JUSTINE MUSK

Extreme success results from an extreme personality and comes at the cost of many other things.

In the late spring of 2008, my wealthy entrepreneurial husband, Elon Musk, the father of my five young sons, filed for divorce. Six weeks later, he texted me to say he was engaged to a gorgeous British actress in her early 20s who had moved to Los Angeles to be with him.

I've noticed that women who pursue recognition rather than attention have a different relationship with aging. They're not dropping tens of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery. When they have to choose between looking older - or looking odd - they'll go with older.

I don't believe that we - and this holds true for both genders - have as many choices as we seem to like to think.

Why strive to be 'elite'? Because it infuses your life with purpose and meaning that does not depend on anyone or anything that can ever be taken away from you.

You have to have a spirit of courage and adventure, or else you're going to find it tough to get up in the morning sometimes.

Sometimes it is a way of controlling others, including family members, because you don't know how to connect to them in any other way. Money can also serve as a scorecard to indicate how well you are doing, the impact you are having, if you are winning.

Extreme success is not like other kinds of success; what has worked for someone else probably won't work for you.

Extreme people combine brilliance and talent with an insane work ethic.

Hope is much more than wishful thinking. Hope is a way of moving through the world.

From childhood on, both males and females learn to do whatever we need to do to get the attention we need to survive. We fashion ourselves accordingly. And then, should that attention ever go away, it's only natural to do the same things we've always done, rely on what we've always relied on, in order to make it come back.

The world gives you money in exchange for something it perceives to be of equal or greater value: something that transforms an aspect of the culture, reworks a familiar story or introduces a new one, alters the way people think about the category and make use of it in daily life.

We live in a culture that does not encourage women to be epic heroes of their own Big Stories but the mothers and lovers and wives and mistresses and muses and personal assistants, the femme fatales and fantasies and manic pixie dream girls, in someone else's Big Story, and this someone else is usually a dude.

I had turned into a trophy wife - and I sucked at it. I wasn't detail-oriented enough to maintain a perfect house or be a perfect hostess. I could no longer hide my boredom when the men talked and the women smiled and listened. I wasn't interested in Botox or makeup or reducing the appearance of the scars from my C-sections.

The world doesn't throw a billion dollars at a person because the person wants it or works so hard they feel they deserve it.

We are born into a particular place and time with a particular set of gifts and limitations. The challenge isn't to pluck the best career out of the air, but to learn yourself from the inside out: to know your gifts and accept your limitations and shape your life accordingly.

Every time a confident, successful woman like Marissa Meyer distances herself from feminism, I think of Athena. Athena women, with all their brilliance and strategy, are the ones smashing up through layers of glass. They tend to identify with men, keeping femininity at a distance.

Fear is a powerful beast. But we can learn to ride it.

Recognition happens when you see yourself from the inside-out: as someone who can make an impact on the world instead of navigating the impact the world has on you.

A lot of people work extremely hard and through no fault of their own - bad luck, the wrong environment, unfortunate circumstances - struggle to survive.

Artemis women often have difficult childhoods. She's the kid who seeks comfort in the woods, or animals, or books. If trapped in an authoritarian family, she blends in to get by - but keeps a fierce autonomy inside her head and heart, looking to the day she breaks free.

I have struggled with self-esteem issues since my teens, but it's clear in my first long-ago diary that I didn't start out that way. I acquired my low self-esteem. I learned it.

I don't think it's that difficult to distinguish between people with narcissistic disorders and people with high self-esteem.

Money is rarely just money. Sometimes it stands in for love or self-esteem or freedom or a sense of control over your destiny (especially if you lacked these things in childhood).

As a girlchild in the early-to-mid 1980s, I wasn't expected to like math. So I stopped liking math. As a young woman, I wasn't expected to have high self-esteem.