Personal mastery

As Diane Coutu so eloquently explains in her luminous “How Resilience Works,” “Resilient people possess three characteristics — a staunch acceptance of reality; a deep belief, often buttressed by strongly held values, that life is meaningful; and an uncanny ability to improvise. You can bounce back from hardship with just one or two of these

Winston Churchill set up a special department. Others might be in awe of his titanic persona, but the job of this department, Jim Collins reports, was to give Churchill all the worst news. Then Churchill could sleep well at night, knowing he had not been groupthinked into a false sense of security.

a ‘slow hunch’ – the anti-‘lightbulb moment,’ the idea that comes into focus over decades, not seconds.

Using the SCARF model, you can have a better understanding of what needs aren’t being met and why you’re being triggered. This will help you not scratch the itch or react without thinking.

Status

Certainty

Autonomy

Relatedness

Fairness

Develop Your Communication Skills One often‐neglected skill set that can boost your career is your ability to communicate well, in both speaking and writing. How many rambling, poorly composed emails do you see these days? How many take you through the confusion and hell of the writer's mind? How many announcements do you read that bury the real

Theodore Roosevelt's famous speech, “The Man in the Arena”: The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows

but if there is one skill that stands out, it’s the ability to focus and make the best move when there are no good moves.

even after all the obvious levels of skill and craft (chi) have been mastered, the Yu still depends on the discovery of new challenges (the “complicated place” or “difficulties” in the above quotation), and on the development of new skills ... In other words, the mystical heights of the Yu are not attained by some superhuman quantum jump, but

The roots of the word “compete” are the Latin con petire, which meant “to seek together.” What each person seeks is to actualize her potential, and this task is made easier when others force us to do our best. Of course, competition improves experience only as long as attention is focused primarily on the activity itself. If extrinsic goals—such as