People who achieve success and drive progress deeply understand the cause-effect relationships that govern reality and have principles for using them to get what they want. (1/4)
The converse is also true: Idealists who are not well grounded in reality create problems, not progress. What does a successful life look like? We all have our own deep-seated needs, so we each have to decide for ourselves what success is. (2/4)
I don’t care whether you want to be a master of the universe, a couch potato, or anything else—I really don’t. Some people want to change the world and others want to operate in simple harmony with it and savor life. Neither is better. (3/4)
Each of us needs to decide what we value most and choose the paths we take to achieve it. (4/4)
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I highly recommend @AdamMGrant's new book Think Again. Adam is one the most revered experts in what makes organizations and people successful and he loudly and clearly tells you what is most important... (1/4)
... which is also what I tried to convey in the first two sentences of my book Principles: Life & Work: “Before I begin telling you what I think, I want to establish that I’m a ‘dumb shit’ who doesn’t know much relative to what I need to know. (2/4)
Whatever success I’ve had in life has had more to do with my not knowing how to deal with my not knowing than anything I know.”
Adam’s book is about strategies for “knowing what you don’t know” and figuring out how to find it. (3/4)
If they choose to have a primarily win-win cooperative-competitive relationship, they must take into consideration what is really important to the other and try to give it to them in exchange for them reciprocating. (1/6)
In that type of win-win relationship, they can have tough negotiations done with respect and consideration, competing like two friendly merchants at a bazaar or two friendly teams at the Olympics. (2/6)
If they choose to have a lose-lose mutually threatening relationship they will primarily think about how they can hurt the other in the hope of forcing the other into a position of fear in order to get what they want. (3/6)
Back in February, I said I wanted a president who could “bring together our country to face our challenges in a more united and less divisive way.” (1/6)
I wanted someone who would unite people – i.e. who does not view themselves as the leader of the winning side imposing policies the other side would find intolerable. (2/6)
I believe we are on the brink of a terrible civil war (as I described in The Changing World Order series), where we are at an inflection point between entering a type of hell of fighting or pulling back to work together for peace and prosperity... (3/6)
History has shown that this is the best way to sustain an empire, even one of conquered people. For example, empires that grew the most and lasted the longest did it by sharing the spoils of their successes with those were conquered rather than subjugating them. (1/4)
Conversely, those that prevented those from having what the people held most dear and would fight to the death for, were the quickest to fall. This is an important principle for those who lead to remember. (2/4)
For example, in the United States it would not be wise for the president who was elected by one large segment of the population to use that victory to try to take away from the losers those things that they hold most dear. (3/4)
I admired Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he was a principled man with great principles. The couple that stick in my mind at this time are:
1. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
2. We must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.
3. An Individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity.
Media distortions are killing us and most people are reluctant to stand up against them because they are afraid that the media they are criticizing will destroy them. (1/5)
That is why I applaud James and Kathryn Murdoch’s honest and bold public statement that, as described by the FT “castigates the US media for the ‘toxic politics’ threatening American democracy... (2/5)
...saying the media are as culpable as politicians who ‘know the truth but choose instead to propagate lies.’” (3/5)