Labor conquers all. If you’re struggling, choose action. If you’re losing, keep your feet moving. I f you’re embarrassed, work harder. The only way to win, to endure, to persevere, is through labor. Getting up and getting going. Showing up and showing out. Putting the work

Stephen King on how to approach writing/any craft, “You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down some names. You can come

The three E’s—excitement, endurance, and embarrassment. How excited are you about your work? How much of endurance do you have? How embarrassed are you willing to look? Doing abything difficult requires a high capacity in one, two, and sometimes all three of these things.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was once asked during his term what it was like to be president: “It’s pound, pound, pound. Not only is your intellectual capacity taxed to the utmost, but so is your physical stamina," he said. That’s the cost of leadership. The cost of being in

It’s not about finding the answers to life, it’s about finding life—the thing that gets you shaking in your boots. It's the work, the craft, the activity that makes every day feel like Christmas. When you find the thing that gives you life and energy, you realize you never needed

Jiro Ono, the word's greatest sushi chef, on how he viewed his work and craft, “All I want to do is make better sushi. I do the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit. There is always a yearning to achieve more. I'll continue to climb, trying to reach the top… but no

You don't do the work because it guarantees you will win. You do the work because it's the only thing that gives you a chance to win.

Rick Rubin on the importance of reducing decisions in life: “The more you reduce your daily-life maintenance tasks, the greater the bandwidth available for creative decisions. Albert Einstein wore the same thing daily: a gray suit. Erik Satire had seven identical outfits, one

If you want to change, you will. If you don’t change, you didn’t actually want to in the first place.

Phil Jackson on a leaders toughest battle and how he dealt with it: “Managing anger is every coach’s most difficult task. It requires a great deal of patience and finesse because the line between the aggressive intensity needed to win games and destructive anger is often razor

A good skill to develop is to know the difference between a catastrophe and an inconvenience. Most of what you think is a catastrophe is often merely just a little nuisance.  This skill, in relationships, work, and life, saves you from a lot of undue burdens and problems.

The greats just find a way. When Marie and Pierre Curie began their quest to uncover the existence of radium, they worked in an abandoned shed. It had no electrical and technical equipment. No room for assistants. No heater for the winter months. It wasn’t the type of setup

Two questions to keep asking yourself:  If you had a year left to live, would you still be doing what you’re doing?  Could you see yourself doing what you're doing, living as you're living, for the rest of your life? If the answer is not any of these, it might be time to

There’s this funny story of painter N.C.Wyeth, when his work wasn’t going well, would tape a piece of cardboard to the side of his glasses, blocking his view of the studio’s large north window in an effort to improve his concentration. Interesting and humorus, but it offers an

Winning requires you to wobble.  There is no stability, it’s a ride with uncertainty. Not knowing how long it will take or how hard it will be. You’ll get close, only to realize how much farther you have to go. You’ll work hard, only to realize you have to work harder. You’ll

Endurance is the name of the game. You need a way that you can work that is repeatable. Not dreadful. Not painful. Not fearful. One you look forward to doing. Ernest Hemingway got to work right when he woke up, but he didn’t kill himself in the process. “You write until you

Winning lies in if you can believe in yourself when you have no evidence to believe in yourself.

There comes a moment in Winston Churchill’s life when he hits an absolute low. He lost most of his fortune in the Wall Street crash, he lost his political seat, and he was hit by a car that put him in the hospital and nearly killed him. In the hospital, here’s what Churchill

When Roger Federer was sixteen, he ended his formal education in Switzerland and went all in on becoming a professional tennis player.  His parents, supportive of the idea, gave him one caveat: they would help finance his career, but if he was not in the top 100 by age twenty,