We are not serious people.

My daughter — a graduate of Columbia University in New York City, with a degree in history, currently living in that in-between space of a corporate job and studying for the LSAT — had the brilliant idea that we should read The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys by Doris Kearns Goodwin together. All 932 pages of it. We're two chapters in, and the first one alone did something to me.

It's set just before the Civil War, just after the potato famine in Ireland. And it left me with something I already knew — a splinter that sits in the back of my mind, one that's been getting sharper lately.

It's the same splinter as the relative or parent you need to call and reconnect with but don't. The colleague or team member who seems off, whom you notice, but never approach for an honest, caring conversation. The skill you won't take the time to learn, or the clutter that just sits in limbo.

My immigrant grandparents talked about coming through Ellis Island in the early twentieth century. Different decade, different circumstances than the Fitzgeralds — but reading that chapter, I heard their voices anyway.

And here's what it left me with: We've got to get it together. We are not serious people these days.

We're stubborn. We don't ask for help. We aren't self-aware. We're entitled. And on our best days, that may not be good enough.

Would you want you in your foxhole? Not the version of you that shows up when things are easy — the version that shows up when they're not.

Are you scrolling, or are you spinning a yarn about how bad everything is instead of doing something about it?

There's a difference between naming a hard truth and just narrating your own decline.

The ego is a strong mechanism. We cannot admit what we don't know. We ask for help more than we offer it. We complain as a form of standard communication.

It doesn't take a lot to be a star candidate or a star professional right now.

You need to be brutally self-aware. Learn what you don't know. Practice hyper-organizational skills. Be impeccable with your word. That alone will raise your bar 50% higher than most.

There's a quote that's been floating around for a few years, usually credited to novelist G. Michael Hopf, from Those Who Remain:

"Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times."

People argue about who said it first, and honestly, the idea is much older than Hopf — you can trace it back through generational theory all the way to Herodotus, the Greek historian from the 5th century BC often called the Father of History, who wrote about how soft lands breed soft men. But the age of the idea isn't the point. The mirror is.

No one owed me anything when I started Hunter Ambrose twenty years ago. No one owes any of us a thing.

We owe it to ourselves to be better human beings. Better listeners. Less sensitive. Less loud. More quiet listening. More doing. Less repeating what is not working.

If you need a humbling moment, find something in history — this book is a great one to start with. Listen to old people. Find the historical moments that give pause to better decisions today.

Our silos are shrinking, and the air is getting stale.

We have more access to everything than any country has ever had, at any point in the history of the planet. There is no excuse left.

Let's get on with it.