Mark Goulston

If you're fortunate, you'll meet people over the course of your career who exceed your expectations in every way. When you work or spend time with them, you find yourself wanting to be a better person.

Why do people who consider themselves good communicators often fail to actually hear each other? Often it's due to a mismatch of styles: To someone who prefers to vent, someone who prefers to explain seems patronizing; explainers experience venters as volatile.

The measure of self-assurance is how deeply and sincerely interested you are in others; the measure of insecurity is how much you try to impress them with you.

PTSD occurs following a trauma that was so awful that in retrospect you don't understand how you survived. What that causes is an extreme feeling of vulnerability that you get past but that doesn't go away.