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Number two is always hungry because she never sleeps. A person needs a great deal of energy to stay awake all the time, and thus a great deal of food.

In the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work… you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: knowing that your short time here on earth has been well spent. And that it mattered.

Non business example of a coach and building up the high school XC team.

The story of Walt Disney… he decided that Disney could build something much better perhaps even the best in the world… the whole idea is to bring a smile to a child’s face. 🥹

Those who turn good to great are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake. Those who build and perpetuate mediocrity, in contrast, are motivated more by the fear of being left behind.

Much of the answer to the question of “good to great” lies in the discipline to do whatever it takes to become the best within carefully selected arenas and then to seek continual improvement. from there… everyone would like to be the best, but organizations lack the discipline to figure out with egoless clarity… they lack disciple to rinse their cottage cheese

To let people languish in uncertainty for months or years, stealing precious time in their lives that tenth could use to move on to something else, when in the end they aren’t going to make it anyway - that would be ruthless. To deal with it right up front and let people get on with their lives - that is rigorous.

The best hiring decisions often came from people with no industry or business experience. In one case, he hired a manager who’d been captured twice during WWII and escaped both times. “I thought that anyone who could do that shouldn’t have trouble with business.”

Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well (and if they cannot find a specific person or event to give credit to, they credit good luck). At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly.

Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce results. They will sell the mills or fire their brother, if that’s what it takes to make the company great.

Darwin smith, CEO of Kimberly-Clark, when asked by a journalist how he described his management styles he said “eccentric.” He was a man who carried no airs of self-importance. He found his favorite companionship among plumbers and electricians and spent his vacations rumbling around his Wisconsin farm in the can of a backhoe digging holes and moving rocks. He was not meek or soft. He was Fierce.

As one of my favorite professors once said, “The best students those who never quite believe their professors.” He also said, “one ought not to reject the data merely because one does not like what the data implies.” I offer everything herein for your thoughtful consideration, not blind acceptance. You’re the judge and jury. Let the evidence speak.

“People are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The RIGHT people are.

Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.

Good is the enemy of great.

Sometimes you’ve just got to stop and remind yourself that there’s another way. Take a deep breath. Let the anger settle. It’s best not to act out of anger.

Sorry for the harsh words last night. I woke up this morning wishing we could end each battle with a hug. But we’re both stubborn and saying “I love you” no longer comes easily. I preach and punish when I should be telling you how proud you make me… the past often serves as a guide for the future… I pray you always know how deeply you were loved.

The part of you that you think is so unlovable, so ugly, so broken, that’s what people need to hear…”

If there’s a line between bravery and stupidity, no one knows where it is.

Here was the magic of mothers- the simple reminder that the same road a child travels to unknown lands can also be used to return.

The heart finds a thousand ways to break when someone dies.

This was the whole point of my time with Reb and Henry: not the conclusion, but the search, the study, the journey to belief. You can’t fit the Lord in a box. But you can gather stories, traditions, wisdom, and in time, you needn’t lower the shelf; God is already nearer to thee.

Nothing haunts us like the things we don’t say.

But you can touch everything and be connected to nothing.

I know what I believe. It’s only soul. But I constantly tell our people: you should be convinced of the authenticity of what you have, but you must also be humble enough to say that we don’t know everything. And since we don’t know everything, we must accept that another person may believe something else.

Would you want the whole world to look alike? No. The genius of life is its variety… it’s like being a musician. If you found THE note, and you kept hitting that note all the time, you would go nuts. It’s the blending of the different notes that makes the music.

I think people expect too much from marriage today. They expect perfection. Buy that is not the human experience. Like Sarah says, 20 good minutes here, 40 good minutes there, it adds up to something beautiful. The trick is when things aren’t so great, you don’t junk the whole thing. It’s ok to have any argument. It’s ok that the other one nudges you, bothers you. It’s part of being close to someone.

Remember the only difference between “marital” and “martial” is here you put the “I.” He also, on passion, told the joke about a man who complains to his doctor that his wife, when angry, gets historical. You mean hysterical, the doctor says. No, historical, she lists the history of every wrong thing I’ve ever done!

When we spoke a few weeks ago, I asked you what you thought about your parents…
You said they weren’t perfect but…
But they don’t need improvement.
This is very insightful because it means you are willing to accept people as they are. Nobody is perfect. Not even mom and dad. That’s ok.

No two recollections of the event are alike because facts never tell the whole story.