Jon Acuff · 288 pages
Rating: (4.7K votes)
“You don't need to go back in time to be awesome; you just have to start right now. Regretting that you didn't start earlier is a great distraction from moving on your dream today, and the reality is that today is earlier than tomorrow.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“Regardless of what you want to do or who you are, fear will always see you as wholly unqualified for anything you ever dream or attempt.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“People are mistaken when they think chasing your dream is a selfish thing to do. As if perhaps being average is an act of humility. As if perhaps wasting the talents you were given is proof that you're a considerate individual.
It's not.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“Fear would have told the Wright brothers not to fly. Fear would have told Rosa Parks to change seats. Fear would have told Steve Jobs that people hate touchscreens.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“Joy is an incredible alarm clock. It will wake you up and keep you up and pick you up and gently pull you through a thousand rejections along the way.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“In order to survive, I came up with a five-step secret to getting it all done. If you're busy too, feel free to use it:
1. Admit that you can't possibly get it all done.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“I’m not a fan of “finding your purpose.” I’m a fan of “living with purpose.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“Age is no longer the primary factor that determines where you are on the map. Life is now less about how old you are and more about when you decide to live.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“Awesome writes great books even if no one is going to read them.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“Don't climb a single rung up the entitlement ladder. Demanding something you haven't truly earned is a great way to get stuck in the land of Learning for decades, even an entire lifetime. Kick those ladders over and keep on walking.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“You used to believe like that too. You used to turn sticks into swords or dirty flip-flops into glass slippers. You climbed trees and made forts and thought being a doctor wasn’t out of reach. Nothing was out of reach. Then, somewhere along the way, you lost it.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“Regardless of your age or station in life, it all comes down to one simple truth: you just have to start.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“Not because of my words—those are cheap and untrustworthy. But because of my actions, which are expensive and trustworthy.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“What do you do when all the excuses you used to not chase your dream are gone? What do you do then?”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“People are mistaken when they think chasing your dream is a selfish thing to do. As if perhaps being average is an act of humility. As if perhaps wasting the talents you were given is proof that you’re a considerate individual.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“You’re just going to be a Starter. The starting line is the only line you completely control.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“As if perhaps joy is acceptable for rare moments on the weekend or surprising glimpses of sunsets while on vacation, but it has no real purpose in the real world.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“I learned a simple lesson about being awesome: always play to the size of your heart, not to the size of your audience. Awesome doesn’t let the crowd determine the size of the performance. Awesome gets up for two people or 200. Awesome writes great books even if no one is going to read them. Awesome sweeps the parts of store floors that no foot will ever touch. Awesome can’t help itself. Awesome has a huge heart. And that’s what it always plays to. The size of the crowd doesn’t matter. The applause of the audience doesn’t matter.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“(The truth is that real life-change and the joy of being who you are designed to be always results in selflessness, not selfishness.)”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“don’t build a park bench if you secretly love Frisbee.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“Want to know how to be awesome at just about everything else too? It’s simple. Don’t be a jerk.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“You’ve got today, and today is all you need to start.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“Average is so popular because average is familiar.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“In that moment, I learned a simple lesson about being awesome: always play to the size of your heart, not to the size of your audience. Awesome”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“You will work harder at something you love than at something you like. You will work harder than you have ever worked when you start chasing a dream. You will hustle and grind and sweat and push and pull. You will get up earlier and go to bed later. But that’s okay.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“No one pursuing a life of average was ever made fun of by other average people. But if you decide to travel the road to awesome, you will be.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“If you want help for your dream, start by helping someone else with their dream. If you want support for your hope, start by giving support to someone else’s hope. If you want encouragement as you work on your calling, start by encouraging other people. Giving support is often the best way to get it.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“Learning from those before you is a dying art that can catapult you ahead in the land of Mastering.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
“Someone is going to hate what you do. That’s not a maybe. That’s a definite. And I don’t mean dislike. I mean hate. With energy and vitriol and a passion that surprises you.”
― Jon Acuff, quote from Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters
Jon Acuff
Born place: The United States
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“I was always amazed at Cambridge how quickly people appeared to take offence at everything I said, but now I see plainly that it was not my words they hated - it was this fairy face. The dark alchemy of this face turns all my gentle human emotions into fierce fairy vices. Inside I am all despair, but this face shows only fairy scorn. My remorse becomes fairy fury and my pensiveness is turned to fairy cunning.”
― Susanna Clarke, quote from The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories
“You’re the best there is. No one can replace you.” Unexpectedly, the White chuckled. “Words every megalomaniac longs to hear. But true only of the truly bad and the monumentally great. I am neither,”
― Brent Weeks, quote from The Broken Eye
“Ben, I don’t want to take your freedom. I just want a place in your world. An important one.”
He craned his neck, tipping my chin up to make me look at him at the same time. “Sweetheart, you’ve been important since day one.”
― Kylie Scott, quote from Deep
“I really haven't had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I'd rather tell a story about somebody else.”
― Kurt Cobain, quote from Journals
“For the majority of people, what they love exists only in the imagination. The object of their love is not the man or woman of reality, but what he or she is like in their imagination. The person in reality is just a template used for the creation of this dream lover. Eventually, they find out the differences between their dream lover and the template. If they can get used to those differences, then they can be together. If not, they split up. It’s as simple as that. You differ from the majority in one respect: You didn’t need a template.”
― Liu Cixin, quote from The Dark Forest
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