Fire yourself today, please

This article by The Robert D. Smith is a remarkable slap upside the head and shot across the bow for anyone who thinks their lot in life is out of their control.

This is your life! This is not a dress rehearsal or a practice run. This is the real thing. Time is limited. You are on a deadline. It ends at midnight tonight. ... It is time to start acting like your butt is on the line. Fire yourself today if you don’t show up, and measure up. Then hire the new you tomorrow ...

Stop acting like you’re protected from your own incompetence. That is a lie. You are an individual and this is your life. Period. 

 Read the whole article here.

Insist on yourself

I find quite a few nuggets of wisdom in every reading of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s immortal essay Self-Reliance.

Here, he summarizes an entreaty that the reader think and act for herself, find her own way, not be content to follow in the steps of even the greatest men and women who have come before – because only you can or will walk the path ahead of you.

“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.”