Eleven Rings

Think lightly of yourself and think deeply of the world. MIYAMOTO MUSASHI

Forget mistakes, forget failures, forget everything, except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day. WILL DURANT

What matters most is playing the game the right way and having the courage to grow, as human beings as well as basketball players. When you do that, the ring takes care of itself.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it. ROALD DAHL

“To hear the unheard,” he said, “is a necessary discipline to be a good ruler. For only when a ruler has learned to listen closely to the people’s hearts, hearing their feelings uncommunicated, pains unexpressed, and complaints not spoken of, can he hope to inspire confidence in the people, understand when something is wrong, and meet the true need

I’ve taken a different tack. After years of experimenting, I discovered that the more I tried to exert power directly, the less powerful I became. I learned to dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority. Paradoxically, this approach strengthened my effectiveness because it freed me to focus on m

“It sounds more mystical than it really is,” he says of the process he went through. “The coaches’ goal was to set down some basic guidelines for us on how to play basketball together as a group. And then you were expected to create your own chart for everything else. It was an uncanny way of creating organization without over-organizing. It wasn’t

The paradox, he writes in his seminal work, On Becoming a Person, “is that the more I am simply willing to be myself, in all this complexity of life and the more I am willing to understand and accept the realities in myself and in the other person, the more change seems to be stirred up.”

the courage needed to engage in battle was indistinguishable from love.

Leadership is not about forcing your will on others. It’s about mastering the art of letting go.