- The cheapest source of capital is self-belief. Self-belief is precious and fragile.
- “At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind...This is in fact one of the most valuable things you can do with your time and with your life.” - Tyler Cowen [Marginal Revolution - “The high-return activity of raising others’ aspirations”]
- Steve Jobs quotes, where he says, "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
- You are lucky in life if you get to experience such pace-setters because they literally redefine what is possible
- Bill Walsh in The Score Takes Care of Itself (reminds me of “results as a lagging indicator” or how Billy Beane wouldn’t watch the games.)
- A standard of performance is its high requirements for actions and attitudes. When Bill joined the 49ers, it was in shambles. His approach to building the 49er organization was an agenda that didn't include a timetable for a championship or even a winning season. Instead.
- [Kris: The self-image hack feels like a motivational technique predicated on our own confirmation bias to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s the virtuous use of the same technique where you flatter someone’s self-image, “oh, you’re so good with words you could write this for me “, to manipulate them into doing something for you]
- Give people credit. Give their aspirations room.
“No Speed Limits”
Capra taught Dr. Seuss to cut all non-essential words. John Gould did the same for Stephen King. All of these people could tell a big story in a single paragraph. But what is especially interesting is that despite formal writing education, they learned this skill from Capra and Gould respectively directly and quickly.
This is my favorite part of the episode because of how he ties this to Derek Sivers’ revelation that there are “no speed limits”. When Sivers was at Berklee College of Music, he meets an alumni, Kimo Williams, who accomplishes what Sivers thinks is impossible — he teaches him 2 years of theory in a few lessons! Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected:
“Kimo’s high expectations set a new pace for me. He taught me that the standard pace is for chumps, that the system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you’re more driven than most people, you can do way more than anyone expects. And this principle applies to all of life, not just school. Before I met Kimo, I was just a kid who wanted to be a musician doing it casually. Ever since our five lessons, I’ve had no speed limit. I owe every great thing that’s happened in my life to Kimo’s raised expectations. A random meeting and five music lessons showed me that I can do way more than the norm.”
I arrived with an urgent timetable for installing, an agenda of specific behavioral norms. This includes both actions and attitudes. That applied to every single person on, our payroll. To put it bluntly, I would teach every person in the organization, what to do and how to think. The short-term results would contribute, both symbolically and functionally to a new and productive self-image…Before you become a winner, you have to believe you have the ability to become a winner. So I'm going to systematically convince every single person in my organization that that one that they have the ability to be a winner that they're part of a world class elite organization. This is the standard you have for your own life.
- “If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming”. Goethe
- George Mumford on Ferris: I’m just happy that I can just be here and have this wonderful conversation about how to live in a solution, not in a problem. And how do we access the fact that we are already perfect whole and complete in terms of being a masterpiece or a divine spark? We just don’t know it or we don’t show it…My wish for everyone is for everyone to really understand they have a masterpiece in how to know ourselves so we can be ourselves so we can express ourselves so we can share ourselves. So the sharing is really important. My hope is that we all understand that we have to take personal responsibility in our inner game. And if we don’t like what we are experiencing, we can change it, but we have to be willing. ..not blame with denial, prevent us from taking responsibility and being able to share the focus on the solution. So if we’re going to criticize somebody, it’s one thing to say, I don’t like this. It’s another thing to say it and then give them an option that’s helpful.
- Agents of their own destiny are less scared and less insecure. More empowered. Better decision-making—> Better outcomes —> More agency —> Higher citizenry —> Incentive for honest and benevolent leadership and accountability Insecure people can be manipulated. Kill the -isms at their root. Help people learn so they can increase their agency.
- Sal Khan’s north star is personalized mastery learning because it increases self-esteem and well-being. It’s the maximum leverage point because our largest problems and conflicts stem from what’s in our minds. This is highly adjacent to my own “agency” argument.
- Is my motivation for X from inspiration or insecurity?
- Also https://medium.com/personal-growth/beyond-insecurity-the-positive-power-of-the-right-kind-of-ambition-f98504d6c0d7
There is a big but subtle difference between ambition driven by insecurity and ambition driven by the desire to self-actualize. The former is born out of not feeling enough — its source is either self-hate, or self-disrespect, or a combination. The latter, however, is simply an affirmation of life — it is an attempt to do the most that one can do with the body one has been given. It doesn’t compete with others but with itself. It doesn’t project its own hate and moralizing onto the world because it has already dealt with them internally.
- Confidence is key. Narrative follows price
- Reflexivity: a constant dialogue between your inputs and outputs. Confidence/optimism are critical because of this fact since it can cause you to succeed.