“
Every flower blooms at its own pace.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
Competition is a rude yet effective motivation.
”
”
Toba Beta (Master of Stupidity)
“
You were born a winner, a warrior, one who defied the odds by surviving the most gruesome battle of them all - the race to the egg. And now that you are a giant, why do you even doubt victory against smaller numbers and wider margins? The only walls that exist are those you have placed in your mind. And whatever obstacles you conceive, exist only because you have forgotten what you have already achieved.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
I’m not interested in competing with anyone. I hope we all make it.
”
”
Erica Cook
“
Once you figure out what you want in life—expect nothing less.
”
”
Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
“
Needs cause motivation. Deep-rooted desires for esteem, affection, belonging, achievement, self-actualization, power, and control motivate us to push for what we want and need in our lives.
”
”
Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
“
When healthy competition prevails -- you come out to play and you play to win.
”
”
Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
“
To be a champion, compete; to be a great champion, compete with the best; but to be the greatest champion, compete with yourself.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Men write more books. Men give more lectures. Men ask more questions after lectures. Men post more e-mail to Internet discussion groups. To say this is due to patriarchy is to beg the question of the behavior's origin. If men control society, why don't they just shut up and enjoy their supposed prerogatives? The answer is obvious when you consider sexual competition: men can't be quiet because that would give other men a chance to show off verbally. Men often bully women into silence, but this is usually to make room for their own verbal display. If men were dominating public language just to maintain patriarchy, that would qualify as a puzzling example of evolutionary altruism—a costly, risky individual act that helps all of one's sexual competitors (other males) as much as oneself. The ocean of male language that confronts modern women in bookstores, television, newspapers, classrooms, parliaments, and businesses does not necessarily come from a male conspiracy to deny women their voice. It may come from an evolutionary history of sexual selection in which the male motivation to talk was vital to their reproduction.
”
”
Geoffrey Miller (The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature)
“
Good becomes better by playing against better, but better doesn't become the best by playing against good.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Never underestimate a warrior; the lion in him may be sleeping, but that does not mean he’s dead.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
The feeling of being in competition for scarce resources has powerfully motivating properties.
”
”
Robert B. Cialdini (Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials))
“
While good strategy content is based on a compelling value proposition for buyers with a robust profit proposition for the organization, sustainable strategy execution is based largely on a motivating-people proposition.
”
”
W. Chan Kim (Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant)
“
I am not stopping till my enemies become my friends.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
When I see an arrogant man, I see one less competitor.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
God gave us ground we created a city, God gave us time we need to create a future.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
I’d rather go into a competition as the underdog. Less pressure to perform, and more motivation.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Seriously delirious, but not at all serious)
“
Competition is for losers.
”
”
Peter Thiel
“
Time is always new, for dreams to come true
Destiny is yours, to do what you do
Change is different, but only for awhile
Free will it always, brings in a whole new style
Competition makes, the fight all worth your while
”
”
Marie Helen Abramyan
“
Never despair if you have to start at the bottom; not even the sun rises from the top.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Losing teaches you how to win; winning teaches you how not to lose.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Talent silences your competition; genius deafens them.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Complements from your companion will do you no good, but if you get complements from your competitors it means you are really doing good.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
Competition is what motivates us, but it’s how we compete that drives us to become better—or unhinged.
”
”
Evy Poumpouras (Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, and Live Fearlessly)
“
Now, for example, people with freckles aren’t thought of as a minority by the nonfreckled. They aren’t a minority in the sense we’re talking about. And why aren’t they? Because a minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of a threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary. Anyone here disagree with that? If you do, just ask yourself, What would this particular minority do if it suddenly became the majority overnight? You see what I mean? Well, if you don’t – think it over!
“All right. Now along come the liberals – including everybody in this room, I trust – and they say, ‘Minorities are just people, like us.’ Sure, minorities are people – people, not angels. Sure, they’re like us – but not exactly like us; that’s the all-too- familiar state of liberal hysteria in which you begin to kid yourself you honestly cannot see any difference between a Negro and a Swede….” (Why, oh why daren’t George say “between Estelle Oxford and Buddy Sorensen”? Maybe, if he did dare, there would be a great atomic blast of laughter, and everybody would embrace, and the kingdom of heaven would begin, right here in classroom. But then again, maybe it wouldn’t.)
“So, let’s face it, minorities are people who probably look and act and – think differently from us and hay faults we don’t have. We may dislike the way they look and act, and we may hate their faults. And it’s better if we admit to disliking and hating them than if we try to smear our feelings over with pseudo liberal sentimentality. If we’re frank about our feelings, we have a safety valve; and if we have a safety valve, we’re actually less likely to start persecuting. I know that theory is unfashionable nowadays. We all keep trying to believe that if we ignore something long enough it’ll just vanish….
“Where was I? Oh yes. Well, now, suppose this minority does get persecuted, never mind why – political, economic, psychological reasons. There always is a reason, no matter how wrong it is – that’s my point. And, of course, persecution itself is always wrong; I’m sure we all agree there. But the worst of it is, we now run into another liberal heresy. Because the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, therefore the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure. Can’t you see what nonsense that is? What’s to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse? Did all the Christian victims in the arena have to be saints?
“And I’ll tell you something else. A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority–not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities, because all minorities are in competition: each one proclaims that its sufferings are the worst and its wrongs are the blackest. And the more they all hate, and the more they’re all persecuted, the nastier they become! Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you’re being persecuted, you hate what’s happening to You, you hate the people who are making it happen; you’re in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn’t recognize love if you met it! You’d suspect love! You’d think there was something behind it – some motive – some trick…
”
”
Christopher Isherwood (A Single Man)
“
When you can't win by being better, you can win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it easier to stand out. You can shortcut the need for a genetic advantage (or for years of practice) by rewriting the rules. A good player works hard to win the game everyone else is playing. A great player creates a new game that favors their strengths and avoids their weaknesses.
”
”
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
“
The most important role of managers is to create an environment in which people are passionately dedicated to winning in the marketplace. Fear plays a major role in creating and maintaining such passion. Fear of competition, fear of bankruptcy, fear of being wrong and fear of losing can all be powerful motivators.
”
”
Andrew S. Grove (Only the Paranoid Survive)
“
Because the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, therefore the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure...What's to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse? Did all the Christian victims on the arena have to be saints?
...A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority - not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities - because all minorities are in competition; each one proclaims that its sufferings are the worst and its wrongs are the blackest. And the more they all hate, and the more they're all persecuted, the nastier they become! Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you’re being persecuted, you hate what’s happening to you, you hate the people who are making it happen; you’re in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn’t recognize love if you met it! You’d suspect love! You’d think there was something behind it—some motive—some trick.
”
”
Christopher Isherwood (A Single Man)
“
When we donate to a good cause, it “says” to our associates, “Look, I’m willing to spend my resources for the benefit of others. I’m playing a positive-sum, cooperative game with society.” This helps explain why generosity is so important for those who aspire to leadership. No one wants leaders who play zero-sum, competitive games with the rest of society. If their wins are our losses, why should we support them? Instead we want leaders with a prosocial orientation, people who will look out for us because we’re all in it together.
”
”
Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
“
When it comes to creating things, I compete with nature not with men.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
I don't consider those competitions fair where judges get to decide the winner, because selected judges quite often are not worthy or qualified enough to make the right decision.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
True champions, like the sun, cannot be eclipsed for long.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Today I will work when others procrastinate, I will confront my fears when others hide from theirs, and I will create solutions when others find excuses; today I refuse to allow my enemies to out work me.
”
”
Noel DeJesus
“
But for most trees, height is all about getting more sun. A forest is an intensely competitive place, and sunlight is a scarce but critical resource. And even when you’re a redwood, the tallest of all tree species, you still have to worry about getting enough sun because you’re in a forest of other redwoods. Often a species’ most important competitor is itself. Thus the redwood is locked in an evolutionary arms race—or in this case, a “height race”—with itself. It grows tall because other redwoods are tall, and if it doesn’t throw most of its effort into growing upward as fast as possible, it will literally wither and die in the shadows of its rivals.
”
”
Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
“
Another key strategic concept deriving from competitor analysis is creating a situation of mixed motives or conflicting goals for competitors. This strategy involves finding moves for which retaliation, though effective, would hurt the competitor’s broader position. For example, as IBM responds to the threat of the minicomputer with its own minicomputer, it may hasten the decline in growth of its large computers and accelerate the changeover to minicomputers. Placing competitors in a situation of conflicting goals can be a very effective strategic approach for attacking established firms that have been successful in their markets. Small firms and newly entered firms often have very little legacy in the existing strategies in the industry and can reap great rewards from finding strategies that penalize competitors for their stake in these existing strategies.
”
”
Michael E. Porter (Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors)
“
Most of us are continually engaged in some form of pursuit. We are seeking excellence within one or more areas in our lives, and that is the basis of our motivation. It is human nature to have a need to get ahead, need a little something more—it’s in our DNA. Although we may not be certain of what we need at any given moment, we know there’s something. It’s a competitive itch and desire to improve that never goes away.
”
”
Lorii Myers (No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book (3 Off the Tee, #3))
“
MY FIVE DOS FOR GETTING BACK INTO THE GAME:
1. Do expect defeat. It’s a given when the stakes are high and the competition is working ferociously to beat you. If you’re surprised when it happens, you’re dreaming; dreamers don’t last long.
2. Do force yourself to stop looking backward and dwelling on the professional “train wreck” you have just been in. It’s mental quicksand.
3. Do allow yourself appropriate recovery—grieving—time. You’ve been knocked senseless; give yourself a little time to recuperate. A keyword here is “little.” Don’t let it drag on.
4. Do tell yourself, “I am going to stand and fight again,” with the knowledge that often when things are at their worst you’re closer than you can imagine to success. Our Super Bowl victory arrived less than sixteen months after my “train wreck” in Miami.
5. Do begin planning for your next serious encounter. The smallest steps—plans—move you forward on the road to recovery. Focus on the fix.
MY FIVE DON’TS:
1. Don’t ask, “Why me?”
2. Don’t expect sympathy.
3. Don’t bellyache.
4. Don’t keep accepting condolences.
5. Don’t blame others.
”
”
Bill Walsh (The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership)
“
Competition in business is a blessing, for without it, we wouldn't be motivated to improve.
”
”
Nabil N. Jamal
“
If you are a winner by the judgements of few judges and not by your performance, you are not a real winner.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
If the reason of your sleeplessness is competition, then you will make a successful businessman.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
In the presence of the sun nobody sees the stars; excel, and you too will eclipse your competition.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Knowledge imparts a sense of authority. It will help you stand out and give you an edge over your competition.
”
”
Susan C. Young (The Art of Preparation: 8 Ways to Plan with Purpose & Intention for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #2))
“
If there was no such thing as 'Competition' , would there be such a thing as 'Success
”
”
Hiba Fatima Ahmad
“
If you don’t plant any seed today.
You will be bitter, petty and have
jealous , When others are harvesting
what they planted. If you do nothing ,
don't expect to be something.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
We still have people who are proud of hating others. Not knowing that their stress,depression, suffering and sleepless nights comes from that hate.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
Competition might motivate you at first, urging you to expend more dollars and energy to win. But if competition leads you down the wrong path, you’ll be stuck playing someone else’s game.
”
”
Sally Hogshead (How the World Sees You: Discover Your Highest Value Through the Science of Fascination)
“
Society is competitive and some feel inferior and are jealous of others. This motivates them to believe and spread lies. They satisfy their malevolence to lift themselves. In the world I want to live in, any form of gossip should be illegal and people should talk only about arts and sciences.
”
”
Maria Karvouni
“
THE SEVEN TRAITS OF ELITE CAPTAINS 1. Extreme doggedness and focus in competition. 2. Aggressive play that tests the limits of the rules. 3. A willingness to do thankless jobs in the shadows. 4. A low-key, practical, and democratic communication style. 5. Motivates others with passionate nonverbal displays. 6. Strong convictions and the courage to stand apart. 7. Ironclad emotional control.
”
”
Sam Walker (The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership)
“
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not totally uncompetitive. It's just that, for some reason, I never cared all that much whether I beat others or lost to them. This sentiment remained pretty much unchanged after I grew up. It doesn't matter what field you're talking about, beating somebody else just doesn't do it for me. I'm much more interested in whether I reach the goals that I set for myself.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)
“
But the greatest paradox of the sport has to do with the psychological makeup of the people who pull the oars. Great oarsmen and oarswomen are necessarily made of conflicting stuff—of oil and water, fire and earth. On the one hand, they must possess enormous self-confidence, strong egos, and titanic willpower. They must be almost immune to frustration. Nobody who does not believe deeply in himself or herself—in his or her ability to endure hardship and to prevail over adversity—is likely even to attempt something as audacious as competitive rowing at the highest levels. The sport offers so many opportunities for suffering and so few opportunities for glory that only the most tenaciously self-reliant and self-motivated are likely to succeed at it. And yet, at the same time—and this is key—no other sport demands and rewards the complete abandonment of the self the way that rowing does. Great crews may have men or women of exceptional talent or strength; they may have outstanding coxswains or stroke oars or bowmen; but they have no stars. The team effort—the perfectly synchronized flow of muscle, oars, boat, and water; the single, whole, unified, and beautiful symphony that a crew in motion becomes—is all that matters. Not the individual, not the self.
”
”
Daniel James Brown (The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics)
“
People play differently when they’re keeping score,” the 4DX authors explain. They then elaborate that when attempting to drive your team’s engagement toward your organization’s wildly important goal, it’s important that they have a public place to record and track their lead measures. This scoreboard creates a sense of competition that drives them to focus on these measures, even when other demands vie for their attention. It also provides a reinforcing source of motivation. Once the team notices their success with a lead measure, they become invested in perpetuating this performance.
”
”
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
“
Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.
”
”
Albert Einstein (Why Socialism?)
“
You will only find yourself in a race when you choose to compare yourself to others.
”
”
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
“
This life exists as a competition with oneself - no one else.
”
”
Jay D'Cee
“
You’ll only find yourself in a race when you choose to compare yourself to others.
”
”
Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
“
You are not in competition with anyone on social media. You must face the reality that your success requires you to focus on yourself.
”
”
Nate Green (Suck Less, Do Better: The End of Excuses & the Rise of the Unstoppable You)
“
There is more competition to achieve a job, but very less competition to achieve the glory.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
Winners of some competition are not heroes, heroes are not found in the competition, heroes win much more severe battles than competition to become heroes.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
One's best work comes when we are fully alive, happy, and inspired.
”
”
Eric Schiffer (Emotionally Charged Learning: Secrets to Competitive Advantages for the Second Half of the Knowledge/Entertainment-Based Economy)
“
Teams that spend a lot of time learning the tricks of the trade will probably never really learn the trade.
”
”
Yuri Boganov
“
Competition in business is a blessing, for without it, we wouldn’t be motivated to improve.
”
”
Nabil N. Jamal
“
Perfecting your character isn’t a marathon, a race, or a competition. It can only be won in stride with daily motivation.
”
”
Orly Wahba (Kindness Boomerang: How to Save the World (and Yourself) Through 365 Daily Acts)
“
It is foolish for the moon to compete with the sun for the spotlight.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Doing your homework and being well prepared for appointments is one of the most powerful ways to set yourself apart from your competition to gain and retain new clients.
”
”
Susan C. Young (The Art of Preparation: 8 Ways to Plan with Purpose & Intention for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #2))
“
Don't compete with your friends to win a date with few beautiful girls, but compete to win few beautiful goals.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
One of the golden rules of success is to treat everything like a competition.
”
”
Abdulazeez Henry Musa
“
The art of lateral thinking in a team is key, in order to gain a competitive advantage.
”
”
Wayne Chirisa
“
Find the game you like to play - not just to win but because it clicks with you differently.
”
”
Ali Sohani (The Radical Leap)
“
Start celebrating other people's wins and keep striving for your own! Life isn't a competition, so focus on your journey and appreciate the successes of those around you.
”
”
Felecia Etienne (Overcoming Mediocrity: Limitless Women)
“
There are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.
”
”
Atticus Aristotle (Success and Happiness - Quotes to Motivate Inspire & Live by)
“
Like an energy even an opportunity cannot be destroyed, if you don't accept, it goes to someone else.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
Choose to be the beautiful, unique you and not compare yourself with others. Stay in your lane and replace competitive energy with a picture of success for you.
”
”
Jackie Cantoni (ARE YOU READY? A GUIDE TO BE THE BEST VERSION OF YOU: A Self-Help Book for Becoming Your Best Self)
“
One who sets records is great. One who breaks records is extraordinary. One who shatters records is exceptional.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
In business, the size of our success is partly attributable to the fear of failure that has prevented some people from being our competitors.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
Stop worrying about your competition; focus on increasing your value proposition.
”
”
Kayambila Mpulamasaka
“
Compete with yourself, it is the fastest way to eclipse all of your competition.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Now and then, always be cutthroat or you'll be brushed aside.
”
”
SoulWanderer_
“
Step up your game and success will step up to you.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Compete with yourself until the only one left to compete with is yourself.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
When you are your only competition in life, the only person you ever have to prove anything to is yourself.
”
”
Michael Stagnitta (Soul Work: Illuminate Your Purpose & Uncover Your True Self)
“
What the socialist barbarians destroy is private ownership of the means of production, the profit motive, private saving and capital accumulation, competition, and the price system.
”
”
George Reisman (Marxism/Socialism, A Sociopathic Philosophy Conceived In Gross Error And Ignorance, Culminating In Economic Chaos, Enslavement, Terror, And Mass Murder: A Contribution To Its Death)
“
Rather than reacting to every obstacle or dashed expectation, incorporate the event into your overall plan. Real life setbacks like rejections, broken promises, and unfair disadvantages will happen. Rethink the meaning behind the emotional triggers and how your reaction will further your purpose. Manage emotions by recognizing their place, but do not allow them to control your moves.
”
”
Alisa Melekhina (Reality Check: What the Ancient Game of Chess Can Teach You About Success in Modern Competitive Settings)
“
Reasoning systematically, Marx was one of the few socialists to understand that economic competition, motivated by "greed," was what drove prices down under capitalism, as capitalists ceaselessly searched for more profits by seeking cheaper ways of producing than those possessed by their fellow capitalist rivals. Mutual competition ensured that capitalists were in no position simply to tack higher profits onto production costs. Therefore, as production costs were driven down throughout an industry, prices tended to be driven down as well, to the benefit of the consuming public.
”
”
Thomas Sowell (Marxism: Philosophy and Economics)
“
It is a wonderful quirk of our species that the incentives of social life don’t reward strictly ruthless behavior. Leaders who are too domineering are often penalized. Rampant lying and cheating are often caught and punished. Freeloaders frequently get the boot. At the same time, people are often positively rewarded—with friendship, social status, a better reputation—for their service to others. As if our oversized brains and hairless skin didn’t make us an uncanny enough species, our genes long ago decided that, in the relentless competition to survive and reproduce, their best strategy was to build ethical brains.
”
”
Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
“
And I'll tell you something else. A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority - not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities, because all minorities are in competition: each one proclaims that its sufferings are the worst and its wrongs are the blackest. And the more they all hate, and the more they're all persecuted, the nastier they become! Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn't! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you're being persecuted, you hate what's happening to you, you hate the people who are making it happen; you're in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn't recognize love if you met it! You'd suspect love! You'd think there was something behind it - some motive - some trick....
”
”
Christopher Isherwood (A Single Man)
“
Find what you love, find it for a long, and don’t settle until you find it. Find something you would love to fail in – because that’s where you will have the most chance (in each successive attempt) to make a big win.
”
”
Ali Sohani (The Radical Leap)
“
I use “anticapitalist” because conservative defenders of capitalism regularly say their liberal and socialist opponents are against capitalism. They say efforts to provide a safety net for all people are “anticapitalist.” They say attempts to prevent monopolies are “anticapitalist.” They say efforts that strengthen weak unions and weaken exploitative owners are “anticapitalist.” They say plans to normalize worker ownership and regulations protecting consumers, workers, and environments from big business are “anticapitalist.” They say laws taxing the richest more than the middle class, redistributing pilfered wealth, and guaranteeing basic incomes are “anticapitalist.” They say wars to end poverty are “anticapitalist.” They say campaigns to remove the profit motive from essential life sectors like education, healthcare, utilities, mass media, and incarceration are “anticapitalist.”
In doing so, these conservative defenders are defining capitalism. They define capitalism as the freedom to exploit people into economic ruin; the freedom to assassinate unions; the freedom to prey on unprotected consumers, workers, and environments; the freedom to value quarterly profits over climate change; the freedom to undermine small businesses and cushion corporations; the freedom from competition; the freedom not to pay taxes; the freedom to heave the tax burden onto the middle and lower classes; the freedom to commodify everything and everyone; the freedom to keep poor people poor and middle-income people struggling to stay middle income, and make rich people richer. The history of capitalism—of world warring, classing, slave trading, enslaving, colonizing, depressing wages, and dispossessing land and labor and resources and rights—bears out the conservative definition of capitalism.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist)
“
Trends working at least marginally towards the implantation of a very narrow range of attitudes, memories, and opinions include control of major television networks and newspapers by a small number of similarly motivated powerful corporation and individuals, the disappearance of competitive daily newspapers in many cities, the replacement of substantive debate by sleaze in political campaigns, and episodic erosion of the principal of the separation of powers.
”
”
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
“
When you see the extent to which people try, like the tremors of a ballet dancer, or the intensity of a pianist, or a mural containing the details of tiny little people making up the background-- you see the vulnerable extension of our private selves. There is an element inside us and it wavers between beauty and madness. You know it when you see it, like a hyperactive atom bouncing in a tube. It is like trying, really trying, and when we do, we are in our most honest forms. When we reach, we expose the contents of the human spirit. The more often we see it spill, the more encouraged we are to go further. And we can go further than others, in joyous competition. After all, it is called the human race, no?
”
”
Kristian Ventura (Can I Tell You Something?)
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The strangest of all the doctrines of the cult of competition, in which admittedly there must be losers as well as winners, is that the result of competition is inevitably good for everybody, that altruistic ends may be met by a system without altruistic motives or altruistic means.
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Wendell Berry (What Are People For?)
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Managers’ responsibility is to ensure that people deliver the expected results, which are the company’s strategy. The company’s strategy, in turn, determines its competitive advantage. So, if a manager does a poor job of motivating employees’ productivity, the enterprise is a weak competitor.
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Anna Szabo (Turn Your Dreams And Wants Into Achievable SMART Goals!)
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Self-oriented people are inclusive only of those they believe will further their own motives and causes. More evolved people understand that inclusivity is the most productive and positive way to be. As such, their endeavours are life-enhancing, successful, and significantly contributory. Truly inclusive people do not gossip, listen to gossip, seek to pull other people down, view competition as a play of personal power, or try to gain benefit from someone else’s suffering. Instead, their eyes, mind, and talents are directed towards whatever is best for everyone in any given situation.
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Donna Goddard (Touched by Love (Love and Devotion, #4))
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I have a distinct air of myself standing amidst such a crowd of people. My eyes set above, looking at the tall building if it bespeaks a promising note. I don’t know how fair is life, All I know is I have a plan to alter the face of it, the way I choose. A purpose, a driving motive, and an obsession.
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Parul Wadhwa (The Masquerade)
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You have a filter, a characteristic way of responding to the world around you. We all do. Your filter tells you which stimuli to notice and which to ignore; which to love and which to hate. It creates your innate motivations — are you competitive, altruistic, or ego driven? It defines how you think — are you disciplined or laissez-faire, practical or strategic? It forges your prevailing attitudes — are you optimistic or cynical, calm or anxious, empathetic or cold? It creates in you all of your distinct patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. In effect, your filter is the source of your talents.
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Marcus Buckingham (First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently)
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I have seen people with a particularly acute sensitivity to petty tyranny and over-aggressive competitiveness restrict within themselves all the emotions that might give rise to such things. Often they are people whose fathers were excessively angry and controlling. Psychological forces are never unidimensional in their value, however, and the truly appalling potential of anger and aggression to produce cruelty and mayhem are balanced by the ability of those primordial forces to push back against oppression, speak truth, and motivate resolute movement forward in times of strife, uncertainty and danger.
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Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
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The only competition we are good at and we are winning on. It is destroying each other. Hurting each other. Insulting each other. Underestimating each other, looking each other down, getting each other fired and Killing each other. . It is never late for us to choose to support ,build and uplifting each other.
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D.J. Kyos
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I swapped countries. I now live in a warmer, more relaxed, more laid-back, happier, less competitive country (Italy), and I’m happy with that. When I go back to the UK I find it – in about equal measures – inspiring, motivating, alive, buzzing… but also overcrowded, over-competitive, striving, messy, uptight and neurotic.
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John C. Parkin (F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way)
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He wrote extensively on how schools should be made more attractive to boys and girls and thus more productive. His own co-educational school at Santiniketan had many progressive features. The emphasis here was on self-motivation rather than on discipline, and on fostering intellectual curiosity rather than competitive excellence.
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Amartya Sen (The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity)
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The behaviour of the individual capitalist does not depend on 'the good or ill will of the individual' because 'free competition brings out the inherent laws of capitalist production, in the shape of external coercive laws having power over every individual capitalist' (Capital, vol. 1, p. 270). In so far as individuals adopt the role of capitalist, they are forced to internalize the profit-seeking motive as part of their subjective being. Avarice and greed, and the predilections of the miser, find scope for expression in such a context, but capitalism is not founded on such character traits — competition imposes them willy-nilly on the unfortunate participants.
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David Harvey (The Limits to Capital)
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Trends working at least marginally towards the implantation of a very narrow range of attitudes, memories and opinions include control of major television networks and newspapers by a small number of similarly motivated powerful corporations and individuals, the disappearance of competitive daily newspapers in many cities, the replacement of substantive debate by sleaze in political campaigns, and episodic erosion of the principle of the separation of powers. It is estimated (by the American media expert Ben Bagditrian) that fewer than two dozen corporations control more than half of the global business in daily newspapers, magazines, television, books and movies!
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Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
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Our study suggests that given the right culture, women are as competitively inclined as men, and even more so in many situations. Competitiveness, then, is not only set by evolutionary forces that dictate that men are naturally more so inclined than women. The average woman will compete more than the average man if the right cultural incentives are in place.
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Uri Gneezy (The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and The Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life)
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Strategy can seem mystical and mysterious. It isn't. It is easily defined. It is a set of choices about winning. Again, it is an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition. Specifically, strategy is the answer to these five interrelated questions:
1. What is your winning aspiration? The purpose of your enterprise, its motivating aspiration.
2. Where will you play? A playing field where you can achieve that aspiration.
3. How will you win? The way you will win on the chosen playing field.
4. What capabilities must be in place? The set and configuration of capabilities required to win in the chosen way.
5. What management systems are required? The systems and measures that enable the capabilities and support the choices.
These choices and the relationship between them can be understood as a reinforcing cascade, with the choices at the top of the cascade setting the context for the choices below, and choices at the bottom influencing and refining the choices above.
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A.G. Lafley (Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works)
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CEO Gil Amelio stumbled. Ellison may have been baffled when Jobs insisted that he was not motivated by money, but it was partly true. He had neither Ellison’s conspicuous consumption needs nor Gates’s philanthropic impulses nor the competitive urge to see how high on the Forbes list he could get. Instead his ego needs and personal drives led him to seek fulfillment by creating a legacy that would awe people. A dual legacy, actually: building innovative products and building a lasting company. He wanted to be in the pantheon with, indeed a notch above, people like Edwin Land, Bill Hewlett, and David Packard. And the best way to achieve all this was to return to Apple and reclaim his kingdom. And yet when the cup of power neared his lips, he became strangely hesitant, reluctant, perhaps coy. He returned to Apple officially in January 1997 as a part-time advisor, as he had told Amelio he would. He began to assert himself in some personnel areas, especially in protecting his people who had made the transition from NeXT. But in most other ways he was unusually passive. The decision not to ask him to join the board offended him, and he felt demeaned
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Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
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Biology teaches us that we’re competitive social animals, with all the instincts you’d expect from such creatures. And consciousness is useful—that’s why it evolved. So shouldn’t it stand to reason that we’d be hyper-conscious of our deepest biological incentives? And yet, most of the time, we seem almost willfully unaware of them. We all know they’re there. And yet they make us uncomfortable, so we mentally flinch away.
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Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
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rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages. The causes of hostility among nations are innumerable. There are some which have a general and almost constant operation upon the collective bodies of society. Of this description are the love of power or the desire of pre-eminence and dominion—the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety. There are others which have a more circumscribed though an equally operative influence within their spheres. Such are the rivalships and competitions of commerce between commercial nations. And there are others, not less numerous than either of the former, which take their origin entirely in private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes, and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members. Men of this class, whether the favorites of a king or of a people, have in too many instances abused the confidence they possessed; and assuming the pretext of some public motive, have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquillity to personal advantage or personal gratification.
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Alexander Hamilton (The Federalist vs. Anti-Federalist Dispute: The Original Arguments For Each)
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As for having reached the top, with only one way to go from there, Lee had a point, no? I mean, if you cannot repeat a once-in-a-lifetime miracle—if you can never again reach the top—then why bother creating at all? Well, I can actually speak about this predicament from personal experience, because I myself was once “at the top”—with a book that sat on the bestseller list for more than three years. I can’t tell you how many people said to me during those years, “How are you ever going to top that?” They’d speak of my great good fortune as though it were a curse, not a blessing, and would speculate about how terrified I must feel at the prospect of not being able to reach such phenomenal heights again. But such thinking assumes there is a “top”—and that reaching that top (and staying there) is the only motive one has to create. Such thinking assumes that the mysteries of inspiration operate on the same scale that we do—on a limited human scale of success and failure, of winning and losing, of comparison and competition, of commerce and reputation, of units sold and influence wielded. Such thinking assumes that you must be constantly victorious—not only against your peers, but also against an earlier version of your own poor self. Most dangerously of all, such thinking assumes that if you cannot win, then you must not continue to play. But what does any of that have to do with vocation? What does any of that have to do with the pursuit of love? What does any of that have to do with the strange communion between the human and the magical? What does any of that have to do with faith? What does any of that have to do with the quiet glory of merely making things, and then sharing those things with an open heart and no expectations?
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
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Healthy competition is not detrimental to our well-being and progress. It is advantageous. It highlights the skills that others have. It’s a teaching and motivating device. It helps us to see the weaker areas within ourselves that need improvement. Other people’s strengths are not disadvantageous to us. They can inspire and push us to develop those same elements within our own being. Turn the flame of jealousy into the fire of self-improvement.
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Donna Goddard (Writing: A Spiritual Voice (The Creative Spirit Series, #2))
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There is a scene in one of the Rocky movies where after the match Apollo Creed and Rocky are waiting for the scoring of their brawl all beat up and battered, obviously both fighters gave all they had to win, and Apollo Creed says to Rocky - "Your not getting a rematch" and Rocky says "I don't want one".
I love that scene.
That's when you know that you left no doubt - that your opponent, win or lose, never wants to compete against you ever again.
That's fighting.
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JohnA Passaro
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Impressions comes at a cost of you losing something , in a trade for admiration, likes or love. The more you try to impress others. The more you lose somethings. Now don’t lose what you can’t replace nor lose what is valuable to you or something you can’t live and progress without. Mostly don’t lose yourself, trying to impress others. Don’t compete with people whom their loss is nothing to them, because they have everything or plenty , while your loss is everything to you ,because you have nothing.
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D.J. Kyos
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But what," said she, after a pause, "can have been his motive? What can have induced him to behave so cruelly?"
"A thorough, determined dislike of me—a dislike which I cannot but attribute in some measure to jealousy. Had the late Mr. Darcy liked me less, his son might have borne with me better; but his father's uncommon attachment to me irritated him, I believe, very early in life. He had not a temper to bear the sort of competition in which we stood—the sort of preference which was often given me.
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Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
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The most important lesson I took away from my year on the competitive memory circuit was not the secret to learning poetry by heart, but rather something far more global and, in a way, far more likely to be of service in my life. My experience had validated the old saw that practice makes perfect. But only if it's the right kind of concentrated, self-conscious, deliberate practice. I'd learned firsthand that with focus, motivation, and, above all, time, the mind can be trained to do extraordinary things.
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Joshau Foer
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Eliciting peak performance means going up against something or somebody. Let me give you a simple example. For years the performance of the Intel facilities maintenance group, which is responsible for keeping our buildings clean and neat, was mediocre, and no amount of pressure or inducement seemed to do any good. We then initiated a program in which each building’s upkeep was periodically scored by a resident senior manager, dubbed a “building czar.” The score was then compared with those given the other buildings. The condition of all of them dramatically improved almost immediately. Nothing else was done; people did not get more money or other rewards. What they did get was a racetrack, an arena of competition. If your work is facilities maintenance, having your building receive the top score is a powerful source of motivation. This is key to the manager’s approach and involvement: he has to see the work as it is seen by the people who do that work every day and then create indicators so that his subordinates can watch their “racetrack” take shape.
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Andrew S. Grove (High Output Management)
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The key questions answered by tipping point leaders are as follows: What factors or acts exercise a disproportionately positive influence on breaking the status quo? On getting the maximum bang out of each buck of resources? On motivating key players to aggressively move forward with change? And on knocking down political roadblocks that often trip up even the best strategies? By single-mindedly focusing on points of disproportionate influence, tipping point leaders can topple the four hurdles that limit execution of blue ocean strategy. They can do this fast and at low cost. Let
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W. Chan Kim (Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant)
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Feedback works well when it provides useful information that can guide future learning. If feedback tells you what you’re doing wrong or how to fix it, it can be a potent tool. But feedback often backfires when it is aimed at a person’s ego. Praise, a common type of feedback that teachers often use (and students enjoy), is usually harmful to further learning. When feedback steers into evaluations of you as an individual (e.g., “You’re so smart!” or “You’re lazy”), it usually has a negative impact on learning. Further, even feedback that includes useful information needs to be correctly processed as a motivator and tool for learning.
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Scott H. Young (Ultralearning: The Essential Guide To Mastering Hard Skills And Future-Proofing Your Career)
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Feminist “theory,” as it is grandiloquently called, is simply whatever the women in the movement come up with in post facto justification of their attitudes and emotions. A heavy focus on feminist doctrine seems to me symptomatic of the rationalist fallacy: the assumption that people are motivated primarily by beliefs. If they were, the best way to combat an armed doctrine would indeed be to demonstrate that its beliefs are false. (…) A feminist in the strict and proper sense may be defined as a woman who envies the male role.
By the male role I mean, in the first place, providing, protecting, and guiding rather than nurturing and assisting. This in turn envolves relative independence, action, and competition in the larger impersonal society outside the family, the use of language for communication and analysis (rather than expressiveness or emotional manipulation), and deliberate behavior aiming at objective achievement (rather than the attainment of pleasant subjective states) and guided by practical reasoning (rather than emotional impulse).
Both feminist and nonfeminist women sense that these characteristically male attributes have a natural primacy over their own. I prefer to speak of“primacy” rather than superiority in this context since both sets of traits are necessary to propagate the race. One sign of male primacy is that envy of the female role by men is virtually nonexistent — even, so far as I know, among homosexuals. Normal women are attracted to male traits and wish to partner with a man who possesses them. (…) The feminists’ response to the primacy of male traits, on the other hand, is a feeling of inadequacy in regard to men—a feeling ill-disguised by defensive assertions of her “equality.”She desires to possess masculinity directly, in her own person, rather than partnering with a man. That is what leads her into the spiritual cul de sac of envy. And perhaps even more than she envies the male role itself, the feminist covets the external rewards attached to its successful performance: social status, recognition, power, wealth, and the chance to control wealth directly (rather than be supported).
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F. Roger Devlin (Sexual Utopia in Power: The Feminist Revolt Against Civilization)
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For too long shame has been a central organizing force in Black communities. We have used shame to motivate people to go to church. To vote. To control women’s bodies and sexual desires. To toss away our trans and gay children and take roles in institutions that tear our communities apart. To transform shame in our communities, we are going to have to weed it out. We are going to have to find a way to express our concern that doesn’t equate to our noses in the air or our backs turned on our ugly. We are going to have to chant from the street corners to the halfway homes, from the ERs and the encampments to the church pews and the house and ball competitions, to every Black life we come across: Shame is not your name.
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Tarana Burke (You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience)
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To oppose something is to maintain it.
They say here "all roads lead to Mishnory." To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.
Yegey in the Hall of the Thirty-Three today: 'I unalterably oppose this blockade of grain-exports to Karhide, and the spirit of competition which motivates it.' Right enough, but he will not get off the Mishnory road going that way. He must offer an alternative. Orgoreyn and Karhide both must stop following the road they're on, in either direction; they must go somewhere else, and break the circle.
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Ursula K. Le Guin
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Conflict and differences. People share so much in common, yet are so magnificently different. They think differently; they have different and sometimes competing values, motivations, and objectives. Conflicts naturally arise out of these differences. Society’s competitive approach to resolving the conflict and differences tends to center on “winning as much as you can.” Though much good has come from the skillful art of compromise, where both sides give on their positions until an acceptable middle point is reached, neither side ends up truly pleased. What a waste to have differences drive people to the lowest common denominator between them! What a waste to fail to unleash the principle of creative cooperation in developing solutions to problems that are better than either party’s original notion!
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RosettaBooks (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
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He had told Larry Ellison that his return strategy was to sell NeXT to Apple, get appointed to the board, and be there ready when CEO Gil Amelio stumbled. Ellison may have been baffled when Jobs insisted that he was not motivated by money, but it was partly true. He had neither Ellison’s conspicuous consumption needs nor Gates’s philanthropic impulses nor the competitive urge to see how high on the Forbes list he could get. Instead his ego needs and personal drives led him to seek fulfillment by creating a legacy that would awe people. A dual legacy, actually: building innovative products and building a lasting company. He wanted to be in the pantheon with, indeed a notch above, people like Edwin Land, Bill Hewlett, and David Packard. And the best way to achieve all this was to return to Apple and reclaim his kingdom.
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Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
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He remembers how someone – he forgets who – once said in a sarcastic tone, “Isn’t she just Little Miss Sweetness and Light?” – and it was a statement that put him off proposing. It made him seriously reassess his options. He didn’t want to be with someone others saw as overly-moral because he has flaws, he has weaknesses. How would his mistakes compare to her virtuousness? She used to dislike the competitiveness at work, the way she claimed she could never really make friends with anyone because everything was always so fake and cut-throat and he used to berate her for it, used to tell her to accept it, to realise the truth about life and relationships – but she wouldn’t take it. She was always thinking too hard about everything, always questioning her motives. Surely, if he’d married her, she’d have started questioning his.
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Carla H. Krueger (Coma House)
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However people sincerely call on me, I come to them and fulfill their hearts’ desires. They use many paths to reach me. It might sound philosophical, but we can make it a little clearer by saying that God, the Supreme One, the Incarnation, is not a person. Then what is God? Simplest to understand is that God is the peace in us. We are born with joy. We are peace and joy personified. We are purity personified. Unfortunately we seem to be ignoring that. We’re ignorant of our own true nature. So we run after things to make us happy and to find peace. Behind all our efforts, our basic motive is to find happiness and thus to find peace. All our actions are for that good. They need not be religious. We’re all working toward that happiness. Even all these wars, fights and competition are ways people look for happiness. Even when people steal things, they think they’re going to be happy by stealing. So the ultimate motive behind all our actions is to find that joy and peace. That’s what Krishna means when he says, “Whatever people do, ultimately their interest is in me.” When he says “me,” it means that peace: “I am that joy. I am eternal. Unfortunately many don’t realize that I, as peace, am already there in them.” Sometimes you put on your earrings and then forget them. Then you spend hours pulling out all the drawers until somebody comes, pinches your ears and says, “Here they are.” It’s the same way spiritually. Peace, or your true Self, is something subjective. You look about for it outside of you as some object, something different from you. That’s why you miss it. If occasionally you seem to be enjoying some happiness or peace, that’s nothing but a reflection of your own peace within.
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Satchidananda (The Living Gita: The Complete Bhagavad Gita: a Commentary for Modern Readers)
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Discouraging cooperation and common purpose. Rewarding individuals for measured performance diminishes the sense of common purpose as well as the social relationships that provide the unmeasureable motivation for cooperation and institutional effectiveness.7 Reward based on measured performance tends to promote not cooperation but competition. If the individuals or units respond to the incentives created, rather than aiding, assisting, and advising one another, they strive to maximize their own metrics, ignoring, or even sabotaging, their fellows. As Donald Berwick, a leading medical reformer, has recounted, One hospital CEO described to me his system of profit-center management, in which middle management bonuses depended on local budget performance. I asked him if one of his managers would transfer resources from his department to another’s if it would help the organization as a whole. “Yes,” the CEO answered honestly, “if he were crazy.
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Jerry Z. Muller (The Tyranny of Metrics)
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The expectation of a reward or evaluation, even a positive evaluation, squelched creativity. She calls this phenomenon the intrinsic theory of motivation. Stated simply: “People will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, and the challenge of the work itself—not by external pressures.” She warns that many schools and corporations, by placing such emphasis on rewards and evaluation, are inadvertently suppressing creativity. It’s a compelling theory, and one that, intuitively, makes sense. Who hasn’t felt creatively liberated writing in a private diary or doodling in a notebook, knowing no one will ever see these zany scribbles? The theory, though, doesn’t always jibe with the real world. If we are only motivated by the sheer joy of an activity, why do athletes perform better in the heat of competition rather than during training sessions? Why did Mozart abandon works in progress because his
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Eric Weiner (The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley (Creative Lessons in History))
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What motivates Olympic athletes to train for years for one event—in some cases, for just seconds of actual competition? It’s the same thing that kept my friend Pete nosing around old bookstores for years. It’s the same thing that makes a person venture out of a comfortable job to start a new business. We see it in the artist who spends day after day in a studio chipping away at a block of stone. Look closely and you’ll find it in the shopper who passes up the good deal in search of the best deal. It’s one of the things that makes us most human. We consciously pursue what we value. It’s not simply a matter of being driven by biology or genetics or environmental conditioning to satisfy instinctive cravings. Rather, we perceive something, prize it at a certain value, then pursue it according to that assigned value because we were created that way. This ability to perceive, prize, and pursue is part of our essential humanness, and it’s the essence of ambition.
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Dave Harvey (Rescuing Ambition)
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9. HUMAN RIGHTS [70:9.1] Nature confers no rights on man, only life and a world in which to live it. Nature does not even confer the right to live, as might be deduced by considering what would likely happen if an unarmed man met a hungry tiger face to face in the primitive forest. Society's prime gift to man is security. [70:9.2] Gradually society asserted its rights and, at the present time, they are Assurance of food supply. Military defense—security through preparedness. Internal peace preservation—prevention of personal violence and social disorder. Sex control—marriage, the family institution. Property—the right to own. Fostering of individual and group competition. Provision for educating and training youth. Promotion of trade and commerce—industrial development. Improvement of labor conditions and rewards. The guarantee of the freedom of religious practices to the end that all of these other social activities may be exalted by becoming spiritually motivated.
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Urantia Foundation (The Urantia Book)
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World-class runners, of course, want to outdo their closest rivals, but for your average, everyday runner, individual rivalry isn't a major issue. I'm sure there are garden-variety runners whose desire to beat a particular rival spurs them on to train harder. But what happens if their rival, for whatever reason, drops out of the competition? Their motivation for running would disappear or at least diminish, and it'd be hard for them to remain runners for long.
Most ordinary runners are motivated by an individual goal, more than anything: namely, a time they want to beat. As long as he can beat that time, a runner will feel he's accomplished what he set out to do, and if he can't then he'll feel he hasn't. Even if he doesn't break the time he'd hoped for, as long as he has the sense of satisfaction at having done his very best-- and, possibly, having made some significant discovery about himself in the process-- then that in itself is an accomplishment, a positive feeling he can carry over to the next race.
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Haruki Murakami (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)
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I've defined myself, privately and abstractly, by my brief, intense years as an athlete, a swimmer. I practiced five or six hours a day, six days a week, eating and sleeping as much as possible in between. Weekends were spent either training or competing. I wasn't the best; I was relatively fast. I trained, ate, traveled, and showered with the best in the country, but wasn't the best; I was pretty good.
I liked how hard swimming at that level was- that I could do something difficult and unusual. Liked knowing my discipline would be recognized, respected, that I might not be able to say the right things or fit in, but I could do something well. I wanted to believe that I was talented; being fast was proof. Though I loved racing, the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn't motivate me.
I still dream of practice, of races, coaches and blurry competitors. I'm drawn to swimming pools, all swimming pools, no matter how small or murky. When I swim now, I step into the water as though absentmindedly touching a scar. My recreational laps are phantoms of my competitive races
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Leanne Shapton
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Parent, have you trained yourself not to discipline immediately but to wait until your irritation builds into anger? If so, then you have allowed anger to become your inducement to discipline—a less than worthy motivation. “But how can I stop being so angry?” you ask. It’s simple. Don’t wait until it becomes a personal affront to you. Discipline immediately upon the slightest disobedience. When children see you motivated by anger and frustration, they assume that your “discipline” is just a personal matter, a competition of interest. The child thinks of you much as he would of any other child who is bullying him around. He is not being made to respect the law and the lawgiver. He believes that you are forcing him to give in to superior power. When you act in anger, your child feels that you are committing a personal transgression against him—violating his rights. You have lost the dignity of your office. As politicians often say, “You are not presidential enough.” If your child does not see consistency in the lawgiver, in his mind there is no law at all, just competition for supremacy. You have taught yourself to be motivated only by anger. And you have taught your child to respond only to anger. Having failed to properly train your child, you have allowed the seeds of self-indulgence
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Michael Pearl (To Train Up a Child: Turning the hearts of the fathers to the children)
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1. Connect with Your Why Start by identifying your key motivations. Why do you want to reach your goal in the first place? Why is it important personally? Get a notebook or pad of paper and list all the key motivations. But don’t just list them, prioritize them. You want the best reasons at the top of your list. Finally, connect with these motivations both intellectually and emotionally. 2. Master Your Motivation There are four key ways to stay motivated as you reach for your goals: Identify your reward and begin to anticipate it. Eventually, the task itself can become its own reward this way. Recognize that installing a new habit will probably take longer than a few weeks. It might even take five or six months. Set your expectations accordingly. Gamify the process with a habit app or calendar chain. As Dan Sullivan taught me, measure the gains, not the gap. Recognize the value of incremental wins. 3. Build Your Team It’s almost always easier to reach a goal if you have friends on the journey. Intentional relationships provide four ingredients essential for success: learning, encouragement, accountability, and competition. There are at least seven kinds of intentional relationships that can help you grow and reach your goals: ‣ Online communities ‣ Running and exercise groups ‣ Masterminds ‣ Coaching and mentoring circles ‣ Reading and study groups ‣ Accountability groups ‣ Close friendships If you can’t find a group you need, don’t wait. Start your own.
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Michael Hyatt (Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals)
“
A common problem plagues people who try to design institutions without accounting for hidden motives. First they identify the key goals that the institution “should” achieve. Then they search for a design that best achieves these goals, given all the constraints that the institution must deal with. This task can be challenging enough, but even when the designers apparently succeed, they’re frequently puzzled and frustrated when others show little interest in adopting their solution. Often this is because they mistook professed motives for real motives, and thus solved the wrong problems. Savvy institution designers must therefore identify both the surface goals to which people give lip service and the hidden goals that people are also trying to achieve. Designers can then search for arrangements that actually achieve the deeper goals while also serving the surface goals—or at least giving the appearance of doing so. Unsurprisingly, this is a much harder design problem. But if we can learn to do it well, our solutions will less often meet the fate of puzzling disinterest. We should take a similar approach when reforming a preexisting institution by first asking ourselves, “What are this institution’s hidden functions, and how important are they?” Take education, for example. We may wish for schools that focus more on teaching than on testing. And yet, some amount of testing is vital to the economy, since employers need to know which workers to hire. So if we tried to cut too much from school’s testing function, we could be blindsided by resistance we don’t understand—because those who resist may not tell us the real reasons for their opposition. It’s only by understanding where the resistance is coming from that we have any hope of overcoming it. Not all hidden institutional functions are worth facilitating, however. Some involve quite wasteful signaling expenditures, and we might be better off if these institutions performed only their official, stated functions. Take medicine, for example. To the extent that we use medical spending to show how much we care (and are cared for), there are very few positive externalities. The caring function is mostly competitive and zero-sum, and—perhaps surprisingly—we could therefore improve collective welfare by taxing extraneous medical spending, or at least refusing to subsidize it. Don’t expect any politician to start pushing for healthcare taxes or cutbacks, of course, because for lawmakers, as for laypeople, the caring signals are what makes medicine so attractive. These kinds of hidden incentives, alongside traditional vested interests, are what often make large institutions so hard to reform. Thus there’s an element of hubris in any reform effort, but at least by taking accurate stock of an institution’s purposes, both overt and covert, we can hope to avoid common mistakes. “The curious task of economics,” wrote Friedrich Hayek, “is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”8
”
”
Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
“
Man is born into a world of production and social relations. The unequal opportunities of different lands,
the more or less rapid improvements in the means of production, and the struggle for life have rapidly
created social inequalities that have been crystallized into antagonisms between production and
distribution; and consequently into class struggles. These struggles and antagonisms are the motive power
of history. Slavery in ancient times and feudal bondage were stages on a long road that led to the
artisanship of the classical centuries when the producer was master of the means of production. At this
moment the opening of world trade routes and the discovery of new outlets demanded a less provincial
form of production. The contradiction between the method of production and the new demands of
distribution already announces the end of the regime of small-scale agricultural and industrial production.
The industrial revolution, the
invention of steam appliances, and competition for outlets inevitably led to the expropriation of the small
proprietor and to the introduction of large-scale production. The means of production are then
concentrated in the hands of those who are able to buy them; the real producers, the workers, now only
dispose of the strength of their arms, which can be sold to the "man with the money." Thus bourgeois
capitalism is defined by the separation of the producer from the means of production. From this conflict a
series of inevitable consequences are going to spring which allow Marx to predicate the end of social
antagonisms.
”
”
Albert Camus (The Rebel)
“
This revolution of values must go beyond traditional capitalism and Communism. We must honestly admit that capitalism has often left a gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, has created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few, and has encourage smallhearted men to become cold and conscienceless so that, like Dives before Lazarus, they are unmoved by suffering, poverty-stricken humanity. The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspire men to be more I-centered than thou-centered. Equally, Communism reduces men to a cog in the wheel of the state. The Communist may object, saying that in Marxian theory the state is an “interim reality” that will “wither away” when the classless society emerges. True—in theory; but it is also true that, while the state lasts, it is an end in itself. Man is a means to that end. He has no inalienable rights. His only rights are derived from, and conferred by, the state. Under such a system the fountain of freedom runs dry. Restricted are man’s liberties of press and assembly, his freedom to vote and his freedom to listen and to read.
Truth is found neither in traditional capitalism nor in classical Communism. Each represents a partial truth. Capitalism fails to see the truth in collectivism. Communism fails to see the truth in individualism. Capitalism fails to realize that life is social. Communism fails to realize that life is personal. The good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of Communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism.
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr. (Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?)
“
Performance measure. Throughout this book, the term performance measure refers to an indicator used by management to measure, report, and improve performance. Performance measures are classed as key result indicators, result indicators, performance indicators, or key performance indicators. Critical success factors (CSFs). CSFs are the list of issues or aspects of organizational performance that determine ongoing health, vitality, and wellbeing. Normally there are between five and eight CSFs in any organization. Success factors. A list of 30 or so issues or aspects of organizational performance that management knows are important in order to perform well in any given sector/ industry. Some of these success factors are much more important; these are known as critical success factors. Balanced scorecard. A term first introduced by Kaplan and Norton describing how you need to measure performance in a more holistic way. You need to see an organization’s performance in a number of different perspectives. For the purposes of this book, there are six perspectives in a balanced scorecard (see Exhibit 1.7). Oracles and young guns. In an organization, oracles are those gray-haired individuals who have seen it all before. They are often considered to be slow, ponderous, and, quite frankly, a nuisance by the new management. Often they are retired early or made redundant only to be rehired as contractors at twice their previous salary when management realizes they have lost too much institutional knowledge. Their considered pace is often a reflection that they can see that an exercise is futile because it has failed twice before. The young guns are fearless and precocious leaders of the future who are not afraid to go where angels fear to tread. These staff members have not yet achieved management positions. The mixing of the oracles and young guns during a KPI project benefits both parties and the organization. The young guns learn much and the oracles rediscover their energy being around these live wires. Empowerment. For the purposes of this book, empowerment is an outcome of a process that matches competencies, skills, and motivations with the required level of autonomy and responsibility in the workplace. Senior management team (SMT). The team comprised of the CEO and all direct reports. Better practice. The efficient and effective way management and staff undertake business activities in all key processes: leadership, planning, customers, suppliers, community relations, production and supply of products and services, employee wellbeing, and so forth. Best practice. A commonly misused term, especially because what is best practice for one organization may not be best practice for another, albeit they are in the same sector. Best practice is where better practices, when effectively linked together, lead to sustainable world-class outcomes in quality, customer service, flexibility, timeliness, innovation, cost, and competitiveness. Best-practice organizations commonly use the latest time-saving technologies, always focus on the 80/20, are members of quality management and continuous improvement professional bodies, and utilize benchmarking. Exhibit 1.10 shows the contents of the toolkit used by best-practice organizations to achieve world-class performance. EXHIBIT 1.10 Best-Practice Toolkit Benchmarking. An ongoing, systematic process to search for international better practices, compare against them, and then introduce them, modified where necessary, into your organization. Benchmarking may be focused on products, services, business practices, and processes of recognized leading organizations.
”
”
Douglas W. Hubbard (Business Intelligence Sampler: Book Excerpts by Douglas Hubbard, David Parmenter, Wayne Eckerson, Dalton Cervo and Mark Allen, Ed Barrows and Andy Neely)
“
The defenses that form a person’s character support a grand illusion, and when we grasp this we can understand the full drivenness of man. He is driven away from himself, from self-knowledge, self-reflection. He is driven toward things that support the lie of his character, his automatic equanimity. But he is also drawn precisely toward those things that make him anxious, as a way of skirting them masterfully, testing himself against them, controlling them by defying them. As Kierkegaard taught us, anxiety lures us on, becomes the spur to much of our energetic activity: we flirt with our own growth, but also dishonestly. This explains much of the friction in our lives. We enter symbiotic relationships in order to get the security we need, in order to get relief from our anxieties, our aloneness and helplessness; but these relationships also bind us, they enslave us even further because they support the lie we have fashioned. So we strain against them in order to be more free. The irony is that we do this straining uncritically, in a struggle within our own armor, as it were; and so we increase our drivenness, the second-hand quality of our struggle for freedom. Even in our flirtations with anxiety we are unconscious of our motives. We seek stress, we push our own limits, but we do it with our screen against despair and not with despair itself. We do it with the stock market, with sports cars, with atomic missiles, with the success ladder in the corporation or the competition in the university. We do it in the prison of a dialogue with our own little family, by marrying against their wishes or choosing a way of life because they frown on it, and so on. Hence the complicated and second-hand quality of our entire drivenness. Even in our passions we are nursery children playing with toys that represent the real world. Even when these toys crash and cost us our lives or our sanity, we are cheated of the consolation that we were in the real world instead of the playpen of our fantasies. We still did not meet our doom on our own manly terms, in contest with objective reality. It is fateful and ironic how the lie we need in order to live dooms us to a life that is never really ours.
”
”
Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death)
“
When you see the extent to which people try, like the tremors of a ballet dancer, or the intensity of a pianist, or a mural containing the details of tiny little people making up the background-- you see the vulnerable extension of our private selves. There is an element inside us and it wavers between beauty and madness. You know it when you see it, like a hyperactive atom bouncing in a tube. It is like trying, really trying, and when we do, we are in our most honest forms. When we reach, we expose the contents of the human spirit. And we can go further than others, in joyous competition. After all, it is called the human race, no?
”
”
Kristian Ventura (Can I Tell You Something?)
“
Socialism in Chinese style’ is in fact a phrase coined to save the face of the Chinese Communist leaders who do not have the courage to acknowledge openly that socialism has failed in China. They hope to revitalize the State-owned industries with methods of management copied from capitalist countries and to use market forces as a substitute for central planning while retaining State ownership of those industries. They want the Party-appointed managers, who are bureaucrats on fixed salaries, to achieve the same degree of expertise and commitment as the entrepreneurs of private industries in the West. They want the workers to work much harder and more competitively for bonuses and small increases in pay but reduced welfare benefits. And they hope everybody will be motivated by patriotism to achieve increased productivity and profit for the State but at the same time to remain honest and incorruptible.
”
”
Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai: The Extraordinary Memoir of a Woman Accused of Being a British Spy in Maoist China)
“
Competition for a financial reward is also what keeps Bitcoin’s blockchain secure. If any ill-motivated actors wanted to change Bitcoin’s blockchain, they would need to compete with all the other miners distributed globally who have in total invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the machinery necessary to perform PoW. The miners compete by searching for the solution to a cryptographic puzzle that will allow them to add a block of transactions to Bitcoin’s blockchain.
”
”
Chris Burniske (Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond)
“
KNOWING WHAT WE desire in a mate provides no guarantee that we will succeed in getting what we want. Success hinges on providing signals that we will deliver what the partner we desire is seeking. Because ancestral women valued high status in men, for example, men have evolved motivation for acquiring and displaying status. Because ancestral men desired youth and health in potential mates, women have evolved motivations to appear young and healthful. Competition to attract a mate therefore involves besting one’s rivals in developing and displaying the characteristics most keenly sought by one’s desired partners.
”
”
David M. Buss (The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating)
“
My life. My lane. My pace. My rules.
”
”
Mitta Xinindlu
“
Don't compete with others. Get inspired by their success and efforts.
”
”
Mitta Xinindlu
“
And, on a bad day, the methods and motives of the source will be challenged
”
”
Rita Gunther McGrath (The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business)
“
The major conclusion was that this group of firms was pursuing strategies with a long-term perspective on where they wanted to go, but also with the recognition that whatever they were doing today wasn’t going to drive their future growth. Interestingly, they had identified and implemented ways of combining tremendous internal stability while motivating tremendous external agility, particularly in terms of business models.
”
”
Rita Gunther McGrath (The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business)
“
Understanding what goes in mind of other people helps in winning war, competitions!
”
”
Akhilesh Bhagwat
“
I met with Chad Logan a few days after our first get-together. I told him that I would explain my point of view and then let him decide whether he wanted to work with me on strategy. I said: I think you have a lot of ambition, but you don’t have a strategy. I don’t think it would be useful, right now, to work with your managers on strategies for meeting the 20/20 goal. What I would advise is that you first work to discover the very most promising opportunities for the business. Those opportunities may be internal, fixing bottlenecks and constraints in the way people work, or external. To do this, you should probably pull together a small team of people and take a month to do a review of who your buyers are, who you compete with, and what opportunities exist. It’s normally a good idea to look very closely at what is changing in your business, where you might get a jump on the competition. You should open things up so there are as many useful bits of information on the table as possible. If you want, I can help you structure some of this process and, maybe, help you ask some of the right questions. The end result will be a strategy that is aimed at channeling energy into what seem to be one or two of the most attractive opportunities, where it looks like you can make major inroads or breakthroughs. I can’t tell you in advance how large such opportunities are, or where they may be. I can’t tell you in advance how fast revenues will grow. Perhaps you will want to add new services, or cut back on doing certain things that don’t make a profit. Perhaps you will find it more promising to focus on grabbing the graphics work that currently goes in-house, rather than to competitors. But, in the end, you should have a very short list of the most important things for the company to do. Then you will have a basis for moving forward. That is what I would do were I in your shoes. If you continue down the road you are on you will be counting on motivation to move the company forward. I cannot honestly recommend that as a way forward because business competition is not just a battle of strength and wills; it is also a competition over insights and competencies. My judgment is that motivation, by itself, will not give this company enough of an edge to achieve your goals. Chad Logan thanked me and, a week later, retained someone else to help him. The new consultant took Logan and his department managers through an exercise he called “Visioning.” The gist of it was the question “How big do you think this company can be?” In the morning they stretched their aspirations from “bigger” to “very much bigger.” Then, in the afternoon, the facilitator challenged them to an even grander vision: “Think twice as big as that,” he pressed. Logan
”
”
Richard P. Rumelt (Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters)
“
Being a high performer is like being an elite race car, speeding past the competition with ease. But even the best cars need to make pit stops to recharge and refuel. Take the time to rest, re-energize, and focus on self-care, for it's these moments of rejuvenation that will give you the strength to cross the finish line
and win the race.
”
”
Felecia Etienne (Overcoming Mediocrity: Limitless Women)
“
There are seven reasons people go to work: (1) Money; (2) Passionate self-expression; (3) Rewarding relationships; (4) Service to improve others’ lives; (5) Egoic achievement, competitive victory, or status; (6) Fear, guilt, obligation, rote habit, or debt to tradition; and (7) Avoidance of boredom or escape from a more unpleasant situation. We might boil this list down to two basic motivations: fear-based lack and joy-based expression.
”
”
Alan Cohen (Spirit Means Business: The Way to Prosper Wildly without Selling Your Soul)
“
Sibling abuse is underreported. It’s common for it to go under the radar. Typically, in early childhood, sibling rivalry can start out with squabbles, disagreements, name-calling, and competition between brothers and sisters. The rivalry is reciprocal. The motive can be for parental attention. Or a dozen other reasons.
”
”
Dana Arcuri CTRC (Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma)
“
CEASE USING COMPETITIVE MONETARY REWARDS TO MOTIVATE PEOPLE
”
”
Fred Lee (If Disney Ran Your Hospital: 9 1/2 Things You Would Do Differently)
“
many aspects of social life at school – including a lot of violence, fierce competitiveness, and psychological bullying including boycotting and ostracism – indicate that school is not necessarily the most appropriate setting for socialization processes to unfold. In fact, many parents note that the school social environment is one of their main motivations for choosing homeschooling.
”
”
Ari Neuman (Home Smart - How Homeschooled Children Become Confident, Independent Adults)
“
I don’t know anyone who enjoys studying. It’s boring and painful. The reframe that I found useful in my school days involved treating tests as competitive events. I didn’t mind doing work to win a competitive event. But I hated studying on the promise it would be useful someday in the future. That wasn’t motivating.
”
”
Scott Adams (Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success (The Scott Adams Success Series))
“
When I am confident, there is no competition. I do not shrink myself to be accepted by others. There is enough room for everyone to blossom and flourish.
”
”
Ashton August (A Year of Self Motivation for Women: Daily Inspiration, Courage, and Confidence (A Year of Daily Reflections))
“
The next time you go to the supermarket, look closely at a can of peas. Think about all the work that went into it—the farmers, truckers, and supermarket employees, the miners and metalworkers who made the can—and think how miraculous it is that you can buy this can for under a dollar. At every step of the way, competition among suppliers rewarded those whose innovations shaved a penny off the cost of getting that can to you. If God is commonly thought to have created the world and then arranged it for our benefit, then the free market (and its invisible hand) is a pretty good candidate for being a god. You can begin to understand why libertarians sometimes have a quasi-religious faith in free markets. Now let’s do the devil’s work and spread chaos throughout the marketplace. Suppose that one day all prices are removed from all products in the supermarket. All labels too, beyond a simple description of the contents, so you can’t compare products from different companies. You just take whatever you want, as much as you want, and you bring it up to the register. The checkout clerk scans in your food insurance card and helps you fill out your itemized claim. You pay a flat fee of $10 and go home with your groceries. A month later you get a bill informing you that your food insurance company will pay the supermarket for most of the remaining cost, but you’ll have to send in a check for an additional $15. It might sound like a bargain to get a cartload of food for $25, but you’re really paying your grocery bill every month when you fork over $2,000 for your food insurance premium. Under such a system, there is little incentive for anyone to find innovative ways to reduce the cost of food or increase its quality. The supermarkets get paid by the insurers, and the insurers get their premiums from you. The cost of food insurance begins to rise as supermarkets stock only the foods that net them the highest insurance payments, not the foods that deliver value to you. As the cost of food insurance rises, many people can no longer afford it. Liberals (motivated by Care) push for a new government program to buy food insurance for the poor and the elderly. But once the government becomes the major purchaser of food, then success in the supermarket and food insurance industries depends primarily on maximizing yield from government payouts. Before you know it, that can of peas costs the government $30, and all of us are paying 25 percent of our paychecks in taxes just to cover the cost of buying groceries for each other at hugely inflated costs. That, says Goldhill, is what we’ve done to ourselves. As long as consumers are spared from taking price into account—that is, as long as someone else is always paying for your choices—things will get worse.
”
”
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
“
Companies that do not anticipate the conditions of the VUCA world are on a direct path to losing their competitiveness.
”
”
Sandy Pfund | The Enterneer®
“
I’m competitive.
I see everything I do as a competition.
I thrive on it and get goosebumps thinking about the next competition.
I only compete against who I was yesterday.
I may look and sound the same, but my mindset isn't.
I'm loving this new me today, tomorrow I'll be better and different.
”
”
Marion Bekoe
“
The quest for the best hurts the rest in the nest.
”
”
R. N. Prasher
“
Being competitive in the marketplace will require you to be innovative, creative, and hard-working, but nothing can prepare you if you're not up for the challenge.
”
”
Germany Kent
“
There is an immense gravitation toward flaunting luxuries for purpose of gaining fame and acknowledgement. Do not get caught in the rat race of social competition.
”
”
Jay D'Cee
“
In the second year of the Trump presidency, I attended a dinner of American hedge funders in Hong Kong. I was there as a guest speaker, to survey the usual assortment of global hot spots. A thematic question emerged from the group—was the “Pax Americana” over? There was a period of familiar cross-talk about whether Trump was a calamitous force unraveling the international order or merely an impolitic Republican politician advancing a conventional agenda. I kept interjecting that Trump was ushering in a new era—one of rising nationalist competition that could lead to war and unchecked climate change, to the implosion of American democracy and the accelerated rise of a China that would impose its own rules on the world. Finally, one of the men at the table interrupted with some frustration. He demanded a show of hands—how many around the table had voted for Trump, attracted by the promise of tax cuts and deregulation? After some hesitation, hand after hand went up, until I was looking at a majority of raised hands. The tally surprised me. Sure, I understood the allure of tax cuts and deregulation to a group like that. But these were also people who clearly understood the dangers that Trump posed to American democracy and international order. The experience suggested that even that ambiguous term “Pax Americana” was subordinate to the profit motive that informed seemingly every aspect of the American machinery. I’d come to know the term as a shorthand for America’s sprawling global influence, and how—on balance—the Pax Americana offered some stability amid political upheavals, some scaffolding around the private dramas of billions of individual lives. From the vantage point of these bankers, the Pax Americana protected their stake in international capital markets while allowing for enough risk—wars, coups, shifting energy markets, new technologies—so that they could place profitable bets on the direction of events. Trump was a bet. He’d make it easier for them to do their business and allow them to keep more of their winnings, but he was erratic and hired incompetent people—so much so that he might put the whole enterprise at risk. But it was a bet that enough Americans were willing to make, including those who knew better. From the perspective of financial markets, I had just finished eight years in middle management, as a security official doing his small part to keep the profit-generating ocean liner moving. The debates of seemingly enormous consequence—about the conduct of wars, the nature of national identity, and the fates of many millions of human beings—were incidental to the broader enterprise of wealth being created.
”
”
Ben Rhodes (After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made)
“
They're competing with you while you're competing with yourself. Who's losing in this equation?
”
”
Mitta Xinindlu
“
They're working towards stopping you instead of advancing themselves. What a wasted energy on their part.
”
”
Mitta Xinindlu
“
National Novel Writing Month introduces the element of competition in book writing and achieving high word count goals, wheras #Writestorm adds the much needed element of encouragement to writing with short term creative goals.
”
”
A.L. Mengel (#Writestorm: How to Create a 100,000 Word Novel from Conception to Publication in Less Than One Year)
“
If you are good at your game. You would not cheat.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
Now more than ever, we are members of a hyper-competitive world. It is for you to decide where competition makes sense. Some trophies are not worth winning.
”
”
Jay D'Cee
“
There is something about sibling love that is greatly overlooked due to the talk of sibling rivalry, a phenomenon characterized by competition, jealousy and fighting between brothers, between sisters, and even between a brother and a sister. An older sibling’s love for the younger sibling starts when the younger brother or sister is in the crib. That love evolves into a rivalry that can be silent or overt as the siblings grow older. But do not be mistaken by all the appearances. The older sibling subconsciously retains his or her protective instinct whenever the younger sibling pursues a dangerous path in life, just like in the old days when the younger sibling was a helpless baby and the older sibling assumed the role of a protector even without being asked to. It is that protective instinct of the older sibling that eventually overcomes his misgivings about the ways of his younger sibling.
”
”
Janvier Chouteu-Chando (The Girl on the Trail)
“
Social media serves as a double-edged sword; it provides a mechanism through which we can foster relationships remotely, but it also enables unhealthy social competition.
”
”
Jay D'Cee
“
There is a pressure toward conformity; we are in a perpetual competition of trying to one-up those around us.
”
”
Jay D'Cee
“
Having said thus much in preparation, I will now confess my own utopia. I devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the gradual advent of some sort of socialistic equilibrium. The fatalistic view of the war function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due to definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise. And when whole nations are the armies, and the science of destruction vies in intellectual refinement with the science of production, I see that war becomes absurd and impossible from its own monstrosity. Extravagant ambitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims, and nations must make common cause against them. I see no reason why all this should not apply to yellow as well as to white countries, and I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples.
All these beliefs of mine put me firmly into the anti-military party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states, pacifically organized, preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently successful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the more or less socialistic future toward which mankind seems drifting we must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon which states are built -- unless, indeed, we which for dangerous reactions against commonwealths, fit only for contempt, and liable to invite attack whenever a centre of crystallization for military-minded enterprise gets formed anywhere in their neighborhood.
The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the martial virtues, although originally gain by the race through war, are absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic pride and ambition in their military form are, after all, only specifications of a more general competitive passion. They are its first form, but that is no reason for supposing them to be its last form.
”
”
William James (The Moral Equivalent of War)
“
Love is not sports, there's no need to compete.
”
”
Mitta Xinindlu
“
Embrace innovation, avoid unnecessary competition and surpass your own expectations.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
“
Focus on yourself. Your competition does not think of you as much as you're thinking of them.
”
”
Janna Cachola
“
Embrace innovation, avoid unnecessary competition, and surpass your own expectations.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (365 Motivational Life Lessons)
“
They win only when you stop moving forward. Remember that!
”
”
Mitta Xinindlu
“
The competition mentality can become a destructive slippery slope that will eat you alive and create an unhealthy pattern in your life. There is enough success to go around.
”
”
Nate Green (Suck Less, Do Better: The End of Excuses & the Rise of the Unstoppable You)
“
The competition in your life must be between the prior version of you and the current version of you. You have to focus on your lighthouse, your goals, and the greatest version of you that you’re driving toward.
”
”
Nate Green (Suck Less, Do Better: The End of Excuses & the Rise of the Unstoppable You)
“
The only true competition is who you are versus who you need to be to achieve your desired outcome and greatest success.
”
”
Nate Green (Suck Less, Do Better: The End of Excuses & the Rise of the Unstoppable You)
“
This competition in your life should be focused only on how you show up each day versus the version of you that you are striving to be.
”
”
Nate Green (Suck Less, Do Better: The End of Excuses & the Rise of the Unstoppable You)
“
When looking inward, you can know the whole story. When it comes to others, there are huge gaps. There's too much about individual journey and motivation and resources and progress that we don't and can't know. Even if you do have insight (such as "healthy" competition with a colleague or teammate) there's still so much that simply doesn't correlate directly.
”
”
Adam J. Kurtz (You Are Here (For Now): A Guide to Finding Your Way)
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Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology. When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible. At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales. Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day. We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform. Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.[431]
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Charles Morris (Tesla: How Elon Musk and Company Made Electric Cars Cool, and Remade the Automotive and Energy Industries)
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Finding the Competitive Levers When there’s a battle between two networks, there are competitive levers that shift users from one into the other—what are they? The best place to focus in the rideshare market was the hard side of the network: drivers. More drivers meant that prices would be lower, attracting valuable high-frequency riders that often comparison shop for fares. Attract more riders, and it more efficiently fills the time of drivers, and vice versa. There was a double benefit to moving drivers from a competitor’s network to yours—it would push their network into surging prices while yours would lower in price. Uber’s competitive levers would combine financial incentives—paying up for more sign-ups, more hours—with product improvements to improve Acquisition, Engagement, and Economic forces. Drawing in more drivers through product improvements is straightforward—the better the experience of picking up riders and routing the car to their destination, the more the app would be used. Building a better product is one of the classic levers in the tech industry, but Uber focused much of its effort on targeted bonuses for drivers. Why bonuses? Because for drivers, that was their primary motivation for using the app, and improving their earnings would make them sticky. But these bonuses weren’t just any bonuses—they were targeted at quickly flipping over the most valuable drivers in the networks of Uber’s rivals, targeting so-called dual apping drivers that were active on multiple networks. They were given large, special bonuses that compelled them to stick to Uber, and every hour they drove was an hour that the other networks couldn’t utilize. There was a sophisticated effort to tag drivers as dual appers. Some of these efforts were just manual—Uber employees who took trips would just ask if the drivers drove for other services, and they could mark them manually in a special UI within the app. There were also behavioral signals when drivers were running two apps—they would often pause their Uber session for a few minutes while they drove for another company, then unpause it. On Android, there were direct APIs that could tell if someone was running Uber and Lyft at the same time. Eventually a large number of these signals were fed into a machine learning model where each driver would receive a score based on how likely they were to be a dual apper. It didn’t have to be perfect, just good enough to aid the targeting.
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Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
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Underachievers who consciously strive to bridge the gap between their current and desired conditions embody a growth mindset and competitiveness. They thrive on challenges, embrace experiences and adversities, motivated by the desire to improve and be better.
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Asuni LadyZeal
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I compete with whom I was yesterday, while they compete with each other.
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Marion Bekoe (I WILL BE A BILLIONAIRE: The right mindset is the first step towards the journey.)
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User
I am competitive by nature, and I am confident that's my strength. I apologize if anyone ever mistook my competitive spirit for arrogance, but I will never apologize for being too competitive and confident because that's what pushes me to not fail. I'd rather be criticized for my ambition than regret not giving my all. It's not about being better than others, as the truth is there is always someone better than you. But, as I said, it's about proving to myself that I am capable. By confronting my fears and failures, I learn to fail to succeed. I admit that at times I can be very tough, but don't ever think it's because of you. My toughness is a reflection of the high standards I set for myself. It's a personal journey of growth, where resilience and determination fuel my relentless pursuit of self-improvement . I have learned that in the arena of life, I aim not just to participate but to conquer.
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Christen Kuikoua
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At the major market level, competition among radio stations is fierce.
Battling program directors create format narratives that sometimes instruct
announcers to chime like puppets during tailored and precise talk segments.
Marionettes don’t win Oscars, but when you are hired as a talent, you are
expected to be able to implement this level of precision.
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Kingsley H. Smith (Powerhouse Radio: Rough Roads, Radiance, and Rebirth)
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At the major market level, competition among radio stations is fierce. Battling program directors create format narratives that sometimes instruct announcers to chime like puppets during tailored and precise talk segments. Marionettes don’t win Oscars, but when you are hired as a talent, you are expected to be able to implement this level of precision.
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Kingsley H. Smith (Powerhouse Radio: Rough Roads, Radiance, and Rebirth)
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What had seemed a personal hatred of me, an inexplicable refusal of Southern whites to confront their own emotions, and a stubborn willingness of Blacks to acquiesce, became the inevitable consequence of a ruthless system that kept itself alive and well by encouraging spite, competition, and the oppression of one group by another. Profit was the word: the cold and constant motive for the behavior, the contempt, and the despair I had seen.
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Angela Y. Davis (Angela Davis: An Autobiography)
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You should be your own competition and not the other way around.
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Widline Jean Jules (Daily Motivational Quotes: Inspirational & life-changing thoughts)
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While you focus on yourself, they focus on you.
Counting your blessings instead of theirs. They seek competition, though your spirit is on a mission. Therefore, not there.
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Diyahwho
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There is a reason why the waiting game won't serve your career. The truth is, not everyone at your company will have your best interests at heart, and not everyone will want you to get ahead. This could be for any number of reasons - they may see you as competition, they may mentor someone at your level who they want to help excel, they may simply not like you. Who knows their motivations, and frankly, who cares?
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Lauren Wesley Wilson (What Do You Need?: How Women of Color Can Take Ownership of Their Careers to Accelerate Their Path to Success)
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Political talk builds an exterior wall of words, a set of opinions built and reinforced by competitive passions: “I am this sort of person and not that.” It is a way to avoid the encounter with the difficult and humiliating social reality to which one belongs or for which one is responsible. Further on, I call this process “opinionization,” by which I mean the reduction of thinking and perception to simple slogans or prefabricated positions, a reduction motivated by fear, competition, and laziness.
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Zena Hitz (Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life)
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In conclusion, businesses aiming for success in India need AMT Market Research as a crucial partner. AMT helps its customers make well-informed decisions that drive growth and profitability by providing individualized research solutions, consumer insights, and strategic analysis. AMT Market Research is the preferred consulting firm for businesses attempting to navigate the Indian market's complexities.
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market research consultant in india
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I am not concerned about being better than others, my only competition is with myself. My focus is on improving and becoming a better version of who I was the day before.
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Usman Aman
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If the Presidents Club had a seal, around the ring would be three words: cooperation, competition, and consolation. On the one hand, the presidents have powerful motives—personal and patriotic—to help one another succeed and comfort one another when they fail. But at the same time they all compete for history’s blessing.
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Nancy Gibbs (The Presidents Club)
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My artificial creations will be better than nature's natural creations.
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Amit Kalantri
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keep it positive rather than competitive
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Teen Vouge Editor
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Not only are the gender overlaps large, but the gender differences are actually inflated at the outset. One danger of studying gaming populations (or any natural community) is that of bringing underlying biases into the data. The gender difference in achievement motivations is a good case in point. It turns out that age influences the achievement motivation more than gender; older players are much less interested in goals and competition in online games compared with younger players. In fact, the relation between age and the achievement motivation dwarfs the gender difference.
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Nick Yee (The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us - and How They Don't)
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One thing you should not fear is competition. They only help to raise your game and build a better product. If they are better than you, you deserve to lose." Peldi in Do! the pursuit of xceptional execution
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Kevin Kelly
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One thing you should not fear is competition. They only help to raise your game and build a better product. If they are better than you, you deserve to lose." Peldi in Do! the pursuit of xceptional execution
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Kevin Kelly DO the pursuit of xceptional execution
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is driven more by fear of not being a success than by a concrete desire to do anything in particular.” The postcollege choices of Ivy League students, he explained, “are motivated by two main decision rules: (1) close down as few options as possible; and (2) only do things that increase the possibility of future overachievement.” Recruiters for investment banks and consulting firms understand this psychology, and they exploit it perfectly: the jobs are competitive and high status, but the process of applying and being accepted is regimented and predictable. The recruiters also make the argument to college seniors that if they join Goldman Sachs or McKinsey and Company or any similar firm, they’re not really choosing anything—they’re just going to spend a couple of years making money and, perhaps, recruiters suggest, doing some good in the world, and then at some point in the future they’ll make the real decision about what they want to do and who they want to be. “For people who don’t know how to get a job in the open economy,” Kwak wrote, “and who have ended each phase of their lives by taking the test to do the most prestigious thing possible in the next phase, all of this comes naturally.
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Paul Tough (How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character)
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The Show-off Promotion Focus/Be-Good Mindset/Confidence Symptoms: Takes on too much Reckless Competitive with colleagues/fellow students Brags Tunes out criticism Treatment: 1. Shift mindset to Get-Better 2. Create fit for promotion focus
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Heidi Grant Halvorson (The 8 Motivational Challenges)
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The methodical implementation of modern human faculties that allow us human beings to transcend the physical limits of biological evolution is Education. However, today, the term education has become somehow synonymous with economic benefits and due to the primeval craving for security, it has disgracefully lost its very core of transcendence into the unknown. Thus, the very evolutionary seeds that gave birth to the method known as education have gone almost extinct in the modern industrialized system of soulless competition and regurgitation. Hence emerged the reason for me to get to the root of its quite unofficially accepted problems, and to concoct the thought processes that would make necessary amendments to the perceptual errors of what I call the three major nodes of education system, which are the teachers, the students and the parents.
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Abhijit Naskar (The Education Decree)