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It’s a sad fact of life that new talents are regularly missed, and even when recognized, often unappreciated. The reasons always vary, but it’s a part of the journey.
archetype.
“imaginary audience.”
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Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Don’t cook the sauce before catching the fish. The way to cook a rabbit is first to catch a rabbit. Game slaughtered by words cannot be skinned. Punching above your weight is how you get injured. Pride goeth before the fall.
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What a pitiful thing it is when a man lets a little temporary success spoil him, warp his judgment, and he forgets what he is!”
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“If you can’t swallow your pride, you can’t lead.”
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“The first product of self-knowledge is humility,”
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Privately thinking you’re better than others is still pride. It’s still dangerous.
self-remimder
we trade thinking and talking for working.
“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do,” was how Henry Ford put it.
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humbleness to be patient and the fortitude to put in the work.
there is no triumph without toil.
proceed with quiet confidence in spite of the distractions.
ambitious but patient, innovative without being brash, brave without being dangerous. He was a real leader.
For ego is a wicked sister of success.
Sobriety, open-mindedness, organization, and purpose—these are the great stabilizers. They balance out the ego and pride that comes with achievement and recognition.
After we give ourselves proper credit, ego wants us to think, I’m special. I’m better. The rules don’t apply to me.
Without the right values, success is brief. If we wish to do more than flash, if we wish to last, then it is time to understand how to battle this new form of ego and what values and principles are required in order to beat it.
ALWAYS STAY A STUDENT
Genghis Khan was not born a genius. Instead, as one biographer put it, his was “a persistent cycle of pragmatic learning, experimental adaptation, and constant revision driven by his uniquely disciplined and focused will.”
The Mongol Empire was remarkable for its religious freedoms, and most of all, for its love of ideas and convergence of cultures. It brought lemons to China for the first time, and Chinese noodles to the West. It spread Persian carpets, German mining technology, French metalworking, and Islam. The cannon, which revolutionized warfare, was said to be the resulting fusion of Chinese gunpowder, Muslim flamethrowers, and European metalwork. It was Mongol openness to learning and new ideas that brought them together.
John Wheeler, who helped develop the hydrogen bomb, once observed that “as our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”
It’s remembering Socrates’ wisdom lay in the fact that he knew that he knew next to nothing.
Scientia infla (knowledge puffs up). That’s the worry and the risk—thinking that we’re set and secure, when in reality understanding and mastery is a fluid, continual process.
“Humility
they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. They don’t assume, ‘I know the way.’”
better still be a student. If you’re not still learning, you’re already dying.
Learn from everyone and everything. From the people you beat, and the people who beat you, from the people you dislike, even from your supposed enemies. At every step and every juncture in life, there is the opportunity to learn—and even if the lesson is purely remedial, we must not let ego block us from hearing it again.
“Standard of Performance.” That is: What should be done. When. How. At the most basic level and throughout the organization, Walsh had only one timetable, and it was all about instilling these standards.
The Standard of Performance was about instilling excellence. These seemingly simple but exacting standards mattered more than some grand vision or power trip. In his eyes, if the players take care of the details, “the score takes care of itself.”
Facts are better than stories and image.
people’s claims about what they’re doing in the market are rarely to be trusted.
Make it about the work and the principles behind it—not about a glorious vision that makes a good headline.
great destiny, Seneca reminds us, is great slavery.
success in the future is just the natural next part of the story—when really it’s rooted in work, creativity, persistence, and luck.
“inspiration” or “pain” that fueled their art and create an image around that—instead of hard work and sincere hustle—will
focused on the execution—and on executing with excellence.
Whatever you like, as long as you live, is yours.
mastered his ego,
couldn’t decide what was important—what actually mattered—to
We think “yes” will let us accomplish more, when in reality it prevents exactly what we seek.
us waste precious life doing things we don’t like, to prove ourselves to people we don’t respect, and to get things we don’t want.
The farther you travel down that path of accomplishment, whatever it may be, the more often you meet other successful people who make you feel insignificant. It doesn’t matter how well you’re doing; your ego and their accomplishments make you feel like nothing—just as others make them feel the same way. It’s a cycle that goes on ad infinitum . . . while our brief time on earth—or the small window of opportunity we have here—does not.
it’s not about beating the other guy. It’s not about having more than the others. It’s about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from
It’s time to sit down and think about what’s truly important to you and then take steps to forsake the rest. Without this, success will not be pleasurable, or nearly as complete as it could be. Or worse, it won’t last. This is especially true with money.
One cannot be an opera singer and a teen pop idol at the same time. Life requires those trade-offs, but ego can’t allow it.
Success casts a spell over us.
there are legitimate stresses and anguish that come with the responsibilities of your new life. All the things you’re managing, the frustrating mistakes of people who should know better,
making the owner a prisoner of its own delusions and chaos.
you become successful in your own field, your responsibilities may begin to change. Days become less and less about doing and more and more about making decisions.
