The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change

Most of all, I'll remind them each morning that we make a choice to bring positivity or negativity into the world, and that within every single person where lies an extraordinary story waiting to unfold.

The single most powerful element of youth is that you don't have the life experiences to know what can't be done.

Your life should be a story you are excited to tell.

It's the presence of others who are smarter, kinder, wiser, and different from you that enables you to evolve. Those are the people to surround yourself with at all times.

You may be safe, but I am free.' Take advantage of the freedom that comes with your youth. Inhale life, exhale fire, and embrace the late, sleepless nights, because that's when the magic happens- when everyone else is asleep and you're awake thinking about the world as it is, and the world as it would be. Make the most of those moments," I said forcefully. "And in the coming years people will tell you that you're too young to change the world. I'm here to tell you, that's fucking bullshit.

In moments of uncertainty, when you must chose between two paths, allowing yourself to be overcome by either the fear of failure or the dimly lit light of possibility, immerse yourself in the life you would be most proud to live.

At certain moments in your life you just know that everything after will change. You can ignore these moments by not acting on the new set of possibilities they enable, and your life will stay the same. But if you say yes to their reverberating potential, your life path alters permanently.

Creating something new is easy, creating something that lasts is the challenge.

Many of us spend our entire lives in the same bubble - we surround ourselves with people who share our opinions, speak the way we speak, and look the way we look. We fear leaving those familiar surroundings, which is natural, but through exploration of the unfamiliar we stop focusing on the labels that define WHAT we are and discover WHO we are.

Every person has a revolution beating within his or her chest

your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

I realized that even big waves start with small ripples

Sometimes you have to leave things behind to understand their true value.

Your twenties are the time to both accept and fight your way into the person you're destined to become.

The biggest difference between the person who lives his or her dreams and the person who aspires is the decision to convert that first spark of motivation into immediate action.

Every great inventor, architect, scientist, and mathematician began as a child holding nothing more then a pencil. That single stick of wood and graphite could enable him to explore worlds within that he would never otherwise access.

what you see around you is proof of what exists within you.

Weak speakers look down at the floor, good speakers look up but scan the room, great speakers make eye contact selectively, and exceptional speakers deliver every complete thought directly to one person in the audience, making that person feel like the center of the room—and then they move on and do it again.

I looked around and acknowledged that what you see around you is proof of what exists within you.

It was only by focusing on creating joy in her life that I discovered the greatest feeling of happiness in my own.

I nodded, still unable to speak, digesting the weight of what she had just said. We exist because of the sacrifice of those who came before us, but how often can we make them feel the full value of their impact? ... It was only by focusing on creating joy in her life that I discovered the greatest feelings of happiness in my own.

Sometimes you know something in your head, and other times you know it in your heart. The mind delivers logic and reason, but the heart is where faith resides. In moments of uncertainty, when you must choose between two paths, allowing yourself to be overcome by either the fear of failure or the dimly lit light of possibility, immerse yourself in the life you would be most proud to live.

So many of the people I admired—the musicians, the artists, the writers—created their greatest works not during a period of happiness and contentment, but during a period of struggle.

Non is defined as “of little or no consequence: unimportant: worthless.” Worthless? Clearly, something needed to change. Why were we the only industry that introduced itself with a negative when we existed not to reduce profits, but to foster a profusion of purpose? Instead of introducing ourselves by touting what we didn’t do, shouldn’t we share what we did do?

This realization led me to institute a personal policy of going off email from Friday night until Sunday morning. I would use my weekends to rest, rejuvenate, and reconnect with those I cherished most. For one day a week, it’s important to allow yourself to be a human being, rather than a human doing.

How many times have I missed an incredible connection that could have been made because I had my face in my phone instead of paying attention to those around me?