My top 25 points:

1. Regret is a feeling I wouldn’t wish on any human being

2. Regret is a devilish cocktail of agency and imagination

3. We don’t feel regret because we tried and failed. We regret not trying.

4. Our default response in life is not to experience meaning or happiness. Our default response is to experience inertia.

5. All of us are programmed in some way by our parents. The good news is that we have the right to deprogram ourselves whenever we want.

6. The odds of success favor those who don’t stray too far from their expertise, experience and relationships.

7. If you have the ability to sell, you have adjacency to any career that requires persuasion. Adjacency dramatically expands your options.

8. Many people overweight Aspiration at the expense of Ambition. They dream big and do small.

9. We are not very good at sifting the insignificant choices in our lives from the significant.

10. We grossly overestimate the impact of some meaningless choices and grossly underestimate others that turn out to be life altering.

11. Keep a log of every time someone says something to you that sounds as if they see latent potential that you’ve been overlooking. You’re not looking for praise. You’re looking for insights on how you can be better.

12. How to refine our choices so that they serve us rather than sabotage us?

13. Yes, people get better, but only with follow up.

14. Whatever form follow up takes, we should welcome it rather than resent it. It’s a supportive gesture, not an intrusion on our integrity and personal space.

15. I gleefully confess that I don’t suffer from Not- Invented- Here syndrome. I’m a connoisseur of other people’s ideas.

16. Structure is particularly useful with the small stuff. I’m not ashamed that I need a reminder to behave better. It would be shameful if I knew it and didn’t do anything about it.

17. If an individual identifies with a group, his desire for approval from the group shapes his behavior and performance.

18. If I can leave you with only one piece of advice it is this: Ask for help. You need it more than you know.

19. One executive told me his major inflection points are his screw ups- because he tuned the shame filled memory of each fiasco into a teachable moment.

20. We typecast people by our memory of their worst moments, refusing to forgive them or accept that people change.

21. Your ability to experience delayed gratification is such a decisive factor in living an earned life, perhaps an even more reliable predictor than intelligence.

22. Regret is the price you pay for not paying the price.

23. That’s the risk that comes with the empathy of feeling. We can feel too much. We can reduce that risk a well-intended come and go strategy. By all means share the other persons feelings but don’t stay too long at the party. Join in and then get out.

24. Empathy is biased. We tend to bestow it on those who look like us, who are attractive, and who are non-threatening and familiar.

25. If I could have only one index card to carry with me for the rest of my life, this would be the message I’d write on it: “Am I being the person I want to be right now?”