1. Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?(The line he used to lure John Scullery into becoming Apple’s CEO)

2. Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

3. If you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.

4. There’s a phrase in Buddhism, ‘Beginner’s mind.’ It’s wonderful to have a beginner’s mind.

5. Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.

6. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

7. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.

8. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

9. Life is brief, and then you die, you know?

10. You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

To stand out from the crowd, you have to be prepared to think differently from everyone else .It’s impossible to be an overachiever with conventional thinking.You have to stand out by living in your own world and generating your own realities rather than accepting the realities dictated by society (and blindly followed by most people).Do your own thing.

Exceptional thinkers view the world through their own lens. If they don’t like the lens they currently have, they get active about inventing another one better suited to the task at hand .They never get sidetracked by worrying about whether others think they have what it takes to succeed. Nor do they worry about the odd early failure along the way. Overachievers are busy doing their own thing to worry about such superficial issues.

For overachievers, being described as "weird, arrogant", or "a maverick" is a badge of honor. They realize that to do something noteworthy or even to solve a big problem, they won’t get there by thinking the way everyone else does. Instead, they have to be original, even if that involves upsetting a few apple carts and putting a few noses out of joint.

The paradox is most people give lip service to the idea of originality but then proceed to live a life chained to convention, popular opinion and following whatever is the trend of the moment. Overachievers are deaf to their critics. They focus on doing things that impress themselves, even if those ideas seem strange or outrageous to everyone else. And above all, exceptional performers ignore what the best performers in every field consistently force the experts to end up seeing the world their way rather than the other way around.

If you walk around constantly thinking about your strategy and ignore the immediate tasks in front of you, you’re falling into the trap of allowing external events to control how you think and feel .When you need to perform under pressure, you need to ignore your inner conversation or external circumstances and concentrate on performing well. Exceptional people get very good at switching off all the day-to-day annoyances and focusing on the business at hand. You need to do the same. This will mean the difference between being a victim of your thoughts and taking positive control over the fabric of your life.

The top guns in every field do not leave how they think to chance. And neither should you.