The key is taking responsibility and initiative, deciding what your life is about and prioritizing your life around the most important things.
Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will go about achieving it and staying with that plan.
For the novice runner, I'd say to give yourself at least 2 months of consistently running several times a week at a conversational pace before deciding whether you want to stick with it. Consistency is the most important aspect of training at this point.
You have to think of your career the way you look at the ocean, deciding which wave you're gonna take and which waves you're not gonna take. Some of the waves are going to be big, some are gonna be small, sometimes the sea is going to be calm. Your career is not going to be one steady march upward to glory.
I sometimes think if I had gone to Oxford or Cambridge and looked like a handsome young guy who could be in an Evelyn Waugh novel or something, I'd be a massive movie star. But there's a longevity to what I do. It's more reliable. Someone isn't deciding that I'm the next big thing.
Actively deciding to give to causes that move you deeply is far more fulfilling than the momentary gratification derived from signing a check and mailing it to a nonprofit about which you know little more than what's on the brochure they sent you.
I like to imagine, as a thought experiment, the day, perhaps not too far off, when a Republican president nominates a Supreme Court Justice married to someone of the same sex, maybe even with the sanction of 'orthodox' theology - with that gay Supreme Court justice casting the deciding vote that finally overturns 'Roe vs. Wade.' It could happen.
Smoking calms me down. It's enjoyable. I don't want politicians deciding what is exciting in my life.
A 'Globe' examination found that Boston police officers exercise broad discretion when deciding whether to issue a ticket.
Our criteria for deciding what's good and what's bad is very fickle, especially in this country.