👑 On Being Well-Read, Persistence, and Choosing The Right Enemy.

“Resistance feeds on fear. We experience Resistance as fear. But fear of what?

Fear of the consequences of following our heart. Fear of bankruptcy, fear of poverty, fear of insolvency. Fear of groveling when we try to make it on our own, and of groveling when we give up and come crawling back to where we started. Fear of being selfish, of being rotten wives or disloyal husbands; fear of failing to support our families, of sacrificing their dreams for ours. Fear of betraying our race, our ’hood, our homies. Fear of failure. Fear of being ridiculous. Fear of throwing away the education, the training, the preparation that those we love have sacrificed so much for, that we ourselves have worked our butts off for. Fear of launching into the void, of hurtling too far out there; fear of passing some point of no return, beyond which we cannot recant, cannot reverse, cannot rescind, but must live with this cocked-up choice for the rest of our lives. Fear of madness. Fear of insanity. Fear of death.

These are serious fears. But they’re not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it.

Fear That We Will Succeed.

That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess.

That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are.

This is the most terrifying prospect a human being can face, because it ejects him at one go (he imagines) from all the tribal inclusions his psyche is wired for and has been for fifty million years.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know. We pass through a membrane. We become monsters and monstrous.

We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognize us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to.

Of course this is exactly what happens. But here’s the trick. We wind up in space, but not alone. Instead we are tapped into an unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship. Yeah, we lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they’re better friends, truer friends. And we’re better and truer to them.”

“If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.”

‘“He who wrestles with us,” wrote Edmund Burke, “strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.”’

“Casadevall leads by example. A single conversation with him is liable to include Anna Karenina, the Federalist Papers, the fact that Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz were philosophers as well as scientists, why the Roman Empire wasn’t more innovative, and a point about mentoring in the form of a description of the character Mentor from Homer’s Odyssey. “I work at it,” he said, smirking. “I always advise my people to read outside your field, everyday something. And most people say, ‘Well, I don’t have time to read outside my field.’ I say, ‘No, you do have time, it’s far more important.’ Your world becomes a bigger world, and maybe there’s a moment in which you make connections.”

“I have found that if we feed the unconscious, it will discover connections between what may appear to be disparate realities. The path to artistic insight in one direction often involves deep study of another—the intuition makes uncanny connections that lead to a crystallization of fragmented notions.”

“Every day, you need to compete at a higher level than the day before. Small decisions. Little changes. New challenges. Bigger ambitions. You’re not going to make a million bucks or build your empire or win a championship in one day. You’re going to compete for it every day for infinite days. That’s how you become not just a competitor, but a true competitor: You get better every day for a long time. Not accidentally, but intentionally.”

“Those who have cultivated the HABIT of persistence seem to enjoy insurance against failure. No matter how many times they are defeated, they finally arrive up toward the top of the ladder. Sometimes it appears that there is a hidden Guide whose duty is to test men through all sorts of discouraging experiences. Those who pick themselves up after defeat and keep on trying, arrive; and the world cries, "Bravo! I knew you could do it!" The hidden Guide lets no one enjoy great achievement without passing the PERSISTENCE TEST. Those who can't take it, simply do not make the grade.”

“One of the common patterns for a self made billionaires is their ability to self study, self reason and accumulate a set of their own mental model. Intellectual capital compounds at a hidden rate and most people use tangible badges and net worth as measures.”

“I’ll guarantee you that your biggest life regret will be not being confident enough in yourself: your ideas, your looks, your height, your social skills, your money making ideas. So know thyself and what you’re good at & then have massive confidence.”

“He didn't have any privilege, no reason why he should ever be a general, because generals came from the aristocracy. The French Revolution erupts and he’s already in the military as a cadet. And the French Revolution turns everything over, and that old order of things where it’s very stodgy, and suddenly the world is upside down. And he reveals very early on this powerful sense of boldness, and confidence. We think of people being fearless today, or generals being great—this man was literally on the battlefield facing bullets flying at his face in battle after battle after battle. Earlier on in his career as an artillery corporal, and later on as a general he would lead from the front. He was not afraid of facing battle. He was courageous. He was bold. And he was incredibly creative. The source of his creativity was this incredible organisational mind. He had a mind almost like a computer in the amount of information it could hold. When he went into battle, he would get every single detail available to him. He had lines of communication to his lieutenants where real time things going on on the ground among the foot soldiers would reach Napoleon so he knew every little thing going on in the battle, and before the battle, all the different possibilities. He was creative. He was fluid. And he wasn’t obsessed with control. That’s the main thing that drives me crazy about CEOs and leaders—they want to control everything. And you can’t control everything in life. That sense of wanting to control comes from deep levels of insecurity. Life is inherently chaotic and random. Things happen that you never expect, and you cannot control this. The power lies in what I call ‘controlled chaos’. You let chaos into your system, you move with it, and you try and adapt it to your plans and strategies. Napoleon was a genius at that. He created a system. He could adapt. He wasn’t a control freak. And with this creativity, with this bravery, with this audacity that he had—for 10 years, he led a series of the most amazing battles ever. It was unbelievable.”