Achievement In Sports Quotes

To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don't isolate.

If you want to find the real competition, just look in the mirror. After awhile you'll see your rivals scrambling for second place.

I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive. Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial! I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers. I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail. But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant. I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the “F” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore--no soft porn. I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity. I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough, over and out!

In my country, we value achievement. People are free to decide what that means to them, and I’ve always considered helping others to be my way of accomplishing something important. I was hoping to serve others with my new job, but that’s history now, so I’m going to have to accomplish something big, or I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.

What the new mate, sports car, or unexpected check could never do, Christ says, "I Can." You'll love how he achieves it. He reconnects your soul with God.

No man who really is a man ever cared for the easy task. There is no enjoyment in the game that is easily won. It is that in which you have to strain every muscle and sinew to achieve victory that provides real joy.

I think it is just terrible and disgusting how everyone has treated Lance Armstrong, especially after what he achieved, winning seven Tour de France races while on drugs. When I was on drugs, I couldn’t even find my bike.

No matter what you or I achieve, in sports, business, or life, we can’t be satisfied. Life is too dynamic a game. We’re either getting better or we’re getting worse. Yes, we need to celebrate our victories. There’s power in victory that’s transformative, but after our celebration we should dial it down, dream up new training regimens, new goals, and start at zero the very next day.

Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval and acceptance. Most perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule-following, people-pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it.

Absurdly, I haven't yet got around to saying that football is a wonderful sport, but of course it is. Goals have a rarity value that points and runs and sets do not, and so there will always be that thrill, the thrill of seeing someone do something that can only be done three or four times in a whole game if you are lucky, not at all if you are not. And I love the pace of it, its lack of formula; and I love the way that small men can destroy big men … in a way that they can’t in other contact sports, and the way that t he best team does not necessarily win. And there’s the athleticism …, and the way that strength and intelligence have to combine. It allows players to look beautiful and balletic in a way that some sports do not: a perfectly-timed diving header, or a perfectly-struck volley, allow the body to achieve a poise and grace that some sportsmen can never exhibit.

Wine runs in your veins.

You can learn a lot about business by watching sports. Some of the strategies you see being executed in a sports game can actually be translated into business terms and executed to achieve business success.

It may be obvious that to achieve anything substantial in life—learn a profession, master a sport, raise a child—a good deal of effort is required.

There is a Western phenomenon called the male midlife crisis. Very often it is heralded by divorce. What history might have done to you, you bring about on purpose: separation from woman and child. Don’t tell me that such men aren’t tasting the ancient flavors of death and defeat. In America, with divorce achieved, the midlifer can expect to be more recreational, more discretionary. He can almost design the sort of crisis he is going to have: motorbike, teenage girlfriend, vegetarianism, jogging, sports car, mature boyfriend, cocaine, crash diet, powerboat, new baby, religion, hair transplant. Over here, now, there’s no angling around for your male midlife crisis. It is brought to you and it is always the same thing. It is death.

The high salt content in the water allowed tank users to float silently and without effort, achieving ultimate relaxation. If the makers of the tanks were to be believed, floating in the saltwater would improve mental alertness, decrease pain, facilitate healing, improve sports performance, wash your car, do your taxes, and clean the clutter out of your attic.

Stay cool, stay focused, learn from your failures and celebrate your success each time you have one. By doing these things, you're unstoppable.

The star player must slay his ego and learn teamwork and communication skills before he can achieve the ultimate in sport

There is nothing so momentary as a sporting achievement, and nothing so lasting as the memory of it.

The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his harpoon like a marshal's baton.

Here’s the most important thing to understand: your life will move in the direction of your thoughts and you’ll never achieve more than you believe you can.

Give up your attachment to comfortable ways of living - show yourself in the gymnasium (gymnos = 'naked'), prove that you are not indifferent to the difference between perfect and imperfect, demonstrate to us that achievement - excellence, arete, virtu - has not remained a foreign word to you, admit that you have motives for new endeavours! Above all: only grant the suspicion that sport is a pastime for the most stupid as much space as it deserves, do not misuse it as a pretext to drift further in your customary state of self-neglect, distrust the philistine in yourself who thinks you are just fine as you are! Hear the voice from the stone, do not resist the call to get in shape! Seize the chance to train with a god!

In 1924, Nikola Tesla was asked why he never married? His answer was this: "I had always thought of woman as possessing those delicate qualities of mind and soul that made her in her respects far superior to man. I had put her on a lofty pedestal, figuratively speaking, and ranked her in certain important attributes considerably higher than man. I worshipped at the feet of the creature I had raised to this height, and, like every true worshiper, I felt myself unworthy of the object of my worship. But all this was in the past. Now the soft voiced gentle woman of my reverent worship has all but vanished. In her place has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies on making herself as much as possible like man - in dress, voice, and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind. The world has experience many tragedies, but to my mind the greatest tragedy of all is the present economic condition wherein women strive against men, and in many cases actually succeed in usurping their places in the professions and in industry. This growing tendency of women to overshadow the masculine is a sign of a deteriorating civilization. Practically all the great achievements of man until now have been inspired by his love and devotion to woman. Man has aspired to great things because some woman believed in him, because he wished to command her admiration and respect. For these reasons he has fought for her and risked his life and his all for her time and time again. Perhaps the male in society is useless. I am frank to admit that I don't know. If women are beginning to feel this way about it - and there is striking evidence at hand that they do - then we are entering upon the cruelest period of the world's history. Our civilization will sink to a state like that which is found among the bees, ants, and other insects - a state wherein the male is ruthlessly killed off. In this matriarchal empire which will be established, the female rules. As the female predominates, the males are at her mercy. The male is considered important only as a factor in the general scheme of the continuity of life. The tendency of women to push aside man, supplanting the old spirit of cooperation with him in all the affairs of life, is very disappointing to me." Galveston Daily News, Galveston, Texas, page 23. August 10, 1924.

Deliberate practice is more important than natural talent. Although we’re often led to believe that we’re either gifted with natural-born talent or we aren’t, most talents can be cultivated through hard work. Research studies have found that after ten years of daily practice, people can surpass others with natural talent in chess, sports, music, and the visual arts. After twenty years of dedicated practice, many people who lack natural talent can gain world-class achievement. But often we believe if we weren’t born with a specific gift, we won’t ever be able to develop enough talent to become successful. This belief can cause you to give up before you’ve had a chance to cultivate the skills necessary to succeed. •

I'm really not quite as frippery a fellow as you seem to think! I own that in my grasstime I committed a great many follies and extravagances, but, believe me, I've long since out-grown them! I don't think they were any worse than what nine out of ten youngsters commit, but unfortunately I achieved, through certain circumstances, a notoriety which most young men escape. I was born with a natural aptitude for the sporting pursuits you regard with so much distrust, and I inherited, at far too early an age, a fortune which not only enabled me to indulge my tastes in the most expensive manner imaginable, but which made me an object of such interest that everything I did was noted, and talked of. That's heady stuff for greenhorns, you know! There was a time when I gave the gossips plenty to talk about. But do give me credit for having seen the error of my ways!

Life isn't about keeping score. It's not about how many people call you and it's not about who you've dated, are dating, or haven't dated at all. It isn't about who you've kissed, what sport you play, or which guy or girl likes you. It's not about your shoes or your hair or the color of your skin or where you live or go to school. In fact, it's not about grades, money, clothes, or colleges that accept you or not. Life isn't about if you have lots of friends, or if you are alone, and it's not about how accepted or unaccepted you are. Life just isn't about that. But life is about who you love and who you hurt. It's about how you feel about yourself. It's about trust, happiness, and compassion. Life is about avoiding jealousy, overcoming ignorance, and building confidence. It's about what you say and what you mean. It's about seeing people for who they are and not what they have. Most of all, it is about choosing to use your life to touch someone else's in a way that could never have been achieved otherwise. These choices are what life's about.

When everything seems worse, impossible to achieve, thinking about giving up, quitting? Remember why started first? Trust yourself, tap yourself and say if you cannot make it, no one is going to. Look back, the whole team believes in you, go for it and be a CHAMPION.

Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval. Most perfectionists grew up being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule following, people pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, they adopted this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect. Prove.

Here are some things I didn't have space for: putting on Alone by Heart and miming the lyrics in Leah's face until she started laughing, Leah's long hands and her yellow hair and the werewolf quality of her eyebrows. The way she walked around the flat in shorts and a sports bra and told me off for staring. The way she kissed me and then apologized for biting. The time Leah told me that making me laugh was an achievement because my face was so typically set against it. The way I was often bored and Leah never was. Talking with Leah on early dates about the panic of doing what everyone else was doing and then feeling like a dick about it. The way Leah was kind by nature whereas I always seemed to struggle. The way she tipped my face towards hers and told me otherwise. "You're the kindest person I know and I know six or seven people.

Golf is not as much fun without a scorecard. Tennis doesn’t work as well without it. Same for other sports. Somehow, though, we muddle through life without a scorecard, one that’s focused on character strengths, even though most people, if they reflected on it, would agree that in the game of life, these are what truly matter most.

It is in our toughest moments that we really discover who we are.

Each experience, good or bad, joyful or painful, is a piece of the puzzle that makes up our lives. It’s up to us to choose how complex the puzzle will be.

An opportunity isn’t a free pass to success. It requires courage to try and a will to succeed.

People are not born mentally tough. Mental toughness is developed by experience. Developing mental toughness is a very long process.

No matter what you or I achieve, in sports, business, or life, we can’t be satisfied. Life is too dynamic a game. We’re either getting better or we’re getting worse.

Sport can teach us how to set and achieve goals, solve problems, cope with stress, manage our emotions, refocus after mistakes, and build self-confidence.

If you can believe it, the mind can achieve it.

it is evident that experience is the foundation of the superior achievements of the masters.

You can reach maximum performance by engaging in physical activities.

It’s amazing what you can achieve when you start focusing on the reasons why you can do something instead of the reasons why you can’t.

You show me a weak leader and I’ll show you someone who’s afraid to make decisions. Great achievers will sometimes make poor decisions, but they’ll never make weak decisions.

Don’t let the fear of change keep you from taking the risks necessary to achieve greatness.

If you want to achieve greatness, you have to be willing to make changes, no matter how uncomfortable those changes might be in the short-term.

you allow yourself to lose track of the big picture and get distracted by things that are out of your control, you’ll never achieve your dreams.

Feeling the need to be perfect is a curse. It didn’t make me perfect, it only prevented me from enjoying the moment because I couldn’t be satisfied with just being the best I could be.

In the space of a few generations a city with a population slightly less than that of present-day Stillwater, Oklahoma, produced the greatest outpouring of artistic achievement the world has ever known.

Just as women fought for the vote, and that very achievement compels us to the polling stations, so women have fought for the right to exercise and participate in sport, and we cannot throw that away. From the women of ancient Greece putting their lives on the line just by watching sport, and the women in Iran who continue to risk imprisonment today by doing the same, to the likes of Kathrine Switzer who campaigned for women to be allowed to run any distance they liked, or Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand who demand the right to participate in sport as women, without being told what their labia should look like. We

Here’s another one,” he continued. “Do you know about the three main achievements of the Revolution? Healthcare, education, and sports. Do you know about the three failures of the Revolution? Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Six express tracks and twelve locals pass through Palimpsest. The six Greater Lines are: Stylus, Sgraffito, Decretal, Foolscap, Bookhand, and Missal. Collectively, in the prayers of those gathered prostrate in the brass turnstiles of its hidden, voluptuous shrines, these are referred to as the Marginalia Line. They do not run on time: rather, the commuters of Palimpsest have learned their habits, the times of day and night when they prefer to eat and drink, their mating seasons, their gathering places. In days of old, great safaris were held to catch the great trains in their inexorable passage from place to place, and women grappled with them with hooks and tridents in order to arrive punctually at a desk in the depth, of the city. As if to impress a distracted parent on their birthday, the folk of Palimpsest built great edifices where the trains liked to congregate to drink oil from the earth and exchange gossip. They laid black track along the carriages’ migratory patterns. Trains are creatures of routine, though they are also peevish and curmudgeonly. Thus the transit system of Palimpsest was raised up around the huffing behemoths that traversed its heart, and the trains have not yet expressed displeasure. To ride them is still an exercise in hunterly passion and exactitude, for they are unpredictable, and must be observed for many weeks before patterns can be discerned. The sport of commuting is attempted by only the bravest and the wildest of Palimpsest. Many have achieved such a level of aptitude that they are able to catch a train more mornings than they do not. The wise arrive early with a neat coil of hooked rope at their waist, so that if a train is in a very great hurry, they may catch it still, and ride behind on the pauper’s terrace with the rest of those who were not favored, or fast enough, or precise in their calculations. Woe betide them in the infrequent mating seasons! No train may be asked to make its regular stops when she is in heat! A man was once caught on board when an express caught the scent of a local. The poor banker was released to a platform only eight months later, when the two white leviathans had relinquished each other with regret and tears.

When we look at other people, we are prone to construct our own ideal images of ourselves, which we then detract from and judge. Imagine, for example, a child who never talks back to his parents, excels in both schoolwork and sports, attends a good university, and joins a large company. There are parents who will compare their child to such an image of an ideal child—which is an impossible fiction—and then be filled with complaints and dissatisfaction. They treat the idealized image as one hundred points, and they gradually subtract from that. This is truly a “judgment” way of thinking. Instead, the parents could refrain from comparing their child to anyone else, see him for who he actually is, and be glad and grateful for his being there. Instead of taking away points from some idealized image, they could start from zero. And if they do that, they should be able to call out to his existence itself.

They have confirmed my belief that the ideas people choose to have about themselves largely determine the quality of the lives they lead. We can choose to believe in ourselves, and thus to strive, to risk, to persevere, and to achieve.

Simplicity itself is the key. Education in ballet, dance, martial arts, etc., is done through poses, or to be more precise, through a countless series of poses. Perfection of movement is achieved through the flow of perfectly rehearsed poses.

When the NSSF fights against legislation designed to prevent mass shootings because it “won’t work and is a violation of rights,” we understand that many people agree with that argument. But that’s not, at all, even a little bit why the organization lobbies so hard. It works hand in hand with the NRA and certain senators, and spends millions of dollars per year for one reason and one reason only: to make more money. And every time a shooting happens, it makes even more money. Yes. For real. When a mass shooting makes national headlines, the gun lobby purposefully stokes up fear and paranoia over proposed new gun laws so that scared citizens get out their checkbooks and buy a new AR-15 (or sporting rifle). So why would the NSSF have any interest in stopping mass shootings? Why would it engage politically and invest in compromise, a reform plan that attempts to make all Americans safer, or any sort of reckoning of the role guns play in gun violence? It won’t. However you feel about guns and their place in America—whether we’re talking about rifles for hunting or assault rifles, or anything in between—it’s undeniable that the gun lobby has refused to acknowledge or entertain any sort of regulation or reform aimed at making us a safer and saner nation. The reason why: because that does not make it more money. A customer base kept terrified at all times that this will be “the last chance before the government bans” whatever gun manufacturers are peddling is much more valuable. A customer base absolutely convinced that the just-about-anyone-can-buy culture we have is politically necessary without seeing that it serves those companies is what they’re after. They have achieved it.

Jiu Jitsu gives each of us something that no other sport can. We have the opportunity to become truly great regardless of what circumstance fate has handed us. We have complete freedom and responsibility to achieve whatever level of mastery we wish.

The best example I know, of this astonishingly stupid attitude towards sport, is that of Franz Ferdinand. His, however, was an achievement with the gun. He used to shoot at Konopist with no less than seven weapons and four loaders, and he once killed more than 4,000 birds, himself, in one day. [A propos of statistics and quite beside the point: a Yorkshireman once drank 52½ pints of beer in one hour.] Now why did Franz Ferdinand do this? Even if he shot for twelve hours at a stretch, without pause for luncheon, it means that he killed six birds in each minute of the day. The mere manual labour, a pheasant every ten seconds for twelve successive hours, is enough to make a road-mender stagger; and there is little wonder that, by the time the unhappy archduke had accumulated his collection of 300,000 head of game, he was shooting with rubber pads on his coat and a bandage round his ears. The unfortunate man had practically stunned himself with gunpowder, long before they bagged him also at Sarajevo.

You see twenty-six years ago, when I was in high school, my goal and mission in life was to win a New York State Wrestling Championship. I committed myself to a lifestyle, made the sacrifices, put in the time, starved myself, shaved my head, had the hunger, desire and determination, but I came up short. For many years, after I graduated it seemed like I got nothing out of my six years of total dedication to the sport. That the trade off of what I gave and what I got in return to this sport was way out of whack. I hated wrestling for it. To put every ounce of your soul into achieving something and to get nothing out of it in return was beyond my comprehension and could not be justified in my head. Until I had adversity in my life. And slowly but surely I started realizing how much the sport of wrestling actually has given back to me. Much more than I ever knew. When life throws you to your back, you need to know how not to get pinned, get off of your back and do enough to make up the difference in order to win.

If he wanted to be great, he would find the time and energy. The actual number of shots I suggested was not as important as the idea that Lebron would set a practice goal for himself, commit to achieving it everyday , and wait patiently for results. Patience was essential.

Now the soft-voiced gentle woman of my reverent worship has all but vanished, in her place has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies in making herself as much as possible like man—in dress, voice and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind.

Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval and acceptance. Most perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (good grades, good manners, nice appearance, sports prowess, rule following, people pleasing). Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect. Healthy striving is self-focused—How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused—What will they think?

We can choose to believe in ourselves, and thus to strive, to risk, to persevere, and to achieve. Or we can choose to cling to security and mediocrity. We can choose to set no limits on ourselves, to set high goals and dream big dreams. We can use those dreams to fuel our spirits with passion.

Penelope Eckert, who observed boys and girls in high school, points out that boys define their social status in a simple and straightforward way—their individual skill and achievement, especially at sports—but girls 'must define theirs in a far more complicated way, in terms of their overall character.

[LSSU] was the kind of school where students had a lot of pride. Not the raucous strain of sports pride... And not academic pride... It was more of a geographical pride. Kids were proud to live in that tough wilderness setting, and the best way to prove your mettle was through achievements in the wild.

Individuals who achieve durable, frequent success are optimists. They shake off their doubts and know in their heads and in their hearts that in the long run, they are going to be successful, they’re going to have great careers, everything will fall into place, and wonderful things will happen to them.

I realized that despite society’s molds, we had choices. We, and only we, could decide the course of our lives. There would always be obstacles. Like a river meeting a boulder, we could go over it or around it — that decision was ours to make. Or we could take an entirely new course. Nothing was impossible.

Plane Ride - In our sport it is natural and necessary to set up goals to inspire us. We all want to achieve the next level, the break-thru performance. What we (all of us) must not forget is that the journey to these goals is the best part. The daily process of obtaining success takes up the majority of our time and effort throughout our lives. Remember to appreciate what you’ve done in the past and what you are doing in the present on your way to higher goals. This will allow you to always strive for something more without missing out on the fact that your path to success is as much a starting point as it is a finish line.

Most people try to be good at lots of different things, but they never become great at any one thing. You’ll see extraordinary results when you stop trying to be good at lots of things and start trying to be great at one thing. You’ll achieve greatness when you sharpen your focus down to one, single, overriding goal.

Schools could do the same thing. Elementary and middle schools could put the January through April–born students in one class, the May through August in another class, and those born in September through December in the third class. They could let students learn with and compete against other students of the same maturity level. It would be a little bit more complicated administratively. But it wouldn’t necessarily cost that much more money, and it would level the playing field for those who — through no fault of their own — have been dealt a big disadvantage by the educational system. We could easily take control of the machinery of achievement, in other words — not just in sports but, as we will see, in other more consequential areas as well. But we don’t. And why? Because we cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don’t matter at all.

But there always have been, and probably always will be, five ingredients for success in sport: Purpose: Know exactly what your goal is. Passion: Have a burning desire to achieve it. Planning: Determine how you’ll go about achieving it. Perspiration: Work hard, following your plan to achieve it. Perseverance: Don’t let anything get in the way of achieving it.

Everyone belongs to some community, whether it’s based on your background, your home state, your college, or your favorite sports team. By identifying all the possible communities to which you belong, you may well find an affinity group—and a story—that helps get your business off the ground, secures your dream job, or lets you achieve whatever goal you are pursuing.

The people who achieve the most success in life are not those who somehow find a way to avoid making mistakes or encountering obstacles. No, mistakes and obstacles are an unavoidable part of life. The most successful people are those who are willing to keep moving forward after making mistakes. They find a way not to avoid life’s inevitable obstacles, but to overcome them!

New Rule: Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism. That's right, the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poorer one...just like President Obama wants to do with his secret army of ACORN volunteers. Green Bay, Wisconsin, has a population of one hundred thousand. Yet this sleepy little town on the banks of the Fuck-if-I-know River has just as much of a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as the New York Jets--who next year need to just shut the hell up and play. Now, me personally, I haven't watched a Super Bowl since 2004, when Janet Jackson's nipple popped out during halftime. and that split-second glimpse of an unrestrained black titty burned by eyes and offended me as a Christian. But I get it--who doesn't love the spectacle of juiced-up millionaires giving one another brain damage on a giant flatscreen TV with a picture so real it feels like Ben Roethlisberger is in your living room, grabbing your sister? It's no surprise that some one hundred million Americans will watch the Super Bowl--that's forty million more than go to church on Christmas--suck on that, Jesus! It's also eighty-five million more than watched the last game of the World Series, and in that is an economic lesson for America. Because football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity, and baseball is built on a model where the rich almost always win and the poor usually have no chance. The World Series is like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. You have to be a rich bitch just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in. Or to put it another way, football is more like the Democratic philosophy. Democrats don't want to eliminate capitalism or competition, but they'd like it if some kids didn't have to go to a crummy school in a rotten neighborhood while others get to go to a great school and their dad gets them into Harvard. Because when that happens, "achieving the American dream" is easy for some and just a fantasy for others. That's why the NFL literally shares the wealth--TV is their biggest source of revenue, and they put all of it in a big commie pot and split it thirty-two ways. Because they don't want anyone to fall too far behind. That's why the team that wins the Super Bowl picks last in the next draft. Or what the Republicans would call "punishing success." Baseball, on the other hand, is exactly like the Republicans, and I don't just mean it's incredibly boring. I mean their economic theory is every man for himself. The small-market Pittsburgh Steelers go to the Super Bowl more than anybody--but the Pittsburgh Pirates? Levi Johnston has sperm that will not grow and live long enough to see the Pirates in a World Series. Their payroll is $40 million; the Yankees' is $206 million. The Pirates have about as much chance as getting in the playoffs as a poor black teenager from Newark has of becoming the CEO of Halliburton. So you kind of have to laugh--the same angry white males who hate Obama because he's "redistributing wealth" just love football, a sport that succeeds economically because it does just that. To them, the NFL is as American as hot dogs, Chevrolet, apple pie, and a second, giant helping of apple pie.

the satisfaction of success doesn’t come from achieving your goals, but from struggling well. To understand what I mean, imagine your greatest goal, whatever it is—making a ton of money, winning an Academy Award, running a great organization, being great at a sport. Now imagine instantaneously achieving it. You’d be happy at first, but not for long. You would soon find yourself needing something else to struggle for.

Billions of people are living on the earth today with the knowledge of mathematics, physics, and biology. They have the knowledge of stocks market, the knowledge of politics, engineering, law, and medicine. They know about fashion, sports, arts, music and a lot more other aspects of life. However, the sad reality is that a greater percentage of these people do not know who they are nor why they exist. They do not know for what purpose they are on the earth and where they are heading

In America, organized athletics teach militarism, authoritarianism , racism, and sexism, thereby perpetuating the "false consciousness" of the masses. Sports serve as an "opiate" of the people, diverting the masses from their real problems with a "dream world" of glamour and excitement. They promote sexual -rivalry among males-with "vestal virgins" leading the cheers from the sidelines-and thus prevent the proletariat from achieving revolutionary solidarity in the face of its oppressors.

Every Olympian wants to win a gold medal. Every candidate wants to get the job. And if successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers.22 It wasn’t the goal of winning the Tour de France that propelled the British cyclists to the top of the sport. Presumably, they had wanted to win the race every year before—just like every other professional team. The goal had always been there. It was only when they implemented a system of continuous small improvements that they achieved a different outcome.

As a recovering perfectionist and an aspiring good-enoughist, I’ve found it extremely helpful to bust some of the myths about perfectionism so that we can develop a definition that accurately captures what it is and what it does to our lives. Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be your best. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. It’s a shield. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from taking flight. Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval and acceptance. Most perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule-following, people-pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect. Healthy striving is self-focused—How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused—What will they think?

Once detachment, viveka, is interpreted mainly in this internal sense, it appears perhaps easier to achieve it today than in a more normal and traditional civilization. One who is still an 'Aryan' spirit in a large Eu­ropean or American city, with its skyscrapers and asphalt, with its poli­tics and sport, with its crowds who dance and shout, with its exponents of secular culture and of soulless science and so on-among all this he may feel himself more alone and detached and nomad than he would have done in the rime of the Buddha, in conditions of physical isolation and of actual wandering. The greatest difficulty, in this respect, lies in giving this sense of internal isolation, which today may occur to many almost spontaneously, a positive, full, simple, and transparent charac­ter, with elimination of all traces of aridity, melancholy, discord, or anxiety. Solitude should not he a burden, something that is suffered, that is borne involuntarily, or in which refuge is taken by force of cir­cumstances, but rather, a natural, simple, and free disposition, in a text we read: 'Solitude is called wisdom [ekattam monam akkhatarin], he who is alone will find that he is happy'; it is an accentuated version of 'beata solitudo, sofa beatitudo'.

billionaire Jeff Hoffman recently spoke at one of the Quantum Leap Mastermind retreats that my business partner, Jon Berghoff, and I cohost, and of the many takeaways that I wrote down, the following stood out most: “You can’t win a gold medal at more than one [sport].” Let that sink in for a minute. Most Olympic athletes spend their entire lives focused on developing themselves to be best in the world at one thing. And remember what we learned in the last chapter, that when you choose and commit to one mission, achieving your other goals will become more probable, because you will be living in alignment with your highest priority.

People usually live up to their expectations. The kid picked first for dodgeball feels a duty to be the best, and to perform the best, and to be better than anyone else. They feel a need to execute. And, the only way they are going to achieve that is to make their body run faster, jump higher, and move quicker. If more fat kids were chosen first for activities and sports and group/team dynamics, they would automatically start to change their lives to fit into the expectations that surround those moments. Any time a child is picked last, they know it’s because people expect the least of them, and so they never actually have a need to rise above that.

there is no stronger taboo today than talking about race. In many cases, just being accused of “racism” can get you fired. Yet, teachers in America know the races differ in school achievement; policemen know the races differ in crime rates; social workers know the races differ in rates of welfare dependency or getting infected with AIDS. And sports fans know that Blacks excel at boxing, basketball, and running. They all wonder why. Some blame poverty, White racism, and the legacy of slavery. Although many doubt that “White racism” really tells the whole story, few dare share their doubts. When it comes to race, do you really dare to say what you think?

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert talks about this phenomenon in his 2006 book, Stumbling on Happiness. “The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real,” he writes. “The frontal lobe—the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature, and the first to deteriorate in old age—is a time machine that allows each of us to vacate the present and experience the future before it happens.” This time travel into the future—otherwise known as anticipation—accounts for a big chunk of the happiness gleaned from any event. As you look forward to something good that is about to happen, you experience some of the same joy you would in the moment. The major difference is that the joy can last much longer. Consider that ritual of opening presents on Christmas morning. The reality of it seldom takes more than an hour, but the anticipation of seeing the presents under the tree can stretch out the joy for weeks. One study by several Dutch researchers, published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life in 2010, found that vacationers were happier than people who didn’t take holiday trips. That finding is hardly surprising. What is surprising is the timing of the happiness boost. It didn’t come after the vacations, with tourists bathing in their post-trip glow. It didn’t even come through that strongly during the trips, as the joy of travel mingled with the stress of travel: jet lag, stomach woes, and train conductors giving garbled instructions over the loudspeaker. The happiness boost came before the trips, stretching out for as much as two months beforehand as the holiday goers imagined their excursions. A vision of little umbrella-sporting drinks can create the happiness rush of a mini vacation even in the midst of a rainy commute. On some level, people instinctively know this. In one study that Gilbert writes about, people were told they’d won a free dinner at a fancy French restaurant. When asked when they’d like to schedule the dinner, most people didn’t want to head over right then. They wanted to wait, on average, over a week—to savor the anticipation of their fine fare and to optimize their pleasure. The experiencing self seldom encounters pure bliss, but the anticipating self never has to go to the bathroom in the middle of a favorite band’s concert and is never cold from too much air conditioning in that theater showing the sequel to a favorite flick. Planning a few anchor events for a weekend guarantees you pleasure because—even if all goes wrong in the moment—you still will have derived some pleasure from the anticipation. I love spontaneity and embrace it when it happens, but I cannot bank my pleasure solely on it. If you wait until Saturday morning to make your plans for the weekend, you will spend a chunk of your Saturday working on such plans, rather than anticipating your fun. Hitting the weekend without a plan means you may not get to do what you want. You’ll use up energy in negotiations with other family members. You’ll start late and the museum will close when you’ve only been there an hour. Your favorite restaurant will be booked up—and even if, miraculously, you score a table, think of how much more you would have enjoyed the last few days knowing that you’d be eating those seared scallops on Saturday night!

What happens when conspiracy theories become the coin of politics, and mainstream media and educational institutions are discredited, is that citizens no longer have a common reality that can serve as background for democratic deliberation. In such a situation, citizens have no choice but to look for markers to follow other than truth or reliability. What happens in such cases, as we see across the world, is that citizens look to politics for tribal identifications, for addressing personal grievances, and for entertainment. When news becomes sports, the strongman achieves a certain measure of popularity. Fascist politics transforms the news from a conduit of information and reasoned debate into a spectacle with the strongman as the star.

Teddy Roosevelt?" I suggested. Sadie and I had been trying to figure out the second mathlete's costume for a few minutes. He was wearing a 1930's-style suit,had his hair slicked down carefully, and was sporting a fake mustache. "No glasses. And I can't even begin to imagine the connection between Davy Jone's Locker and Teddy Roosevelt." Sadie pulled a long gold hair from her pumpkin-orange punch and sighed. Maybe her mother hadn't topped her Sleepy Hollow triumph, but it wasn't from lack of determination. What Mrs. Winslow hadn't achieved in creativity (she'd gone the mermaid route), she'd made up in the details. The tailed skirt was intricately beaded and embroidered in a dozen shades of blue and green. It was pretty amazing.The problem was the bodice: not a bikini, but not much better as far as Sadie was concerned. It was green, plunging, and edged with itchy-looking scallops. She was managing to stay covered by the wig, but that was an issue in itself. It was massive,made up of hundreds of trailing corkscrew curls in a metallic blonde. To top it all off, the costume included a glittering, three point crown, and a six-foot trident, complete with jewels and trailing silk seaweed. "Sadie," I'd asked quietly when she'd appeared at my house, shivering and tangled in her wig, "why don't you..." Just tell her where she can shove her trident? But that would just have been mean. Sadie gives in and wears the costumes because it's infinitely easier than fighting. "...come next door and we'll see if Sienna has a shawl you can borrow?

They have confirmed my belief that the ideas people choose to have about themselves largely determine the quality of the lives they lead. We can choose to believe in ourselves, and thus to strive, to risk, to perse- vere, and to achieve. Or we can choose to cling to security and medi- ocrity. We can choose to set no limits on ourselves, to set high goals and dream big dreams. We can use those dreams to fuel our spirits with pas- sion. Or we can become philosophers of the worst kind, inventing ways to rationalize our failures, inventing excuses for mediocrity. We can fall in love with our own abilities and our own potential, then choose to maximize those abilities. Or we can decide that we have no special tal- ents or abilities and try to be happy being safe and comfortable.

By action people hope to achieve enjoyment, to feel that they are alive and young and vigorous at an elemental level. Games, sport, sex, creative work, the intense pleasure of speed - a hundred other forms of action, but all fleeting and momentary. Action here and now is a transitory thing that can have only two results. Either we go back and reflect on what we have done, and it is all dust and ashes; or else we keep on doing it, day after day heaping up sensuous pleasures, ecstasies, and delights. In the former case we have an Epicurean restraint that demands great discipline and can be achieved only by the word. In the latter case we are in a headlong flight like Don Juan, Mille e tre, with a round of conquests, each testifying that it is already over, and that there must be a search for new pastures with increasing dissatisfaction. Action uses up action, and it uses us up even more swiftly until the point is reached where there is only the sad recollection of what was once action but has now become impossible.

Despite the dangers and discomforts, climbing is for many an all-consuming passion. They interrupt, end, or never start their careers, focusing exclusively on completing the next climb. Climber Todd Skinner said free climbing means "going right to the edge" of your capabilites. For many climbers, this closeness to death - the risk of dying - produces an adrenaline rush that most other life experiences simply can't. It is what keeps many of them married to the sport. Probably no other sport creates such a feeling of oneness with Mother Nature. Attached to a mountainside by fingertips and toes, the climber necessarily becomes part of the rock - or else. One climber says that while scaling a granite face, she felt close to God, so intense was her relationship with the natural world. Climbers speak of "floating" or "performing a ballet" over the rock, each placement of foot and each reach into a crack creating unity with the mountain. The sport is one of total engagement with the here-and-now, which frees the mind from everything else. Climbers' concentration is complete and focused. Their only thought is executing the next move... Ken Bokelund... said: "Climbing for me has always been the strength of the body over the weakness of the mind. If you train so that you are very strong physically and you have mastered the techniques, then all that's left is believing. Freeing your mind of fear is the key. This is very difficult to do, but when you can achieve it, then you are in true harmony with the rock. Fear is just one more thing to worry about and is very distracting. It can make you fall... ...when you know you are strong enough to complete any maneuver, once that level of physical confidence is achieved, then you are able to put fear out of your mind. Climbing becomes a very simple pleasure. It's just you and the rock. It's a total clarity of being, a time when nothing matters, you're moving without any thought, you're in a place where time stands still. Even when you're on a wall for days, when you get down, everything seems exactly the same, as though time never passed.

Life isn't about keeping score. It's not about how many people call you and it's not about who you've dated, are dating or haven't dated at all. It isn't about who you've kissed, what sport you play, or which guy or girl likes you. It's not about your shoes or your hair or the color of your skin or where you live or go to school. In fact, it's not about grades, money, clothes, or colleges that accept you or not. Life isn't about if you have lots of friends, or if you are alone, and it's not about how accepted or unaccepted you are. Life just isn't about that. But life is about who you love and who you hurt. It's about how you feel about yourself. It's about trust, happiness, and compassion. It's about sticking up for your friends and replacing inner hate with love. Life is about avoiding jealousy, overcoming ignorance and building confidence. It's about what you say and what you mean. It's about seeing people for who they are and not what they have. Most of all, it is about choosing to use your life to touch someone's else's in a way that could never have been achieved otherwise. These choices are what life's about.

Great athletes practice, train, study, and develop. So do great learners. As students empowering ourselves with knowledge, what can we learn from Olympic-caliber athletes about success, and how to achieve it? 1. Preparation = Success! “If you fail to prepare, you're prepared to fail.” —Mark Spitz, Gold Medalist, Swimming 2. Learning is lifelong “Never put an age limit on your dreams.” —Dara Torres, Gold Medalist, Swimming 3. Failure is opportunity "One shouldn't be afraid to lose” —Oksana Baiul, Gold Medalist, Figure Skating 4. The only person who can stop you is yourself “This ability to conquer oneself is no doubt the most precious of all things sports bestows.” —Olga Korbut, Gold Medalist, Gymnastics 5. Learning is fun! “If you're not having fun, then what the hell are you doing?” —Allison Jones, six-time Paralympian 6. You have to be in it to win it “Failure I can live with. Not trying is what I can't handle.” —Sanya Richards-Ross, Gold Medalist, Track & Field There are always new skills to learn, new challenges to overcome, new ways to succeed. The only guarantee of failure is if you don’t get started in the first place.

Cultivate gratitude. Carve out an hour a day for solitude. Begin and end the day with prayer, meditation, reflection. Keep it simple. Keep your house picked up. Don’t overschedule. Strive for realistic deadlines. Never make a promise you can’t keep. Allow an extra half hour for everything you do. Create quiet surroundings at home and at work. Go to bed at nine o’clock twice a week. Always carry something interesting to read. Breathe—deeply and often. Move—walk, dance, run, find a sport you enjoy. Drink pure spring water. Lots of it. Eat only when hungry. If it’s not delicious, don’t eat it. Be instead of do. Set aside one day a week for rest and renewal. Laugh more often. Luxuriate in your senses. Always opt for comfort. If you don’t love it, live without it. Let Mother Nature nurture. Don’t answer the telephone during dinner. Stop trying to please everybody. Start pleasing yourself. Stay away from negative people. Don’t squander precious resources: time, creative energy, emotion. Nurture friendships. Don’t be afraid of your passion. Approach problems as challenges. Honor your aspirations. Set achievable goals. Surrender expectations.

I realized that all of them—like me, like everyone—make mistakes, struggle with their weaknesses, and don’t feel that they are particularly special or great. They are no happier than the rest of us, and they struggle just as much or more than average folks. Even after they surpass their wildest dreams, they still experience more struggle than glory. This has certainly been true for me. While I surpassed my wildest dreams decades ago, I am still struggling today. In time, I realized that the satisfaction of success doesn’t come from achieving your goals, but from struggling well. To understand what I mean, imagine your greatest goal, whatever it is—making a ton of money, winning an Academy Award, running a great organization, being great at a sport. Now imagine instantaneously achieving it. You’d be happy at first, but not for long. You would soon find yourself needing something else to struggle for. Just look at people who attain their dreams early— the child star, the lottery winner, the professional athlete who peaks early. They typically don’t end up happy unless they get excited about something else bigger and better to struggle for. Since life brings both ups and downs, struggling well doesn’t just make your ups better; it makes your downs less bad. I’m still struggling and I will until I die, because even if I try to avoid the struggles, they will find me.

In 1979, Christopher Connolly cofounded a psychology consultancy in the United Kingdom to help high achievers (initially athletes, but then others) perform at their best. Over the years, Connolly became curious about why some professionals floundered outside a narrow expertise, while others were remarkably adept at expanding their careers—moving from playing in a world-class orchestra, for example, to running one. Thirty years after he started, Connolly returned to school to do a PhD investigating that very question, under Fernand Gobet, the psychologist and chess international master. Connolly’s primary finding was that early in their careers, those who later made successful transitions had broader training and kept multiple “career streams” open even as they pursued a primary specialty. They “traveled on an eight-lane highway,” he wrote, rather than down a single-lane one-way street. They had range. The successful adapters were excellent at taking knowledge from one pursuit and applying it creatively to another, and at avoiding cognitive entrenchment. They employed what Hogarth called a “circuit breaker.” They drew on outside experiences and analogies to interrupt their inclination toward a previous solution that may no longer work. Their skill was in avoiding the same old patterns. In the wicked world, with ill-defined challenges and few rigid rules, range can be a life hack. Pretending the world is like golf and chess is comforting. It makes for a tidy kind-world message, and some very compelling books. The rest of this one will begin where those end—in a place where the popular sport is Martian tennis, with a view into how the modern world became so wicked in the first place.

Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking. We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry. The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the checks and balances in our Constitution were designed to prevent the self-inflicted wounds we face today. But as our long history reveals, those written words must be applied by people charged with giving life to them in each new era. That’s how African Americans moved from being slaves to being equal under the law and how they set off on the long journey to be equal in fact, a journey we know is not over. The same story can be told of women’s rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, the rights of the disabled, the struggle to define and protect religious liberty, and to guarantee equality to people without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity. These have been hard-fought battles, waged on uncertain, shifting terrain. Each advance has sparked a strong reaction from those whose interests and beliefs are threatened. Today the changes are happening so fast, in an environment so covered in a blizzard of information and misinformation, that our very identities are being challenged. What does it mean to be an American today? It’s a question that will answer itself if we get back to what’s brought us this far: widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of freedom, and strengthening bonds of community. Shrinking the definition of them and expanding the definition of us. Leaving no one behind, left out, looked down on. We must get back to that mission. And do it with both energy and humility, knowing that our time is fleeting and our power is not an end in itself but a means to achieve more noble and necessary ends. The American dream works when our common humanity matters more than our interesting differences and when together they create endless possibilities. That’s an America worth fighting—even dying—for. And, more important, it’s an America worth living and working for.

What would be the natural thing? A man goes to college. He works as he wants to work, he plays as he wants to play, he exercises for the fun of the game, he makes friends where he wants to make them, he is held in by no fear of criticism above, for the class ahead of him has nothing to do with his standing in his own class. Everything he does has the one vital quality: it is spontaneous. That is the flame of youth itself. Now, what really exists?" "...I say our colleges to-day are business colleges—Yale more so, perhaps, because it is more sensitively American. Let's take up any side of our life here. Begin with athletics. What has become of the natural, spontaneous joy of contest? Instead you have one of the most perfectly organized business systems for achieving a required result—success. Football is driving, slavish work; there isn't one man in twenty who gets any real pleasure out of it. Professional baseball is not more rigorously disciplined and driven than our 'amateur' teams. Add the crew and the track. Play, the fun of the thing itself, doesn't exist; and why? Because we have made a business out of it all, and the college is scoured for material, just as drummers are sent out to bring in business. "Take another case. A man has a knack at the banjo or guitar, or has a good voice. What is the spontaneous thing? To meet with other kindred spirits in informal gatherings in one another's rooms or at the fence, according to the whim of the moment. Instead what happens? You have our university musical clubs, thoroughly professional organizations. If you are material, you must get out and begin to work for them—coach with a professional coach, make the Apollo clubs, and, working on, some day in junior year reach the varsity organization and go out on a professional tour. Again an organization conceived on business lines. "The same is true with the competition for our papers: the struggle for existence outside in a business world is not one whit more intense than the struggle to win out in the News or Lit competition. We are like a beef trust, with every by-product organized, down to the last possibility. You come to Yale—what is said to you? 'Be natural, be spontaneous, revel in a certain freedom, enjoy a leisure you'll never get again, browse around, give your imagination a chance, see every one, rub wits with every one, get to know yourself.' "Is that what's said? No. What are you told, instead? 'Here are twenty great machines that need new bolts and wheels. Get out and work. Work harder than the next man, who is going to try to outwork you. And, in order to succeed, work at only one thing. You don't count—everything for the college.' Regan says the colleges don't represent the nation; I say they don't even represent the individual.

No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism. Whoever is convinced that indulgence or excessive indulgence in these poisons is pernicious is not hindered from living abstemiously or temperately. This question cannot be treated exclusively in reference to alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, etc., which all reasonable men acknowledge to be evils. For if the majority of citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority, it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgence in alcohol, morphine, cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be valid also for nicotine, caffeine, and the like? Why should not the state generally prescribe which foods may be indulged in and which must be avoided because they are injurious? In sports too, many people are prone to carry their indulgence further than their strength will allow. Why should not the state interfere here as well? Few men know how to be temperate in their sexual life, and it seems especially difficult for aging persons to understand that they should cease entirely to indulge in such pleasures or, at least, do so in moderation. Should not the state intervene here too? More harmful still than all these pleasures, many will say, is the reading of evil literature. Should a press pandering to the lowest instincts of man be allowed to corrupt the soul? Should not the exhibition of pornographic pictures, of obscene plays, in short, of all allurements to immorality, be prohibited? And is not the dissemination of false sociological doctrines just as injurious to men and nations? Should men be permitted to incite others to civil war and to wars against foreign countries? And should scurrilous lampoons and blasphemous diatribes be allowed to undermine respect for God and the Church? We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual's mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community, bound to obey the dictates of the majority. It is hardly necessary to expatiate on the ways in which such powers could be abused by malevolent persons in authority. The wielding, of powers of this kind even by men imbued with the best of intentions must needs reduce the world to a graveyard of the spirit. All mankind's progress has been achieved as a result of the initiative of a small minority that began to deviate from the ideas and customs of the majority until their example finally moved the others to accept the innovation themselves. To give the majority the right to dictate to the minority what it is to think, to read, and to do is to put a stop to progress once and for all. Let no one object that the struggle against morphinism and the struggle against "evil" literature are two quite different things. The only difference between them is that some of the same people who favor the prohibition of the former will not agree to the prohibition of the latter.

What you have to do is get out of wait-and-see mode and get into attack-and-adapt mode. The quicker you make your decision, act on it, and adapt as needed; the quicker you will start achieving your goals.

It’s amazing what a man can achieve when he takes the attention off of helping himself and focuses it on helping others.

you’ve got to want something so bad in life that you’re willing to make the sacrifices most people won’t. That’s where you’ll find your edge. That extreme desire to achieve something only comes when your goal is aligned with your true passion.

To achieve greatness, you have to leave your comfort zone,

and Socrates asked the young man to walk with him toward the river. When the water got up to their necks, Socrates took the young man by surprise and pushed him under the water. The boy struggled to get out but Socrates kept him there. When the boy started turning blue, Socrates raised the boy’s head out of the water. The first thing the boy did was to take a deep breath of air. Socrates asked, “What did you want the most when you were under water?” The boy replied, “Air.” Socrates said, “That is the secret to success. When you want success as badly as you wanted air underwater, you will have it.” There is no other secret. This is called the burning desire. In the business community, we call it the fire in the belly. In the sports community, we call it the killer instinct. A

Regardless of the career field, the most successful achievers agree: you must follow your heart and live your unique purpose in order to be successful and happy.

A society of prohibition requires all its members to sacrifice their individual, private ways of obtaining enjoyment for the sake of the social order as a whole. That is to say, one receives an identity from society in exchange for one’s immediate access to enjoyment, which one must give up. This is, traditionally, the way in which society as such functions. This type of society operates in the manner of a sports team: the team demands individual sacrifices in order to ensure the team’s success. In order for the team to win, the individual must give up her or his dreams of wholly individual achievement and fit her or his abilities into the structure of the team. In a society of commanded enjoyment, this dynamic changes dramatically. Rather than demanding that its members give up their individual enjoyment for the sake of the whole, the society of enjoyment commands their enjoyment—private enjoyment becomes of paramount importance—and the importance of the social order as a whole seems to recede. Contemporary complaints about sports stars who are more concerned about individual statistics and money than about their team’s fortunes are indicative of this transformation. These sports stars are not simply anomalous narcissists. In the society of enjoyment, individual, private accomplishments and rewards are more important than the success of the team. In such a society, it is no longer requisite that subjects accept a constant dissatisfaction as the price for existing within a social order. To return to the example of the sports team, one can remain a member of the team without having to subordinate one’s own individual agenda to the larger plans of the team. Dissatisfaction now appears as something that one need not experience, in contrast to life in the society of prohibition, where dissatisfaction inheres in the very fabric of social existence itself. In the society of enjoyment, the private enjoyment that threatened the stability of the society of prohibition becomes a stabilizing force and even acquires the status of a duty.

Neuroscience Explains Why You Need To Write Down Your Goals If You Actually Want To Achieve Them.” (Excerpt)

The goals you set affect everything you do. When you set a goal and commit yourself to it, it will affect the way you think, talk, and act. Even when you’re sleeping, your subconscious works to find ways to achieve the goals you’ve given it. That’s the awesome power of goal-setting.

All big dreams require big risks. To achieve greatness, you’ve got to accept that risk and believe in your heart that you can overcome any obstacles it may bring.

Brian Zuleger, a sports psychologist out of Adams State University, taught me an exercise to reframe expectations. Instead of aiming for our best performance, something that we can only accomplish rarely, shoot for improving your best average. When we judge ourselves against our all-time best, we inevitably fall short more often than not. Instead, averaging out our five most recent performances gives us a still tricky but achievable goal.

In real life, being relentless is a state of mind that can give you the strength to achieve, to survive, to overcome, to be strong when others are not. It means craving the end result so intensely that the work becomes irrelevant. Not just in sports, but in everything you do. The ability to be relentless is in all of us.

It’s a commitment to long-term positive thinking that separates the big achievers from everyone else.

Football is just like life. When you try to achieve something important and difficult, you will face setbacks along the way. When that happens, regroup and choose to focus on the next play, the next game, and the next opportunity. That’s the great thing about life—regardless of what happened on the last hand, you always get a new hand

Ultimately, those who achieve the greatest accomplishments are those who waste the fewest days.

It’s easy to stick with a new philosophy when things are going your way. It’s easy to say you’re not going to focus on results when you win and achieve the results you want. The test comes when you lose. Can you still feel good about your approach? Are you committed to it? “I can say with certainty that I am all in on this.

to have self-confidence. Lots of self-confidence. You’ve got to believe you will find a way to achieve your goals.

I have never met a parent who dreams about his child growing up to be lazy or dishonest or a failure. No parent envisions a future for his child that is not prosperous or filled with opportunity, abundance, and loving relationships. Every parent I have ever met wants their son or daughter to possess things like courage, integrity, sportsmanship, humility, and passion. They all intend for their children to achieve greatness in their lives.

The best coaches have a growth mindset and know how to motivate, communicate, and inspire their athletes to achieve more than they ever would on their own. They instill a love of the game, a passion for achievement, and model the character and values that they preach to their athletes. They know when a kid needs a hug and when he needs a metaphoric kick in the rear. All high performers can point to various coaches as major contributors in their ultimate success, and most lifelong athletes can point to a coach who taught them to love sport and to be active for life.

HT-1 This point is difficult to access, as it is well protected by the structure of the human body. HT-1is a bilateral Vital Point that is located in the armpit at the junction of the inner arm with the torso. It is associated with the Heart Meridian and is the point that the internal aspects of that meridian leaves the inner torso and emerges close to the surface of the skin. It does not have a direct connection to any Extraordinary Vessels, but is highly sensitive to attack. Traditional Chinese Medicine state that this is a no-needle point in many related textbooks. On the surface, this point would appear to be a difficult one to access during an altercation, but it is accessible. HT-1 becomes easily accessible if the opponent’s arm is raised, which occurs in the short instances that they are throwing a punch. A quick finger thrust or one-knuckle fist strike can easily activate it, but it requires a fair amount of precision to land. Combat science teaches us that precision generally diminishes during an altercation, but I add the above variant for those that would be willing to put in the training time for achieve such a strike. Just remember that the likelihood of landing such a technique during an actual altercation is remote, even with copious amounts of practice. A more realistic attack to HT-1 is when you have used your opponent’s arm to take them to the ground. Once established, as a generally rule of thumb, it is advised that if you have established control over an opponent’s arm that you should maintain that control until you deliver a blow that ends the fight. So, with that in mind, one of my favorite attacks to HT-1 after driving an opponent to ground while having established and maintained arm control, that you jerk the arm towards yourself as you throw a kick into this Vital Point. The type of kick will be dependent on the positioning of your opponent. If he is bladed on the ground (laying on one side with the arm you control in the air) a hard side kick or stomp works well. If the opponent starts turning, or squaring his shoulders towards you as he hits the ground in an attempt to regain his feet, then a forceful forward, or straight kick, can work. I would suggest working with a training partner to determine the various configurations that a downed opponent would react when you maintain control of one of their arms. Notice that I did not advise that you kick your training partner in HT-1, which is ill advised since it theoretically can cause disruptions to the heart and according to Traditional Chinese Medicine theory even death. Again, this technique is not for demonstration or sport-oriented martial arts, but mature and thoughtful training practice can provide a wealth of knowledge on how best to attack a Vital Point, even if it is not actually struck.

Winning coaches demand a quest for excellence rather than short-term successes. But excellence requires patience, and many parents and coaches don’t have the patience to achieve excellence.

If your child is going to be a high performer, he needs control over his athletic experience. The sport must be his choice, his performance must be based upon his efforts and motivation, and his development must be a result of his failures and successes. As a result, the outcome of his achievement belongs to him and him alone.

I loved that concept because it sent a message that no matter what we’d accomplished in the outside world, as far as the Rangers were concerned we weren’t shit. And I claimed that metaphor for myself, because it’s always and forever true. No matter what you or I achieve, in sports, business, or life, we can’t be satisfied. Life is too dynamic a game. We’re either getting better or we’re getting worse. Yes, we need to celebrate our victories. There’s power in victory that’s transformative, but after our celebration we should dial it down, dream up new training regimens, new goals, and start at zero the very next day.

The most successful athletes are self-motivated. “The most important thing is to love your sport,” said Peggy Fleming, the former Olympic figure-skating champion. “Never do it to please someone else—it has to be yours. That is all that will justify the hard work needed to achieve success.

One key to achieving success in sports is learning how to focus on the task and not let negative thoughts intrude.

I asked [Nick Maounis]: “What’s the main goal of your career?” He thought about it deeply in silence and then answered: “To be a billionaire. And also to own a sports team.” Sadly, Maounis never achieved either goal because Amaranth famously imploded the following year.

…cognitive challenges were the same as physical challenges: you learn, you train, and you set your own limits

…cognitive challenges were the same as physical challenges: you learn, you train, and you set your own limits.

Regardless of the outcome, each step we take toward following our dreams is a full day of life.

We no longer recognize that real solutions are only achieved through commitment, effort, and a process that starts from within.

The parents of athletes who are both high-performing and happy share a common trait. They have recognized that they cannot change their kids, but that they can change themselves and how they see their kids. They have stopped trying to force their kids to be what they want them to be. Instead they have guided their kids to follow their own path and become what they are capable of becoming. They have opened the door to high achievement and created a positive sports environment.

We all can become magicians of sorts. But to experience this higher reality I’m speaking of—to really find it—you’ll need to leave the world a lot. Play in common society and succeed in the game it sells you but disconnect from it often, so you’re never really owned by it. Because the sport the majority is playing is only an illusion—sort of a waking dream—that too many good people are donating the best mornings of their finest days to as they put money over meaning, profits over people, popularity over integrity, being busy over family and achievement over loving the basic miracles of the now.

Family meals are also critical. Research consistently demonstrates that the family meal is a better indicator of academic achievement than participation in sports or the arts.

Achieve complete mastery of his mind by pushing back the limits of his capacity to suffer until those limits disappeared.

Frankl focused his psychologist’s eye on ultrarealists he encountered in these awful places, writing that “the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement,” which proved that “any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually.

The end of history is a metaphor for the disablement of the dominant reality principle of the Iron Age following non-heroic measures against the five needs. These include the industrial-political switch from scarcity to oversupply; the division of labour between the topic achievers and the moderately working in business and sport; the general deregulation of sexuality; the transition to a mass culture without masters and a politics of co-operation without enemies; and attempts toward a post-heroic thanatology.

In sport, coaching is there in times of joy and crisis. When things get tough, the coach doesn’t hide away. When the rain comes they get wet too. They remind the athlete of their training, their routines and, critically, link their discipline in the most emotionally charged moments to their desired future success.

Play in common society and succeed in the game it sells you but disconnect from it often, so you’re never really owned by it. Because the sport the majority is playing is only an illusion—sort of a waking dream—that too many good people are donating the best mornings of their finest days to as they put money over meaning, profits over people, popularity over integrity, being busy over family and achievement over loving the basic miracles of the now.

Everything that seems impossible is possible. We’re all able to go twenty times beyond any boundaries we ever imagined. There are no limits to what we can achieve.

You might think that it would be easier for a player to go it alone. That, after all, is part of the Ben Hogan legend, and Hogan was one of the all-time greats. The legend has it that he worked by himself to perfect his swing, putting in countless hours of lonely practice to achieve near-perfection.

Civilization was achieved for gay couples in the United States when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in 2015. Overcivilization, however, is the LGBTQ community’s current quest for transgender rights, or, more accurately described, the demand that biological men who self-identify as women be granted legal permission to use ladies’ restrooms and dominate women’s sports competitions.

During the first part of this stage, the encouragement and support of parents and teachers was crucial to the child’s progress, but eventually the students began to experience some of the rewards of their hard work and became increasingly self-motivated. A piano student performed for others and appreciated the applause. A swimmer basked in the approval and respect of peers. These students became more vested in the process, and their self-image started to include those abilities that were setting them apart from their peers. In the case of team sports, like swimming, the students often relished being part of a group of like-minded people. But whatever the reasons, the motivation started to shift from external to internal in origin.

But life is a lot more balanced and varied now. My competitive nature has softened, and my drive and determination are channelled into different pursuits. Projects like these books, my career with Parkrun, and being with friends and family—when we’re allowed—are now more important than setting sporting goals. I’ll always be active, but I no longer feel the need to go out on a five-hour bike ride. My desire to prove something through sport has lessened, but my desire to achieve things beyond sport has increased.

The girl who questioned me could find examples of women from small cities like Rutland who have risen from modest circumstances to fulfill their dreams. Or she could persuade herself that she’d be the pioneer, that she’d be the first Rutland kid to achieve some wonderful dream and that she’d be a role model for others.

For the ultrarealist, goals exist not to be achieved but to stimulate striving and to drive progress toward the fulfillment of potential. This is why champions set goals that are hard to achieve, and why they welcome opportunities to raise their game.

All those people who have achieved greatness in their life have one thing in common as a personality trait within them that is "Discipline". They follow a routine and they are constantly striving towards excellence. If you have a million-dollar dream but lacks discipline, your dream will be your dream only it will not become a reality. Great people have mastered discipline in their life and without discipline, they are just people without greatness.

Nothing has been handed to myself, or the team, on a platter. The team and I had to work unbelievably hard for every bit of success we have achieved.

It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, those who achieve greatness are those who decide to achieve greatness. They encounter setbacks just like everyone else. They run into “unlucky” circumstances. They face tragedies just like we all do. The only difference between the achievers and everyone else is how they respond to those obstacles.  They don’t make excuses or go looking for someone or something to blame. Instead, they accept full responsibility for how they respond. How you respond to the events you encounter determines your outcome. This is the secret to a successful life.

Maximize your training load within your realistic amount of training time in a way that achieves a positive life/sport balance in any given week.

Try to experience as far as possible, the truth in the old maxim, "Age quod agis"; this is "Attend to what you are doing," or "Do what you're doing." But you must do all this as if in sport, with no anxiety, fear or worry.

You don’t get to the highest levels of the sport without having the basics in order.

The left hand touches the target at the moment when the weight of the body has been transferred to the left leg, preventing further movement of the body forward. This position of the body in the final phase of the blow, while at the same time resting on the front of the foot, makes it possible to simultaneously maintain the balance in the event of a miss. When dealing with single, fast, attacking blows from a distance, it is possible for accidents when the fist reaches the target earlier than the leg reaching will find a point of support. The right leg, after pushing away, at the very moment of the blow, pulls slightly to the left, at a distance indispensable for maintaining balance. Thanks to this, a stable balance is achieved, both at the time of striking and after the blow. The right hand, at the moment of dealing a blow, protects the chin with the open hand and the elbow of the torso down. Regardless, you should cover the chin with the left shoulder. Assurance (defense) from counter-blows should in some way be organic to be combined with an attacker's attack and ensure the safety of the blow to the assailant.

You can read Moneyball as a testament to the analytical awakening in American sports, but you can also read it as a celebration of the irreversible integration of finance ideals and sports strategies. You can read it as a manual for integrating the ideological insights of finance capitalism into a front office, but you can also read it as evidence that our culture’s outrageous mania for computation, quantification, and efficiency is now striding alongside our favorite athletes on the playing surfaces of Fenway Park and Madison Square Garden. Make no mistake, this mania has always been there, but in post-Moneyball America, computation, quantification, and efficiency have achieved a superstar status like we’ve never seen before.

The only limits are the ones we set for ourselves

Given the ubiquity of the Judge’s conditional love game, I have embarked on a very different kind of game with my son to prevent a strong version of his Judge from taking hold. I start tickling him and tell him that I will only stop if he keeps giving me the right answers, which he has learned to give over the years. Here’s how the game goes, as I tickle him and stop only to hear his answers through his laughter: Me: Kian, do you know why I love you so much? Kian: No, Daddy, I don’t know. Me: Is it because you are so handsome? (Trust me, he is very handsome!) Kian: No, Daddy, it isn’t because I’m handsome. Me: Is it because you are so smart? Kian: No, Daddy, it isn’t because I am smart. Me: Is it because you do so well on your homework and get good grades? Kian: No, Daddy, it isn’t … I keep going down the list that includes his kindness and generosity, his talent in sports, his sensitivity and thoughtfulness, and so on. At some point, I feign great frustration: Me: So why is it, Kian? Why do I love you so much? By now Kian has learned to say (and he says it with firmness and certainty): “Daddy, it’s because I am me.” Occasionally I ask Kian to remind me what this answer means. He says it means that my love for him is not conditional on anything he does. It is for his essence, for the being looking back at me when I first held him the day he was born. He knows that in his essence he is worthy of love, always. He is to never worry that he might lose it, regardless of his successes or failures and the ups and downs of life.

Influential educational school in Abu Dhabi: Reach British School Selecting schools that speak about the type of education you want to impart to your kid is an important decision. Like all other difficult decisions that parenthood brings with it, this one too cannot be decided based on one impulsive thought. School is an important part of any child's growth. They learn, they giggle, and grow into beautiful individuals. Thus, schools build them into responsible beings. However, finding the right school can be research-heavy and hectic. International education in the United Arab Emirates is not cheap, and this adds to an extra load of pressure on deciding parents. Yet, Abu Dhabi is known to host an excellent range of international schools that are somewhat budget-friendly. The British International School is one such example, they surely secure a place in the list of best schools in Abu Dhabi. Why choose Reach British School? Reading through different curriculums, and googling into millions of school websites is a part of this decision-making. You look for that spark, one that you look for in any relationship. Yes, choosing a school is the beginning of a life-long relationship, an important part of your child’s life. This article will push you towards decision making, as it lists the points on why you should choose Reach British School. The following reasons will convince you that it fits into the best schools in Abu Dhabi. English proficiency The staff is filled with native English-speaking teachers. Thus, they bring with them, years of experience in the language field and absolute English proficiency. Being native English speakers, they can showcase experience in the UK or other international schools. Excellent facilities Schooling is a part of a child's overall growth, and there is more to it than just academics. Being one of the best schools in Abu Dhabi, they support an exciting curriculum. It includes sports, arts, academic subjects, and a bunch of other extra-curricular activities. High Academic standards and behavioral expectations A child grows into a successful human being, who is also a responsible citizen. Thus, the school sets a strong focus on the academic depth and the behavioral patterns of the child. They ensure that your child reaches their fullest potential in a safe and secure environment. Student progress tracking You will get a chance to be deeply involved in your child's progress. The school will provide regular reports on your child's growth that will give you a fair idea about their needs, likes, and dislikes. Thus, you can take an active part in their academic progress, social and emotional well-being. Secondary scholarships The school funds a scholarship program to motivate students to achieve their dreams. The program attracts bright minds and pushes them to reach their potential in the fields they are passionate about. Amazing learning Not just the staff, but also the environment of the school will enable your child to go through an amazing learning experience. Your child will be motivated and encouraged to perform better as that is the base for amazing learning. Endnotes Reach British School wants to let your child shine, in the truest sense possible. Keeping the tag of being one of the best schools in Abu Dhabi, is difficult. Thus, they aspire to be better every day and sculpt new souls into responsible adults, while protecting their innocence and childhood.

…American men actually engage most in hunting and fishing. The desire of men in wealthy societies to re-create the food-gathering conditions of very primitive people appears to be an appropriate comment on the power of the hunting drives discussed earlier. Not only is hunting expensive in many places – think of the European on safari in Africa – but it is also time-consuming, potentially dangerous, and frequently involves considerable personal discomfort. Men do it because it is ‘fun’. So they say, and so one must conclude from their persistent rendition of the old pattern. What is relevant from our point of view is that hunting, and frequently fishing, are group activities. A man will choose his co-hunters very carefully. Not only does the relative intimacy of the hunt demand some congeniality, but there is also danger in hunting with inept or irresponsible persons. It is a serious matter, and even class barriers which normally operate quite rigidly may be happily breached for the period of the hunt. Some research on hunters in British Columbia suggests the near-piety which accompanies the hunt; hunting is a singular and important activity. One particular group of males takes along bottles of costly Crown Royal whisky for the hunt; they drink only superior whisky on this poignant re-creation of an ancient manly skill. But when their wives join them for New Year's celebrations, they drink an ordinary whisky: the purely formal and social occasion does not, it seems, merit the symbolic tribute of outstanding whisky. Gambling is another behaviour which, like hunting and sport, provides an opportunity in countless cultures for the weaving of and participation in the web of male affiliation. Not the gambling of the London casino, where glamorous women serve drinks, or the complex hope, greed, fate-tempting ritual, and action of the shiny American palaces in Nevada, and not the hidden gambling run by racketeers. Rather, the card games in homes or small clubs, where men gather to play for manageable stakes on a friendly basis; perhaps – like Jiggs and his Maggie – to avoid their women, perhaps to seek some money, perhaps to buy the pleasant passage of time. But also to be with their friends and talk, and define, by the game, the confines of their intimate male society. Obviously females play too, both on their own and in mixed company. But there are differences which warrant investigation, in the same way that the drinking of men in groups appears to differ from heterosexual or all-female drinking; the separation of all-male bars and mixed ones is still maintained in many places despite the powerful cultural pressures against such flagrant sexual apartheid. Even in the Bowery, where disaffiliated outcast males live in ways only now becoming understood, it has been noted that, ‘There are strong indications that the heavy drinkers are more integrated and more sociable than the light. The analytical problem lies in determining whether socialization causes drinking or drinking results in sociability when there is no disapproval.’ In the gentleman's club in London, the informally segregated working man's pub in Yorkshire, the all-male taverns of Montreal, the palm-wine huts of west Africa, perhaps can be observed the enactment of a way of establishing maleness and maintaining bonds which is given an excuse and possibly facilitated by alcohol. Certainly, for what they are worth in revealing the nature of popular conception of the social role of drinking, advertisements stress the manly appeal of alcohol – particularly whisky – though it is also clear that there are ongoing changes in the socio-sexual implications of drinking. But perhaps it is hasty to regard the process of change as a process of female emancipation which will culminate in similarity of behaviour, status, and ideals of males and females. The changes are still too recent to warrant this. Also, they have been achieved under sufficiently self-conscious pressure...

The scheme of elements of the boxers moving around the ring clearly illustrates the boxer's desire to maintain an indispensable space between the feet after each step, in order to maintain stability. In this way, the boxer can freely take the next step in any direction. By practicing moving around the ring during a free fight, the boxer achieves a high degree of technical perfection of leg movements. When moving around the ring during a fight, the muscles of the body of the boxer should not be excessively stretched. The increased speed of the boxing step, combined with the attacker's blow or defense action, is achieved by quickly moving the body towards the step being taken. Each step is performed without first transferring body weight to the leg, which the boxer bounces at the given movement, directly from the boxing position. The weight of the body is directly relevant to the progressive movement

Victory in combat is achieved primarily thanks to the activity and fast pace of battle; and yet misses interfere with the continuity of the boxer's actions. The most important condition for a properly planned fight in terms of tactics - is the ability to act unexpectedly. The fight, in which the lack of combat cunning, can not bring success, because the opponent, knowing the combat capabilities and means of the boxer, easily opposes their actions.

In the fight against an opponent operating quickly and using the most unexpected counterattacks in a variety of ways, there is only one type of belaying - cover the chin without interruption. The most commonly used insurance method is the following: the palm of the right hand, ready to accept a possible opponent's blow, should be kept by the chin. When learning blows, defending the chin with the hand of a free hand is considered a valid condition. In the initial period of training it is necessary to observe that young boxers attacking are protected from unexpected opponents' countermeasures. It is important, however, to protect yourself against loss of balance in the case of misses, which use a lot of energy and put the boxer in a difficult positional situation against the opponent. Therefore, the boxer, even quickly and energetically carrying out his attacks, should skillfully calculate the strength of his blows to always keep his balance. Victory in combat is achieved primarily thanks to the activity and fast pace of battle; and yet misses interfere with the continuity of the boxer's actions. The most important condition for a properly planned fight in terms of tactics - is the ability to act unexpectedly. The fight, in which the lack of combat cunning, can not bring success, because the opponent, knowing the combat capabilities and means of the boxer, easily opposes their actions. The ability to keep your opponent in the unconscious as well as the ability to attack unexpectedly gives a great advantage in combat. If a boxer skilfully conceals his intentions, the opponent can not guess his individual actions, or understand the general plan of the fight, nor did he know anything about his combat situation correctly.

What gets measured, gets managed.” If we measure the wrong things, we will not achieve our goals.

It is very important to teach the boxer how to maintain the direction of the boxing position in relation to the constantly changing opponent's place. This is achieved by returns. Returns are made on the front of the foot, bearing the weight of the body. Returns can be made on any leg. If, for example, you want to lean on the right leg around which the turn is made, the left leg is set aside towards the opponent. In this way, the combat direction of the position relative to the opponent is obtained (Figure 3). A quick turn of the torso around the leg, on which the weight of the body rests, facilitates the movement of the other leg, moved forward or backward.

People wrongly dismiss black achievement in these areas for reasons that can be ascribed only to racism—that our compelling excellence follows from a mere genetic advantage. The fact is that we are good at sports and music because we subject ourselves to unforgiving standards of excellence and then work ferociously to meet those standards. Ruthlessly, we allow absolutely no excuses.

Many ancient teachings tell us that we have the capacity to gain extraordinary powers through grit or grace. Techniques used to achieve these supernormal abilities, known as siddhis in the yoga tradition (from the Sanskrit, meaning “perfection”2, 5), include meditation, ecstatic dancing, drumming, praying, chanting, sexual practices, fasting, or ingesting psychedelic plants and mushrooms. In modern times, techniques also include participation in extreme sports, floating in isolation tanks, use of transcranial magnetic or electrical stimulation, listening to binaural-beat audio tones, and neurofeedback. Most of these techniques are ways of transcending the mundane. Those who yearn to escape from suffering or boredom may dive into a cornucopia of sedatives and narcotics. Others, drawn to the promise of a more meaningful reality, or a healthier mind and body, are attracted to yoga, meditation, or other mind-expanding or mind-body integrating techniques.

The unprecedented 3rd Heavyweight Championship Title won by Muhammad Ali, his final victory, will stand as one of the greatest human achievements in all of sporting history".

The de-spiritualization of asceticisms is probably the event in the current intellectual history of mankind that is the most comprehensive and, because of its large scale, the hardest to perceive, yet at once the most palpable and atmospherically powerful. Its counterpart is the informalization of spirituality - accompanied by its commercialization in the corresponding subcultures. The threshold values for these two tendencies provide the intellectual landmarks for the twentieth century: the first tendency is represented by sport, which has become a metaphor for achievement as such, and the second by popular music, that devotio postmoderna which covers the lives of contemporary individuals with unpredictable flashes of inner emergency.

It was very quiet at the hotel, as if there had been a death in the family. When you have quit the Tour, nobody really knows what to say or do. (...) Everything I'd previously achieved meant nothing; all I was now was a pro rider who couldn't finish the Tour de France.

NBA is not exactly the friendliest environment for teaching selflessness. Even though the game itself is a five-person sport, the culture surrounding it celebrates egoistic behavior and stresses individual achievement over team bonding.

Passion is pure. Passion is what drives people to achieve extraordinary things. No athlete ever won a gold medal without the passion to play their sport. They love it. They love it so much, they’ll adjust everything else in their life—their diet, their social activities, their education—everything in order to pursue their dream.

If stimulation is used when it will not help you achieve something of value, it is an uncomplementary stress. I consider coffee drinking an uncomplementary stress. I view it as a form of credit, similar to shopping with a credit card. You get energy now that you don’t actually have, but you pay for it later—when the “bill,” or fatigue, hits.

Persistence is important in every endeavor. Whether it’s finishing your homework, completing school, working late to finish a project, or “finishing the drill” in sports, winners persist to the point of sacrifice in order to achieve their goals.

I’m not just a competitor. I’m also committed to helping others build more strength and grit to achieve their goals in both sports and life

Anyone who practises sport knows this: if you want to achieve your objectives, you have to be prepared for a daily dose of pain or discomfort. At first, it's unpleasant and demotivating, but in time you come to realise that it's part of the process of feeling good, and the moment arrives when, if you don't feel pain, you have a sense that the exercises aren't having the desired effect.

Campitelli and Gobet found that 10,000 hours was not far off in terms of the amount of practice required to attain master status, or 2,200 Elo points, and to make it as a pro. The average time to master level in the study was actually about 11,000 hours—11,053 hours to be exact—so more than in Ericsson’s violin study. More informative than the average number of practice hours required to attain master status, however, was the range of hours. One player in the study reached master level in just 3,000 hours of practice, while another player needed 23,000 hours. If one year generally equates to 1,000 hours of deliberate practice, then that’s a difference of two decades of practice to reach the same plane of expertise. “That was the most striking part of our results,” Gobet says. “That basically some people need to practice eight times more to reach the same level as someone else. And some people do that and still have not reached the same level.”* Several players in the study who started early in childhood had logged more than 25,000 hours of chess practice and study and had yet to achieve basic master status. While the average time to master level was 11,000 hours, one man’s 3,000-hours rule was another man’s 25,000-and-counting-hours rule. The renowned 10,000-hours violin study only reports the average number of hours of practice. It does not report the range of hours required for the attainment of expertise, so it is impossible to tell whether any individual in the study actually became an elite violinist in 10,000 hours, or whether that was just an average of disparate individual differences.

Peak performance in most sports occurs in late afternoon and early evening, when body temperature reaches its daily high. Respect for this body rhythm may decrease your likelihood of injuries,

Instead of reworking the doll, Shackelford implemented a market "segmentation strategy," which she thinks helped Barbie achieve record sales. She did this by "segmenting the market," introducing dolls with different themes and then "creating whole worlds around them." Beginning about 1980, Mattel issued separate dolls for each of the major play patterns. There was a "hairplay" doll that came with styling paraphernalia; a "lifestyle" doll that came with sporting equipment; and a "glamour" doll that came with a gaudy dress. The strategy benefited Mattel in two major ways: because the costumes were sold on dolls, Mattel could charge more for them, and the variety encouraged girls to own more than one doll.

Just like the cast of a great movie and the career of great athletes few success stories are a one man show. Build your team and grow.

The consequence of winning is one of the most common desires of persons affiliated with sport. Athletes, coaches, and sport managers act in ways to achieve victory. If they are guided exclusively by their desires to win, moral reasoning most likely will not be a part of the process involved in winning.

If excellence is achieved in the form of execution and performance, winning will frequently follow.

Focus on using your sport to develop more true mental toughness rather than being used by your sport by focusing on results that are outside your control

You will boost your productivity with active exercise.

We will never surrender but go forward to win the game.

Focus on progress. Just keep taking steps in the right direction, and eventually you will get there.” ~Author Unknown

take control of the machinery of achievement, in other words—not just in sports but, as we

At the end of the day, it doesn’t come down to who has the most talent or intelligence. It comes down to who is willing to make the choices that others are not willing to make. Like who is willing to shoot baskets in the dark when everyone else is sleeping? Who is willing to prepare more for an interview? Who is willing to practice their speech ten times more than anyone else? All are choices we make.

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two imposters just the same.

In Chicago and across the country, whites looking to achieve the American dream could rely on a legitimate credit system backed by the government. Blacks were herded into the sights of unscrupulous lenders who took them for money and for sport.

What We Know For NBA 2K18 So Far One of the most valuable series of sport games of nowadays is, without a doubt, NBA 2K. As you can easily see from impressions of last year's edition NBA 2K18, the series has reached a simply brutal level so this 2017/18 edition will have an increased level of demand. NBA 2K18 still finds the first steps but has already received weight news. In recent years, the NBA 2K series has managed to become the most valuable game related to the biggest basketball competition in the world, the NBA. All those who follow the NBA minimally, will be accustomed to watching brutal television productions with high levels of spectacular and show-off. In fact, this can be confirmed today with the final of the current edition of this year. With 2K Games NBA 2K Games transposed in a very well achieved all this spectacular for the digital. However, it is not only this that the game feeds and another strong point of the game is the great diversity of modes that makes available to the player. This is both singleplayer and multiplayer. This year, however, the series will be back and with it comes an increased responsibility: to maintain the high levels of quality, increasing them even more. For now, little is known about NBA 2K18, but here's what we know. Firstly, NBA 2K18 already has a cover, you already have the player that will cover. It is Kyrie Irving, the player of the Cleveland Cavaliers that is to be the cover of the NBA 2K18 Standard Edition of this time. About the choice to fall on the cover of the game, Kyrie revealed that he feel a great honor at being chosen for the cover. Meanwhile, Shaquille O'Neal feels great pleasure as the cover of this year's Legend Edition. The pe-odering reward is huge, too. Then, NBA 2K18 will hit stores on September 19 for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC. We hope that during the E3 of this year 2017 we know a little more about the innovations that are incorporated in the delivery of this year and we can enjoy its gameplay.

I have talked to many international sporting men and women and there is one common denominator that has driven them to excellence,’ Atkinson continues. ‘That is the frustration and hurt they have experienced from someone who has told them they would never achieve or be good at anything.

Joy of the self, as explained in the above verse of the Gita, can be explained by understanding driving force whilst we pursue a hobby. Why is it that, when we pursue a hobby such as singing, painting, a sport, etc., we seem to have unlimited energy that comes from within? Why does self-motivation automatically take the driver’s seat during those moments of working on a hobby? Why is it that even a failure while working on a hobby does not stop us from pursuing it further? Why are we stress-free whilst engaged in a hobby? Why doesn’t this happen when it comes to our profession?

It should come as no surprise that Berra, or any athlete who makes it to the highest levels of sports, was unusually determined. But the brand of perseverance Berra, Shelford, Puyol, and the other Tier One captains showed is peculiar, even among the elite. The main point of difference is that their natural ability seemed to bear no relation to the size of their accomplishments. Something enabled them to set aside their limitations and tune out the skepticism from their critics. But what was it? What allows some people to press on until they achieve mastery? —

The author of this groundbreaking book was Bill Starr; and years before he penned The Strongest Shall Survive, Starr was your quintessential 7-stone weakling.  And Starr would watch in wonder as this training system took a bodybuilding wrecking ball to world records in all sports, knocking them over like skittles: In the world of swimming, Indiana University students began smashing national and world records almost at will. In track and field, Jim Beatty broke the world record in the indoor mile. In competitive weightlifting, Bill March won everything in sight. At the 1963 Philadelphia Open, almost predictably, a world record followed. Yet as remarkable as these results undoubtedly sound, they become almost unbelievable when I tell you something that will likely halt you in your tracks...  It’s this: These results were achieved with lifts that took just 6 seconds. No. That is not a misprint.  Each of these lifts took a mere 6 seconds to build Superhuman strength.  And the really exciting part?  These lifts are guaranteed to work for you too. Train Like Bruce Lee During the course of Ninja Strength Secrets, you’ll learn how to train

Mental abilities, financial status, sporting achievements and moral qualities do not depend on a person’s nationality

Great athletes practice, train, study, and develop. So do great learners. As students empowering ourselves with knowledge, what can we learn from Olympic-caliber athletes about success, and how to achieve it? 1. Preparation = Success! “If you fail to prepare, you're prepared to fail.” —Mark Spitz, Gold Medalist, Swimming 2. Learning is lifelong “Never put an age limit on your dreams.” —Dara Torres, Gold Medalist, Swimming 3. Failure is opportunity "One shouldn't be afraid to lose” —Oksana Baiul, Gold Medalist, Figure Skating 4. The only person who can stop you is yourself “This ability to conquer oneself is no doubt the most precious of all things sports bestows.” —Olga Korbut, Gold Medalist, Gymnastics 5. Learning is fun! “If you're not having fun, then what the hell are you doing?” —Allison Jones, six-time Paralympian 6. You have to be in it to win it “Failure I can live with. Not trying is what I can't handle.” —Sanya Richards-Ross, Gold Medalist, Track & Field There are always new skills to learn, new challenges to overcome, new ways to succeed. The only guarantee of failure is if you don’t get started in the first place.

Nervously I tried to check my reflection in the opaque window of the front door. I had an idea that equerries to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales were several inches taller than me in their Gucci loafers and carried a reassuring air of Labradors and sports cars. They certainly did not lose their cuff links. Summoning up all my stiffening thoughts, I pressed the bell. I could not hear if it had rung, so after several minutes I pressed it again, just as the door opened to reveal the Prince of Wales’s butler. He was about my height and wore a dark blue jacket with the Prince of Wales’s monogram on the lapels. He looked politely unimpressed. “Oh yes,” he said. “Come in.” Later, I came to know Harold Brown well and grew to admire his professionalism. At home and abroad, he quietly bore the hundreds of little stresses that came with dealing with his royal employers at their less attractive moments. His gift as a mimic had me crying tears of laughter into my whiskey on many foreign tours. That afternoon, however, he was every inch the guardian of his master’s privacy and impassively allowed me to follow him to the Equerries’ Room where I was to await the royal summons. Like so much of the apartment, although undeniably comfortable and well appointed, the Equerries’ Room was dark. Clever effects had been achieved with concealed lighting, pastel colorings, and flowers, but the overriding impression was one of pervasive gloom. Two people were already there—the Princess’s lady-in-waiting, Anne Beckwith-Smith, and her current equerry, Richard Aylard. They were there to examine me as a possible recruit to their exclusive way of life. During the last few days they had been examining five others as well, of course, so they were understandably distant, if polite. I was polite too—this was surely part of the selection process—and determined, like the butler, to look unimpressed. But I did need to go to the loo. Badly. Groping in the semigloom of the cloakroom, I became the latest visitor to fumble for the trick light switch on a fiendish trompe l’oeil before finding the real switch on the wall behind me.

In 1988, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals explicitly rejected the theory Trump had sold to the other owners—that a lawsuit was an appropriate way to force the NFL to merge with the USFL. The court, in the formal language of legal opinions, chastised both Trump and the owners who went along with him. Judge Ralph K. Winter Jr. wrote that “what the USFL seeks is essentially a judicial restructuring of major-league professional football to allow it to enter” into a merger with the NFL. Calling the NFL “a highly successful entertainment product,” Judge Winter observed that “new sports leagues must be prepared to make the investment of time, effort and money that develops interest and fan loyalty and results in an attractive product for the media. The jury in the present case obviously found that patient development of a loyal following among fans and an adherence to an original plan that offered long-run gains were lacking … The jury found that the failure of the USFL was not the result of the NFL’s television contracts but of its own decision to seek entry into the NFL on the cheap.” The appeals court decision, which the United States Supreme Court let stand, was a stinging rebuke of Trump’s effort to use litigation to obtain what he was unwilling to achieve by patiently devoting time, money, and effort in the market. Years

to make a place for yourself, you have to be tough, take risks, and be willing to piss some people off. You need to chart your own path as an individual. Don’t be afraid of breaking away from the pack, even if you might end up looking like an idiot or losing what you’ve worked to achieve. Sadly, that’s exactly the opposite of what we teach people, including our children, today. Now we tell them “everybody wins!” In youth sports these days, they give out trophies to everybody. In the real world, though, only the winners get the trophies.

Most perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule-following, people-pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect.

There are probably as many different definitions of leadership as there are roles for leaders. There are civic leaders, political, religious and academic leaders. There are “captains” of industry and “skippers” of sports teams. There are leaders by achievement, assignment or necessity. Some leaders are official, others just emerge. Some lead by insignia, some by action, some by both. Some lead in public and some, like the head of a family, lead in private. There are at least ten different theories of leadership and ten times ten books on how to lead. Despite this complexity of characterizing leadership, or more precisely effective leadership, there is one indisputable reality, a requirement common to all those who would effect successful action. They have the ability to handle crisis because they possess the necessary skills to remain calm and functional when others are rendered confused or overwhelmed by difficult circumstances.

Oh well,” Dad said. “I also always knew that I would let you down, but I hoped that if I loved you enough and you were amazing enough, you would forgive me. And I loved you more than I knew I could, and you, well, you turned out all right, considering.” Kami laughed and punched him in the chest. “You know I’m the greatest achievement of your life.” “Nope,” said Jon. “That would be this wicked cool home page I made for this sports star once. Later I saw it painted on a van.

I loved the counter filled with lox, whitefish, sturgeon. Saperstein looked like a sturgeon, long, white, sharp-toothed. I marveled at the way he wielded his razor-sharp knife. Cutting a bit of translucent smoked sturgeon, you expected it to shred if you breathed on it. Manya achieved status as his sturgeon expert. She had grown up with sturgeon, a staple along the Black Sea, and she pronounced a sample too salty, too mealy from being packed in ice, too strong in flavor, or absolutely perfect. Saperstein, a purist, inevitably felt sad that his customers did not truly appreciate his top-of-the-line products. He communed with Bubby over a slice of sturgeon or belly lox as if having a religious moment. Even when bad weather kept customers away from our restaurant and we were low in cash, Bubby invested in a few slices of smoked sturgeon, not for her customers, but for our family. She could ignore lox, smoked whitefish, pickles or fresh herring, but she couldn't do without a weekly treat of sturgeon. To prove that he was a sporting man who approved of her taste, Saperstein created a cone from white paper and dropped in some caviar, which he kept in a tin secreted in a hole under the counter- God forbid during a robbery, the thieves would never discover his hiding place.

Everything going into performance can be quantified, measured, made visible. The mystique of innate inability has been penetrated and the truth revealed: high performance for women is eminently achievable. The more unbiased the instruments used to understand and assess performance, the clearer it became. Studies show gender to be be barely relevant as a predictor, or limiter of athletic performance. What really counts are acquired skills, trained muscles and movement efficiency that comes from refined technique.

Often, when the goal is daunting and the journey arduous, there is a sense of having achieved the goal, even if it’s really only a milestone. You see that with students who work so hard to make it to the IITs and IIMs and experience burnout once they get there. Sadly, they mistake a milestone for a goal and they feel that their destination has already arrived. It is true of young Indian cricketers who sometimes experience such joy and relief at being selected that they are not ready for what follows. Even companies are known to become complacent once they become market leaders. It’s easier for the number two and three to remain motivated since there is still an unfulfilled feeling and a higher sense of purpose. That is why managing success is always more difficult than achieving it and staying number one is more difficult than becoming number one.

This is because perfection just doesn’t exist but you put yourself under all this pressure to try and achieve it. Of even more importance, so called perfection is often never required in your daily life. Perfectionism for me was one of the biggest triggers of my procrastination that I had to overcome. I, like I’m sure you do, always want to deliver to the best of my ability. Whether it be in business or at home. Sometimes even when it came to sport. Because of this I would find myself never being happy with what I was producing and always deferring it to later or often scrapping what I had all together because I didn’t think it was good enough.

Boys, almost all boys, too fat or awkward or arrogant for sports, and not actually bright enough to achieve top marks, find their ways to the darkest corners and dustiest shelves, and there Lovecraft is waiting.

And you see it happening more, it’s crazy to watch. Whether in politics, or corporate, or even sports lately… women being expected to answer and even apologize for over achievement or wanting equal pay. But what message are we sending? Win, but not too much. Celebrate, but not too much. Be empowered, but not too much. Own your body, but not too much. Show emotion, but not too much. Question, but not too much. Report injustice, but not too much. Love yourself, but not too much. If we want to flourish as a society, then we need to recognize this about ourselves and change it. Let’s break free from the psychological prison of inequality. And of course some people will fight to keep things as they’ve always been, but we can expect that. The warden is never happy when the prison closes. Regardless of the resistance, let’s stand up for this change anyway. Our daughters, our sisters, our moms, our neighbors, all the women in our society deserve better than that, and we are better than that. Outdated ideas inevitably lead to outdated behaviors, it’s time for an update.

Formerly, it is pointed out, heroism was linked to the honor of accomplishment. Honor was accorded to the person with some genuine achievement, whether in character, virtue, wisdom, the arts, sport, or warfare. Today, however, the media offer a shortcut to fame—instantly fabricated famousness with no need for the sweat, cost, and dedication of true greatness. The result is not the hero but the celebrity, the person famously described as “well-known for being well-known.” A big name rather than a big person, the celebrity is someone for whom character is nothing, coverage is all.