happens to other people so long as they get what they want. They put other people down to make themselves feel important. “Then there are people who do the opposite, who are able to imagine how others must feel, and make sure that they don’t do things that hurt people. “So,” she said, looking me squarely in the eye. “Which kind of person do you want to be?” ~Barack Obama, A Promised Land [AT]
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” ~C.S. Lewis [PB]
“Your life is your life. Don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. Be on the watch. There are ways out. There is light somewhere. It may not be much light but it beats the darkness. Be on the watch. The gods will offer you chances. Know them. Take them. You can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. And the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. Your life is your life. Know it while you have it. You are marvelous. The gods wait to delight in you.” ~Charles Bukowski [SD]
“Instead of saying ‘I don’t have time’ try saying ‘it’s not a priority,’ and see how that feels. Often, that’s a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don’t want to. But other things are harder. Try it: ‘I’m not going to edit your résumé, sweetie, because it’s not a priority.’ ‘I don’t go to the doctor because my health is not a priority.’ If these phrases don’t sit well, that’s the point. Changing our language reminds us that time is a choice. If we don’t like how we’re spending an hour, we can choose differently.” ~Laura Vanderkam [SD]
“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out…The personas we inhabit publicly are merely approximations of who we are internally—shrunken, distorted versions of ourselves that we present to the real world. This is because the things that are most important to us, that are really vital to us, are perversely the most difficult to express.” ~Khaled Hosseini [JG]
“My daily challenge to myself is to be part of the solution, to be a joyful warrior in the battle to come. My challenge to you is to join that effort. To stand up for our ideals and our values. Let's not throw up our hands when it’s time to roll up our sleeves. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Years from now, our children and our grandchildren will look up and lock eyes with us. They will ask us where we were when the stakes were so high. They will ask us what it was like. I don’t want us to just tell them how we felt. I want us to tell them what we did.” ~Kamala Harris, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey [AT]
“When you compare your purpose to someone else’s, you walk away from purpose and enter competition. When we’re focused on God’s Will, we’re operating in true purpose. When we’re focused on proving ourselves to others, we get sidetracked from our destiny. It’s a trap! Stay on mission!! If you’re worried about ‘winning’ or appearing more successful than someone else, you’re playing a losing game. You must know the difference between ‘The Completion of God’s Purpose’ and ‘The Competition of Your Pride.” Here’s the thing, both take a lot of effort and hard work but only one brings true fulfillment.” ~Chris Durso [TM]
“Integrity. Integrity and honesty are everything for the long game. They are everything. But in the short game you may feel like you are losing and everyone else is winning. Don’t be fooled by this false belief. Hold to your integrity. For it is your integrity that shows the world you are consistent, you are your word, you know your worth, you provide value and you are here to do bigger things. Integrity is the frequency you want to be aligned with when the dust settles and you’re sitting with others who believed the same…For it was the ones who didn’t compromise their integrity that sit atop in the long game; the ones we now call icons.” ~Matt Gottesman [JG]
“He’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can. He isn’t going to quote poetry, he’s not thinking about you every moment, but he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break. Don’t hurt him, don’t change him, and don’t expect for more than he can give. Don’t analyze. Smile when he makes you happy, yell when he makes you mad, and miss him when he’s not there. Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.” ~Bob Marley [JG]
“8 sentences I wish I read sooner…These hard times, this pain, these lessons—one day they’ll be your strength, your awareness, your blessings. Stop expecting honesty from people who lie to themselves. You’ll never look good trying to make someone look bad. Save your explanations for those that are determined to understand you—give your silence to those that are determined to misunderstand you. Your life is too short to be unhappy 5 days a week in exchange for 2 days of freedom. Anything you lose when you stand up for yourself, protect your boundaries and begin to grow, was not meant to stay. Don’t be upset about disrespect from people you don’t respect. If you are easily provoked, you are easily controlled—restraint is a superpower.” ~Steven Bartlett [SD]
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” ~Theodore Roosevelt, The Man in the Arena [SD]
“When you experience someone else’s genius work, a little part of you feels, ‘That’s what I could have, would have, and should have done!’ Someone else did it. You didn’t. They fought the resistance. You gave in to distractions. They made it top priority. You said you’d get to it some day. They took the time. You meant to. When this happens, you can take it two ways: You could let that part of you give up. ‘Oh well. Now I don’t need to make that anymore.’ Or you could do something about that jealous pain. Shut off your phone, kill the distractions, make it top priority, and spend the time. It takes many hours to make what you want to make. The hours don’t suddenly appear. You have to steal them from comfort. Whatever you were doing before was comfortable. This is not. This will be really uncomfortable. The few times in my life I’ve made a real change like this, it felt awful on the surface. I wasn’t shallow-happy about it. I wasn’t smiling. I was annoyed and fighting it inside, but on the outside I did the work. And in the end, got the deeper satisfaction of finishing.” ~Derek Sivers, Where to find the hours to make it happen [PR]
“An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self…so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They are the people who live an eternal ‘I’ … They start out, the minute you talk with them, talking about what they can do, what they have done…where they have been…who they know…and how much money they have. Now, we can say to a certain extent that persons in this situation are persons who have really never grown up…For you see, a child is inevitably, necessarily egocentric. He is a bundle of his own sensations, clamoring to be cared for…When people become mature, they are to rise above this. When one matures…he turns himself to higher loyalties. He gives himself to something outside of himself. He gives himself to causes that he lives for and sometimes will even die for. He comes to the point that now he can rise above his individualistic concerns. And so you see people who are apparently selfish; it isn’t merely an ethical issue but it is a psychological issue. They are the victims of arrested development, and they are still children. They haven’t grown up.” ~Martin Luther King Jr. [PR]
Last Set:
“You fear death because you crave life. You fear death because you think there’s something to get that you haven’t experienced yet. Many people feel that death will take something away from them. The wise person realizes that death is constantly giving them something. Death is giving meaning to your life. You’re the one who throws your life away; you waste every second of it. You get in your car, drive from here to there, and you don’t see anything. You’re not even there. You’re busy thinking about what you’re going to do next. You’re a month ahead of yourself, or even a year. You’re not living life; you’re living mind. So it is you who throws your life away, not death. Death actually helps you get your life back by making you pay attention to the moment. It makes you say, ‘My God, I’m going to lose this. I’m going to lose my children. This could be the last time I’ll see them. From now on I’m going to pay more attention to them, and to my spouse, and to all my friends and loved ones. I want to get so much more out of life!’” ~Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul [SD]