Authenticity

Your passion must come from the things that fill you from the inside.

What is failure? If I stayed, that would be failure. I had to be true to myself. You've got to listen to the voice in your gut. It is individual. It is unique. It is yours. It's called being authentic.

Be strong enough to say, 'I don't know.' When you don't know, say so. Don't guess. Don't fake it.

Create your own definition of success. Don't let it be judged or guided by someone else's measurements, by someone else's expectations or limitations.

Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

True success is measured in how you play the game of life — that you honor those that have come before you by playing the game with great integrity, with honor and class.

I had to take off the teacher mask, which so many of us put on at the beginning; the mask that says: 'Well, I'm the teacher and I know it all. You sit there and I'll tell you.'

From fear to freedom. That's it. To free yourself of the stuff that's been imposed on you.

Real leadership comes from the quiet nudging of an inner voice. It comes from realizing that the time has come to move beyond preparing to doing.

Your integrity is not for sale.

Have the courage to accept that you're not perfect, nothing is, and no one is — and that's OK.

Your path is your character defining itself more and more every day like a photograph coming into focus, like a color that becomes more vivid in contrast with its surroundings.