“I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.”
— John D. Rockefeller
"Develop the strength to do bold things, Not the strength to suffer." - Machiavelli
Putting up with garbage isn't heroic,
Taking action against it, is.
What’s easy to miss is that the setback isn’t just buying you time…it’s doing something in you that the open door never would.
The waiting, the closed door, the season that makes no sense is not just preparation for what’s next. God isn’t just managing your timeline. He’s working to transform you…
You are not tied to a particular position; your loyalty is not to a career or a company. You are committed to your Life's Task, to giving it full expression. It is up to you to find it and guide it correctly. It is not up to others to protect or help you. You are on your own.
Sage advice from Steve Jobs:
“A lot of people ask me: I want to start a company. What should I do?
My first question is always, "What is your passion? What is it you want to do in your company?"
Most of them say, "I don't know."
My advice is go get a job as a busboy until you figure it out.
You've got to be passionate about something.
You shouldn't start a company because you want to start a company.
Almost every company I know of got started because nobody else believed in the idea and the last resort was to start the company.
That's how Apple got started.
That's how Pixar got started. It's how Intel got started.
You need to have passion about your idea and you need to feel so strongly about it that you're willing to risk a lot.
Starting a company is so hard that if you're not passionate about it, you will give up. If you're simply doing it because you want to have a company, forget it.
It's so much work and at times is so mentally draining.
The hardest thing I've ever done is to start a company.
It's the funnest thing, but it's the hardest thing, and if you're not passionate about your goal or your reason for doing it, you will give up.
You will not see it through. So, you must have a very strong sense of what you want.
You have to need to run such a business and know you can do it better than anyone else.”
Self-educated people are often great teachers.
They might have "wasted" a bit of time during their exploration journey, but as a result, they took the time to learn things with more breadth than people who had a straightforward plan and clear guidance right from the beginning:
God did not put this fire in me so I could manage it politely. He put it here so I could burn through every excuse I was ever handed and arrive on the other side as the man He saw before I did. to dim the fire is to insult the giver. I will not insult Him. I will burn until there is nothing left to burn, and then I will find more fuel.
"Trust us, you look amazing. You look beautiful."
Artemis II astronaut Victor Glover says seeing Earth from space has made one thing clear: “We’re all one people.” Glover said from up above, the planet looks like “one thing,” adding, “homosapiens is all of us.”
Victor Glover failed an engineering class his sophomore year of college. His dad talked him out of joining the Navy SEALs and told him an engineering degree and pilot wings might make him an astronaut someday. Right now Glover is somewhere between the Earth and the Moon.
He grew up in Pomona, California. Played quarterback in high school, wrestled well enough to place sixth at the state championship, won Athlete of the Year. Went to Cal Poly for engineering and played both sports at the college level.
He got his Navy wings in 2001 and started flying F/A-18 fighter jets off aircraft carriers. His squadron deployed on the USS John F. Kennedy to fight in Iraq, the carrier’s final deployment ever. Twenty-four combat missions. His commanding officer gave him the callsign “Ike,” short for “I Know Everything.”
He became a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base and over his career flew more than 40 types of aircraft, 3,000 hours in the air, everything from a Korean War-era Soviet MiG-15 to the Goodyear blimp. More than 400 landings on a moving carrier deck. He earned three master’s degrees in three years. He once told Cal Poly’s president that the hardest thing he ever chose to do was walk in space. The second hardest was wrestling practice.
He applied to NASA in 2009 and got rejected. Applied again in 2013 while working in the U.S. Senate for John McCain. NASA’s head of flight crew operations called him. He missed the call. Frantically dialed back. Eight people got in that year out of more than 6,000 applicants.
NASA put him in the pilot seat for the first operational SpaceX Crew Dragon flight in 2020. He spent 168 days on the International Space Station and walked in space four times.
Last June he went back to Cal Poly to accept an honorary doctorate. His wife Dionna and their oldest daughter Genesis both walked across the stage at the same ceremony to pick up their own degrees.
Three days ago Glover launched from Kennedy Space Center. The crew will fly past the far side of the Moon on Monday and travel about 252,000 miles from home, breaking a distance record that Apollo 13 set fifty-six years ago. They come back at roughly 25,000 mph.
He has four daughters. His callsign is still Ike.
UNIVERSAL MISSION: Astronaut Victor Glover said before liftoff that he loves that he can inspire "young brown boys and girls" but also hopes "one day we don't have to talk about" dividing accomplishments by race or gender.
NASA pilot Victor Glover CLAPS back after being asked what it means to be the first black man to visit the moon: “It’s the story of humanity, not black history, not women’s history, but that it becomes human history.”
“I also HOPE we are pushing the other direction that one day we don’t have to talk about these first. That one day, this is just—and listen to this—that this is the human history.”
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
— Haruki Murakami