Greatness

Diving into the life, lessons, and greatness of John Wooden  from his book, Wooden on Leadership

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2:30 - Definition of Success

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.

3:50 - Dad's advice

Don’t worry about whether you’re better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the best you can become. You have control over that; the other you don’t.”

1. Be true to yourself 
2. Make each day your masterpiece 
3. Help others
4. Drink deeply from good books including the good book
5. Make friendship a fine art.
6. Build a shelter against a rainy day
7. Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings everyday 

7:00 - Enthusiasm

Success is unattainable without enthusiasm…enthusiasm comes from your heart being in your work...You will perish without hard work, without industriousness. Industriousness is not possible without enthusiasm. Success is unattainable without both of them.


11:25 - Eagerness vs willing to sacrifice

Initially, I defined team spirit as a “willingness to sacrifice personal interest or glory for the welfare of all,” but there was something in the definition that bothered me, something not quite right…When it came to team spirit, willingness was not enough; eagerness was the exact description of what I sought in myself and in those I coached. A willingness to be selfless suggests a begrudging aspect of doing what is required for the team. I wanted each player to be eager to sacrifice personal interest for the good of the group…Team spirit is nearness to sacrifice personal interests or glory for the welfare of all.

13:50 - Confidence

You have to earn the right to be confident

16:50 - Strongest four-letter word

“Love is patient; love is kind. It is not jealous; it is not pompous; it is not inflated; it is not rude; it does not seek its own interest; it is not quick tempered; it does not brood over injury; it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.”

18:15 - Don't give 110%

Give me 100 percent. You can’t make up for poor effort today by giving 110 percent tomorrow. You don’t have 110 percent. You only have 100 percent, and that’s what I want from you right now.

20:10 - How to Win

If you want to extend a winning streak – forget about it. If you want to break a losing streak – forget about it. Forget about everything except concentrating on hard work and intelligent planning…The best way to achieve dreams is to ignore them

21:30 - Assume Adversity

All leaders and organizations are blind-seided by bad luck and misfortune in varius ways at various times. The best leaders understand this and are seldom thrown off stride when it occurs. They recognize the opportunity it presents, namely, that your response can separate you and your organization front he competition whose leader is stunned and then disheartened when fate frowns. Expect the rough patches and allow them to make you stronger 

25:45 - One Final Note

A good leader never stops learning. A gr

Diving into the life, lessons, and greatness of Giannis Antetokounmpo  from Mirin Fader's book, Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA Champion

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1:45 - Daily Reminder

We’ve got to make the most of today. Tomorrow is not promised

3:25 -  Motivation

It’s hard to be motivated when you have everything. When your life is good. I didn’t have a choice. I had to be motivated.

6:20 - The Change

Let’s do something with our lives so we can never have to do this again

7:45 - Find a Sanctuary

Basketball was the only way Giannis could forget about everything happening in his life. He told me when he plays, the problems are gone. And he’s happy.”

10:00 - Nigerian Proverb

However far the stream flows, it never forgets its source - Nigerian Proverb

11:20 - You'll Never Be Ready

I know I’m not ready. I have a lot of work ahead of me. But I’m not afraid. I will give everything on the court, in the gym. And I will prove to the Milwaukee Bucks that they made the right choice.


13:20 - Kobe's Advice to Giannis

Be serious until the last time you play basketball. You have to have that killer mindset. That mindset that you will not be beat. That you will outwork everybody.”

You always gotta be a kid. A kid uses fantasy. You can see a kid being creative, playing with two rocks and playing around with them. When you’re a lid you always wanna learn. You ask question. Why did I do this? Why am I sitting in the passenger seat? Why am I going to school today? You’re always asking questions. Be a kid.

19:45 - The Thought

What if we all went to sleep and woke up and we were back where we started?

23:10 - Mindset

It’s human nature to want to relax, but you can’t relax. You have to get back into killer mode.

28:45 - One Final Note

Fate can start you at the bottom. Dreams can take you to the top.

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Diving into the life, lessons, and greatness of Theodore Roosevelt  from Edmund Morris' book, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

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1:10 - The Power of Reading

Yet from reading of the people I admired...I felt a great admiration for men who were fearless and could hold their own in the world, and I had a great desire to be like one.”

2:40 -  Make Your Body

Theodore, you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.

8:10 - Live With Cancer

Doctor. I’m going to do all the things you tell me not to do. If I’ve got to live the sort of life you have described, I don’t care how short it is.”

10:20 - Love and Death

There is nothing left for me except to try to live so as not to dishonor the memory of those I loved who have gone before me.

12:30 - Father's Motto

“Take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies.”

18:40 - On dissapointment

I have been fairly defeated, but to tell the truth I am not disappointed at the result.

23:30 - Calling > Comfort

There are higher things in this life than the soft and easy enjoyment of material comfort

25:15 - One Final Note

I have only a second rate brain, but I think I have a capacity for action.”

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Check out my new book Chasing Greatness: Timeless Stories on the Pursuit of Excellence

Diving into the life, lessons, and greatness of Phil Knight from his book, Shoe Dog.

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4:45 - Work as Play

 I asked myself: What if there were a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time, instead of working? Or else to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing.

7:15 -  The Two Voices

Go home, a faint inner voice told me. Get a normal job. Be a normal person. Then I heard another faint voice, equally emphatic. No, don’t go home. Keep going. Don’t stop.

9:30 - Marketing and Belief

Driving back to Portland, I’d puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I’d been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I’d despised it to boot. I’d been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I’d felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief I decided. Belief is irresistible.

15:15 - On Imbalance

I was putting in six days a week at Price Waterhouse, spending early morning and late nights and all weekends anf vacations at Blue Ribbon. No friends, no exercise, no social life–and wholly content. My life was out of balance, sure, but I didn't care. In fact, I wanted even more imbalance. Or a different kind of imbalance.

18:50 - On Leading

One lesson I took from all my home-schooling about heroes was that they didn’t say much. None was a blabbermouth. None micromanaged. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

23:15 - Competition is Forgetting

People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that is always brings out the best in people, but that’s only true for people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past. You must forget that internal voice screaming, begging, “Not one more step.” And when it’s not possible to forget it, you must negotiate with it. I thought over all the races in which my mind wanted one thing, and my body wanted another, those laps in which I’d had to tell my body, “Yes, you raise some excellent points, but let’s keep going anyway…


25:30 - Grow or Die

Leaning back in my recliner each night, staring at the ceiling, I tried to settle myself. I told myself: Life is growth. You grow or you die.

32:30 - One Final Note

I’d tell men and women in their mid-twenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means. Seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, and the highs will be nothing like you’ve ever felt.

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Check out my new book Chasing Greatness: Timeless Stories on the Pursuit of Excellence

Diving into the life, lessons, and greatness of the founders of PayPal from Jimmy Soni's book called, The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entreprenuers Who Shaped Silicon Valley

Check out my new book Chasing Greatness: Timeless Stories on the Pursuit of Excellence

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0:00 - Wrong Ideas

“You start off with an idea, and that idea is mostly wrong. And then you adapt that idea and keep refining it and you listen to criticism…and then engage in sort of a recursive self-improvement…keep iterating on a loop that says, ‘Am I doing something useful for other people?’ Because that’s what a company is supposed to do.” - Elon Musk

2:50 -  On questions

“A lot of times the question is harder than the answer, and if you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part.” - Elon Musk

6:35 - Trust

“Trust builds speed. We could be on a much faster cycle than a lot of companies where you have to take a month to sort of massage things throughout the company before you could say what you were trying to say.” - Peter Thiel

7:40 - On hirings

“As hire As. Bs hire Cs. So the first B you hire takes the whole company down." - Max Levchin

15:30 - On all-nighters

“I think there's something very special about the all-nighter ethic. There's definitely something about the nocturnal lifestyle for engineers specifically that really opens up the chakras of creativity or code writing. People get slightly sillier, but also maybe a little more creative. They get tired and some spirit and camaraderie wakes up in those hours and you get more done because you're not afraid to tell people to shove it when they're doing something wrong and the interactions become more interesting." - Max Levchin

17:15 - On losers

“Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.” - Peter Thiel

25:50 - A question to ask.

“Who is the most eccentric or unorthodox person you know and could I meet them.” - Reid Hoffman

27:00 - One final note

 "The fates guide the person who accepts them and hinders the person who resists them." - Cleanthes

Diving into the life, lessons, and greatness of Tiger Woods from Jeff Benedict's and Armen Keteyian's  book, Tiger Woods


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0:00 - 10,000 hours

“Malcolm Gladwell who coined the phrase 10,000 hours said, “the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.” And Tiger Woods had probably accumulated ten thousand hours by the time he was twelve.

2:30 -  Make it Visible

“Earl was always looking for ways to give his son an edge. Tiger was in grade school when his father furnished him with a cassette player and motivational self-help tapes…Tiger was filling his mind with words that were intended to make him great. He even wrote some of the messages from the self-help cassettes on a sheet of paper that he taped on his bedroom wall:

4:45 - Philosophy

“In sport, you have to go for the throat because if all friendly, they come back and beat your ass. So you kill them. Take their heart.”

10:00 - Chasing History

“Many believed Tiger’s primary goal was to win more major championships than Jack Nicklaus. Nicklaus’s eighteen major championships, however, were not Woods’ primary focus. It was age not numbers, that mattered most to Tiger. 

“It was the first time he broke 40, the first time he broke 80, the first golf tournament he ever won, first time he ever won the state amateur, first time he won the US amateur, and the first time he won the US Open…That was it. That was the list. It was all age related. To me, it was important. This guys the best out there and the best of all time. If I can beat each age that he did it, then I have a chance at being the best.”

13:25 - Belief

“In my life, I’ve never gone to a tournament without thinking I could win. I’ve explained that to you guys before. That’s just the mindset I have.”

17:15 - Never Satisfied

“I was in in it to find the answer to one question. How good can I be?”

“I didn’t care that I won by twelve shots. I knew what I needed to do…I thrived on working on my swing. I was addicted to staying on the range for hours.”

22:30 - Capacity for Pain

“There is a difference between being hurt and being injured. If I’m hurt, I can deal with pain. Pain is no big deal. I can block that out.

30:30 - One final Note

"There’s no sense in going to a tournament if you don’t believe that you can win it. That is the belief I’ve always had, and that’s not going to change.”

Diving into the life, lessons, and greatness of Elon Musk from Ashlee Vance's book,  Elon Musk: How Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping the Future

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0:50 - Musk Purpose

“If we can solve sustainable energy problems and be well on our way to becoming a multiplanetary species with a self-sustaining civilization on another planet…I think that would be really good.”

2:30 - Asking Better Questions

“A lot of times, the question is harder than the answer, and if you can properly phrase the question, then answer is the easy part?”

The questions he asked himself after graduating college, “What would most influence the world? What are the problems we have to solve?”

7:00 - Belief Before Ability

“He has this belief that he is the guy who can change the world.” - Dave Bearden, a space industry veteran 

8:30 - Personal Risk and Sacrifice

“He’s willing to take an insane amount of personal risk. When you do a deal like that, it either pays off or you end up in a bus shelter somewhere.”

16:35 - Mentality

“My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit sepuuku than fail.”

17:45 - Failing Fast

“If there were two paths where we had to choose one thing or the other, and one wasn’t obviously better han the other, the rather than spend a lot of time trying to figure out which one was slightly better, we would just pick one and do it . And sometimes  we’d be wrong…but oftentimes it’s better to just pick a path and do it rather than just vacillate endlessly on the choice.”

24:20 - Capacity for Pain

“He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I’ve ever met,”

"The harder it gets, the better he gets. Anyone who saw what he went through firsthand came away with more respect for the guy. I’ve just never seen anything like his ability to take pain.”

32:10: One Final Note

“Elon came to the conclusion early in his career that life is short. If you really embrace this, it leaves you with the obvious conclusion that you should be working as hard as you can.” 

Diving into the life, lessons, and greatness of Bill Gates from Janet Lowe's book,  Bill Gates Speaks: Insight From the World's Greatest Entrepreneur.

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4:10  - Microsoft's Culture

“If you don’t like to work hard and be intense and do your best, this is not the place to work.”

7:00: Maintaining Focus

“Maintaining focus is a key to success. You should understand your circle of competence, the thing that you’re good at, and spend your time and energy there.”

12:30 - Innovation

“The entrepreneurial mind-set continues to thrive at Microsoft because one of our major goals is to reinvent ourselves–we have to make sure that we are the ones replacing our products instead of someone else.”

14:45 - Rules for Business

“We tell people that if no one laughs at at least one of their ideas, they’re probably not being creative enough.”

20:00 - Worst Case Scenario

“How should we prepare ourselves in case our most important partner decides not to work with us anymore?” 

24:30 - Think Week

“A couple of times a year I go away for a think week, during which I read books and other materials my colleagues believe I should see to stay up to date. These materials often include Ph.D theses exploring the frontiers of computer science.”

28:40 - Making Right Decisions

“A couple of times a year I g o away for a think week, during which I read books and other materials my colleagues believe I should see to stay up to date. These materials often include Ph.D theses exploring the frontiers of computer science.”

Great questions are the at the root of innovation, progress, and improvement. If you want to change your life or the world, you just need to ask better question.

In today's episode, we take a dive into the questions some of the greatest entrepreneurs, emperors, and artists have asked.

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1:30 - Elon Musk
“What would most influence the world?” 

3:55 - Peter Thiel
“Will this business be around a decade from now?”

5:55 - Reid Hoffman
“Who is the most eccentric or unorthodox person you know, and could I meet them?”

8:15 - Marcus Aurelius
“What am I doing with my soul?

9:25 - Leonardo Da Vinci
Why is the sky blue?

11:30 - The Obsession Question
How much are you thinking about the thing—your interest or passion or work—when you’re not doing the thing?

13:30- Asking Better Questions
“A lot of times, the question is harder than the answer, and if you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part.”

Diving into the life and work of Lucius Annaeus Seneca from his Letters From a Stoic and On the Shortness of Life

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Show Notes

1:45 - Background on Seneca

8:25 - On wealth and riches
“I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him.”
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”

9:50 - On building discipline
“The body should be treated more rigorously, that it may not be disobedient to the mind. Eat merely to relieve your hunger; drink merely to quench your thirst; dress merely to keep out the cold; house yourself merely as a protection against personal discomfort.”

13:10- Practicing poverty
“I shall give you also a lesson: Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: "Is this the condition that I feared?"

18:45 - On death
“There is no fixed count on our years. You do not know where death awaits you; so be ready for it everywhere.”

21:40 - On reflection
“As far as possible, prove yourself guilty, hunt up charges against yourself; play the part first of accuser, then of judge, last of intercessor. At times be harsh with yourself.”

“I shall keep watching myself continually, and – a most useful habit – shall review each day. For this is what makes us wicked: that no one of us looks back over his own life. Our thoughts are devoted only to what we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future always depend on the past.”

26:00- On freedom
“And what is freedom, you ask? It means not being a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance; it means compelling fortune to enter the list on equal terms.”

“You may therefore be sure that you are at peace with yourself, when no noise reaches you, when no word shakes you out of yourself, whether it be of flattery or of threat, or merely an empty sound buzzing about you with an unmeaning dim.”

34:30: On preparation
“That which has been long expected comes more gently.”

“Each day, he leaves his home with this thought in mind: “Today I will meet many addicted to wine, many overcome by lust, many who lack gratitude, many enslaved by greed, and many bewitched by the false promises of ambition” But all these conditions he will treat with kindness, as a doctor treats his own patients.”

40:35: On a daily reminder
“What can be given can also be taken away.”

43:15 On time
“It is not that we have a short time to love. But that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it we all well invested…So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, adn we are not ill-supplied bit wasteful of it.”

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Resources

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