The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change

by Adam Braun

The purest joys are available to all of us, and they’re unrelated to status, recognition, or material desires.

In truth we re-create our reputation every day.

We each bear responsibility to prove ourselves day in and day out and have no one to blame but ourselves for the outcome.

We exist because of the sacrifices of those who came before us, but how often can we make them feel the full value of their impact?

You never realize how much you value something until you are faced with the prospect of losing it.

I understood that I might fail, but I wouldn’t let it happen because I changed my compass along the way.

The only truth about first impressions is that you only get one. The way people perceive you in those first few moments will set the anchor around which all future interactions are based.

I had used a negative word, non, to detail our work when that inaccurately described what we did. Our primary driver was not the avoidance of profits, but the abundance of social impact.

As the African proverb states, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

At the time, it was clear that everyone expected us to keep growing. Expectations are the daunting shadows that trail behind accomplishments; no matter how high one goes, the other follows on its footsteps.

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

The key is to think big and then take small, incremental steps forward day by day. Start by changing the subjects of your daily conversation from the life you are living to the life you aspire to create.

I’ll tell them that the most direct route to happiness is through creating joy for someone else, and that change doesn’t happen through hard work alone. It requires strength of imagination.