Welcome to The Vault.
Every Sunday, I send out ten pieces of winningcore—insights, lessons, and stories to help you win in business, sports, and life.
If you’d like to subscribe, click below:
On Chasing Your Dreams:
PSA: Chase your dreams.
On Following YOUR Path:
“There is only one way and that is your way; there is only one salvation and that is your salvation. Why are you looking around for help? Do you believe that help will come from outside? What is to come is created in you and from you. Hence look into yourself. Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is like yours. All other ways deceive and tempt you. You must fulfill the way that is in you.
Oh, that all men and all their ways become strange to you! Thus might you find them again within yourself and recognize their ways. But what weakness! What doubt! What fear! You will not bear going your way. You always want to have at least one foot on paths not your own to avoid the great solitude! So that maternal comfort is always with you! So that someone acknowledges you, recognizes you, bestows trust in you, comforts you, encourages you. So that someone pulls you over onto their path, where you stray from yourself and where it is easier for you to set yourself aside. As if you were not yourself! Who should accomplish your deeds? Who should carry your virtues and your vices? You do not come to an end with your life, and the dead will besiege you terribly to live your unlived life. Everything must be fulfilled. Time is of the essence, so why do you want to pile up the lived and let the unlived rot?”
— The Red Book, Carl Jung
True fulfilment comes from doing YOUR thing, YOUR way. Does this mean you shouldn’t learn from other people? NO. Jung is warning against blindly following others at the expense of your own path. He’s warning against the natural tendency to seek validation in others. To abandon your own mission in favour of someone else’s because you can’t handle the solitude and discomfort of living & dying by your own sword.
The un-lived life within you is begging & pleading to be unleashed. And once you start on that path, weakness, doubt, and fear will be your constant enemy, taunting you with the comfort, trust, and encouragement that could be yours if you slaughtered your dreams on the chopping block and went to work on someone else’s. It’s a call to action, to develop self-trust. To remember that you have but one life, and time waits for no one. To follow your path, your way.
On The War of Attrition:
Endurance is a strategy. You can win simply by being the last man standing. The secret = think in decades. Take aggressive action daily, but optimise for stamina. Be the person who’s still going long after the “triers” and “attempters” have given up.
On Reading Books:
J.P. Morgan was an American financier & banker whose actions shaped modern capitalism. At his peak, he had a net worth of around $25 billion (in today’s money). This is his private library:
Remember this when you hear the next 20-something internet “guru” saying that reading is a “slow method of learning” and not worth your time.
On Attention:
— Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
“With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what’s in your mind”—whether you believe the mass siphoning of attention via social media apps and cheap entertainment is a globalist plot to weaken the masses or simply a function of capitalism and profit incentives doesn’t matter. The world is now split into 2 types of people; those who reject the weapons of distraction and develop the quality & depth of their attention to wield in ambitious projects of their choosing, and those who allow their attention to be stolen, and their attention span to be dulled into a useless mess of anxiety & chaos. The latter can’t win, because they have no time or focus. But the former is uniquely positioned to claim all the spoils of the coming technological revolution.
What used to be “normal” is now a competitive advantage. Make sure you fall into the right group.
On Agency:
“It had long since come to
my attention that people of
accomplishment rarely sat back
and let things happen to them.
they went out and happened
to things."
— Leonardo Da Vinci
On Reps:
What looks like overnight success is almost always the product of countless reps, executed without applause or acknowledgment, for a decade or more.
More examples:
Pablo Picasso – Created 50,000+ artworks (paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints).
Johann Sebastian Bach – Composed 1,000+ musical works.
Kobe Bryant – Took 1,000 shots per day, every day, for years.
Stephen King – Wrote 70+ novels and 200+ short stories.
Beethoven – Composed 722 musical works.
Key: Extreme success is never an accident—it’s cause & effect. Those who do more, get more.
On Perseverance:
“Everyone has a time when they lose confidence and doubts their abilities, especially in adversity. But people who really understand the art of action can overcome it with strong perseverance. They will tell themselves that everyone has failures, and when they fail miserably, they will tell themselves no matter how much preparation they have made and how long they think before they do it, will inevitably make mistakes. However, passive people do not regard failure as an opportunity for learning and growth, as they are always admonishing themselves: perhaps I really can't do it, so that is why I have lost my eagerness to participate in future activities.”
— John D. Rockefeller
That’s a quote from one of the 38 letters John D. Rockefeller wrote to his son. In the letters, he talks over & over again about how it’s not failure that destroys people, but their RESPONSE to failure. Another one of my favourite quotes:
“I hate it when my business fails and lose money, but what really concerns me is that I am afraid that in future business, I will be too cautious and become a coward. If that is the case, then my loss will be even greater.”
Key: He hates failure, but he’s far MORE afraid of having the wrong attitude towards failure. “I will be too cautious and become a coward”—far worse than failure itself.
On The Power of Compounding:
— @WillManidis
If you’re young, it’s hard to comprehend the power of compounding because you’ve never experienced it. But it’s a mistake to not take it seriously. To illustrate, here’s a chart showing the growth of Warren Buffet’s personal fortune over his lifetime:
He made 99.7% of his money AFTER the age of 52. That’s the power of compounding—“A few things for a long time”.
On Fading the Masses:
“If you think like everyone else, if you act like everyone else, if you follow the same protocols and traditions and habits like everyone else, guess what: You’ll be like everyone else.”
— Winning, Tim Grover
Always remember: 95% of people don’t get what they want out of life. If you’d like a different fate, you have to think, live, and act in a way that will be considered “extreme” by almost everyone you know. Resisting the pull to conformity is one of the most difficult and rewarding things you’ll ever do. But once you break free, and experience a taste of your true potential, you’ll never go back.
If you got anything from this, forward it to someone who’d benefit:
If you’re new here, click below to subscribe: