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Adversity

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1: Are you facing a challenge that feels overwhelming?  Are you walking through something really hard right now?

There is good news, Jane McGonigal writes in her book SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully.

Let’s start here. “You are stronger than you know. You are surrounded by potential allies. You are the hero of your own story,” Jane notes.

How do you access these powers that are already inside … continue reading

1: “The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal,” Ben Horowitz writes in The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers.

“The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal,” Ben notes.

Not the hard thing: Hiring great people.

The hard thing: “When those ‘great people’ develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things,” … continue reading

1: Author and podcaster Sam Harris was at lunch with a friend.  

He remembers “moaning on about the various problems he was confronting in his work,” Oliver Burkeman writes in his book Meditations for Mortals.

Sam’s friend interrupted him mid-flow. “Were you really expecting to have no more problems at some point in your life?” she asked.

Her question was jarring. It suddenly occurred to him that he “had … continue reading

1: Billionaire Charlie Munger was once asked: What should a young person look for in a career?

“I have three basic rules—meeting all three is nearly impossible, but you should try anyway,” he writes in  Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger.

Rule #1: Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself.

Rule #2: Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire.

Rule #3:continue reading

1: Persia. 482 B.C.

King marries queen. King kills queen because “she is too bold and displeases him.”

King meets beautiful young woman. Beautiful young woman becomes new queen. Queen hides the fact that she is Jewish. 

A royal decree is issued: “On a future date, neighbors of Jewish families throughout the realm will be free to kill them and plunder their wealth.” 

Queen’s relative tells her she must take … continue reading

1: Eleven days after the Union victory at Gettysburg and ten days after General Ulysses S. Grant’s crucial triumph at Vicksburg, Abraham Lincoln suffered what was likely his most gut-wrenching setback as commander-in-chief during the Civil War.

At Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee “had been forced to relinquish the battlefield for the first time, his Army of Northern Virginia reduced by almost twenty-three thousand men,” write Raymond Kethledge and Michael Erwin … continue reading