The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

from J.K. Rowling’s 2008 Commencement Address at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association (via Amanda Horne)

My personal test of a life well lived? To me, the answer lies in the quality of our personal relationships and the care we devote to them. Everything else is peripheral, and mostly trivial. Our personal relationships – the test bed of our sensitivity, our moral courage and our capacity for love – are not only the source of life’s richest meanings, but as we struggle to establish them, nurture them and sometimes forsake them, they teach us that notions like happiness or sadness are mere accidents of our fluctuating emotional state, and are incidental to the great realisation that it is in loving we are made whole.

Extract of a fabulous speech from Hugh Mackay at the Happiness & Its Causes 2010 Conference.

(via Zoe Lamont)

… the best leaders and the best organizations have strong opinions that are weakly held. Strong opinions reflect and instill confidence, and also provide clear guidance about the direction that people should try to go right now. But, since those opinions are weakly held, they don’t stand as barriers to change when better information comes along.

If we were starting this whole office thing today, it’s inconceivable we’d pay the rent/time/commuting cost to get what we get. I think in ten years the TV show ‘the Office’ will be seen as a quaint antique.

When you need to have a meeting, have a meeting. When you need to collaborate, collaborate. The rest of the time, do the work, wherever you like.

What Seth said.

What have you done with your connection skills that has been worthy of criticism, that moved the dial and that changed the world?

Go, do that.

We lose respect for a leader when he or she fails to acknowledge a mistake. What we want to see in our leaders is a sense of self-awareness and honesty.

If you’re spending all day in bed, you want other people to know about it, and be jealous. So provide frequent and descriptive Twitter and Facebook updates about your day. “Gray bird on windowsill.” “Turning over now.” “Tahitian Gardenia candle worth the $20.”

Love it!

Hydroponic edible gardens for urban windows – window farms turn our cities’ windows into vertical veggie farms.

Another item to add to the list of dream office requirements (along with Idea Paint, an office dog, and walking workstations).

(via Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist)