The size of your thinking determines the
size of your results, if you have vastly big
thinking, you have vastly big results.
– Mark Victor Hansen

As you go through challenges in your life,
the secret to success is to realize that the
gift is in the setback, is in the challenge, is
in the failure. Because it’s out of those failures
that we grow, that we learn and we
discover things about ourselves that
we didn’t know about beforehand.
– Willie Jolley

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association. Enjoy, rate, comment and tell us what you think.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

“We are like tea bags — we don’t know our own strength until we’re in hot water.”

Sister Busche

This guide to enlightened conduct for people in positions of authority is based on the teachings of several great Chinese Zen masters. Drawing on private records, letters, and long-lost documents of the Song dynasty (tenth to thirteenth centuries), Zen Lessons consists of short excerpts written in language that is accessible to the reader without any background in Eastern philosophy. This book serves as a guide to recognizing the qualities of a genuine Zen teacher; it also serves as a study of the character and conduct necessary for the mastery of any position of power and authority—whether religious, social, political, or organizational.

Zen Lessons: The Art of Leadership

We should work from inspiration in our
lives. That is what should guide us, that is
what should help us to create our vision,
this feeling of inspiration. Not someone
else’s, not someone else’s sense of passion or
their likes or interests, but our own.
– Bob Doyle