Adapt To Win Quotes

#Cats are marvelous creatures - they either adapt to circumstances, or decide to make circumstances adapt to them. Either way - they win.

All failure is failure to adapt, all success is successful adaptation.

Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.

Elephant, beyond the fact that their size and conformation are aesthetically more suited to the treading of this earth than our angular informity, have an average intelligence comparable to our own. Of course they are less agile and physically less adaptable than ourselves -- nature having developed their bodies in one direction and their brains in another, while human beings, on the other hand, drew from Mr. Darwin's lottery of evolution both the winning ticket and the stub to match it. This, I suppose, is why we are so wonderful and can make movies and electric razors and wireless sets -- and guns with which to shoot the elephant, the hare, clay pigeons, and each other.

The real struggle is in your own mind. You must know you are going to win before you start the fight. You have to see it, smell it, and believe it utterly. It is a form of confidence, but you must guard against overconfidence. You have to be flexible—able to adapt in an instant and never allow yourself to give up. Without this, nothing else is possible.

Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win.

So what does it take to win? Yes, you have to be determined. Yes, you have to be driven. Yes, you must have the unconquerable will to win. But to really win, to truly win at all cost, requires more flexibility, more creativity, more adaptability, more compromise, and more humility than most people ever realize. That is what it takes to win.

There are no perfect leaders.

The Beast may win a battle, the Mastermind may win a war, but only those able to adapt to change will stand the test of time. - Delanawa, Tears of Destiny (Elements of Eaa #1)

For no temptation (no trial regarded as enticing to sin), [no matter how it comes or where it leads] has overtaken you and laid hold on you that is not common to man [that is, no temptation or trial has come to you that is beyond human resistance and that is not adjusted and adapted and belonging to human experience, and such as man can bear]. But God is faithful [to His Word and to His compassionate nature], and He [can be trusted] not to let you be tempted and tried and assayed beyond your ability and strength of resistance and power to endure, but with the temptation He will [always] also provide the way out (the

The greatest gift that humans have is the ability to think. Of all the creatures in the world, humans are physically the most ill-equipped. A human cannot fly like a bird, outrun a leopard, swim like an alligator, nor climb trees like a monkey. A human doesn’t have the eyes of an eagle, nor the claws and teeth of a wild cat. Physically, humans are helpless and defenseless; a tiny insect can kill them. But nature is reasonable and kind. Nature’s greatest gift to humankind is the ability to think. Humans can create their own environment, whereas animals have to adapt to their environment.

In any situation in life, being adaptable is the only way to grow and succeed. You may have skills that you’ve perfected, a certain worldview that worked for you at a particular stage – but the reality is that circumstances change, and you can’t be prepared for everything. Lowering your resistance to change, removing bias and being willing to adapt will help you tackle whatever comes your way. Once you’ve assessed the resources at your disposal and weighed what is feasible against what is risky you will see the path.

In 1960, Joy wrote of her experiences raising Elsa in the bestselling book Born Free which was adapted into an Academy award-winning film. In 1980 Joy was tragically murdered on her reserve, but her conservation work continues through the Elsemere Trust.

To survive, life has to win every day. Death has to win just once. A small error or miscalculation can wipe out all the successes. The negativity bias is adaptive, the term biologists use for a trait that improves the odds of survival for an individual or a group.

sharing information would help build relationships and the two together would kindle a new, coherent, adaptive entity that could win the fight.

winning = adaptation and one step forward to take the prize

It is not the stongest person who wins in life, but it is the most nimble, flexible, and adaptive person who wins in life.

You know the adage “People resist change.” It is not really true. People are not stupid. People love change when they know it is a good thing. No one gives back a winning lottery ticket. What people resist is not change per se, but loss. When change involves real or potential loss, people hold on to what they have and resist the change.

I saw that he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons; because her rank and connexions suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point – this was where the nerve was touched and teased – this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him.

The Greek myth of Narcissus is directly concerned with a fact of human experi­ence, as the word Narcissus indicates. It is from the Greek word narcosis, or numb­ness. The youth Narcissus mistook his own reflection in the water for another person. This extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image. The nymph Echo tried to win his love with fragments of his own speech, but in vain. He was numb. He had adapted to his extension of himself and had become a closed system. Now the point of this myth is the fact that men at once become fascinated by any extension of themselves in any ma­terial other than themselves. There have been cynics who insisted that men fall deep­est in love with women who give them back their own image. Be that as it may, the wisdom of the Narcissus myth does not convey any idea that Narcissus fell in love with anything he regarded as himself. Obviously he would have had very different feelings about the image had he known it was an extension or repetition of himself. It is, perhaps, indicative of the bias of our intensely technological and, therefore, narcotic culture that we have long interpreted the Narcissus story to mean that he fell in love with himself, that he imagined the reflection to be Narcissus!

You were supposed to be like me," Kevin said. "You were a gift, another player for the master to train. You had two days to win him over: an initial scrimmage with us to show off your potential and a second scrimmage to prove you could adapt to and implement his instructions and criticisms. If afterward he decided you weren't worth his time you would be executed by your own father." Neil swallowed hard. "How did I do?" "Your mother wouldn't risk failure," Kevin said. "You never made it to the second practice. She disappeared with you overnight.

The book I selected for him was Corelli’s Mandolin, a novel set on a small Greek island occupied by the Italian army during World War II. During the course of the story, the islanders have to accept the fact that they no longer control their own destiny and must come together and adapt to the new reality. In the end, they win by losing.

We have been winning running barefoot, imagine what would happen if we had spikes, a nutritionist and a coach we would break records.

The winning strategy is the one that successfully adapts to the changing circumstances of time, place, and person.

There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though much to create despair. Much, too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous...Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine; she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, any opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her. Too often she betrayed this...Other eyes besides mine watched these manifestations of character--watched them closely, keenly shrewdly. Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity--this guardedness of his--this perfect, clear conciousness of his fair one's defects--this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that ever-toturing pain arose. I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and connecions suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point--this was where the nerve was touched and teased--this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him. If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and have died to them.

When we combine the adaptation principle with the discovery that people’s average level of happiness is highly heritable,11 we come to a startling possibility: In the long run, it doesn’t much matter what happens to you. Good fortune or bad, you will always return to your happiness setpoint—your brain’s default level of happiness—which was determined largely by your genes. In 1759, long before anyone knew about genes, Adam Smith reached the same conclusion: In every permanent situation, where there is no expectation of change, the mind of every man, in a longer or shorter time, returns to its natural and usual state of tranquility. In prosperity, after a certain time, it falls back to that state; in adversity, after a certain time, it rises up to it.12 If this idea is correct, then we are all stuck on what has been called the “hedonic treadmill.”13 On an exercise treadmill you can increase the speed all you want, but you stay in the same place. In life, you can work as hard as you want, and accumulate all the riches, fruit trees, and concubines you want, but you can’t get ahead. Because you can’t change your “natural and usual state of tranquility,” the riches you accumulate will just raise your expectations and leave you no better off than you were before. Yet, not realizing the futility of our efforts, we continue to strive, all the while doing things that help us win at the game of life. Always wanting more than we have, we run and run and run, like hamsters on a wheel.

In order to win life's daily struggles, you must have a winner's mind. One that is in control and proclaims that you will conquer today's challenges and that you will adapt and overcome any obstacle put or placed in your way. But if you continue to nurture a mind set on losing or quitting, you will find yourself in a losing position every time. Today, adjust your mind set and proclaim "I am a winner because winning is within me.

Little Volodya, Usoltsev thought, had a remarkable ability to adapt his personality to the situation and to his superiors, charming them and winning their confidence; it was a defining trait that others would notice.

Just as in combat, priorities can rapidly shift and change. When this happens, communication of that shift to the rest of the team, both up and down the chain of command, is critical. Teams must be careful to avoid target fixation on a single issue. They cannot fail to recognize when the highest priority task shifts to something else. The team must maintain the ability to quickly reprioritize efforts and rapidly adapt to a constantly changing battlefield.

The world has been changing even faster as people, devices and information are increasingly connected to each other. Computational power is growing and quantum computing is quickly being realised. This will revolutionise artificial intelligence with exponentially faster speeds. It will advance encryption. Quantum computers will change everything, even human biology. There is already one technique to edit DNA precisely, called CRISPR. The basis of this genome-editing technology is a bacterial defence system. It can accurately target and edit stretches of genetic code. The best intention of genetic manipulation is that modifying genes would allow scientists to treat genetic causes of disease by correcting gene mutations. There are, however, less noble possibilities for manipulating DNA. How far we can go with genetic engineering will become an increasingly urgent question. We can’t see the possibilities of curing motor neurone diseases—like my ALS—without also glimpsing its dangers. Intelligence is characterised as the ability to adapt to change. Human intelligence is the result of generations of natural selection of those with the ability to adapt to changed circumstances. We must not fear change. We need to make it work to our advantage. We all have a role to play in making sure that we, and the next generation, have not just the opportunity but the determination to engage fully with the study of science at an early level, so that we can go on to fulfil our potential and create a better world for the whole human race. We need to take learning beyond a theoretical discussion of how AI should be and to make sure we plan for how it can be. We all have the potential to push the boundaries of what is accepted, or expected, and to think big. We stand on the threshold of a brave new world. It is an exciting, if precarious, place to be, and we are the pioneers. When we invented fire, we messed up repeatedly, then invented the fire extinguisher. With more powerful technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and strong artificial intelligence, we should instead plan ahead and aim to get things right the first time, because it may be the only chance we will get. Our future is a race between the growing power of our technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let’s make sure that wisdom wins.

Even though he had lived in Monroe County his whole life, Walter McMillian had never heard of Harper Lee or To Kill a Mockingbird. Monroeville, Alabama, celebrated its native daughter Lee shamelessly after her award-winning book became a national bestseller in the 1960s. She returned to Monroe County but secluded herself and was rarely seen in public. Her reclusiveness proved no barrier to the county’s continued efforts to market her literary classic—or to market itself by using the book’s celebrity. Production of the film adaptation brought Gregory Peck to town for the infamous courtroom scenes; his performance won him an Academy Award. Local leaders later turned the old courthouse into a “Mockingbird” museum. A group of locals formed “The Mockingbird Players of Monroeville” to present a stage version of the story. The production was so popular that national and international tours were organized to provide an authentic presentation of the fictional story to audiences everywhere. Sentimentality about Lee’s story grew even as the harder truths of the book took no root.

There was no changing Mark, or Jinx, or Cheyanne, or how the world worked. They were like chess pieces; they moved how the moved. If you wanted to win, you couldn't dwell on how you wished they would move, or how it would be fairer if they moved a different way. You had to adapt.

So as a leader it is critical to balance the strict discipline of standard procedures with the freedom to adapt, adjust, and manoeuvre to do what is best to support the overarching commander's intent and achieve victory. For leaders, in combat, business, and life, be disciplined, but not rigid.

One in five gets diagnosed with PTSD.” I nod. I know that. “One in five, Katy. Do you know how many American soldiers there are?” “Not sure.” “A million point three. I looked it up last night, and that’s just the army.” I sit there, stunned, as she goes on. One in five. One in five. “Right now, two hundred thousand are homeless. Some can’t adapt back into their old lives. Some never even make it home after they get off the bus.” I stew on her words. I know this is to give me a point of reference for my own progress, but my empathy is winning, and my heart is breaking. She looks at me pointedly. “Twenty-two soldiers kill themselves every single day.

Decentralized Command was a necessity. In such situations, the leaders did not call me and ask me what they should do. Instead, they told me what they were going to do. I trusted them to make adjustments and adapt the plan to unforeseen circumstances while staying within the parameters of the guidance I had given them and our standard operating procedures. I trusted them to lead. My ego took no offense to my subordinate leaders on the frontlines calling the shots. In fact, I was proud to follow their lead and support them. With my leaders running their teams and handling the tactical decisions, it made my job much easier by enabling me to focus on the bigger picture.

I watched my brothers, both older and younger, those less worthy, fall one by one. Did I feel anything as I watched them gasp their final breaths? I don’t know anymore. I don’t remember what feelings feel like. They’re not useful to predators. With each death, my father’s gaze burned with scorn. My mother’s lips quivered, and tears shimmered in her eyes, but she didn’t shed a single one. My father was a predator. She didn’t want him to devour her. I learned the lessons my father taught us, and I adapted, and I alone survived. A predator doesn’t ask. He takes. A predator knows no fear. A predator is a hunter, and a hunter needs prey. A predator can only win if someone else loses

Much of what it takes to succeed in school, at work, and in one’s community consists of cultural habits acquired by adaptation to the social environment. Such cultural adaptations are known as “cultural capital.” Segregation leads social groups to form different codes of conduct and communication. Some habits that help individuals in intensely segregated, disadvantaged environments undermine their ability to succeed in integrated, more advantaged environments. At Strive, a job training organization, Gyasi Headen teaches young black and Latino men how to drop their “game face” at work. The “game face” is the angry, menacing demeanor these men adopt to ward off attacks in their crime-ridden, segregated neighborhoods. As one trainee described it, it is the face you wear “at 12 o’clock at night, you’re in the ‘hood and they’re going to try to get you.”102 But the habit may freeze it into place, frightening people from outside the ghetto, who mistake the defensive posture for an aggressive one. It may be so entrenched that black men may be unaware that they are glowering at others. This reduces their chance of getting hired. The “game face” is a form of cultural capital that circulates in segregated underclass communities, helping its members survive. Outside these communities, it burdens its possessors with severe disadvantages. Urban ethnographer Elijah Anderson highlights the cruel dilemma this poses for ghetto residents who aspire to mainstream values and seek responsible positions in mainstream society.103 If they manifest their “decent” values in their neighborhoods, they become targets for merciless harassment by those committed to “street” values, who win esteem from their peers by demonstrating their ability and willingness to insult and physically intimidate others with impunity. To protect themselves against their tormentors, and to gain esteem among their peers, they adopt the game face, wear “gangster” clothing, and engage in the posturing style that signals that they are “bad.” This survival strategy makes them pariahs in the wider community. Police target them for questioning, searches, and arrests.104 Store owners refuse to serve them, or serve them brusquely, while shadowing them to make sure they are not shoplifting. Employers refuse to employ them.105 Or they employ them in inferior, segregated jobs. A restaurant owner may hire blacks as dishwashers, but not as wait staff, where they could earn tips.

Dropping into the world with a half-baked brain has proven a winning strategy for humans. We have outcompeted every species on the planet: covering the landmass, conquering the seas, and bounding onto the moon. We have tripled our life spans. We compose symphonies, erect skyscrapers, and measure with ever-increasing precision the details of our own brains. None of those enterprises were genetically encoded. At least they weren't encoded directly. Instead, our genetics bring about a simple principle: don't build inflexible hardware; build a system that adapts to the world around it. Our DNA is not a fixed schematic for building an organism; rather, it sets up a dynamic system that continually rewrites it's circuitry to reflect the world around it and to optimize its efficacy within it.

Yes: the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance: and it was from this sagacity—this guardedness of his—this perfect clear consciousness of his fair one's defects—this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments toward her, that my ever-torturing pain arose. I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons; because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point—this was where the nerve was touched and teased—this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him. If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and (figuratively) have died to them. If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervor, kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers—jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her—acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would have been my admiration—the more truly tranquil my quiescence. But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram's efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester; to witness their repeated failure—herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched, hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure—to witness this, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint. Because when she failed I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester's breast and fell harmless at his feet might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart—have called love into his stern eye and softness into his sardonic face; or, better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won.

LEADING LESSONS Stretch your legs. By this I mean you need to let go of the structure and rigidity of your life and do something different. There’s a saying: You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. When I signed on to do Footloose, I learned about commitment on a whole new level. The tools I had called upon in the past to help me win dance competitions were not the ones I needed now. I had to find new ways to win at this as well. I had to let go of what had worked before and figure out new solutions. Flexibility is something all leaders need in their tool belt--the ability to roll with things, to shift gears, to approach something in a new and different way. The only thing certain in life is that life isn’t certain. Leaders know this, expect it, and change their hearts and heads to adapt to the situation.

We gotta come up with a plan,” Shaftoe says. “The plan: You live, I die,” Goto Dengo says. “Fuck that,” Shaftoe says. “Hey, don’t you idiots know you’re surrounded?” “We know,” Goto Dengo says wearily. “We know for a long time.” “So give up, you fucking morons! Wave a white flag and you can all go home.” “It is not Nipponese way.” “So come up with another fucking way! Show some fucking adaptability!” “Why are you here?” Goto Dengo asks, changing the subject. “What is your mission?” Shaftoe explains that he’s looking for his kid. Goto Dengo tells him where all of the women and children are: in the Church of St. Agustin, in Intramuros. “Hey,” Shaftoe says, “if we surrender to you, you’ll kill us. Right?” “Yes.” “If you guys surrender to us, we won’t kill you. Promise. Scout’s honor.” “For us, living or dying is not the important thing,” Goto Dengo says. “Hey! Tell me something I didn’t fucking already know!” Shaftoe says. “Even winning battles isn’t important to you. Is it?” Goto Dengo looks the other way, shamefaced. “Haven’t you guys figured out yet that banzai charges DON’T FUCKING WORK?” “All of the people who learned that were killed in banzai charges,” Goto Dengo says. As if on cue, the Nips in the left field dugout begin screaming “Banzai!” and charge, as one, out onto the field.

think of climate change as slow, but it is unnervingly fast. We think of the technological change necessary to avert it as fast-arriving, but unfortunately it is deceptively slow—especially judged by just how soon we need it. This is what Bill McKibben means when he says that winning slowly is the same as losing: “If we don’t act quickly, and on a global scale, then the problem will literally become insoluble,” he writes. “The decisions we make in 2075 won’t matter.” Innovation, in many cases, is the easy part. This is what the novelist William Gibson meant when he said, “The future is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed.” Gadgets like the iPhone, talismanic for technologists, give a false picture of the pace of adaptation. To a wealthy American or Swede or Japanese, the market penetration may seem total, but more than a decade after its introduction, the device is used by less than 10 percent of the world; for all smartphones, even the “cheap” ones, the number is somewhere between a quarter and a third. Define the technology in even more basic terms, as “cell phones” or “the internet,” and you get a timeline to global saturation of at least decades—of which we have two or three, in which to completely eliminate carbon emissions, planetwide. According to the IPCC, we have just twelve years to cut them in half. The longer we wait, the harder it will be. If we had started global decarbonization in 2000, when Al Gore narrowly lost election to the American presidency, we would have had to cut emissions by only about 3 percent per year to stay safely under two degrees of warming. If we start today, when global emissions are still growing, the necessary rate is 10 percent. If we delay another decade, it will require us to cut emissions by 30 percent each year. This is why U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres believes we have only one year to change course and get started. The scale of the technological transformation required dwarfs any achievement that has emerged from Silicon Valley—in fact dwarfs every technological revolution ever engineered in human history, including electricity and telecommunications and even the invention of agriculture ten thousand years ago. It dwarfs them by definition, because it contains all of them—every single one needs to be replaced at the root, since every single one breathes on carbon, like a ventilator.

Richter touched something in his rats that was dam near unbreakable. He may not have noticed them adapting to their life-or-death trial, but they had to have figured out a more efficient technique to preserve energy. With each passing minute, they became more and more resilient until they started to believe that they would survive. Their confidence didn't fade as the hours piled up; it actually grew. They weren't hoping to be saved. They refused to die! The way I see it, belief is what turned ordinary lab rats into marine mammals. p13

I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point--this was where the nerve was touched and teased--this was where the fever was sustained and fed: she could not charm him. If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and have died to them.

Every relation between forms in a painting is to some degree adaptable to the painter's purpose. This is not the case with photography. Composition in the profound, formative sense of the word cannot enter into photography. The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time. One might argue that photography is as close to music as to painting. I have said that a photograph bears witness to a human choice being exercised. The choice is not between photographing X and Y: but between photographing at X moment or at Y moment. The objects recorded in any photograph (from the most effective to the most commonplace) carry approximately the same weight, the same conviction. What varies is the intensity with which we are made aware of the poles of absence and presence. A photograph, while recording what has been seen, always and by its nature refers to what is not seen. It isolates, preserves, and presents a moment taken from a continuum. The only decision (the still photographer) can take is as regards the moment he chooses to isolate. Yet this apparent limitation gives the photograph its unique power. The immediate relation between what is present and what is absent is particular to each photograph: it may be that of ice to sun, of grief to tragedy, of a smile to a pleasure, of a body to love, of a winning race-horse to the race it has run.

After nearly collapsing under the pressures of poverty, loneliness, and an addiction to Dexedrine, Spark sought help for her drug use and began to work seriously on a first novel, The Comforters (1957), partly with the financial and emotional support of the novelist Graham Greene. Though a late fiction writer, Spark began producing novels and stories at a rapid pace. In 1961 she wrote The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, widely considered her masterpiece. The novel follows a teacher at a girls’ school who carefully and manipulatively cultivates the minds and morals of a select handful of promising pupils. In 1969, it was adapted into an Academy Award–winning film starring Maggie Smith and was a Royal Command Performance.

Yes. Exactly. Everyone thinks that it’s simple. New, invasive species comes in and it has an advantage and it outcompetes, right? That’s the story, but there’s another part to that. Always, always, the local environment resists. Yes, yes, maybe badly. Maybe without a clear idea of coping with novelty. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I am saying it’s there. Even when an invasive species takes over, even when it wins, there is a counterbalancing process it has to overcome to do that. And—” The tall man was scowling, and his discomfort made Prax want to speak faster. To say everything he had in his heart before the hammer fell. “And that counterprocess is so deep in the fabric of living systems, it can never be absent. However well the new species is designed, however overwhelming its advantages seem to be, the pushback will always be there. If one native impulse is overcome, there will be another. You understand? Conspecifics are outcompeted? Fine, the bacterial and viral microecologies will push back. Adapt to those, and it’ll be micronutrient levels and salinity and light. And the thing is, the thing is, even when the novel species does win? Even when it takes over every niche there is, that struggle alone changes what it is. Even when you wipe out or co-opt the local environment completely, you’re changed by the pushback. Even when the previous organisms are driven to extinction, they leave markers behind. What they are can never, never be completely erased.

Eating an early dinner and closing the kitchen is a great way to increase the human growth hormone (the fat-burning hormone) while you sleep. Our hormones are what ultimately determine weight loss or gain. They go up and down throughout the day like waves of the ocean. Insulin and human growth hormone are antagonists, and since insulin is the stronger and more powerful hormone, it always wins. So if you eat carbohydrates, insulin rises and therefore shunts the rise of human growth hormone. The largest natural surge of human growth hormone is 30 to 70 minutes after you fall asleep, but if you just ate a bowl of ice cream or toast with peanut butter and honey (which was what I always did as a kid), you stop that precious fat-burning hormone from helping you burn fat. By the time you wake up in the morning, you still have glycogen in your liver. You haven’t burned any fat.

A great lawyer listens first, speaks second, and always thinks strategically." "Effective lawyering is less about winning arguments and more about crafting solutions that stand the test of justice." "The power of a lawyer lies in their ability to turn complexity into clarity." "A true lawyer is an advocate for the truth, not just for their client." "Lawyering is the art of persuasion, guided by reason and grounded in integrity." "A good lawyer knows the law; a great lawyer knows how to apply it wisely and ethically." "The essence of lawyering is not just in knowing the law, but in understanding people." "A lawyer's greatest skill is turning conflict into resolution with words that heal, not hurt." "Lawyering requires the courage to stand firm in principle and the flexibility to adapt in practice." "To be a lawyer is to be a guardian of justice, ensuring fairness prevails over power.

Imagine a situation where you are too small to win a fight and unable to run away. In this case, the brain and the rest of the body prepare for injury. Your heart rate goes down. You release your body’s own painkiller—opioids. You disengage from the external world and psychologically flee into your inner world. Time seems to slow. You may feel like you are in a movie, or floating and watching things happen to you. This is all part of another adaptive capability, called dissociation. For babies and very young children, dissociation is a very common adaptive strategy; fighting or fleeing won’t protect you, but “disappearing” might. You learn to escape into your inner world. You dissociate. And over time, your capacity to retreat to that inner world—safe, free, in control—increases. A key part of that sensitized ability to dissociate is to be a people pleaser. You comply with what others want. You find yourself doing things to avoid conflict, to ensure that the other person in the interaction is pleased, as well as gravitating toward various regulating, but dissociative, activities.

The road to success is rarely a straight line. For me, it’s always been more like a maze. Many times, when I thought I’d finally cracked the code, had it all figured out, and found the straight path to certain victory, I hit a wall or got spun into a turnaround. When that happens, we have two choices. We can stay stuck or regroup, back up, and try again. That’s where evolution begins. Hitting those walls time and again will harden and streamline you. Having to back up and formulate a new plan without any assurances it will ever pan out will tune your SA up and develop your problem-solving skills and your endurance. It will force you to adapt. When that happens hundreds of times over the course of many years, it is physically exhausting and mentally draining, and it becomes damn near impossible to believe in yourself or your future. A lot of people abandon belief at that point. They swirl in the eddies of comfort or regret, perhaps claim their victimhood, and stop looking for their way out of the maze. Others keep believing and find a way out but hope to never slip into a trap like that ever again, and those skills they’d honed and developed whither. They lose their edge.

Louis van Gaal is generally considered the creator of a football system or machine. It might be more accurate to describe him as the originator of a new process for playing the game. His underlying tactical principles were much as those of Michels and Cruyff: relentless attack; pressing and squeezing space to make the pitch small in order to win the ball; spreading play and expanding the field in possession. By the 1990s, though, footballers had become stronger, faster and better organised than ever before. Van Gaal saw the need for a new dimension. ‘With space so congested, the most important thing is ball circulation,’ he declared. ‘The team that plays the quickest football is the best.’ His team aimed for total control of the game, maintaining the ball ‘in construction’, as he calls it, and passing and running constantly with speed and precision. Totaalvoetbal-style position switching was out, but players still had to be flexible and adaptable. Opponents were not seen as foes to be fought and beaten in battle; rather as posing a problem that had to be solved. Ajax players were required to be flexible and smart – as they ‘circulated’ the ball, the space on the field was constantly reorganised until gaps opened in the opponents’ defence.

The Delusion of Lasting Success promises that building an enduring company is not only achievable but a worthwhile objective. Yet companies that have outperformed the market for long periods of time are not just rare, they are statistical artifacts that are observable only in retrospect. Companies that achieved lasting success may be best understood as having strung together many short-term successes. Pursuing a dream of enduring greatness may divert attention from the pressing need to win immediate battles. The Delusion of Absolute Performance diverts our attention from the fact that success and failure always take place in a competitive environment. It may be comforting to believe that our success is entirely up to us, but as the example of Kmart demonstrated, a company can improve in absolute terms and still fall further behind in relative terms. Success in business means doing things better than rivals, not just doing things well. Believing that performance is absolute can cause us to take our eye off rivals and to avoid decisions that, while risky, may be essential for survival given the particular context of our industry and its competitive dynamics. The Delusion of the Wrong End of the Stick lets us confuse causes and effects, actions and outcomes. We may look at a handful of extraordinarily successful companies and imagine that doing what they did can lead to success — when it might in fact lead mainly to higher volatility and a lower overall chance of success. Unless we start with the full population of companies and examine what they all did — and how they all fared — we have an incomplete and indeed biased set of information. The Delusion of Organizational Physics implies that the business world offers predictable results, that it conforms to precise laws. It fuels a belief that a given set of actions can work in all settings and ignores the need to adapt to different conditions: intensity of competition, rate of growth, size of competitors, market concentration, regulation, global dispersion of activities, and much more. Claiming that one approach can work everywhere, at all times, for all companies, has a simplistic appeal but doesn’t do justice to the complexities of business. These points, taken together, expose the principal fiction at the heart of so many business books — that a company can choose to be great, that following a few key steps will predictably lead to greatness, that its success is entirely of its own making and not dependent on factors outside its control.

I began to see that the stronger a therapy emphasized feelings, self-esteem, and self-confidence, the more dependent the therapist was upon his providing for the patient ongoing, unconditional, positive regard. The more self-esteem was the end, the more the means, in the form of the patient’s efforts, had to appear blameless in the face of failure. In this paradigm, accuracy and comparison must continually be sacrificed to acceptance and compassion; which often results in the escalation of bizarre behavior and bizarre diagnoses. The bizarre behavior results from us taking credit for everything that is positive and assigning blame elsewhere for anything negative. Because of this skewed positive-feedback loop between our judged actions and our beliefs, we systematically become more and more adapted to ourselves, our feelings, and our inaccurate solitary thinking; and less and less adapted to the environment that we share with our fellows. The resultant behavior, such as crying, depression, displays of temper, high-risk behavior, or romantic ventures, or abandonment of personal responsibilities, which seem either compulsory, necessary, or intelligent to us, will begin to appear more and more irrational to others. The bizarre diagnoses occur because, in some cases, if a ‘cause disease’ (excuse from blame) does not exist, it has to be 'discovered’ (invented). Psychiatry has expanded its diagnoses of mental disease every year to include 'illnesses’ like kleptomania and frotteurism [now frotteuristic disorder in the DSM-V]. (Do you know what frotteurism is? It is a mental disorder that causes people, usually men, to surreptitiously fondle women’s breasts or genitals in crowded situations such as elevators and subways.) The problem with the escalation of these kinds of diagnoses is that either we can become so adapted to our thinking and feelings instead of our environment that we will become dissociated from the whole idea that we have a problem at all; or at least, the more we become blameless, the more we become helpless in the face of our problems, thinking our problems need to be 'fixed’ by outside help before we can move forward on our own. For 2,000 years of Western culture our problems existed in the human power struggle constantly being waged between our principles and our primal impulses. In the last fifty years we have unprincipled ourselves and become what I call 'psychologized.’ Now the power struggle is between the 'expert’ and the 'disorder.’ Since the rise of psychiatry and psychology as the moral compass, we don’t talk about moral imperatives anymore, we talk about coping mechanisms. We are not living our lives by principles so much as we are living our lives by mental health diagnoses. This is not working because it very subtly undermines our solid sense of self.

Any relationship will have its difficulties, but sometimes those problems are indicators of deep-rooted problems that, if not addressed quickly, will poison your marriage. If any of the following red flags—caution signs—exist in your relationship, we recommend that you talk about the situation as soon as possible with a pastor, counselor or mentor. Part of this list was adapted by permission from Bob Phillips, author of How Can I Be Sure: A Pre-Marriage Inventory.1 You have a general uneasy feeling that something is wrong in your relationship. You find yourself arguing often with your fiancé(e). Your fiancé(e) seems irrationally angry and jealous whenever you interact with someone of the opposite sex. You avoid discussing certain subjects because you’re afraid of your fiancé(e)’s reaction. Your fiancé(e) finds it extremely difficult to express emotions, or is prone to extreme emotions (such as out-of-control anger or exaggerated fear). Or he/she swings back and forth between emotional extremes (such as being very happy one minute, then suddenly exhibiting extreme sadness the next). Your fiancé(e) displays controlling behavior. This means more than a desire to be in charge—it means your fiancé(e) seems to want to control every aspect of your life: your appearance, your lifestyle, your interactions with friends or family, and so on. Your fiancé(e) seems to manipulate you into doing what he or she wants. You are continuing the relationship because of fear—of hurting your fiancé(e), or of what he or she might do if you ended the relationship. Your fiancé(e) does not treat you with respect. He or she constantly criticizes you or talks sarcastically to you, even in public. Your fiancé(e) is unable to hold down a job, doesn’t take personal responsibility for losing a job, or frequently borrows money from you or from friends. Your fiancé(e) often talks about aches and pains, and you suspect some of these are imagined. He or she goes from doctor to doctor until finding someone who will agree that there is some type of illness. Your fiancé(e) is unable to resolve conflict. He or she cannot deal with constructive criticism, or never admits a mistake, or never asks for forgiveness. Your fiancé(e) is overly dependant on parents for finances, decision-making or emotional security. Your fiancé(e) is consistently dishonest and tries to keep you from learning about certain aspects of his or her life. Your fiancé(e) does not appear to recognize right from wrong, and rationalizes questionable behavior. Your fiancé(e) consistently avoids responsibility. Your fiancé(e) exhibits patterns of physical, emotional or sexual abuse toward you or others. Your fiancé(e) displays signs of drug or alcohol abuse: unexplained absences of missed dates, frequent car accidents, the smell of alcohol or strong odor of mouthwash, erratic behavior or emotional swings, physical signs such as red eyes, unkempt look, unexplained nervousness, and so on. Your fiancé(e) has displayed a sudden, dramatic change in lifestyle after you began dating. (He or she may be changing just to win you and will revert back to old habits after marriage.) Your fiancé(e) has trouble controlling anger. He or she uses anger as a weapon or as a means of winning arguments. You have a difficult time trusting your fiancé(e)—to fulfill responsibilities, to be truthful, to help in times of need, to make ethical decisions, and so on. Your fiancé(e) has a history of multiple serious relationships that have failed—a pattern of knowing how to begin a relationship but not knowing how to keep one growing. Look over this list. Do any of these red flags apply to your relationship? If so, we recommend you talk about the situation as soon as possible with a pastor, counselor or mentor.

forgot about my huge goal. I focused on what I could control: what I did every day. After a little experimentation and a lot of thought, I settled on a process. Because the Internet never sleeps, here’s what I did every day: Write a new post. Without fail. No excuses. Build relationships. I contacted three people who tweeted my posts that day, choosing the three who seemed most influential, the most noteworthy, the most “something” (even if that “something” was just “thoughtful comment”). Then I sent an e-mail—not a tweet—and said thanks. My goal was to make a genuine connection. Build my network. I contacted one person who might be a great source for a future post. I aimed high: CEOs, founders, entrepreneur-celebrities . . . people with instant credibility and engaged followings. Many didn’t respond. But some did. And some have become friends and appear in this book. Add three more items to my “list of great headlines.” Headlines make or break posts: A great post with a terrible headline will not get read. So I worked hard to learn what worked for other people—and to adapt their techniques for my own use. Evaluate recent results. I looked at page views. I looked at shares and likes and tweets. I tried to figure out what readers responded to, what readers cared about. Writing for a big audience has little to do with pleasing yourself and everything to do with pleasing an audience, and the only way to know what worked was to know the audience. Ignore my editor. I liked my editor. But I didn’t want her input because she knew only what worked for columnists who were read by a maximum of 300,000 people each month. My goal was to triple that, which meant I needed to do things differently. We occasionally disagreed, and early on I lost some of those battles. Once my numbers started to climb, I won a lot more often, until eventually I was able to do my own thing. Sounds simple, right? In a way it was, because I followed a self-reinforcing process:

MY DEAR MISS BROOKE,—I have your guardian's permission to address you on a subject than which I have none more at heart. I am not, I trust, mistaken in the recognition of some deeper correspondence than that of date in the fact that a consciousness of need in my own life had arisen contemporaneously with the possibility of my becoming acquainted with you. For in the first hour of meeting you, I had an impression of your eminent and perhaps exclusive fitness to supply that need (connected, I may say, with such activity of the affections as even the preoccupations of a work too special to be abdicated could not uninterruptedly dissimulate); and each succeeding opportunity for observation has given the impression an added depth by convincing me more emphatically of that fitness which I had preconceived, and thus evoking more decisively those affections to which I have but now referred. Our conversations have, I think, made sufficiently clear to you the tenor of my life and purposes: a tenor unsuited, I am aware, to the commoner order of minds. But I have discerned in you an elevation of thought and a capability of devotedness, which I had hitherto not conceived to be compatible either with the early bloom of youth or with those graces of sex that may be said at once to win and to confer distinction when combined, as they notably are in you, with the mental qualities above indicated. It was, I confess, beyond my hope to meet with this rare combination of elements both solid and attractive, adapted to supply aid in graver labors and to cast a charm over vacant hours; and but for the event of my introduction to you (which, let me again say, I trust not to be superficially coincident with foreshadowing needs, but providentially related thereto as stages towards the completion of a life's plan), I should presumably have gone on to the last without any attempt to lighten my solitariness by a matrimonial union. Such, my dear Miss Brooke, is the accurate statement of my feelings; and I rely on your kind indulgence in venturing now to ask you how far your own are of a nature to confirm my happy presentiment. To be accepted by you as your husband and the earthly guardian of your welfare, I should regard as the highest of providential gifts. In return I can at least offer you an affection hitherto unwasted, and the faithful consecration of a life which, however short in the sequel, has no backward pages whereon, if you choose to turn them, you will find records such as might justly cause you either bitterness or shame. I await the expression of your sentiments with an anxiety which it would be the part of wisdom (were it possible) to divert by a more arduous labor than usual. But in this order of experience I am still young, and in looking forward to an unfavorable possibility I cannot but feel that resignation to solitude will be more difficult after the temporary illumination of hope. In any case, I shall remain,     Yours with sincere devotion,      EDWARD CASAUBON

The oppressor–oppressed worldview of white privilege and intersectionality is aligned with neo-Marxism and “privilege theory.”47 It’s natural, then, that the neo-Marxist notion of “white privilege” evolved into social doctrine among progressive activists.48 Karl Marx divided the world into categories of the oppressors and the oppressed with his zero-sum class ideology, which pitted the bourgeoisie against the proletariat and saw capitalism as the systemic oppressor. In modern times, leftists have repackaged Marx’s divisive framework and furtively adapted it to forms of oppression beyond the economic class struggle, such as race and gender, pitting identity groups against one another with the ultimate goal of instituting socialism out of the chaos.

In life, we have been running barefoot and winning. Imagine what would happen if we had spikes, a nutritionist and a coach we would break records.

In Hollywood today, the simple truth is that there are two types of movie studios: Disney, and those that wish they were Disney. Understanding why studios have turned so aggressively toward franchises, sequels, and superheroes and away from originality, risks, and mid-budget dramas takes more than an appreciation for the financial pressures faced by executives like Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal. Just as Olympic swimmers can’t help but pace themselves against Michael Phelps, Sony and its competitors have for years been jealous of and frustrated by Disney. Hollywood is a herd industry. Its executives are constantly looking out the side window or at the rearview mirror and asking, “Why aren’t we doing that?” For those peering at Disney, that means slashing the number of movies made per year by two-thirds. It also means largely abandoning any type of film that costs less than $100 million, is based on an original idea, or appeals to any group smaller than all the moviegoers around the globe. Disney doesn’t make dramas for adults. It doesn’t make thrillers. It doesn’t make romantic comedies. It doesn’t make bawdy comedies. It doesn’t make horror movies. It doesn’t make star vehicles. It doesn’t adapt novels. It doesn’t buy original scripts. It doesn’t buy anything at film festivals. It doesn’t make anything political or controversial. It doesn’t make anything with an R-rating. It doesn’t give award-winning directors like Alfonso Cuarón or Christopher Nolan wide latitude to pursue their visions.

Conservatives, whose political motive is generally mere human altruism, and whose tightest point of natural agreement is an abstract, ill-defined ideal which has no clear recipe for implementation, is generally stated as vaguely as possible so as to attract the largest possible headcount, and exhibits patterns of error perfectly adapted to deflect the respect of the intelligent, cannot conceivably compete on any level playing field with the self-coordinating progressive movement, which has no ideals at all—being defined only by the willingness to swallow some drop, teaspoon, quart or vat of epistemic ordure, as a ticket to hop on the big bandwagon, inhale the party line and join the winning team.​

For many people, the haunting begins the minute they wake up. Maybe they are fat or disabled, feel ugly, or are failing and overwhelmed at school or work, and it consumes them. Their obsession with their own imperfections and faults suffocates self-respect and submarines progress, and from the time they get out of bed until they are able to crawl back in that night, the only thing on their agenda is avoiding exposure and surviving another day in hell. When that’s how you feel about yourself, it’s impossible to see possibilities or seize opportunities. We all have the ability to be extraordinary, but most of us—and especially the haunted ones—tap out of the crucible and never experience what it’s like to get to the other side of hell. My metamorphosis was a brutal process that unfolded over decades, but eventually, I became the polar opposite of the kid frozen in the hot stage lights and the gaze of his teacher who only wanted to teach him to read. I became a full-time savage who walked the distant, narrow path with cliffs rising on both sides, no aid stations or rest areas, and no turnouts or exits of any kind. Whatever popped up in front of me had to be dealt with head-on because the full-time savage sees everything in life as an opportunity to learn, adapt, and evolve. However, when Babbitt’s message found me, at first, I looked for an exit. Then, I pulled my head out of my ass and found a way.

The last thing to learn is the hardest. It can’t be taught. It can barely be explained. It is the idea that the fight—the battle—doesn’t really exist so much in your hands or your feet, but in your head. The real struggle is in your own mind. You must know you are going to win before you start the fight. You have to see it, smell it, and believe it utterly. It is a form of confidence, but you must guard against overconfidence. You have to be flexible—able to adapt in an instant and never allow yourself to give up. Without this, nothing else is possible. Unless you believe you’ll win, fear and hesitation will hold you down while your opponent kills you.

He was actually glad to be alone with his silence and the remains of those who had died. These men hadn’t cared about the squabbles of those born with lighter eyes than they. These men had cared about their families or—at the very least—their sphere pouches. How many of them were trapped in this foreign land, these endless plateaus, too poor to escape back to Alethkar? Hundreds died each week, winning gems for men who were already rich, winning vengeance for a king long dead.

Companies that adapt to the new digital landscape will serve customers better, and will survive. Those that don’t will die. It may not be overnight, but it’s inevitable. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. Banks. Airlines. Automakers. Insurance companies. Real estate. Retailers. Health care.

The real struggle is in your own mind. You must know you are going to win before you start the fight. You have to see it, smell it, and believe it utterly. It is a form of confidence, but you must guard against overconfidence. You have to be flexible—able to adapt in an instant and never allow yourself to give up. Without this, nothing else is possible. Unless you believe you’ll win, fear and hesitation will hold you down while your opponent kills you.

Winning careers, like winning start-ups, are in permanent beta: always a work in progress.

Having a path for the product is good, building that path in line of the vision is key, doing it together ‘makes or breaks it’, tuning and adjusting it as we go and learning from it is what wins in an ever changing environment.

in the absence of fast, frequent, and useful feedback, systems of any type—technological, biological, social, psychological—will experience instability and even collapse. Systems with reliable feedback that triggers appropriate reactions are stable, resilient, and agile in even the most arduous situations. In the long term, systems that have adequate feedback and are capable of adaptation will improve, sometimes in dramatic ways, both by direction and magnitude.

Okay, so let's say you're the one hearing feedback from your partner - now what? Yield. Don't get defensive, or go tit for tat, or any of that Adaptive Child behavior. You, the listener, also need to be centered. You too need to remember love. What can you give this person to help them feel better? You can begin by offering the gift of your presence. Listen. And let them know they've been heard. Reflect back what you heard. If you're at a loss, just repeat your partner's feedback wheel. ... If you are the speaker, and the listening partner has left out important things or gotten something seriously wrong, help them out. Gently correct them, and then have them reflect again. But don't be overly fussy. Serviceable is good enough. Now that you've listened, you need to respond. How? Empathically and accountably. Own whatever you can, with no buts, excuses, or reasons. "Yes, I did that" - plain and simple. Land on it, really take it on. The more accountable you are, the more your partner might relax. If you realize what you've done, if you really get it, you'll be less likely to keep repeating that behavior. And conversely, not acknowledging what you did - by changing the subject, or denying, or minimizing - will leave your partner feeling more desperate. ... If you are the speaker, it pays to keep it specific. The feedback wheel is about this one incident, period. Most people go awry when they escalate their complaints, moving from the specific occurrence to a trend, then to their partner's character. For example: "Terry, you came late." (Occurence.) "You always come late." (Trend.) "You're never on time." (Trend.) "You really are selfish!" (Character.) When the speaker jumps from a particular event to a trend (you always, you never) to the partner's character (you are a ...), they render their partner ever more helpless, and each intensification feels dirtier. ... Once you've reflectively listened and acknowledged whatever you can about the truth of your partner's complaint, give. Give to your partner whatever parts of their request (the fourth step in the feedback wheel: what I'd like now) as you possibly can. ... And finally, for you both, let the repair happen. Don't discount your partner's efforts. Don't disqualify what's being offered with a response like "I don't believe you" or "This is too little too late." Dare to take yes for an answer. ... Let them win; let it be good enough. Com into knowing love.

These ways of looking at events were clearly part of common belief, but Homer exploits them for literary effect; both ineluctable fate and unpredictable divine intervention reinforce the sense of man as a plaything at the mercy of mightier powers. But the conclusion drawn from this is far from a negative or passive one; we must win honour within the limits set for us by our existence within a cosmos which is basically well-ordered, however hard that order may be to discern. When Odysseus is reduced to beggary, he does not lower his moral standards; when Akhilleus faces the inevitability of death, he is still determined to die gloriously. Homer adapts for his own poetic and moral ends ways of thinking which are potentially contradictory, refining the myths and world-view of his tradition. All his art is mobilized to stress the need for intelligence, courage and moral responsibility in the face of a dangerous universe, wherein mankind has an insignificant and yet paramount role. It is this attitude which makes the Homeric poems so sublimely and archetypally humane.

In other words, a legal victory is far more devastating than a mere technical one. A firm that sues a rival into oblivion for aiding its customers in grabbing a better experience for themselves (better prices, more privacy or just a user interface that’s better adapted to their capabilities and disabilities) wins a powerful prize. That firm can use the law to reach beyond its four walls, into the minds of potential future competitors and their investors, and permanently terrorize them out of even the merest thought of a challenge to the company’s dominance. That firm can reach into the hearts of its own customers and convince them that any attempt to disloyally reconfigure their experience of the firm’s products will be a futile waste of hope. Venture capitalists call the products and services adjacent to the Big Tech firms’ core technology “the kill zone” and will not invest in any company that proposes to pitch its tent in that dead place. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Poker players explained to me that there’s a particular moment at which players are extremely vulnerable to an emotional surge. It’s not when they’ve won a huge pot or when they’ve drawn a fantastic hand. It’s when they’ve just lost a lot of money through bad luck (a ‘bad beat’) or bad strategy. The loss can nudge a player into going ‘on tilt’ – making overly aggressive bets in an effort to win back what he wrongly feels is still his money. The brain refuses to register that the money has gone. Acknowledging the loss and recalculating one’s strategy would be the right thing to do, but that is too painful. Instead, the player makes crazy bets to rectify what he unconsciously believes is a temporary situation. It isn’t the initial loss that does for him, but the stupid plays he makes in an effort to deny that the loss has happened. The eat economic psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky summarised the behaviour in their classic analysis of the psychology of risk: ‘a person who has not made peace with his losses is likely to accept gambles that would be unacceptable to him otherwise’. Even those of us who aren’t professional poker players know how it feels to chase a loss.

My work since 1981 has been to put that jigsaw puzzle together. Here’s how the picture looks once the various parts are snapped in place. Social animals are linked in networks of information exchange. Meanwhile, self-destruct mechanisms turn a creature on and off depending on his or her ability to get a handle on the tricks and traps of circumstance. The result is a complex adaptive system—a web of semi-independent operatives linked to form a learning machine. How effective is this collective learning mesh? As David Sloan Wilson discovered, a group usually solves problems better than the individuals within it. Pit one socially networked problem-solving web against another—a constant occurrence in nature—and the one which most successfully takes advantage of complex adaptive system rules, that which is the most powerful cooperative learning contraption, will almost always win.

In Western society, women try to adapt, strengthen, and build resilience to cope, only to be pushed back into an inequitable cultural ecosystem that has us breathing fear. ... In truth, many women tell me they crave a wiser, more balanced way. Society’s win-at-all-cost culture of competition has hurt them dearly. Their stressed-out bodies are telling them no more, not one more day of this unsustainable pressure. They are no longer willing to be judged by the standards of healthism—which believes that those who work out regularly, stay slim, and eat right are more worthy—or to see it as the answer to the much bigger social and political problem of chronic stress.

Considering the time necessary for the effects to show up, we, by analogy with other physiological literature, have observed “conditioning” improvements after a very short training period (1-2 weeks). These short-term changes are rather due to a better neuromuscular and vascular control (a more efficient metabolism, blood flow distribution and use of muscle fibers) than to changes in the muscle structure and will therefore be lost quickly with inactivity. Stable or longer lasting adaptations involve the remodeling of the muscle, such as the enhancement of the mitochondria content or an increase of capillaries, and require, therefore, much longer and continuous training periods.

It’s always amusing to me, you take a book, say, To Kill a Mockingbird, throw away three quarters of it and win an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay. But if you take a screenplay and add three quarters of original material to it––which is a much, much more difficult piece of writing––well, that’s by definition ‘hackwork.’ And it’s much harder, having done both, to take a screenplay and make a book out of it than [to] take a terrific book and make a screenplay out of it.

In America there’s one winning story—no adaptations. The Story imagines a noble, grand progress where we’re all united. Like truths are as self-evident as the Declaration states. Or like they would be if not for detractors like me, the ranks of Vagabonds existing to point out what’s rotten in America, Insisting her gains come at a cost, reminding her who pays, and Negating wild notions of exceptionalism—adding ugly facts to God’s-favorite-nation mythology.

And I do not summon you to slothful or idle inaction, or to drown all your energy in slumbers and the pleasures that are dear to the crowd. That is not to rest; you will find far greater works than all those you have until now performed so energetically, to occupy you in the middle of your release and rest. You, I know, manage the accounts of the whole world as honestly as you would a stranger's, as carefully as you would your own, as conscientiously as you would the state's. You win love in an office in which it is difficult to avoid hatred; but nevertheless believe me, it is better to have knowledge of the ledger of one's own life than of the corn-market.

When you separate yourself from the pack by cultivating the values and priorities that lead to greatness, mountains of adversity and hardship become speed bumps, and that makes it easier to adapt to the road ahead and build the new life or sense of self you crave.

When tormented by the fear of injustice, egomania is adaptive, because the alternative is helplessness and hopelessness. Despair is not exactly a winning strategy and superiority is crucial in gathering one’s resources to keep fighting

Six months later, though I still loathed the man, I changed my approach to the task list. I got up after the first wake-up call without delay. There would be no more early-morning baptisms for me. Instead, I focused on the details Sgt. Jack always noticed and finished each job right the first time. That was the only way I’d get any free time to play basketball. However, my new approach produced an unexpected side effect as well: a sense of pride in a job well done. In fact, that sense of pride came to mean more to me than basketball time. When I washed his car collection, a weekly assignment, I knew every drop of water had to be wiped away with a chamois before the first coat of wax. I used SOS pads to get the white walls gleaming and buffed the hell out of every panel. I also used Armor All on the dashboards and all the vinyl insides. I buffed the leather seats too. It bothered me if I saw streaks on the glass or chrome. I was annoyed if I missed a soiled spot or cut a corner here or there on any chore. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was a sign that I was actually healing. When a half-assed job doesn’t bother you, it speaks volumes about the kind of person you are. And until you start feeling a sense of pride and self-respect in the work you do, no matter how small or overlooked those jobs might be, you will continue to half-ass your life. I knew I had every reason in the world to rebel and remain a lazy motherfucker. I also sensed that would only make me more miserable, so I adapted. But no matter how well I did or how fast I completed a given task, there were no atta’ boys or weekly allowance. No ice cream cones or surprise gifts, hugs, or high fives. In Sgt. Jack’s mind, I was finally doing what I should have been doing all along.

Expanse, which was adapted into an award-winning television series. Corey is the pen name of the writing duo of Daniel Abraham

The Middle East of course was a shit hole, always was, and always would be. Europe was in a mess from all the Muslims they had let in, there was a story that in Germany in not too many years the Muslims would control the votes to win the entire government, France wasn't doing well either. I know there may be a big difference between the violent Muslims and the one who just want to live and have a flushing crapper but if push comes to shove we all know which side they will come down on. I saw that Detroit had a very large Muslim population and in fact many US cities did. To me they will always be an enemy standing behind us with a knife for our back. To them their religion is far more important then national citizenship. In fact most have never adapted to life here in America, they lived in slums of their own making and never bothered to learn the language except for enough to just get by, their communities could have been carved out of some middle east shit hole. It looked and smelled just like where they came form. It's a good thing I'm not a racist!       The way it looks it will be more of a war fought by groups, maybe separated by race to begin with but in time it would break down to a tribal state and race might not matter all that much. But the old guys were right, it was coming and nothing could stop it, I just hoped it blew right over our valley and missed us, right and leave a tooth under the pillow while your at it.

In their own brief conversations, he had the distinct impression that she was toying with him, verbally challenging him to a duel that she was certain to win, for she established the rules and kept them a secret from him. As perplexing as this was, he found her game engaging, and he inexplicably wanted more of it.

While their personalities may differ from person to person, the commonality is that with a narcissistic parent: their needs and wants always come first, above anyone else in the household. As a result of this experience, their children will often become codependent as they learn to adapt. Rather than the parent bearing the responsibility of the children’s emotional needs, the child will have to learn to bear the responsibility of the parent’s emotional needs. In these relationships, the narcissistic parent will feel entitled, and the child will likely feel unentitled, or as though they don’t deserve to have anything. The child will feel the need to sacrifice and deny their own feelings and needs to meet those of the parents. Unless the child also develops a narcissistic personality disorder, in which case both the parent and child will use each other to establish their own superiority. Children of narcissistic parents learn that they should not trust nor value themselves, and they often grow up alienated from who they truly are. They may feel like they have to prove themselves so that they can win the narcissistic parent’s approval but may lack the motivation to pursue their own wants and goals when they are not externally imposed. In other words, they will have difficulty feeling motivated by their own wants and desires and will rely on others telling them what they should want and desire in order for them to go out and achieve it. While

Improvise, adapt, overcome and win.

Behold a unique individualist employing thousands all over the world and influencing the masses as a media phenomenon. Even in the early stages of campaigning for the Republican Party’s nomination, news that Trump was about to have a press conference or deliver a speech in a stadium compelled cable TV networks stop whatever they were broadcasting, cancel their advertisement time, and give Trump—LIVE—their complete attention until his speech was over. Who else gets such treatment? A mensch possessing intuitive Uranian synchronicity with success. He’s plugged into life’s universal rules of how you win, how to transform your weaknesses into strengths and get things done you want done. When you’re Trump you make magic in part because you are a flexible Gemini riding Green-Hornet colored Uranus, adapting your ideas to unexpected changes. You can evolve them inasmuch as cardinal (leadership) and mutable planetary positioning influences your astrology

The Secret to Creating Affluence A young man went to the forest and said to his spiritual master, ‘I want to have unlimited wealth, to help and heal the world. What is the secret to wealth?’ The spiritual master said, ‘There are two Goddesses that reside in the heart of every human being: the Goddess of WEALTH and the Goddess of KNOWLEDGE’. ‘Although you love both, you must pursue one of them to the exclusion of the other. Pursue her, love her, and give her your attention. Understand that only the Goddess of Wealth can give you wealth, and you may pursue only one Goddess, not both’. ‘But, here is the secret: If you pursue the Goddess of Wealth, she will be pleased with you because she loves to be chased. The more you pursue her the more she will elude you. However, if you pursue the Goddess of KNOWLEDGE, the Goddess of WEALTH will become extremely jealous and pay more attention to you. In fact, the more you seek the Goddess of Knowledge, the more the Goddess of Wealth will seek you. She will never leave you. She will constantly shower you with material blessings just to win your attention, and the wealth you desire will be yours forever’. Adapted from (Chopra, 1993)

Nobody owes you anything. If you want something, go get it.

biggest wins from new technology will go to the societies and firms that don’t just double down on the past but that can adapt and direct their citizens toward industries that are growing.

Light of other can only show you limited path, but your own light will guide you everywhere. Be your own Light, don't depend on others. Meditation is absorbance into silence within. The thirst of seeking knowledge outside, will end with bliss of silence within. Love is solution of life, but people make it complicated problem for themselves. Who has know inner bliss in love, won't fall for complications created by mind and world. You only desire something until you don't possess it, it becomes worthless after possession. Only the one who has possessed something, has known it as nothing. Desire make one run a long path toward possession of something with deceived belief of happiness, Joy & pleasure. But end at worthlessness to nothingness. Suffering is caused due to non Acceptance of change, adapt and Accept rather than holding it or clinging to it's desire of self manifestation. To experience blissfulness of life, Live in the present moment of being, and just be, and be lost in it, let your wholeness drown in it. Let the Ego fall, and Self will Rise. Being in nothingness as nothingness, at any moment of being, is being in meditation itself. Presence of Love bring the manifestation of existence of God with it. Be Love, and experience the divine existence of God in everything. Whatever you may win, buy, own, achieve, gather, everything is worthless because they will be lost soon to the world. Nothing can be achieved in the world except the achievement of Self realization of one self of being divine Consciousness. Whatever you possess inside, you will act it outside. You can only give what you possess, not what you don't. Surrender your soul and let the flower of love Bloom inside. Inner Blissfulness is achieved in solitude of self being.

The things we once thought of as luxuries soon become necessities (although, by the same token, our sense of well-being would quickly adapt to losing half our income). What we care about is not our absolute wealth but our rung on the ladder. Ruut Veenhoven, a leading researcher of happiness, says, “When we have overtaken the Joneses, our reference drifts upward to the Smiths, and we feel unhappy again.

Lady Anne Bishop, he was coming to realize to his growing delight, was far more complex than he'd anticipated. Each moment the plans he'd worked out to win her needed to be modified and adapted as he learned something new about her.

Beck is nothing if not adaptable. He was a ponytail-wearing liberal before he saw a commercial opening in conservative talk radio. Now that an improving economy has cast doubt on his end-times visions, he's recasting himself again. This week, he unveiled a new mission statement for the Blaze: "We tell stories of love and courage where the good guys win." He devoted a radio show this week to "three classic Frank Sinatra songs you need to hear.

Win-win solutions are ideal but not common with strategic choices. When we hear someone talk "win-wins," we wonder if anything really lasting is going to change.

Delgamuukw involved two bands of the Skeena region in northwest British Columbia. They wanted to challenge the governmental and legal assumptions about land ownership. The case began in 1984 and ended at the Supreme Court in 1997. The two bands did not win ownership. However, they brought the standard European-derived assumptions about the nature of ownership to a halt and opened the way for what might be fair negotiations. What is fascinating is that the government had all the written documentation it needed to win. But the court, led by Chief Justice Antonio Lamer, turned them back. The Gitxsan and the Wet’suwet’en Nations had put forward an argument of oral memory in order to prove the land was theirs. They argued that oral memory is perfectly accurate, as it is passed on from one generation to the next via individuals charged with remembering, and with doing so accurately through a formalized process. As in the Guerin decision, the Court chose to base its decision on principles far more important than any technical argument coming out of the Western tradition. The result was one of the most important rulings in the history of Canada. Alongside written proof, the Court would give equal place – and in this case what amounted to precedence – to oral memory. This argument for orality carries all of us out of the universal European narrative. In the chief justice’s eloquent judgment, he said that oral histories would be “admitted for their truth,” that the laws of evidence must therefore be adapted, that “in the circumstances, the factual findings [of the government] cannot stand.” His concluding sentences were a call for negotiations to achieve something that I can only imagine happening through a spatial approach: “… the reconciliation of the pre-existence of Aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the Crown. Let us face it, we are all here to stay.” The crisis of 2012–2013 is a depressing reminder that the governments of Canada – federal and provincial – have stubbornly refused to accept this Supreme Court recommendation. But at least the rules are there, carefully argued and laid out, constantly repeated and developed

All Inclusive The single principle can be found everywhere, all the time. Everything works according to it. Every life unfolds according to it. The single principle does not say yes to this and no to that. Even though Tao is the source of all growth and development, nothing profits Tao. Tao benefits all without return and without prejudice. Neither is the single principle private property. You cannot own it. It does not own you. Its greatness lies in its universality. It is all-inclusive. The wise leader follows this principle and does not act selfishly. The leader does not accept one person and refuse to work with another. The leader does not own people or control their lives. Leadership is not a matter of winning. The work is done in order to shed the light of awareness on whatever is happening: also, selfless service, without prejudice, available to all.

Understanding how your child reacts to transitions and changes is a key to winning his cooperation. If your child is slow to adapt, you need to know it so you can help him prepare.

Winning takes constant superior situational awareness and a willingness to step outside the lines of traditional training. It requires each of us to use individual insight and innovation in applying what we have learned in training and through our experiences to what we know.  Applying what we know then takes consistent and constant practice and “practicing what we preach” to our daily duties.