Po Bronson Quotes

There is nothing more genuine than breaking away from the chorus to learn the sound of your own voice.

Who you are is more important than what you do. The goal is to bring what you do in alignment with who you are, so you don’t end up being someone you don’t want to be.

If you want to give yourself a fair chance to succeed, never expect too much too soon

There's a powerful transformative effect when you surround yourself with like-minded people. Peer pressure is a great thing when it helps you accomplish your goals instead of distracting you from them.

I used to want to change the world. Now I'm open to letting it change me.

We all make mistakes, but we need to learn from them and move on. You can own a mistake, or the mistake will own you.

A conventional ‘success’ story is one where, with each next, the protagonist has more money, more respect, and more possessions. I’d like to suggest an alternative ‘success’ story – one where, with each next, the protagonist is closer to finding that spot where he’s no longer held back by his heart, and he explodes with talent, and his character blossoms, and the gift he has to offer the world is apparent.

The virtue of losing is we get used to the fact that competing and to lose doesn't kill you. It just makes you stronger. It just helps you get used to it.

Curiosity is a raw and genuine sign from deep inside our tangled psyches, and we'd do well to follow the direction it points us in.

I'm convinced that business success in the future starts with the question, What should I do with my life? Yes, that's right.... People don't succeed by migrating to a "hot" industry (one word: dotcom) or by adopting a particular career-guiding mantra (remember "horizontal careers"?). They thrive by focusing on the question of who they really are--and connecting that to work that they truly love (and, in so doing, unleashing a productive and creative power that they never imagined).

As I get older, I've learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things.

It surprises me how often we hold ourselves back until we have no choice.

Love that has been tested is far more awe-inspiring than love that has never known anything but bliss.

We've all lost something along the way.

But I'd rather help than watch. I'd rather have a heart than a mind. I'd rather expose too much than too little. I'd rather say hello to strangers than be afraid of them. I would rather know all this about myself than have more money than I need. I'd rather have something to love than a way to impress you.

Good competitive skills means not just to compete hard, but to selectively compete, to harness your energy for the things that matter and, in some cases, to just realize it doesn't matter whether I win or lose here at all.

Books have been my classroom and my confidant. Books have widened my horizons. Books have comforted me in my hardest times. Books have changed my life.

I think when a reader reads a whole book - which takes six to ten hours - that’s kind of a gift to the author. The gift of close, undivided attention. To who else do we listen so closely for eight straight hours? And when readers give that gift to me, I’m grateful for it.

There was a culture that came out of the self-esteem movement which was don't anybody keep track of the goals. The kids keep track, but nobody keep track of the goals because we don't want the kids to have the experience of losing. And in depriving them losing, thinking it scarred them to lose, we made losing so taboo, so unspeakable, that we instead made losing more scary to kids, not less scary.

I used to use business to make money. But I've learned that business is a tool. You can use it to support what you believe in.

The important thing to know about playing to win and playing not to lose is that there are actually different neural networks that are being used. It's not very easy to do both at the same time and, if you are trying to have a playing to win mentality, you're going for it, there's some things that trip you up or trigger the wrong neural network. If you start worrying about your mistakes all of a sudden, if you get too focused on the facts and the details, these are going to shift your neural networks and sort of screw up your strategy.

A piece of writing has to seduce the reader; it has to suspend disbelief and earn the reader's trust.

Make sure your characters are worth spending ten hours with. That’s how long it takes to read a book. Reading a book is like being trapped in a room for ten hours with those characters. Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you’ve created? Your characters can be loveable, or they can be evil, but they’d better be compelling. If not, your reader will be bored and leave.

Write first. Worry about getting an agent or publisher later. Write it first. Prove you can do it and then others will listen. Tons of people talk about books they want to write. Far fewer are those who actually complete that vision. Don’t be a talker.

Anytime you exhaust yourself trying to relax, that's active leisure.