Dan Stocke

Fulfillment comes from achieving what YOU want - other opinions be damned. Any one else’s definition of your success, even if they think you are the cat’s pajamas, is irrelevant.

When your first reflex is an amused sense of wonderment, you can find a lot of happiness in this world. 

When you discover that merely looking for what you’re looking for is what you’re looking for, it messes with your brain. I’m losing my mind over here! 

Leadership isn't about sending people in a direction without direction. Leadership is about being able to explain the benefits of achieving the goal. It's about giving your sled dogs (as it were) the tools to succeed and the language for them to explain the plan well for themselves and to others. 

The story of how I messed up reading the word “asparagus” on national television. 

Sometimes the best relief for a chaotic world is a good hug.

When any other industry’s product causes, or is even remotely involved in, the death of children, they move mountains to correct the problem. For the gun industry this is “intended use”. The mass murder of children is a feature not a bug. 

Mass shootings prove the effectiveness and efficiency of guns over other devices.

If you have never read anything of mine, please read this. It helps explain the deep divide in today’s American discourse and may just be the most revelatory thing I have ever written.

It is revealing the comfort people take when they are surrounded by a community that passes no judgement but nurtures the truest expression of one’s self - to not only find happiness in the happiness of others, but to actively support one another’s happiness.

My mother didn’t know it at the time, but she instilled in me the core tenets of kaizen: to actively make small improvements over time - to always leave it better than you found it.

When I say “efficiency” I mean it in the truest sense of the word: maximizing output while minimizing input - not the DOGE “make smaller for the sake of being smaller” (or whatever the hell they are doing) definition.

For historic parallels to lavish spending and avoiding taxing the rich you have to look to Versailles. Specifically to the guy who built it: Louis XIV, and to the guy who lost his head over it: Louis XVI. 

Champion is a wild word because it has two meanings that can be used opposite themselves:

- Be the best you can be (I am the champion).

- Support the other guy (I will be your champion).

The word is its own oxymoron.

Don't wait for permission. Don't ask for anyone's approval. Don't let anyone tell you you're not doing it right. Your happiness is yours and yours alone.