Chasing Excellence

It’s the days when you have to do things that scare you, when you have to take risks, when you have to push against challenge and difficulty—those are the days that make you stronger, faster, and better overall. In strength and conditioning circles, this is known as the Overload Principle.

“After a certain point, further improvement depends on deliberate efforts to change particular aspects of performance.”

Positivity doesn’t guarantee anything, but it can lower perceived exertion, make things seem more enjoyable, improve your chances of competing at your potential, and give you a competitive advantage. Chapter 4 4.

Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

Deliberate practice can be characterized by the following four elements: It’s designed specifically to improve performance. It is repeated a lot. Feedback on results is continuously available. It’s highly demanding mentally, and not necessarily or particularly enjoyable, because it means you are

“Sports do not build character, they reveal it.”

Only those who have the patience to do things perfectly will acquire the skills to do difficult things easily. —Friedrich Schiller

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. —Henry David Thoreau

Jobs was famously fired from Apple before returning to reshape the entire tech industry; Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas”; J. K. Rowling was fired from her job as a secretary before going on to become the world’s first and only billionaire author.