Right Attitudes

Inspirational Quotations #877

January 24, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi

I would like to see a state of society in which every man and woman preferred the old Scottish Sunday to the modern French one. We should then find solid and eternal foundations of character and self-command.
—Ramsay MacDonald (British Head of State)

The advantage of taking an instant dislike to somebody is that it saves time.
—Spike Milligan (Irish Humorist)

Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.
—Anna Freud (Austrian-British Psychoanalyst)

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.
—Anthony Burgess (English Novelist, Critic)

If you have formed the habit of checking on every new diet that comes along, you will find that, mercifully, they all blur together, leaving you with only one definite piece of information: french-fried potatoes are out.
—Jean Kerr (Irish-American Writer)

What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?
—Bharati Mukherjee (Indian-American Novelist)

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
—Evelyn Waugh (British Novelist, Satirist)

The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.
—Kate Chopin (American Novelist, Short-Story Writer)

My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery.
—Dashiell Hammett (American Crime Writer)

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
—Joseph Schumpeter (Austrian-American Economist)

All beings desire happiness; therefore to all extend your benevolence.
—Mahavamsa (Sri Lankan Narrative History)

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
—Max Beerbohm (British Humorist)

Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.
—William McIlvanney (Scottish Novelist, Poet)

The very essence of leadership is [that] you have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.
—Theodore Hesburgh (American Catholic Educator)

Anyone who moved through those years [of the Second World War] without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.
—William Golding (English Novelist)

Why People Get Happier as They Age

January 23, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Studies have pointed out that most people get happier as they grow older. In fact, across any cultural, economic, and social spectrum, the most content cohort tends to be seniors.

Older people find happiness in “ordinary” things.

Older people start taking stock of their blessings. They’ve concluded that life is short. Amid the anxieties about ill health, income and savings, changes in social status, and bereavements, they tend to make the best of the time they have left.

People in later life learn to avoid situations that make them feel sad or stressed. They have relationships that are more meaningful. They’ve also had more time to learn and read others’ intentions, which helps them avoid stressful situations and develop better solutions to conflict. They’re less likely to experience persistent negative moods.

In short, older people have a better sense of perspective on life, and they take things in stride. Moreover, they’re better able to control their emotions.

Idea for Impact: Don’t wait until later life for a positive experience.

If there’s one thing the older folks can show us best, happiness is a function of expectations. Older people adjust their expectations of life. They have lower aspirations, and they learn to find satisfaction in tiny triumphs.

What elements of that mindset could you integrate into your life now? Could you live more in the present tense, not grasping at some future happiness jackpot?

Five Rules for Leadership Success // Summary of Dave Ulrich’s ‘The Leadership Code’

January 22, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The key to success in any discipline is to figure out the few things that must be done really well and to get those basics right. But so many leaders fail on the fundamentals—and don’t even realize it.

The real implication of leadership has been buried deep over the years: leadership isn’t about the position but about who you are and the responsibility you can undertake. Leadership consultants Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood, and Kate Sweetman’s The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead By (2009) argues that everything you ever need to know about leadership comes down to five straightforward rules.

If you understand these rules and put them into practice, you can’t fail to spur others and enrich teams, organizations, or communities.

Rule 1: Be A Strategist. Deliberate leaders answer the question “Where are we going?” and mull over multiple time frames. They institute a great enough sense of urgency and remove impediments to the new vision. They anticipate the future and work with others to determine how to advance from the present to the desired future. Shape the future.

Rule 2: Be an Executor. The “executor” aspect of leadership focuses on the question, “How will we make sure we get to where we are going?” Effective leaders understand how to make change happen, assign accountability, assess plans, coordinate efforts, and share information that should be incorporated into strategies. Make things happen.

Rule 3: Be a Talent Manager. Leaders who engage talent now answer the question, “Who goes with us on our business journey?” They select the right people for the right job and ensure that people have the right tools and autonomy to succeed. Leaders foster an inviting organization, create a high level of performance and passion, and continuously monitor problems that need to be fixed. Engage today’s talent.

Rule 4: Be a Human Capital Developer. Leaders who are talent developers answer the question, “Who stays and sustains the organization for the next generation?” Leaders take the time to become aware of how future trends could affect their organizations. They position their teams to win by bearing in mind the longer-term competencies required for future strategic success. Build the next generation.

Rule 5: Be Proficient. Leadership demands are more daunting than ever, and the pressure to perform is relentless. Create regular timeouts to review where you invest your time and energy to ensure that you remain capable of self-managing your personal strengths and weaknesses and generating new behaviors to deal with new challenges. Invest in yourself.

As with most “rules-for-success” books, the authors tout their assessment of “hundreds of studies, frameworks, and tools.” But their work is no more than a distillation of notable leadership thinkers’ experiences. Nonetheless, the rules sound right. The five rules are simple, but they aren’t easy. They are sensible and practicable. They’re what you can focus your effort on for maximum return.

Recommendation: Quick read The Leadership Code. It makes a great early book choice for new leaders. It provides a grounded approach to the fundamentals.

Never underestimate the power of key leadership principles that can be well executed. Complement The Leadership Code with Peter Drucker’s The Practice of Management (1954; my summary) and Julie Zhuo’s The Making of a Manager (2019; my summary.)

How to Banish Your Inner Perfectionist

January 21, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

You have an enemy: a feisty, malign force working against you. It’s the internalized perfectionist. It’s the stream of subversive self-talk urging indecision, doubt, and fear.

The #1 hack to overcoming you perfectionist tendency is to accept that whatever you need to work on just needs to be an outline, first attempt, rough copy, version 0. It needn’t be perfect. You just need to get it to a little bit better shape than before. You can then consider the next baby step.

Idea for Impact: Many things in your life need not be done perfectly. They’re to be done … just done … done to spur more done … not to dwell to perfection.

Your goal now is not to be like a Picasso, Mozart, Steven King, Lebron James, Warren Buffett, or some superstar. All you have to do now is create, edit, fix, or process and get whatever it is you’re working on to the next milestone. Make this a rule.

Tribalism Needs to Self-Destruct

January 20, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Big Tech’s recent rush to repress provocative content has expanded the debate on free speech and the social-media algorithms’raw power to preside over how people see the world.

Democracy and free markets aren’t supposed to function this way. Overall, capitalism works because it typically rewards players for being right and penalizes players for being wrong. If you’re an investor and you’re wide of the mark about something, the market will penalize you.

That used to be valid with journalism too. Traditionally, if a mainstream news outlet got something wrong, it’d face disapproval, retractions, and embarrassment. If the outlet was wrong often enough, its circulation would shrink, and advertisers would drop.

Sadly, this feedback loop has gone. Our media consumption has become so segmented and tribal. For instance, Fox News could assert whatever it wants its audience to believe, and the market won’t punish it. Indeed, Fox News could even be rewarded with more significant viewership.

Tribal media consumption is especially manifest with social media because the platforms’business model is driven by tribe-segmentation, engagement, and clicks. Social media reward fanaticism, emotionalism, and hyperbole. There’s no natural self-regulating market apparatus any longer.

All told, tribalism and hyperpolarized filter bubbles have taken their toll. They’re contributing to society’s intellectual decay.

Idea for Impact: This isn’t as much a freedom-of-speech issue as it is a distribution issue. Yes, everyone should be free to express themselves without the interference of editors or other filters. But what does—and doesn’t—surface for consumption needs to be moderated. Gate-keeping must be done in a way that doesn’t devalue truth and ignore the counterevidence. Technology needs to pivot to help society break through the mental barriers of tribes.

Don’t Be as Sad as Saddam // Summary of William McRaven’s ‘Make Your Bed’

January 19, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Admiral William McRaven’s best-selling Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life … And Maybe the World (2017) is one of those enormously successful inspirational books derived from the author’s one famous speech, in this case his 2014 commencement address at the University of Texas-Austin.

McRaven is a retired Navy SEAL. He was the head of the special ops team that killed Osama bin Laden. His book’s central message is exactly what the title proposes—it’s easy to find excuses in our lives. Simple habits, self-discipline, and a large dose of effort can be a framework for personal success and lay the foundations for changing others’ lives.

You need an anchor point for your day, and sometimes that anchor is as a simple as making your bed … If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.

Once you start your day with a completed task, you feel accomplished, and you feel motivated to keep performing things. Making your bed is thus a reflection of your discipline, your pride, and your habits. And if you’ve had a bad day, you can come at least home to a made bed and put your feet up.

If, instead, you succumb to indifference, you’ll likely carry around the same state of mind for the rest of the day. Making your bed and tidying up sets up the intention and the tone for the rest of the day.

The rest of Make Your Bed is the staple of graduation speeches—personal anecdotes that abruptly end with lessons on initiative, risk-taking, perseverance, hardship, courage. For instance, there’s a chapter on hostage negotiation that tersely ends with, “Life is a struggle … without pushing your limits… you will never know what is truly possible in your life.”

Recommendation: Quick-read Make Your Bed, especially the first chapter. And listen to the University of Texas-Austin commencement address—McRaven’s spoken voice is more uplifting.

With all due respect, beyond the intrigue of McRaven’s rigorous training and stellar experience in the armed forces, Make Your Bed makes a recurring assertion that failure to make one’s bed suggests not mere apathy but some terminal moral decay. For instance, “[Saddam Hussein did not make his bed.] … The road to hell may or may not be paved with good intentions, but the one that leads invariably to illegally annexing Kuwaiti oil fields and gassing thousands of your own people begins with a messy bed.” McRaven’s underlying message might as well be “don’t be as bad and sad as Saddam, just make your bed.”

Choose Pronoia, Not Paranoia

January 18, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Pronoia is a weird, incredible feeling that everyone out there is helping you and cheering you on. The world is showering you with blessings.

Yes, that’s the antithesis of paranoia.

Pronoia is the delusional sentiment that people are conspiring in favor of your well-being, speaking nice things behind your back, and rooting for your benefit. The American astrologer Rob Brezsny has written, “Pronoia is the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly. It’s a mode of training your senses and intellect, so you’re able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.”

Pronoia is a convivial orientation—one exemplified by feelings of hope, trust, confidence, and affection. Choosing to cultivate optimism thus opens up a new identity. You no longer harbor bitterness and misgivings towards others.

Idea for Impact: Embrace the mindset that life is happening for you instead of against you. It’s a fantastic way to experience life!

Inspirational Quotations #876

January 17, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi

We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.
—Zelda Fitzgerald (American Writer, Artist)

Love that stammers, that stutters, is apt to be the love that loves best.
—Gabriela Mistral (Chilean Poet)

In case of doubt, do a little more than you have to.
—Warren Mitchell (English Actor)

When you react to a situation, do not re-enact it. Wait until the emotional nature has completely composed itself, then study your reaction.
—Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (American Hindu Teacher)

If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.
—Democritus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Without ethics, everything happens as if we were all five billion passengers on a big machinery and nobody is driving the machinery. And it’s going faster and faster, but we don’t know where.
—Jacques Cousteau (French Underwater Explorer)

There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do.
—Vittorio Alfieri (Italian Poet, Dramatist)

The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
—Johannes Kepler (German Astronomer)

Writing is not only a reflection of what one thinks and feels but a rope one weaves with words that can lower you below or hoist you above the surface of your life, enabling you to go deeper or higher than you would otherwise go. What excites me about his metaphor is that is makes writing much more than a lifesaving venture.
—Phyllis Theroux (American Journalist, Author)

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
—W. Somerset Maugham (British Novelist)

The land is a mother that never dies.
—Maori Proverb

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.
—Frida Kahlo (Mexican Painter)

How selfhood begins with a walking away, and love is proved in the letting go.
—Cecil Day-Lewis (British Poet, Critic)

When an idea that’s constitutionally right for you, an idea that’s an expression of your own heart, comes to mind, it’s very hard to deny it. It comes with a risk. You will always remember it like a lost love, a love that didn’t pan out, if you choose to deny it.
—Charles A. Garfield (American Psychologist)

There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious, as of the extent and strength of his prejudices.
—Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (Scottish Judge, Critic)

How to Own Your Future

January 14, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Work seems to be shifting faster than ever. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman provides a particularly emblematic example of the profound changes in the way people work and the way organizations design jobs and work environments:

Work is being disconnected from jobs, and jobs and work are being disconnected from companies, which are increasingly becoming platforms. A great example of this is what’s ha ppening in the cab business. Traditional local cab companies own cars and have employees who have a job; they drive those cars. But, now they’re competing with Uber, which owns no cars, has no employees, and just provides a platform of work that brings together ride-needers and ride-providers.

Adaptivity via Self-Directed Learning

Dramatic economic, social, and technological changes necessitate professionals at all levels to be almost continuously trained and re-trained just to keep abreast of all facets of working life.

The career implication of this continuous transformation is the increasing need for ongoing learning. You’ll have to equip yourself to stay ahead of changes. In other words, you’ll need a growth mindset to learn, apply, reorient, and keep learning.

More Will Be Now on You

You’ll need to be self-directed. You’ll need to take the initiative and responsibility for the learning process. You’ll need to recognize training needs and choose how you’ll meet these needs rather than rely on your organization to tell you what to learn and how to do it. The smarter organizations out there are enabling and promoting individual choice and self-directed and self-determined learning.

What will set successful professionals apart in the future is that they take responsibility for their continuous learning. They proactively explore what they may be interested in and what the future will demand instead of indifferently waiting for options to present themselves.

Idea for Impact: Own Your Learning

Set your sights on a long career with multiple stages, each involving ongoing training and re-skilling. If you want to achieve career greatness, you will likely find your current skill sets obsolete in less than five years without self-directed learning.

Develop a growth mindset that’ll help you grow, expand, evolve, and change.

Here’s the #1 Lesson from Secret Millionaires

January 11, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Ronald Read (1921–2014) of Brattleboro, Vermont, worked as a gas station assistant and a custodian at a J. C. Penney store. He was a thrifty man, and he even held his coat together using safety pins. Upon his death, he left $2 million to his stepchildren, caregivers, and friends, and another $6 million to the local library and a hospital. Read had built up a secret wealth by starting small, studying businesses that he understood, buying their stock, and holding them for the rest of his life.

Grace Groner (1909–2010) of Lake Forest, Illinois, lived a frugal life in a small one-bedroom cottage near Chicago. She got her clothes at hand-me-down sales, didn’t own a car, and worked most of her life as a clerk for Abbott Laboratories. Groner willed a $7 million scholarship endowment at Lake Forest College. The money came from three Abbott shares she had purchased in 1935 and let grow, reinvesting the dividends.

Agnes Plumb (1905–95) of Los Angeles left a $98 million estate to four hospitals. Plumb had amassed that fortune after liking cornflakes when they were first marketed and having her dad buy her Kellogg’s shares during the company’s early days. She allowed her investment to compound, and by the time she died, she had accumulated 1.3 million shares of the Kellogg Company. She was collecting some $437,000 just in dividends every three months.

Jack MacDonald (1915–2013) was a coupon-clipping, bargain-hunting Seattle lawyer. He even wore sweaters with holes in them, and people assumed that he was broke. When he died at age 98, he left a surprising fortune worth $187 million to various causes, including Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Kathleen and Robert Magowan (1925–2011, 1925–2010) of Simsbury, Connecticut, died within a year of each other. These twins lived as hermits throughout their lives and built up a fortune through wise stock market investments. They left $10 million worth to various civic institutions.

Curt Degerman (1948–2008) was a can-collecting street bum living in Skelleftea in northern Sweden. For three decades, “Burk-Curt” (‘Tin-Can Curt,’) as he was called, roamed the streets of his town in tattered clothes. In between collecting cans, Degerman spent much time in the town library studying business media and examining the stock market. He used his tin-can incomes to buy mutual funds and gold. When he died, he left more than $1.4 million to his cousin.

Time in the Market is a Great Compounder.

There’s one thing not apparent in these live-modestly-and-invest-prudently anecdotes. The fortunes of these seemingly ordinary, generous folks became so big due in no small part to their age.

With time, money has the chance for a heck of a lot of compounding. Money grows 10.83 times every 25 years if you consider a 10% historical mean return on equities. To take a prominent example, Warren Buffett, who’s now 90 years old, has made 99.7% of his fortune after 52.

Idea for Impact: Time in the stock market is infinitely more important than timing the market. Start investing early. Watch over your health. Live a long life. Grow your money. A long time horizon will enable your investments to grow through the “magic” of compounding.

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Older people find happiness in “ordinary” things.

Idea for Impact: Don’t wait until later life for a positive experience.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

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Adaptivity via Self-Directed Learning

More Will Be Now on You

Idea for Impact: Own Your Learning

Wondering what to read next?

Time in the Market is a Great Compounder.

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