Circle Of Competence Quotes

Unrequited love is the only emotion that allows sane people to taste the “life sentence” of someone with bipolar disorder. The longer they hang onto a lost cause the more unstable they look to everyone else. They contradict their own belief systems and statements, by circling the drain with two competing emotions—love and hate.

How do you curb envy? First, stop comparing yourself to others. Second, find your “circle of competence” and fill it on your own. Create a niche where you are the best. It doesn’t matter how small your area of mastery is. The main thing is that you are king of the castle.

But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat. He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening. So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people’s eyes and became an exasperating expression.

Stay within a well-defined circle of competence.

Damn.” Phineas turned the Big Boy off, then noticed he’d left the box on the bed. Damn, had Zoltan seen it? He stuffed the phallus back into the box, but must have jammed too hard, for it started wiggling again. “Stop it.” He punched a button, but it merely increased its speed, the tip spiraling in wild circles. Damn! He watched in horror. It was like a whirlybird on steroids! How could a man compete with that? He ripped the balls off it and emptied out the batteries. “Die, you freakin’ dildo, die!

A single outstanding skill trumps a thousand mediocre ones. Every hour invested into your circle of competence is worth a thousand spent elsewhere.

The Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse [...] stuck in my mind because of the subject's flagrant health and safety violation. As any competent practitioner will tell you, you always complete your protective circle *before* you start your workings.

I circled the site before I came in. If there's anyone within five kilometers, I'll eat my quiver." Halt regarded him, eyebrow arched once more. "Anyone?" "Anyone other than Crowley," Will amended, making a dismissive gesture. "I saw him watching me from that hide he always uses about two kilometers out. I assumed he'd be back in here by now." Halt cleared his throat loudly. "Oh, you saw him, did you?" he said. "I imagine he'll be overjoyed to hear that." Secretly, he was pleased with his former pupil. In spite of his curiosity and obvious excitement, he hadn't forgotten to take the precautions that had been drilled into him. THat augured well for what lay ahead, Halt thought, a sudden grimness settling onto his manner. Will didn't notice the momentary change of mood. He was loosening Tug saddle girth. As he spoke, his voice was muffled against the horses's flank. "he's becoming too much a creature of habit," he said. "he's used that hide for the last three Gatherings. It's time he tried something new. Everyone must be onto it by now." Rangers constantly competed with each other to see before being seen and each year's Gathering was a time of heightened competition. Halt nodded thoughtfully. Crowley had constructed teh virtually invisible observation post some four years previously. Alone among the younger Rangers, Will had tumbled to it after one year. Halt had never mentioned to him that he was the only one who knew of Crowley's hide. The concealed post was the Ranger Commandant's pride and joy. "Well, perhaps not everyone," he said. Will emerged from behind his horse, grinning at the thought of the head of the Ranger Corps thinking he had remained hidden from sight as he watched Will's approach. "All the same, perhaps he's getting a bit long in the tooth to be skulking around hiding in the bushes, don't you think?" he said cheerfully. Halt considered the question for a moment. "Long in the tooth? Well, that's one opinion. Mind you, his silent movement skills are still as good as ever," he said meaningfully. The grin on Will's face slowly faded. He resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder. "He's standing behind me, isn't he?" he asked Halt. THe older Ranger nodded. "He's standing behind me, isn't he?" Will continued and Halt nodded once more. "Is he...close enough to have heard what I said?" Will finally managed to ask, fearin teh worst. This time, Halt didn't have to answer. "Oh, good grief no," came a familiar voice from behind him. "he's so old and decrepit these days he's as deaf as a post." Will's shoulders sagged and he turned to see the sandy-haired Commandant standing a few meters away. The younger man's eyes dropped. "Hullo, Crowley," he said, then mumbled, "Ahhh...I'm sorry about that." Crowley glared at teh young Ranger for a few more seconds, then he couldn't help teh grin breaking out on his face. "No harm done," he said, adding with a small note of triumph, "It's not often these days I amange to get the better of one of you young ones." Secretly, he was impressed at teh news that Will had spotted his hiding place. Only the sarpest eyes could have picked it. Crowley had been in the business of seeing without being seen for thirty years or more, and despite what Will believed, he was still an absolute master of camouflage and unseen movement.

gets updated, and so too must your circle. There are three key practices needed in order to build and maintain a circle of competence: curiosity and a desire to learn, monitoring, and feedback.

By being aware of your own limitations, keeping important decisions inside your circle of competence, and avoiding decisions that are too hard, it is reasonable to feel more confident in your abilities.

He recommended realism in defining one’s circle of competence and discipline to stay within the circle. He added that it helps to insulate yourself from popular opinions. You’re better off sitting and thinking.6 Coping

Buffett also shared some of his classic bits of wisdom about growing wealth. Spend less than what you make. Know and stay within your circle of competence. The only businesses that matter are the ones you put your money in. Keep learning over time. Don’t lose. Insist on a margin of safety.

In political matters I have always been a down-the-middle-line person. When it comes to leaders, I care less about their party affiliation and more about their character and competence. I don’t care how they would vote on school prayer or abortion or gay marriage or gun laws. I want to know that they know what the hell they’re doing, and that they are made of that kind of unswerving steel that will not be rattled in moments that count, no matter what is coming at them. I want to know that they won’t flinch in the face of debate, danger, or death.

Other countries whose educational systems achieve more than ours often do so in part by attempting less. While school children in Japan are learning science, mathematics, and a foreign language, American school children are sitting around in circles, unburdening their psyches and “expressing themselves” on scientific, economic and military issues for which they lack even the rudiments of competence. Worse than what they are not learning is what they are learning—presumptuous superficiality, taught by practitioners of it. The

He was exasperated because he didn’t know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cosy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.

It’s this authentic sisterhood that heals the wounds of our experience of being targeted by the ‘shadow feminine’ – such as immature ‘mean girls’ of all ages who compare, gossip, judge, compete, or exclude other women, often in subtle and manipulative ways. Inclusion is the way of the sacred feminine – that’s the healing power of circle as a practice.

Love is not standing in someone’s shadow, it’s basking in their light. The blinding strength of your light combined pushes the darkness away. True love is not two half-lives joining together to form a perfect circle. It’s two people who were whole to begin with. Their individual circles join and overlap like a Venn diagram where their souls sit in-between, sharing the space instead of competing for it. And when you are around them, there’s no such thing as too close. You try to capture their whispered words with your lips so that they don’t escape and reach anyone else’s ears. You press your body up against theirs with a quiet sense of desperation, resenting the layers of skin and muscle which prevent you from sinking into their bones.

Celestial Music” I have a friend who still believes in heaven. Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to god, she thinks someone listens in heaven. On earth, she’s unusually competent. Brave, too, able to face unpleasantness. We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it. I’m always moved by weakness, by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality. But timid, also, quick to shut my eyes. Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out according to nature. For my sake, she intervened, brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down across the road. My friend says I shut my eyes to god, that nothing else explains my aversion to reality. She says I’m like the child who buries her head in the pillow so as not to see, the child who tells herself that light causes sadness— My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me to wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person— In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We’re walking on the same road, except it’s winter now; she’s telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music: look up, she says. When I look up, nothing. Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees like brides leaping to a great height— Then I’m afraid for her; I see her caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth— In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set; from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall. It’s this moment we’re both trying to explain, the fact that we’re at ease with death, with solitude. My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn’t move. She’s always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image capable of life apart from her. We’re very quiet. It’s peaceful sitting here, not speaking, the composition fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering— it’s this stillness that we both love. The love of form is a love of endings.

You’re okay,” I said happily. She gave me a teasing punch. “You knew I was.” “A phone call is different from seeing,” I said. I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I mean, I knew you were competent and brave and awesome, but, well … it’s still not easy having your wife off risking her life with a bunch of vampire-hating freaks.” I reached into my pocket. “Oh, and don’t forget this.” I got down on my knees and slipped on her diamond and ruby rings, which I’d been holding on to while she was away. “As promised. I mean, except for the naked part. But we can worry about that later.

You’re suggesting the mysterious X. Where do we look for him?’ Poirot said: ‘Obviously in a close circle. There were five people, were there not, whocould have been concerned?’ ‘Five? Let me see. There was the old duffer who messed about with his herb brewing. A dangerous hobby-but an amiable creature. Vague sort of person. Don’t see him as X. There was the girl-she might have polished off Caroline, but certainly not Amyas. Then there was the stockbroker-Crale’s best friend. That’s popular in detective stories, but I don’t believe in it in real life. There’s no one else-oh yes, the kid sister, but one doesn’t seriously consider her. That’s four.’ Hercule Poirot said: ‘You forget the governess.’ ‘Yes, that’s true. Wretched people, governesses, one never does remember them. I do recall her dimly though. Middle-aged, plain, competent. I suppose a psychologist would say that she had a guilty passion for Crale and therefore killed him. The repressed spinster! It’s no good-I just don’t believe it. As far as my dim remembrance goes she wasn’t the neurotic type.’ ‘It is a long time ago.’ ‘Fifteen or sixteen years, I suppose. Yes, quite that. You can’t expect my memories of the case to be very acute.

Specialisation, accompanied by exchange, is the source of economic prosperity. Here, in my own words, is what a modern version of Smithism claims. First, the spontaneous and voluntary exchange of goods and services leads to a division of labour in which people specialise in what they are good at doing. Second, this in turn leads to gains from trade for each party to a transaction, because everybody is doing what he is most productive at and has the chance to learn, practise and even mechanise his chosen task. Individuals can thus use and improve their own tacit and local knowledge in a way that no expert or ruler could. Third, gains from trade encourage more specialisation, which encourages more trade, in a virtuous circle. The greater the specialisation among producers, the greater is the diversification of consumption: in moving away from self-sufficiency people get to produce fewer things, but to consume more. Fourth, specialisation inevitably incentivises innovation, which is also a collaborative process driven by the exchange and combination of ideas. Indeed, most innovation comes about through the recombination of existing ideas for how to make or organise things. The more people trade and the more they divide labour, the more they are working for each other. The more they work for each other, the higher their living standards. The consequence of the division of labour is an immense web of cooperation among strangers: it turns potential enemies into honorary friends. A woollen coat, worn by a day labourer, was (said Smith) ‘the produce of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser . . .’ In parting with money to buy a coat, the labourer was not reducing his wealth. Gains from trade are mutual; if they were not, people would not voluntarily engage in trade. The more open and free the market, the less opportunity there is for exploitation and predation, because the easier it is for consumers to boycott the predators and for competitors to whittle away their excess profits. In its ideal form, therefore, the free market is a device for creating networks of collaboration among people to raise each other’s living standards, a device for coordinating production and a device for communicating information about needs through the price mechanism. Also a device for encouraging innovation. It is the very opposite of the rampant and selfish individualism that so many churchmen and others seem to think it is. The market is a system of mass cooperation. You compete with rival producers, sure, but you cooperate with your customers, your suppliers and your colleagues. Commerce both needs and breeds trust.

The game resembles the act of writing in that you can’t help but compete with yourself: no one is watching, but you still desire perfection, even if such a thing is unattainable. In fact, the toss of a Frisbee is a bit like the writing of a sentence. Each must move along a certain line to keep the game going forward. Each can go astray, spin out of control. At times what is called for is a long, unspooling line, a toss that slices and circles and hovers in the wind, feinting one way before turning back in another, just as a sentence can move in spirals around a central idea, curving ever closer to the center, the heart, the rock. Other times you need a direct approach. Straight and crisp. A shot from short range.

Commitment is what transforms a dream into reality. One percent or ninety-nine percent complete are both incomplete. Wanting is wishing or dreaming. Deciding is the willingness to do whatever it takes to make your wishes and dreams come true. Pondering on what you are going to do actually sucks up more time and energy than going out there and doing it. If you’re planted in an environment with depleted soil loaded with weeds, your conditions must change in order for you grow and thrive. As you change your circle of influence, your thinking changes, and ultimately your world changes too. When you are too busy trying to outshine others, you miss out on your own inner spark. If your focus is on competing with others, you cannot complete you. Perfection is a myth, a misconception, and just an opinion. A well-tailored business suit might look perfect to a banker, but deemed to be dreadful to a heavy metal rocker. Going out of your comfort zone might be gut-wrenching, but dying with the music still inside is even more painful. Stagnation drains your energy and slowly sucks the life out of you. When you declutter your mental space, just like clearing out physical space, you find valuables you had long forgotten about. Keeping emotional toxin in your head is like fertilizing unwanted weeds. Positivity is your weed killer. Turn it around, and let that poison fuel your passion, just like farmers using manure to fertilize plants. Like eating, going to the bathroom, or exercising, self-transformation cannot be delegated. I was a sunflower trying to survive and grow in a stinky muddy swamp, but instead being strangled by a bunch of weeds.

Yesterday while I was on the side of the mat next to some wrestlers who were warming up for their next match, I found myself standing side by side next to an extraordinary wrestler. He was warming up and he had that look of desperation on his face that wrestlers get when their match is about to start and their coach is across the gym coaching on another mat in a match that is already in progress. “Hey do you have a coach.” I asked him. “He's not here right now.” He quietly answered me ready to take on the task of wrestling his opponent alone. “Would you mind if I coached you?” His face tilted up at me with a slight smile and said. “That would be great.” Through the sounds of whistles and yelling fans I heard him ask me what my name was. “My name is John.” I replied. “Hi John, I am Nishan” he said while extending his hand for a handshake. He paused for a second and then he said to me: “John I am going to lose this match”. He said that as if he was preparing me so I wouldn’t get hurt when my coaching skills didn’t work magic with him today. I just said, “Nishan - No score of a match will ever make you a winner. You are already a winner by stepping onto that mat.” With that he just smiled and slowly ran on to the mat, ready for battle, but half knowing what the probable outcome would be. When you first see Nishan you will notice that his legs are frail - very frail. So frail that they have to be supported by custom made, form fitted braces to help support and straighten his limbs. Braces that I recognize all to well. Some would say Nishan has a handicap. I say that he has a gift. To me the word handicap is a word that describes what one “can’t do”. That doesn’t describe Nishan. Nishan is doing. The word “gift” is a word that describes something of value that you give to others. And without knowing it, Nishan is giving us all a gift. I believe Nishan’s gift is inspiration. The ability to look the odds in the eye and say “You don’t pertain to me.” The ability to keep moving forward. Perseverance. A “Whatever it takes” attitude. As he predicted, the outcome of his match wasn’t great. That is, if the only thing you judge a wrestling match by is the actual score. Nishan tried as hard as he could, but he couldn’t overcome the twenty-six pound weight difference that he was giving up to his opponent on this day in order to compete. You see, Nishan weighs only 80 pounds and the lowest weight class in this tournament was 106. Nishan knew he was spotting his opponent 26 pounds going into every match on this day. He wrestled anyway. I never did get the chance to ask him why he wrestles, but if I had to guess I would say, after watching him all day long, that Nishan wrestles for the same reasons that we all wrestle for. We wrestle to feel alive, to push ourselves to our mental, physical and emotional limits - levels we never knew we could reach. We wrestle to learn to use 100% of what we have today in hopes that our maximum today will be our minimum tomorrow. We wrestle to measure where we started from, to know where we are now, and to plan on getting where we want to be in the future. We wrestle to look the seemingly insurmountable opponent right in the eye and say, “Bring it on. - I can take whatever you can dish out.” Sometimes life is your opponent and just showing up is a victory. You don't need to score more points than your opponent in order to accomplish that. No Nishan didn’t score more points than any of his opponents on this day, that would have been nice, but I don’t believe that was the most important thing to Nishan. Without knowing for sure - the most important thing to him on this day was to walk with pride like a wrestler up to a thirty two foot circle, have all eyes from the crowd on him, to watch him compete one on one against his opponent - giving it all that he had. That is what competition is all about. Most of the times in wrestlin

Now, who and what is this minstrel in reality? Where does he come from? In what respects does he differ from his predecessors? He has been described as a cross between the early medieval court-singer and the ancient mime of classical times. The mime had never ceased to flourish since the days of classical antiquity; when even the last traces of classical culture disappeared, the descendants of the old mimes still continued to travel about the Empire, entertaining the masses with their unpretentious, unsophisticated and unliterary art. The Germanic countries were flooded out with mimes in the early Middle Ages; but until the ninth century the poets and singers at the courts kept themselves strictly apart from them. Not until they lost their cultured audience, as a result of the Carolingian Renaissance and the clericalism of the following generation, and came up against the competition of the mimes in the lower classes, did they have, to a certain extent, to become mimes themselves in order to be able to compete with their rivals. Thus both singers and comedians now move in the same circles, intermingle and influence each other so much that they soon become indistinguishable from one another. The mime and the scop both become the minstrel. The most striking characteristic of the minstrel is his versatility. The place of the cultured, highly specialized heroic ballad poet is now taken by the Jack of all trades, who is no longer merely a poet and singer, but also a musician and dancer, dramatist and actor, clown and acrobat, juggler and bear-leader, in a word, the universal jester and maître de plaisir of the age. Specialization, distinction and solemn dignity are now finished with; the court poet has become everybody’s fool and his social degradation has such a revolutionary and shattering effect on himself that he never entirely recovers from the shock. From now on he is one of the déclassés, in the same class as tramps and prostitutes, runaway clerics and sent-down students, charlatans and beggars. He has been called the ‘journalist of the age’, but he really goes in for entertainment of every kind: the dancing song as well as the satirical song, the fairy story as well as the mime, the legend of saints as well as the heroic epic. In this context, however, the epic takes on quite new features: it acquires in places a more pointed character with a new straining after effect, which was absolutely foreign to the spirit of the old heroic ballad. The minstrel no longer strikes the gloomy, solemn, tragi-heroic note of the ‘Hildebrandslied’, for he wants to make even the epic sound entertaining; he tries to provide sensations, effective climaxes and lively epigrams. Compared with the monuments of the older heroic poetry, the ‘Chanson de Roland’ never fails to reveal this popular minstrel taste for the piquant.

We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends. In this condition of apprehensive sobriety we are able to see that the contents of literature, art, music—even in some measure of divinity and school metaphysics—are not sophistry and illusion, but simply those elements of experience which scientists chose to leave out of account, for the good reason that they had no intellectual methods for dealing with them. In the arts, in philosophy, in religion men are trying—doubtless, without complete success—to describe and explain the non-measurable, purely qualitative aspects of reality. Since the time of Galileo, scientists have admitted, sometimes explicitly but much more often by implication, that they are incompetent to discuss such matters. The scientific picture of the world is what it is because men of science combine this incompetence with certain special competences. They have no right to claim that this product of incompetence and specialization is a complete picture of reality. As a matter of historical fact, however, this claim has constantly been made. The successive steps in the process of identifying an arbitrary abstraction from reality with reality itself have been described, very fully and lucidly, in Burtt’s excellent “Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science"; and it is therefore unnecessary for me to develop the theme any further. All that I need add is the fact that, in recent years, many men of science have come to realize that the scientific picture of the world is a partial one—the product of their special competence in mathematics and their special incompetence to deal systematically with aesthetic and moral values, religious experiences and intuitions of significance. Unhappily, novel ideas become acceptable to the less intelligent members of society only with a very considerable time-lag. Sixty or seventy years ago the majority of scientists believed—and the belief often caused them considerable distress—that the product of their special incompetence was identical with reality as a whole. Today this belief has begun to give way, in scientific circles, to a different and obviously truer conception of the relation between science and total experience. The masses, on the contrary, have just reached the point where the ancestors of today’s scientists were standing two generations back. They are convinced that the scientific picture of an arbitrary abstraction from reality is a picture of reality as a whole and that therefore the world is without meaning or value. But nobody likes living in such a world. To satisfy their hunger for meaning and value, they turn to such doctrines as nationalism, fascism and revolutionary communism. Philosophically and scientifically, these doctrines are absurd; but for the masses in every community, they have this great merit: they attribute the meaning and value that have been taken away from the world as a whole to the particular part of the world in which the believers happen to be living.

Dear KDP Author, Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year. With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution – places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if “publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.” Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion. Well… history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Fast forward to today, and it’s the e-book’s turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette – a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate – are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive. Perhaps channeling Orwell’s decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn’t only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette’s readers. The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will “devalue books” and hurt “Arts and Letters.” They’re wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books. Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive. Moreover, e-books are highly price elastic. This means that when the price goes down, customers buy much more. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that’s 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.

great qualities that allow young athletes to discover their bodies and explore the limits of their movements. They need to have room to grow and discover through movement. Bring in the play element early and keep it there! A positive trend is the continued opportunities for women to compete in sport. Unfortunately the training and preparation have not kept pace with the opportunities to compete. Biologically and socioculturally, women are different from men. These differences must be accounted for in training and preparation. Women are certainly more susceptible to certain injuries, specifically ACL tears; this demands that prevention programs be incorporated in daily training. To do otherwise would be remiss. There is still much misunderstanding about the role of strength training with female athletes. Some athletes and coaches just do not recognize its importance. Culturally in many circles it is not acceptable for women to be muscular and fit. For female athletes to receive proper training, these barriers need to be broken down. There is no doubt about the need for more qualified women in coaching. The time commitment and lifestyle dissuade

The most important thing in terms of your circle of competence is not how large it is but how well you define the perimeter.

More precisely, a Hedgehog Concept is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of the following three circles: 1. What you can be the best in the world at (and, equally important, what you cannot be the best in the world at). This discerning standard goes far beyond core competence. Just because you possess a core competence doesn’t necessarily mean you can be the best in the world at it. Conversely, what you can be the best at might not even be something in which you are currently engaged. 2. What drives your economic engine. All the good-to-great companies attained piercing insight into how to most effectively generate sustained and robust cash flow and profitability. In particular, they discovered the single denominator—profit per x—that had the greatest impact on their economics. (It would be cash flow per x in the social sector.) 3. What you are deeply passionate about. The good-to-great companies focused on those activities that ignited their passion. The idea here is not to stimulate passion but to discover what makes you passionate.

it is better to study a tradition as near to its roots as possible in order to gain a competent and confident understanding of its practices.

You don’t have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very

Now we have come full circle to the subtitle of this book: children learn by unlearning other languages. Viewed in the Darwinian light, all humanly possible grammars compete to match the language spoken in the child's environment. And fitness, because we have competition, can be measured by the compatibility of a grammar with what a child hears in a particular linguistic environment. This theory of language takes both nature and nurture into account: nature proposes, and nurture disposes.

You must do something that you are passionate about—and something that is “within your circle of competence,” as Warren Buffett puts it. The road to get there is almost guaranteed to be arduous, but if you love what you do, you’ll thrive on the inevitable challenges and have the stamina to achieve your potential.

be on the lookout for chauffeur knowledge. Do not confuse the company spokesperson, the ringmaster, the newscaster, the schmoozer, the verbiage vendor or the cliché generator with those who possess true knowledge. How do you recognise the difference? There is a clear indicator: true experts recognise the limits of what they know and what they do not know. If they find themselves outside their circle of competence, they keep quiet or simply say, ‘I don’t know.’ This they utter unapologetically, even with a certain pride. From chauffeurs, we hear every line except this. See

The petty terror that reigns there and makes everyone so stiff is not that of the Bolshevik Party. It’s more like that of fashion, that terror which no one exerts in person, but which affects everyone alike. In these milieus, one is afraid of not being radical anymore, just as elsewhere one fears not being fashionable, cool or hip. It doesn’t take much to spoil a reputation. One avoids going to the root of things in favor of a superficial consumption of theories, demos, and relations. The fierce competition between groups and inside them causes them to periodically implode. But there’s always fresh, young, and abused flesh to make up for the departure of the exhausted, the damaged, the disgusted, and the emptied-out. An a posteriori bewilderment overtakes the person who’s deserted these circles: how can anyone submit to such a mutilating pressure for such enigmatic stakes? It’s approximately the same kind of bewilderment that must take hold of any overworked ex-manager turned baker when he looks back on his previous life. The isolation of these milieus is structural: between them and the world they’ve interposed radicality as a standard. They don’t perceive phenomena anymore, just their measure. At a certain point in the autophagy, some will compete for most radical by critiquing the milieu itself, which won’t make the slightest dent in its structure.“It seems to us that what really reduces our freedom,” wrote Malatesta, “and makes intiative impossible, is disempowering isolation

Search yourself and find your passion Stay in your circle of inspirational competence with emotional stability. Shine your personality for others to follow Have fun, enjoy yourself, and model your success!

inside the truck the radio rattles and clicks with the constant clucking of vulgar hens, a sewing circle of truckers and crane operators nagging at each other in a constant stream of bilious invective. It spills out of the speakers and fills the cab with scab picking and snark. Dressed up as jokes—with all the plausible deniability that provides—the operators compete relentlessly to get under each other’s skin.

The immature content themselves with being able to effectively manipulate the basics needed to perpetuate their daily existence. The mature never lose the satisfaction of finding new ways to use the self to influence the non-self. Throughout their lives, they continue to gain in competence, and the more domains they master, the more confident they feel in trying new things. Efficacy (the ability to make things happen) leads to greater self-efficacy (the belief that one possesses said ability), which in turn increases efficacy, in an endlessly virtuous circle.

To assume that men and women are psychologically the same, as was generally done in traditional social science and still is in some out-of-date scientific circles, goes against what we now know about our evolved sexual psychology. Given the power of sexual selection, under which each sex competes for access to desirable mates, it would defy scientific logic to find that men and women were psychologically identical in aspects of mating about which they have faced different adaptive challenges for millions of years.

Learn at least the basics of the realm you’re operating in, while acknowledging that you’re a Stranger, not a Lifer. However, keep in mind that basic information is easy to obtain and often gives the acquirer an unwarranted confidence. Talk to someone whose circle of competence in the area is strong. Take the time to do a bit of research to at least define questions you need to ask, and what information you need, to make a good decision. If you ask a person to answer the question for you, they’ll be giving you a fish. If you ask them detailed and thoughtful questions, you’ll learn how to fish. Furthermore, when you need the advice of others, especially in higher stakes situations, ask questions to probe the limits of their circles. Then ask yourself how the situation might influence the information they choose to provide you. Use a broad understanding of the basic mental models of the world to augment your limited understanding of the field in which you find yourself a Stranger. These will help you identify the foundational concepts that would be most useful. These then serve as a guide to help you navigate the situation you are in.

At any rate, "surfing" is a very powerful model.However, Berkshire Hathaway, by and large, does not invest in these people that are "surfing" on complicated technology. After all, we're cranky and idiosyncratic as you may have noticed.And Warren and I don't feel like we have any great advantage in the high- tech sector. In fact, we feel like we're at a big disadvantage in trying to understand the nature of technical developments in software, computer chips, or what have you. So we tend to avoid that stuff, based on our personal inadequacies. Again, that is a very, very powerful idea. Every person is going to have a circle of competence. And it's going to be very hard to enlarge that circle.

Web Circle is your one-stop destination, offering a myriad of web solutions sans the complexities involved. We level the playing field, making it possible for you to compete with bigger players out there. Our solutions are simple, yes, but expensive, no. We have been there for nearly a decade and know what we are talking about.

To assume that men and women are psychologically the same, as was generally done in traditional social science and still is in some out-of-date scientific circles, goes against what we now know about our evolved sexual psychology. Given the power of sexual selection, under which each sex competes for access to desirable mates, it would defy scientific logic to find that men and women were psychologically identical in aspects of mating about which they have faced different adaptive challenges for millions of years. At this point in history, we can no longer doubt that men and women differ in their preferences for a mate: primarily for youth and physical attractiveness in one case, and for status, maturity, success, protection, and economic resources in the other. Men and women also differ in their proclivities for casual sex without emotional involvement, in their desire for sexual variety, and in the nature of their sexual fantasies.

Do your people ever have tournaments like this?” Shea thought about it. “I don’t think so. They’re mostly focused on training. Once an apprentice passes the last test, they’re assigned to a village or their next posting. It can be years before they circle back to the keep again.” She tilted her head. “Some of the towns have festivals where there are occasional competitions, like who can toss a rock the farthest.”   Shea had never been very interested in attending those, not understanding the interest in comparing whose throw had the longest reach.   “There are events like that, but most test a skill. My favorites have always been hand-to-hand combat or tests of horsemanship.”   Shea would have liked to see him compete in one of those. “And how many of these have you won?”   He gave her a wicked smile. “Every single one.”   She lifted an eyebrow. “Every one? Even your first?”   “I’m a legend. Haven’t you heard?”   She snorted. “You’re something all right.

He lived and moved in a curiously exalted, isolated world between his office on Fifth Avenue, which resembled a millionaire's apartment, and his bachelor apartment on Park, which resembled a business man's office. He moved in a vicious circle so rapid that he hadn't even time to realize how rich he was. It was only during his hurried passage between these two high perches [...] that Ludlow Walcot's feet had any contact with his mother earth. All day and all night (for not even his dreams were his own) his giddy brain was assailed by business details which hammered at it with the persistence of a riveting machine, his stomach insulted by snacks and patent nerve-foods, that jostled each other in competing for the attention of his bewildered digestion.

Even God could not create a rational will not oriented toward deifying union with himself, any more than he could create a square circle, a married bachelor, a two-dimensional cube, or a morally and intellectually competent supporter of Donald Trump.

Understanding your circle of competence improves decision-making and outcomes.

The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles). To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. Just because something is your core business—just because you’ve been doing it for years or perhaps even decades—does not necessarily mean you can be the best in the world at it. And if you cannot be the best in the world at your core business, then your core business absolutely cannot form the basis of a great company. It must be replaced with a simple concept that reflects deep understanding of three intersecting circles.

We cannot tell people to trust us. We cannot instruct people to come up with big ideas. And we certainly can’t demand that people cooperate. These are always results—the results of feeling safe and trusted among the people with whom we work. When the Circle of Safety is strong, we naturally share ideas, share intelligence and share the burdens of stress. Every single skill and strength we have is amplified to better compete and face the dangers in the world outside and advance the organization’s interests vastly more effectively.

So you have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.

The refocusing of attention from cost to time is enabling the early innovators to become time-based competitors who can, literally, run circles around their slower competition. Time-based competitors are offering greater varieties of products at lower costs and in less time than their more pedestrian competitors.

The method was the same: Estimate an investment’s intrinsic value, handicap its risk, buy using margin of safety, concentrate, stay in the circle of competence, let it roll as compounding did the work.

A future world of computer circuits, getting smaller and smaller, yet faster and faster, is a plausible future "life- form" more technically competent than our own. The smaller a circuit can be made, the smaller are the regions over which voltages appear, and hence the smaller these voltages can be. Tiny layers of material just a few atoms thick allow the electronic properties of a material to be finely tuned and rendered far more effective. The first transistors were made of germanium but were far from reliable and failed at high temperatures. When high-quality silicon crystals could be grown they were used in a generation of faster and more reliable silicon transistors and integrated circuitry. Newer materials like gallium arsenide allow electrons to travel through them even faster than through silicon and has given rise to the line of cray supercomputers. The evolution of computer power is represented in figure 7.3. Undoubtedly other materials will eventually take over. The story may even come full circle back to carbon again. Pure carbon in the form of diamond is about the best conductor of heat, a property that is a premium in a densely packed array of circuits.

Someone must have knocked on the door. She rushes to it, looks through the peephole, and steps back, muttering to herself. I can’t quite read her lips. Emily opens the door, and a man brushes past her. He’s wearing a button-down shirt, a tie, and kicks that cost more than my monthly rent. He puts down his suitcase, shakes hands with Mr. Madison, and turns to Emily. He starts toward her, his arms outstretched. I step forward to get between them, but Mrs. Madison grabs my arm. “Don’t,” she warns. “This will work itself out.” Emily lets him pull her into an embrace, but she doesn’t hug him back. She cringes instead. This warms my heart. She looks over at me, and I see something I don’t quite understand in her gaze. Is it pity? For me? Is she afraid I can’t compete with this man? Who the hell is he, anyway? I draw a circle around my lips, asking her who he is without anyone seeing me. She crooks her index finger into the sign for the letter x. That’s her ex? Seriously? Emily’s past has just walked in the door. And if the look on his face is any indication, he no longer wants to be in the past. He wants more. I look at her father, who’s smirking at me with his arms folded in front of his chest. He doesn’t want the asshat to be in the past either. Fine. I’ll knock his ass into the middle of next week. That’s the only way he’ll ever be a part of her future. I take a step forward flexing my fingers as I go. He’s as big as I am, but I’d be willing to bet his jaw is made of candy, just like his ass.

Strong leaders, in contrast, extend the Circle of Safety to include every single person who works for the organization. Self-preservation is unnecessary and fiefdoms are less able to survive. With clear standards for entry into the Circle and competent layers of leadership that are able to extend the Circle’s perimeter, the stronger and better equipped the organization becomes. It is easy to know when we are in the Circle of Safety because we can feel it. We feel valued by our colleagues and we feel cared for by our superiors. We become absolutely confident that the leaders of the organization and all those with whom we work are there for us and will do what they can to help us succeed. We become members of the group. We feel like we belong. When we believe that those inside our group, those inside the Circle, will look out for us, it creates an environment for the free exchange of information and effective communication. This is fundamental to driving innovation, preventing problems from escalating and making organizations better equipped to defend themselves from the outside dangers and to seize the opportunities.

You have to stick within what I call your circle of competence. You have to know what you understand and what you don’t understand. It’s not terribly important how big the circle is. But it is terribly important that you know where the perimeter is.

The email story caused all Planet Hillary’s competing, concentric circles to combust. No one frothed at the mouth blaming the email controversy on a voracious and irresponsible news media more than the Ragin’ Cajun.

He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity.

Humans are capable of great empathy and of horrifying callousness and violence. We have evolved this way because it has been in our interest to both cooperate within our own groups and compete with others. Our empathy is therefore largely limited to those whom we see as members of our own tribe and our callous disregard and violence is reserved for those seen as competitors or traitors. By seeking to expand our circle of empathy ever wider, liberal humanism has achieved unprecedented human equality. It did so by exploiting the better part of our nature—our empathy and sense of fairness.35 By seeking to divide humans into marginalized identity groups and their oppressors, Social Justice risks fuelling our worst tendencies—our tribalism and vengefulness. This cannot work out well for women, or for minority groups, or for society as a whole.

The lesson from this habit is to take a break and find your own circle of competence! And then act! Everything falls in place and you would find yourself on the right path.

In valuing businesses, it is important to understand the language of accounting, to stay within your circle of competence, and to focus on what is meaningful and sustainable.

The most important thing successful investors have in common is worrying about what they can control. They don't waste time worrying about which way the market will go or what the Federal Reserve will do or what inflation or interest rates will be next year. They stay within their circle of competence, however narrow that might be. Warren Buffett said, “What counts for most people in investing is not how much they know, but rather how realistically they define what they don't know.

There are three key practices needed in order to build and maintain a circle of competence: curiosity and a desire to learn, monitoring, and feedback.

Having a clearly defined circle of competence ensures you play a game where you’re the favorite to win. Your circle of competence contains your individual fundamentals—the actions you should focus on to make the most out of your time and efforts.

To beat the market, focus on investments well within your knowledge and ability to evaluate, your “circle of competence.” Be sure your information is current, accurate, and essentially complete. Be aware that information flows down a “food chain,” with those who get it first “eating” and those who get it late being eaten. Finally, don’t bet on an investment unless you can demonstrate by logic, and if appropriate by track record, that you have an edge. Whether or not you try to beat the market, you can do better by properly managing your wealth, which I talk about next.

Be patient and selective, saying no to almost everything. Exploit the market’s bipolar mood swings. Buy stocks at a big discount to their underlying value. Stay within your circle of competence. Avoid anything too hard. Make a small number of mispriced bets with minimal downside and significant upside.

The modern Berkshire Hathaway that he had created churned out new beads for the rosary almost like a clockwork. Buffett’s hunt for things to buy had become more ambitious, free of the cigar butts and lawsuits of the decades before. The great engine of compounding worked as a servant on his behalf, at exponential speed and under the gathering approval of a public gaze. The method was the same: estimate an investment’s intrinsic value, handicap its risk, buy using margin of safety, concentrate, stay in the circle of competence, let it roll as compounding did the work. Anyone could understand these simple ideas, but few could execute them. Even though Buffett made the process look effortless, the technique and discipline underlying it actually did involve an enormous amount of work for him and his employees. As

When Warren was a little boy fingerprinting nuns and collecting bottle caps, he had no knowledge of what he would someday become. Yet as he rode his bike through Spring Valley, flinging papers day after day, and raced through the halls of The Westchester, pulse pounding, trying to make his deliveries on time, if you had asked him if he wanted to be the richest man on earth—with his whole heart, he would have said, Yes. That passion had led him to study a universe of thousands of stocks. It made him burrow into libraries and basements for records nobody else troubled to get. He sat up nights studying hundreds of thousands of numbers that would glaze anyone else’s eyes. He read every word of several newspapers each morning and sucked down the Wall Street Journal like his morning Pepsi, then Coke. He dropped in on companies, spending hours talking about barrels with the woman who ran an outpost of Greif Bros. Cooperage or auto insurance with Lorimer Davidson. He read magazines like the Progressive Grocer to learn how to stock a meat department. He stuffed the backseat of his car with Moody’s Manuals and ledgers on his honeymoon. He spent months reading old newspapers dating back a century to learn the cycles of business, the history of Wall Street, the history of capitalism, the history of the modern corporation. He followed the world of politics intensely and recognized how it affected business. He analyzed economic statistics until he had a deep understanding of what they signified. Since childhood, he had read every biography he could find of people he admired, looking for the lessons he could learn from their lives. He attached himself to everyone who could help him and coattailed anyone he could find who was smart. He ruled out paying attention to almost anything but business—art, literature, science, travel, architecture—so that he could focus on his passion. He defined a circle of competence to avoid making mistakes. To limit risk he never used any significant amount of debt. He never stopped thinking about business: what made a good business, what made a bad business, how they competed, what made customers loyal to one versus another. He had an unusual way of turning problems around in his head, which gave him insights nobody else had. He developed a network of people who—for the sake of his friendship as well as his sagacity—not only helped him but also stayed out of his way when he wanted them to. In hard times or easy, he never stopped thinking about ways to make money. And all of this energy and intensity became the motor that powered his innate intelligence, temperament, and skills.

There are many distractions that can cloud your judgment when trading. Your job is to keep your thinking pure and focused on what matters within your own circle of competence. The hallmark of a pro is to operate within this circle and ignore everything else.

Providing a good user experience meant increasing numbers of users. More users meant more buyers for third-party software, which meant strong revenues for the developers, making it attractive for more and more developers. More developers meant more apps, and more apps made the devices more attractive for users, leading to further growth in the ecosystem for all participants. Once the virtuous circle starts, it is very difficult for competitors to get it to turn in the other direction. Nokia could not compete.

When you are with certain people, do you invariably feel like “less?” Do you spend all of your energy worrying about pleasing someone else? Is his or her happiness more important than yours? Are their shifting moods a constant concern to you, because you never know when to expect a storm? It may seem that when you spend time together, you need to work hard to keep them upbeat and happy, as if it were your responsibility. It can seem like a constant struggle, with you never certain just where you’re going to end up. A toxic relationship has lots of negativity. Nothing is ever right. It can be you, your family, your job, your friends, the weather, the food, the news – anything. There’s always something wrong; something to complain about. In a toxic relationship, you can’t ever do anything right. If you get a promotion, you’ll be accused of seeing work as too important. If you don’t get promoted, you’ll be accused of not being competent enough. If you buy a new outfit, you’re a spendthrift. If you wear something old, you’re frumpy. The truth is, you’re caught in a vicious circle where you can no longer win. Toxic relationships can become familiar and almost comfortable, if that is what we are used to. It may become difficult or impossible for you to acknowledge a positive relationship because it lacks the drama that you are used

Habit 1: Reading + Numbers Habit 2: The Principal of Compounding in Finance and Life Habit 3: The circle of competence Habit 4: Power of isolation, thinking and No Internet! Habit 5: Inner scorecard or outer scorecard? Habit 6: Do what you love – The Science of not getting bored and eventually succeed! Habit 7: Cash is King – Really? Habit 8: Invest in yourself - Pay yourself first! Habit 9: Time management: - 24 hours/1440 minutes a day

Careful thought here will serve the Church for years to come. Churches often find themselves disconnecting their strategic plans from their grievances with church culture. Leaders see a particular problem, but we want to move past repentance right into obedience. Leadership like this only glorifies our own wisdom and righteousness. Appropriate corporate repentance magnifies the Lord of mercy in the church. Not only this, but members of our churches see what we see. When major unbiblical deviations go unaddressed, it only serves to undermine the membership’s view of the care, courage, or competency of the leadership. If we want to see something in culture change, we need to get specific. Exposition. This next stage of managing change will begin a circular process. In this stage, new identified elements of needed cultural change will be added to the existing healthy elements of culture being maintained and reinforced. The leadership team will find itself running around the process circle from exposition to illustration to incorporation to evaluation and a back again to exposition. It may take more laps than a NASCAR race, but culture will change over time. And the process must never end because the culture must be continually cultivated. Exposition is the step in the process that gives Christ-followers a tremendous confidence in the possible future for any church. While formation is always challenging, who better to understand than those the Lord is sanctifying daily? Every single day, we must come to our Bible expecting God to change us, renew us, and cause us to repent. It should be no different for the Church of God. And the means that God uses to shape individuals is the same means He will use to change a church’s culture. The teaching and preaching of God’s Word is our hope and God’s power for change. This step in culture change is so important. The Word of God is powerful to renew hearts and produce fruit among God’s people.

Contestants were selected from the studio audience. By answering an initial question, a contestant won three darts, which he threw at the “Dr. Pepper dartboard.” The board was ten feet high and contained circles with values ranging from $2 to $16. Three darts in the $16 circle netted a contestant the top preliminary prize, $48. If a contestant missed his question, he was given the chance to win his darts anyway, through a variety of forfeit stunts. In one such, a woman had to keep her composure and try to hit the dartboard while sitting on the lap of a stranger, a soldier from the audience. In a finale, the contestants were assembled, given numbered darts, and allowed to compete in a one-shot-only toss at the bull’s eye for a $100 grand prize.

circle of competence.

We're making profiteroles." Profiteroles. Little cream puffs filled with vanilla ice cream and drowned in thick chocolate sauce. "Ha! I knew it!" he said triumphantly. "You already look ten times better. There is nothing as satisfying as making choux pastry." It was exactly what she was thinking. Choux pastry was literally one of her favorite things to make in the whole world. But she didn't tell him that. Instead, she grabbed an apron from a hook on the wall and tied it on. Together, they melted the butter with water in a saucepan, then added the flour, stirring with a wooden spoon until it pulled away from the sides and formed a ball- that was Rosie's favorite part, the way it came together like that. There was something so satisfying about it. Then they scooped the choux into bags and piped them into little circles on a baking sheet, competing to see who could do it better- Bodie was faster, but Rosie was neater.

He rubbed the side of his face, using his left hand. No wedding ring, she noticed. But then there hadn’t been last time, either. He gave her a lopsided smile. “Sounds like you’re still a little angry.” “I’m not angry, O’Dell. Just really not interested in seeing you. Or talking to you. Or even breathing the same air as you.” His eyebrows went up. “That’s harsh.” Obviously not harsh enough because he didn’t leave. Instead he wandered to the display of chocolate letters and selected an “S.” For Sage? “ I owe you an apology,” he allowed. “Five years ago you owed me an apology. Now, you just need to walk out that door and let me go on pretending I never met you.” He sighed like she was the dolt in the classroom who just didn’t get it. “I did try to apologize. But you left town mighty fast.” Less than twenty-four hours after she crashed on that second barrel, her father had shown up in Casper, Wyoming and had whisked her home. But there had been time for Dawson to reach her. If he’d wanted to. That had been the last rodeo she’d ever competed in. And it had been the last time she’d let herself get tangled up with a cowboy, too. “Sage, even if it is a little late, I still want to say it. I was sorry then, and I’m sorry now.” Damn, if he didn’t look sincere. But she hardened her heart. Facts were facts and how sorry could he be if he’d waited so long to find her? Keeping her tone artificially sweet, she asked, “What exactly are you sorry for? Would