He looked at business the way a grand master might look at a chessboard: “There’s nothing you can do about where the pieces are, it’s only your next move that matters”.

The problem with success, even a little success, is that it changes you. You are no longer walking along the same precipice that drove you to do great work in the first place. Now you have something to defend: a reputation, money in the bank, a brand, real customer expectations. Success can take the edge away.

The laws of physics suggest we cannot go in one direction forever. Sooner or later, something will slow us down. Whether it be stocks, housing prices, economies, or entire civilizations, even the biggest boom stall. We build castles, churches, and monuments believing they will last forever; our perception of solidity often belies an underlying movement that is difficult to perceive. Sometimes we can see the wave of change coming. But more often we are swept along in it.

Early in my career I had learned the wisdom of not gripping over the hand I was dealt. I had a mentor who taught me lessons about business and life that served me for years. He looked at business the way a grand master might look at a chessboard. There’s nothing you can do about where the pieces are. It’s only your next move that matters.

It’s not just about entertainment. It’s about telling stories that audiences connect with emotionally. The way to do this is to make our films personal, to make certain they mean something to our directors.

Steve paid attention to every nuance of the slides, even details that, as far as I could tell, were invisible to the naked eye, like font kerning – which is adjusting the space between letters – and font smoothing to make sure the curves on each font were perfect. He hired a presentation professional, Wayne Goodrich, to help finalize these details and to make sure that at every single stop on the road show, all the pieces were in place to show the presentation and video perfectly.

Steve once told me that the gestation of great products takes much longer than it appears. What seems to emerge from nowhere belies a long process of development, trials, and missteps.

There’s nothing you can do about where the pieces are,” he’d say. “It’s only your next move that matters.

The Middle Way is about finding harmony between the structure that helps us function and the fluidity that opens us up to experience more ease, richness, and connection in our lives

Education and material well-being had reached heights that had surely exceeded anything in history, yet we did not seem to have a particular advantage for gaining wisdom, joy and peace of mind.