CHAPTER FIVE:

1. The leader in the room is the person closest to reality.

2. Helping others helps you.

3.Be relentlessly demanding at getting the right people in the right place on the bus.

4. Find what you can be the best in the world at and focus all your energy on it.

5. Enjoy the battles and welcome the fight.

6. “Next” is the most important word after any victory or failure.

7. Transmute your anger to positive daily habits to your goals.

8. Adversity will only make you stronger if you put the hard-learned lessons into action every day for the rest of your life.

9. The day you stop asking questions, relax, and rest on your accomplishments is the day you start dying.

10. Relaxations are dangerous in any field from poetry to politics.

11. The more diverse any society, the more tolerance for new ideas, failure, and the unorthodox.

12. The most diverse societies and organizations are the most successful in developing ideas that change humanity for the better.

13. Someday you might be faced with having to choose which prison you will lock up in. A prison of your own making or a real prison run by those whom you have been bold enough to challenge.

14. The essence of being human is the will to be free.

15. Goals create tension and give you a reason to live.

16. Accepting the status quo of your life is dangerous. It holds you back and gives you a false sense of security.

17. Love what you do.

18. Your subconscious is your fate.

19. Be prepared for a reevaluation
of all your values.

20. To think differently and to follow radically logical conclusions, you must eliminate the fear of where your logic might take you and what others might think about you.

21. Most people vastly underestimate the extent to which their free will is subject to subconsciously imposed limits.

22. Democracy is not the ultimate protector of freedom. Understandable rule of law uninflated by politics is more certain to protect freedom even in a monarchy.

23. In order to turn adversity into advantage, you must be fearless to the danger from those who will seek to stop you because they see you as a challenge or threat to established norms, ideas, practices, companies, competitors, and those in power today.

24. Make your goal an all consuming obsession that puts everything else in perspective as less important.

25. True knowledge comes only from doing, learning, and failing in the school of hard knocks.

26. The greatest danger from education is believing you know.

27. Running a business requires experience and experience requires failure.

28. Getting good grades in a formal education environment has nothing to do with running a successful business.

29. YThe best business people assume they know nothing.

30. Get your hands dirty.

31. If you live your life with fear of others’ opinions then you are not living your life.

32. Failure to turn adversity into an advantage is fundamentally a failure to break free from your comfort zone. Your ability to turn adversity into an advantage is directly proportional to your ability to endure pain.

33. Without gifts of adversity, you might slip into a most dangerous relaxation.

34. Hire people smarter than you and more talented than you and get the heck out of their way.

35. One “C” player on your bus can ruin your whole operation.

36. The amount of freedom you permit to those in your life will determine how accountable they are for upholding their commitment to you.

37. The core of your character is your ability to tell yourself you are going to do something—and then do it.

38. The rule of law in America is a mirage when one in five people is branded a “criminal.”

39. Welcome pain. It makes you stronger. Truth is found on the far side of pain.

40. Love yourself enough to forgive yourself.

41. Thoughts lead to actions, actions lead to habits, habits form character, and your character is your fate.

42. Every human you encounter has something to teach you.

43. Big failure later is often caused by lack of failure early.

44. You can’t predict where your next failure is going to come from.

45. There is no shame in failure,
only in refusing to learn
from failures.

46. Be proud of your failures.

47. Don’t fear death. Instead, stake your goals on it.

48. The more you challenge established powers, the more people will try to take you down.

49. Pray. It’s a powerful positive affirmation.

50. The caliber of your leadership is directly proportional to the distance in the future you can plan your actions and act consistently in the present with those plans.

51. The more you show gratitude and appreciation, the more it comes back to you.

52. The biggest act of humility for a leader is to accept and embrace the mistakes of those people on your team.

53. When the leader of an organization is afraid to make mistakes, everyone will be.

54. Forgiveness builds loyalty.

55. Eternal vigilance in the search for truth and selfawareness is the only key to lasting success.

56. If you find yourself easily achieving your goals, dream bigger.

57. It never gets easier: at every stage of growth, you have new and more powerful detractors.

58. Only decide to become a leader if you are prepared to attend the school of hard knocks for decades on end.

59. Leadership will increase your stress level and make you a target for everyone who wants what you have but doesn’t want to pay the price.

60. If you aren’t the first to be blamed, the first to take the negative attention, the first to face the risks of embarrassment, prosecution, and even death that comes along with leadership, then you aren’t a true leader.

61. The stronger the leader, the less force they need to apply to achieve results.

62. Forced leadership is not leadership; it is the slavery of will.

63. Meaning in life comes from doing something well.

64. Your public narrative and persona will be created by someone; you will be far better off if that someone is you.

65. Succeed by doing the impossible.

66. When someone tells you it can’t be done, prove them wrong.

67. Fail early & fail often. Failing late can be disastrous.

68. Be unreasonable if you want uncommon results.

69. The more feedback you get, the better leader you will be.

70. Master the warrior spirit; peace and comfort do not produce success.

71. People rise to your level of expectation or sink to your level of disregard.

72. Everyone has the seeds of something great inside them. Help them unlock it.

73. Getting the right people on your bus is 90% of success.

74. If you don’t have people on your team capable of taking your job, you aren’t building leaders.

75. Everyone you meet has experienced their own pain; understand it if you want to understand them.

76. Don’t expect to ever find the truth. If you think you have found the truth, study quantum physics. That should convince you that you have a false sense of security.

77. If you are not scared, alone, and nervous, you have not stretched yourself far enough.

78. If people tell you that your idea is crazy, you might be onto something.

79. The cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat will sit on the sidelines and criticize you to no end.

80. Set goals that drive your critics absolutely nuts.

81. You will never keep the critics happy, so don’t even try.

82. The more responsibility you give to the people in your life, the more courage and accountability they will have.

83. Be the change you want to
see in your organization.

84. The leader must create a necessity of learning.

85. Thank people who give you critical feedback. They have taken time from their day to help you improve.

86. Regardless of where you choose to make a difference, choose a path that will require you to use all your gifts.

87. The most important part of remaining humble is admitting you don’t know.

88. Once a leader decides they
have found the truth, the
decline begins.

89. If you do not tolerate failure in your organization, you are wasting the tuition your organization paid to the school of hard knocks.

90. Your future & freedom depend on your ability to conquer your fear.

91. Your detractors whose power comes solely from their title know they are nothing.

92. There is danger in being the motivator—politically, socially, economically.

93. People who aren’t able to achieve their goals will go out of their way to see that you do not achieve yours.

94. Seeking objective truth is not being afraid of what you uncover.

95. Be a philosopher first, and a leader second.

96. Your subconscious is your fate.

97. If you let society determine your goals, ultimately society can take away its approval.

98. Enjoy the daily grind. Success starts with the discipline of daily execution and mastery of the administrivia.

99. RThe 10,000 hour rule: you are not a master at anything until you have practiced for 10,000 hours (3-4 years working all day long). What are you practicing now?

100. T75% of the communication in the modern work environment is a waste of time. It’s amazing how much is not important in today’s communications.

101. If you are not afraid and alone sometimes, you are not going to grow.