Personal mastery

We can’t write off the danger of complacency, growing rigidity, imprisonment by our own comfortable habits and opinions. Look around you. How many people whom you know well — people even younger than yourselves –are already trapped in fixed attitudes and habits. A famous French writer said “There are people whose clocks stop at a certain point in

First, tackle them when we’re in a good mood. A 2016 study found that when people are upset, they’re less likely to try to do hard things. When they’re feeling upbeat, however, they’re more likely to take on the hard-but-essential tasks that ultimately make life better. One way we can get ourselves in the right mindset is to do what’s called

After the ’98 Masters tournament, Woods was disappointed that he did not repeat his win of the previous year, but he felt good about his top-ten finish: “I squeezed the towel dry this week. I’m very proud of the way I hung in there.” Or after a British Open, where he finished third: “Sometimes you get even more satisfaction out of creating a score

“What’s working, and how can we do more of it?” Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet, in the real world, this obvious question is almost never asked. Instead, the question we ask is more problem focused: “What’s broken, and how do we fix it?” - via Chip and Dan Heath, Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard

areas. I might think that my artistic skills are fixed but that my intelligence can be developed. Or that my personality is fixed, but my creativity can be developed. We’ve found that whatever mindset people have in a particular area will guide them in that area.

“I believe . . . that everyone, of whatever age and circumstance, is capable of self-transformation.”