Seth Godin

The enemy of creativity... is fear. We're all born creative, it takes a little while to become afraid. A surprising insight: an enemy of fear is creativity. Acting in a creative way generates action, and action persuades the fear to lighten up.

Just imagine how much you'd get done if you stopped actively sabotaging your own work.

The goal, then, isn't to draw some positioning charts and announce that you have differentiated your product. No, the opportunity is to actually create something that people choose to talk about, regardless of what the competition is doing.

Life is like skiing. Just like skiing, the goal is not to get to the bottom of the hill. It's to have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets.

The first thing you do when you sit down at the computer: If you're an artist, a leader or someone seeking to make a difference, the first thing you do should be to lay tracks to accomplish your goals, not to hear how others have reacted/ responded/ insisted to what happened yesterday.

Your audacious life goals are fabulous. We're proud of you for having them. But it's possible that those goals are designed to distract you from the thing that's really frightening you--the shift in daily habits that would mean a re-invention of how you see yourself.

Our cultural instinct is to wait to get pickedNo one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.

Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.

Self sufficiency appears to be a worthy goal, but it's now impossible if you want to actually get anything done. All our productivity, leverage and insight comes from being part of a community, not apart from it. The goal, I think, is to figure out how to become more dependent, not less.

One bad review doesn't ruin my day because I realize what a badge of honor it is to get a bit of criticism at all.

All good ideas are terrible... _x000D_ Until people realize they are obvious. If you're not willing to live through the terrible stage, you'll never get to the obvious part.

It's rare to find a consistently creative or insightful person who is also an angry person. They can't occupy the same space, and if your anger moves in, generosity and creativity often move out. It's difficult to use revenge or animus to fuel great work.

Art is the work of a human, an individual seeking to make a statement, to cause a reaction, to connect. Art is something new, every time, and art might not work, precisely because it's new, because it's human and because it seeks to connect.

Build it, and they will come" only works in the movies. Social Media is a "build it, nurture it, engage them, and they may come and stay.

One theory says that if you treat people well, you're more likely to encourage them to do what you want, making all the effort pay off. Do this, get that. Another one, which I prefer, is that you might consider treating people with kindness merely because you can. _x000D_ _x000D_ Regardless of what they choose to do in response, this is what you choose to do. Because you can.

'Good enough' stopped being good enough a long time ago. so why not be great?

Go for the edges. Challenge yourself and your team to describe what those edges are, and then test which edge is most likely to deliver the marketing results you seek.

The key to success is to find a way to stand out--to be the purple cow in a field of monochrome Holsteins.

So much easier to aim for the smallest possible audience, not the largest, to build long-term value among a trusted, delighted tribe, to create work that matters and stands the test of time.

If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, they will find someone cheaper than you to do it. And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do.

Perhaps your challenge isn't finding a better project or a better boss. Perhaps you need to get in touch with what it means to feel passionate. People with passion look for ways to make things happen.