Human existence matters the most when you set goals…

Human existence matters the most when you set goals and strive for an undetermined outcome. Maybe you will fail or maybe you will succeed. But in either case it will be your failure and your success in that ownership matters. Success. Failure. Risk.

— from The Flight Plan (Purpose/Wisdom/Risk) · Sick Souls, Healthy Minds- How William James Can Save Your Life by John Kaag

In the book

This is also why risk is not the enemy of a good flight plan but a built-in part of its price. The truth is plain, and worth staking a life on: human existence matters most precisely when you set a goal and strive toward an outcome you cannot guarantee; there is no reward without risk, and that is simply the exchange rate of anything worth having. Listen to the people near the end of their flights and you will hear it confirmed: their sharpest regrets are almost never the risks they took and lost, but the bold ones they never took at all — the whole architecture of regret is built on the words "if only I had". — The Flight Plan (Purpose/Wisdom/Risk)

Human existence matters most, I have come to believe, exactly when you set a goal and strive toward an undetermined outcome — when you might fail and you might succeed, and nobody can tell you in advance which. Because in either case it will be your failure and your success, and that ownership is the whole of it. A life of safe, guaranteed outcomes is not really a life. — Goals, Action & Defining Success (Goal/Action/Success/Motivation)

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