Simone Biles taught a valuable lesson at the Olympics:
Overcoming adversity takes time. Resilience is not about how quickly you bounce back—it’s about how fully you recover.
You can’t judge people’s strength when they fall. Their fortitude is visible when they rise again.
Be the biggest fan of the people you care about.
Defend them.
Keep the hope alive.
Make them look good.
Catch them when they fall.
Be there when they need you.
Root for them unconditionally.
Help them accomplish their dreams.
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir mens’ blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.”
— Daniel Burnham, architect
(quoted in The Devil in the White City)
Do not confuse things that are hard with things that are valuable.
Many things in life are hard. Just because you are giving a great effort does not mean you are working toward a great result.
Make sure that mountain is worth climbing.
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt
this is strangely heartwarming: the canadian pediatrics association now recommends that children engage in risky play—"thrilling and exciting forms of free play that involve uncertainty of outcome and a possibility of physical injury"—because of benefits e.g. to mental health
Paul Tudor Jones: “Don't be a hero. Don't have an ego. Always question yourself and your ability. Don't ever feel that you are very good. The second you do, you are dead.”