Many books about stress are bandages. They focus on escape. They encourage you to breathe deeply. Close your eyes and notice your breath.
Relaxing is a sinister bandage when stress is self-imposed.
Three distortions give birth to self-imposed stress.
Everything is urgent.
Everything is your responsibility.
Everything proves your worth.
Energy determines who leads, not titles. Positive energy multiplies impact.
Multipliers breathe life into people.
Bad is 5X stronger than good. One draining habit cancels five encouraging ones. Eliminate what drains before adding what lifts.
Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Click for tools to become a multiplier.
Empathy destroys us when it makes excuses. Grit is pressing forward.
Getting beyond resilience multiplies competence.
Delicate teams argue over trivialities.
Avoiding discomfort leads to weakness.
The feeble need rescue. The competent grow through challenge.
Resilience survives. Antifragile* teams thrive.
Here’s how to get beyond resilience and turn adversity into advantage.
Comfort is a warning. Don’t wait for failure to change. Abandon what’s working before it fails.
Your Brain at Ease
Stops scanning for issues.
Stops challenging the process.
Stops questioning methods.
Starts protecting the past.
Comfort is unquestioned repetition.
Ease makes the pursuit of better impossible.
When you’re comfortable you’re sinking.
Winning is dangerous.
Katie Ledecky won her first Olympic gold medal when she was 15 years old (a freshman in high school). At 28 she’s the most decorated female Olympian in history. She has 14 Olympic medals. Nine gold.
Success hasn’t hardened into nostalgia for Ledecky.
Don’t make winning your primary focus.
A hawk took a mouse in our front yard. The mouse dined in the cornfield. On its way home, the hawk dined on the mouse.
There’s no cosmic conspiracy. No malice. No mercy. It’s beautiful carnage. Everything is as it should be.
Nature is amoral. Humans are responsible.
