Connections Not Competition Quotes

Don’t let mental blocks control you. Set yourself free. Confront your fear and turn the mental blocks into building blocks.

Comparison is the crush of conformity from one side and competition from the other—it’s trying to simultaneously fit in and stand out. Comparison says, “Be like everyone else, but better.

The competitive advantages the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you.

YOUTH: Have you become free from all forms of competition? PHILOSOPHER: Of course. I do not think about gaining status or honour, and I live my life as an outsider philosopher without any connection whatsoever to worldly competition. YOUTH: Does that mean you dropped out of competition? That you somehow accepted defeat? PHILOSOPHER: No. I withdrew from places that are preoccupied with winning and losing. When one is trying to be oneself, competition will inevitably get in the way.

The great differentiator going forward, the next frontier for exponential growth, the place where individuals and organizations will find a new and sustainable competitive edge, resides in the area of human connectivity.

He was lonely because he could imagine himself as anything but himself and as anywhere but where he was. His competitiveness and self-centeredness cut him off from any thought of shared life. He wanted to have more because he thought that having more would make him able to live more, and he was lonely because he never thought of the sources, the places, where he was going to get what he wanted to have, or of what his having it might cost others. It was loneliness that sometimes even he felt; you could see it. A self-praiser has got to accept a big loneliness in order to accept a little credit.

Let me be brutally honest. Being an insider, I know exactly how these MBA guys think. And because I know who they really are, I have nothing but utter contempt for these professionals. Now you might think I am stereotyping and generalizing. Yes, I am, indeed. But get this thing straight. Only highly competitive people prepare for these entrance exams to these top-notch B-schools. Only those who have excessive cupidity for money, power and status, only such people enter these highly reputed management colleges. These people don’t have friends, instead, they have connections. It’s all about Moolah. It’s all about usefulness. You scratch my back, and I will scratch yours. You be my ladder, and I will be yours.

While boys create connections through friendly competition, girls create connections by downplaying competition and focusing on similarities.

Competitive connectivity is the arms race of the twenty-first century.

...Nina, uncrumpling a piece of paper from her pocket and smoothing it onto the table. A sketch of Matthias looked back at them. “We need to get out of town as soon as possible.” “Damn it,” Jesper said. “Kaz and Wylan are still in the lead.” He gestured to where they’d pasted up the rest of the wanted posters: Jesper, Kaz, and Inej were all there. Van Eck hadn’t yet dared to plaster Kuwei Yul-Bo’s face over every surface in Ketterdam, but he’d had to maintain the pretense of searching for his son, so there was also a poster offering a reward for Wylan Van Eck’s safe return. It showed his old features, but Jesper didn’t think it was much of a likeness. Only Nina was missing. She’d never met Van Eck, and though she had connections to the Dregs, it was possible he didn’t know of her involvement. Matthias examined the posters. “One hundred thousand kruge!” He shot a disbelieving glower at Kaz. “You’re hardly worth that.” The hint of a smile tugged at Kaz’s lips. “As the market wills it.” “Tell me about it,” said Jesper. “They’re only offering thirty thousand for me.” “Your lives are at stake,” said Wylan. “How can you act like this is a competition?” “We’re stuck in a tomb, merchling. You take the action where you find it

An endless number of these unmade connections exist to this day, especially in the business world. You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence, and success. The problem is, you just don’t see them. I

The television commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology since the publication of Das Kapital. To understand why, we must remind ourselves that capitalism, like science and liberal democracy, was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. Its principal theorists, even its most prosperous practitioners, believed capitalism to be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature, well informed and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest. If greed was taken to be the fuel of the capitalist engine, the surely rationality was the driver. The theory states, in part, that competition in the marketplace requires that the buyer not only knows what is good for him but also what is good. If the seller produces nothing of value, as determined by a rational marketplace, then he loses out. It is the assumption of rationality among buyers that spurs competitors to become winners, and winners to keep on winning. Where it is assumed that a buyer is unable to make rational decisions, laws are passed to invalidate transactions, as, for example, those which prohibit children from making contracts...Of course, the practice of capitalism has its contradictions...But television commercials make hash of it...By substituting images for claims, the pictorial commercial made emotional appeal, not tests of truth, the basis of consumer decisions. The distance between rationality and advertising is now so wide that it is difficult to remember that there once existed a connection between them. Today, on television commercials, propositions are as scarce as unattractive people. The truth or falsity of an advertiser's claim is simply not an issue. A McDonald's commercial, for example, is not a series of testable, logically ordered assertions. It is a drama--a mythology, if you will--of handsome people selling, buying and eating hamburgers, and being driven to near ecstasy by their good fortune. No claim are made, except those the viewer projects onto or infers from the drama. One can like or dislike a television commercial, of course. But one cannot refute it.

Ultimately, however, whether it is mother, wife, or child who keeps a man going, or whether a woman focuses her self-sacrifice on parent, husband, or child, the simultaneous connection and contrast between nurturing within the family and competition outside it leads to a profound sense of loneliness.

Being an American boy is a setup. We train boys to believe that the way to become a man is to objectify and conquer women, value wealth and power above all, and suppress any emotions other than competitiveness and rage. Then we are stunned when our boys become exactly what we have trained them to be. Our boys cannot follow our directions, but they are cheating and dying and killing as they try to. Everything that makes a boy human is a “real man’s” dirty secret. Our men are caged, too. The parts of themselves they must hide to fit into those cages are the slices of their humanity that our culture has labeled ‘feminine’—traits like mercy, tenderness, softness, quietness, kindness, humility, uncertainty, empathy, connection. We tell them, ‘Don’t be these things, because these are feminine things to be. Be anything but feminine.’ The problem is that the parts of themselves that our boys have been banished from are not feminine traits; they are human traits. There is no such thing as a feminine quality, because there is no such thing as masculinity or femininity. ‘Femininity’ is just a set of human characteristics a culture pours into a bucket and slaps with the label ‘feminine.’ Gender is not wild, it’s prescribed.

I know certainly, for instance, it's part of the black aesthetic, the whole concept of art as business, art for art's sake, art as the competitive gesture, I connect with a very male-oriented concept of living, as opposed to, and we would call them alternate aesthetics, which include the black aesthetic, the feminist aesthetic, where art and poetry become part and parcel of one's daily living, one's daily expression, the need to communicate, the need to share one's feelings, to develop within oneself the best that is possible. And the definition of art as betterment, I think, is a mainstay of the alternative aesthetics.

The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree.I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during former years may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have at all times overmastered other species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was young, budding twigs; and this connection of the former and present buds by ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three, now grown into great branches, yet survive and bear the other branches; so with the species which lived during long-past geological periods, very few have left living and modified descendants. From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and these fallen branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin straggling branch springing from a fork low down in a tree, and which by some chance has been favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects by its affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.

Trivia, as I’ve said before, shouldn’t really be called “trivia.” Facts about history, geography, books, movies, music—this is the stuff that used to be called good old-fashioned “general knowledge,” the stuff that everybody was supposed to remember from school, regardless of their career niche. We lost something the more we specialized—it started to drain away this vast pool of information that everybody knew. Knowledge was what connected us, and now it distinguishes us.

You kept me down so you would feel up, but love isn't a competition. The sun and the moon exist simultaneously in their aloneness, bestowing light, guiding life and time, because they work together. I'm not sure if I'm the sun or if I'm the moon, but I have found a love that embraces the equality of their inseparable connection.

We are here to connect, not compare. There is a reason we are not in this world alone. It is because we are all connected and need each other to function peacefully, purposefully, and powerfully. We cannot know happiness or our true power if we are constantly in a state of comparison and competition. Comparison and extreme competition run

Teams that spend a lot of time learning the tricks of the trade will probably never really learn the trade.

Since, in our societies, a gendered division of labor still predominates which confers a male twist on basic liberal categories (autonomy, public activity, competition) and relegates women to the private sector of family solidarity, liberalism itself, in its opposition to private and public, harbors male dominance. Furthermore, it is only modern Western capital culture for which autonomy and individual freedom stand higher than collective solidarity, connection, responsibility for dependent others, the duty to respect the customs of one's community. Liberalism itself thus privileges a certain culture: the modern Western one. As to freedom of choice, liberalism is also marked by a strong bias. It is intolerant when individuals of other cultures are not given freedom of choice-as is evident in issues such as clitoridechtomy, child brideship, infanticide, polygamy, and incest. However, it ignores the tremendous pressure which, for example, compels women in out liberal societies to undergo such procedures as plastic surgery, cosmetic implants, and Botox injections to remain competitive in the sex markets.

The wood wide web has been mapped, traced, monitored, and coaxed to reveal the beautiful structures and finely adapted languages of the forest network. We have learned that mother trees recognize and talk with their kin, shaping future generations. In addition, injured tress pass their legacies on to their neighbors, affecting gene regulation, defense chemistry, and resilience in the forest community. These discoveries have transformed our understanding of trees from competitive crusaders of the self to members of a connected, relating, communicating system. Ours is not the only lab making these discoveries-there is a burst of careful scientific research occurring worldwide that is uncovering all manner of ways that trees communicate with each other above and below ground.

The ICC [Interstate Commerce Commission] illustrates what might be called the natural history of government intervention. A real or fancied evil leads to demands to do something about it. A political coalition forms consisting of sincere, high-minded reformers and equally sincere interested parties. The incompatible objectives of the members of the coalition (e.g., low prices to consumers and high prices to producers) are glossed over by fine rhetoric about “the public interest,” “fair competition,” and the like. The coalition succeeds in getting Congress (or a state legislature) to pass a law. The preamble to the law pays lip service to the rhetoric and the body of the law grants power to government officials to “do something.” The high-minded reformers experience a glow of triumph and turn their attention to new causes. The interested parties go to work to make sure that the power is used for their benefit. They generally succeed. Success breeds its problems, which are met by broadening the scope of intervention. Bureaucracy takes its toll so that even the initial special interests no longer benefit. In the end the effects are precisely the opposite of the objectives of the reformers and generally do not even achieve the objectives of the special interests. Yet the activity is so firmly established and so many vested interests are connected with it that repeal of the initial legislation is nearly inconceivable. Instead, new government legislation is called for to cope with the problems produced by the earlier legislation and a new cycle begins.

The curve seems to be imprinted on us as a way to repurpose us for a changing role in society as we age, a role that is less about ambition and competition, and more about connection and compassion.

I’m not building a castle or a monument; I’m building a soul and a family. I’ll tell stories all my life, writing on napkins and on the backs of receipts, or in books if they let me, but this is the promise I make to my God: I will never again be so careless, so cavalier with the body and soul you’ve given me. They are the only things in all the world that have been entrusted entirely to me, and I stewarded them poorly, worshiping for a time at the altars of productivity, capability, busyness, distraction. This body and soul will become again what God intended them to be: living sacrifices, offered only to him. I will spend my life on meaning, on connection, on love, on freedom. I will not waste one more day trapped in comparison, competition, proving, and earning. That’s the currency of a culture that has nothing to offer me. It

Remarkably, the fetal brain generates far more neurons than are found in the adult. Why? During late fetal development, there is a dramatic competition in much of the brain, with winning neurons being the ones that migrate to the correct location and maximize synaptic connections to other neurons. And neurons that don’t make the grade? They undergo “programmed cell death”—genes are activated that cause them to shrivel and die, their materials then recycled.

The postures are both a metaphor and a means for that process. They are tools for creating a connection between the imagination and the physical world. Realizing this connection—this union between body and mind—could be called yoga.

Others of us may be unable to put aside our competitiveness or our need to be in control. We get bored, cranky, and frustrated; we're sore losers; we worry about teaching how to throw the ball correctly when our child just wants to play catch.

In some sports, you can just get by on a lot of natural talent. In swimming, it helps to be long and lean, but you can’t be good at it without putting in the work. There is a direct connection between what you put into it and what you get out of it.

Once, at a writing conference, a white man asked me if destruction was necessary for art. His question was genuine. He leaned forward, his blue gaze twitching under his cap stitched gold with ’Nam Vet 4 Life, the oxygen tank connected to his nose hissing beside him. I regarded him the way I do every white veteran from that war, thinking he could be my grandfather, and I said no. “No, sir, destruction is not necessary for art.” I said that, not because I was certain, but because I thought my saying it would help me believe it. But why can’t the language for creativity be the language of regeneration? You killed that poem, we say. You’re a killer. You came in to that novel guns blazing. I am hammering this paragraph, I am banging them out, we say. I owned that workshop. I shut it down. I crushed them. We smashed the competition. I’m wrestling with the muse. The state, where people live, is a battleground state. The audience a target audience. “Good for you, man,” a man once said to me at a party, “you’re making a killing with poetry. You’re knockin’ ’em dead.

Encourage a healthy proportion of bottom-up OKRs—roughly half. Smash departmental silos by connecting teams with horizontally shared OKRs. Cross-functional operations enable quick and coordinated decisions, the basis for seizing a competitive advantage. Make all lateral, cross-functional dependencies explicit.

Evolution is no longer seen as a competitive struggle for existence, but rather as a cooperative dance in which creativity and the constant emergence of novelty are the driving forces. And with the new emphasis on complexity, networks, and patterns of organization, a new science of qualities is slowly emerging.

Regulations and the size and scope of government have greatly expanded, creating the conditions for the spread of crony capitalism, restricting competition in favor of politically well-connected businesses. Crony capitalism is not capitalism at all, but is seen as such by many because it involves businesspeople.

the competitive advantage the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion.

People often say that they have a very stressful job and that’s why they’re tense. But if they weren’t conscientious about doing a good job, if they weren’t trying to succeed, achieve, and excel, they wouldn’t generate tension. Often such people are highly competitive and determined to get ahead. Typically, they are more critical of themselves than others are of them.

Since happiness is defined in terms of positive feelings and personal gains, striving for happiness requires competition and therefore may damage people’s social connections and increase both their sense of loneliness and detachment from others. Similarly, many other authors have reported that happiness positively correlates with narcissism, which lies at the core of self-aggrandizement, selfishness, egocentrism, hubristic pride, and self-absorption, all of them aspects underlying a vast array of mental disorders.

Men are not raised to be intimate, they're raised to be competitive performers. Traditional socialization teaches young boys to filter their sense of self-worth through performance. The paradox for boys is that in order to be worthy of connection they must prove themselves invulnerable, button down warriors in the world's emotional marketplace. In the world of boys and men, you're either a winner or a loser, one up or one down, in control or controlled, man enough or a girl. Where in this set up is the capacity for love?

Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick. The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous. -George Leonard Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it…the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way…To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so–and this is the inexorable–fact of the journey–you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. (Mastery, p. 14-15). Backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better. Our body, brain and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed…Be aware of the way homeostasis works…Expect resistance and backlash. Realize that when the alarm bells start ringing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sick or crazy or lazy or that you’ve made a bad decision in embarking on the journey of mastery. In fact, you might take these signals as an indication that your life is definitely changing–just what you’ve wanted….Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change. Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences…there are all of those chores that most of us can’t avoid: cleaning, straightening, raking leaves, shopping for groceries, driving the children to various activities, preparing food, washing dishes, washing the car, commuting, performing the routine, repetitive aspects of our jobs….Take driving, for instance. Say you need to drive ten miles to visit a friend. You might consider the trip itself as in-between-time, something to get over with. Or you could take it as an opportunity for the practice of mastery. In that case, you would approach your car in a state of full awareness…Take a moment to walk around the car and check its external condition, especially that of the tires…Open the door and get in the driver’s seat, performing the next series of actions as a ritual: fastening the seatbelt, adjusting the seat and the rearview mirror…As you begin moving, make a silent affirmation that you’ll take responsibility for the space all around your vehicle at all times…We tend to downgrade driving as a skill simply because it’s so common. Actually maneuvering a car through varying conditions of weather, traffic, and road surface calls for an extremely high level of perception, concentration, coordination, and judgement…Driving can be high art…Ultimately, nothing in this life is “commonplace,” nothing is “in between.” The threads that join your every act, your every thought, are infinite. All paths of mastery eventually merge. [Each person has a] vantage point that offers a truth of its own. We are the architects of creation and all things are connected through us. The Universe is continually at its work of restructuring itself at a higher, more complex, more elegant level . . . The intention of the universe is evolution. We exist as a locus of waves that spreads its influence to the ends of space and time. The whole of a thing is contained in each of its parts. We are completely, firmly, absolutely connected with all of existence. We are indeed in relationship to all that is.

The living world is not the harsh domain of classical Darwinism, where each struggle against all, with every species, every organism and every gene competing for advantage against every other. Organisms are not skin-enclosed selfish entities, and competition is never unfettered. Life evolves, as does the universe itself, in a 'sacred dance' with an underlying field. This makes living beings into elements in a vast network of intimate relations that embraces the entire biosphere itself an interconnected element within the wider connections that reach into the cosmos.

Those kids are less likely to come, perhaps because they’re less inclined to analyze and dig deep—that’s not their comfort zone. The so-called shy kids are often hungry to brainstorm ideas, deconstruct them, and act on them, and, paradoxically, when they’re allowed to interact this way, they’re not shy at all. They’re connecting with each other, but in a deeper zone, in a place that’s considered boring or tiresome by some of their peers.” And these kids do “come out” when they’re ready; most of the Writopia kids read their works at local bookstores, and a staggering number win prestigious national writing competitions.

Among Norway rats, males ejaculate more sperm when copulating in the presence of male rivals, seemingly because the competition to reproduce persists all the way up the fallopian tube to the surface of the egg. For the same reason, an ape’s testicles are proportionate to the size of the male breeding pool. The male chimpanzee, surrounded by ruthless competition, has reproductive equipment that is truly prodigious, while the gorilla, living with a harem as the only male, has nothing to brag about. The evolutionary reason: A male without rivals needs no special adaptations to increase his odds of becoming a father. Once again, the social and the physiological cannot be separated any more than we can separate the length from the width of a rectangle.

Get the ongoing process right and it will keep generating ongoing benefits. In our new era, processes trump products. This shift toward processes also means ceaseless change is the fate for everything we make. We are moving away from the world of fixed nouns and toward a world of fluid verbs. In the next 30 years we will continue to take solid things—an automobile, a shoe—and turn them into intangible verbs. Products will become services and processes. Embedded with high doses of technology, an automobile becomes a transportation service, a continuously updated sequence of materials rapidly adapting to customer usage, feedback, competition, innovation, and wear. Whether it is a driverless car or one you drive, this transportation service is packed with flexibility, customization, upgrades, connections, and new benefits.

Let’s define a Crapitalist: A well-connected friend of the powers that be who scores big bucks at taxpayer expense. From bagging millions in tax dollars for phony “green energy” companies that go bust, to vacuuming public coffers to build glitzy sports stadiums, to utilizing little-known tax credit loopholes to loot $1.5 billion a year for Hollywood movies—Crapitalists know how to use every trick to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense. Rather than playing and winning in the rough-and-tumble world of business competition, Crapitalists use government to rig the game in their favor and leave you and me—the taxpayers—holding the bill. These corporate sissies know their ideas suck, so they try to stack the deck to privatize their profits and socialize their losses. And there’s the rub: crony capitalism is socialism’s Trojan horse.

Then Wallace happened. Stepping onto the field something seemed different. As always, he had an energetic quality to him, jumping for the discs and shaking with anticipation, but Roo could sense something else in his bearing, see it in the way he carried himself. His tail was stiff except for the tip, which flicked steadily. His ears were perked, his eyes wide. The music kicked on, the discus began to fly, and Wallace did the rest. He ran a little faster, jumped a little higher. He appeared, if it was possible, to move with a little more grace. He caught nearly everything. As the routine progressed, Roo felt that sensation, that connection and singularity of purpose that had struck him during earlier competitions. He could sense that Josh felt it too, and the three of them worked in perfect synchronicity sharing an instant, almost nonverbal communication.

The answer to this question is closely connected with that other question which arises here, that of who is to do the planning. It is about this question that all the dispute about “economic planning” centers. This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals. Planning in the specific sense in which the term is used in contemporary controversy necessarily means central planning—direction of the whole economic system according to one unified plan. Competition, on the other hand, means decentralized planning by many separate persons. The halfway house between the two, about which many people talk but which few like when they see it, is the delegation of planning to organized industries, or, in other words, monopoly.

Kya never had her troop of close friends, nor the connections Jodie described, for she never had her own family. She knew the years of isolation had altered her behavior until she was different from others, but it wasn't her fault she'd been alone. Most of what she knew, she'd learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would. If consequences resulted from her behaving differently then they too were functions of life's fundamental core. Tate's devotion eventually convinced her that human love is more than the bizarre mating competitions of the marsh creatures. But life also taught her that ancient genes for survival still persist in undesirable forms among the twists and turns of man's genetic code. For Kya it was enough to be part of this natural sequence as sure as the tides. Kya was bonded to her planet and its life in a way few people are. Rooted solid in this earth. Born of this mother.

The remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the reestablishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way—a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response. And in today’s world, that means recognizing that it’s impossible to have a well-informed citizenry without having a well-connected citizenry. While education remains important, it is now connection that is the key. A well-connected citizenry is made up of men and women who discuss and debate ideas and issues among themselves and who constantly test the validity of the information and impressions they receive from one another—as well as the ones they receive from their government. No citizenry can be well informed without a constant flow of honest information about contemporary events and without a full opportunity to participate in a discussion of the choices that the society must make. Moreover, if citizens feel deprived of a meaningful opportunity to participate in the national conversation, they can scarcely be blamed for developing a lack of interest in the process. And sure enough, numerous surveys and studies have documented the erosion of public knowledge of basic facts about our democracy. For example, from the data compiled by the National Election Studies on one recent election, only 15 percent of respondents could recall the name of even one of the candidates in the election in their district. Less than 4 percent could name two candidates. When there are so few competitive races, it’s hard to blame them. Two professors, James Snyder and David Stromberg, found that knowledge of candidates increased in media markets where the local newspaper covered the congressional representative more. Very few respondents claimed to learn anything at all about their congressional elections from television news.

From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and these fallen branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin straggling branch springing from a fork low down in a tree, and which by some chance has been favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects by its affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.

This region concentrates our learned knowledge of letter strings, to such an extent that it can be considered as our brain’s “letter box.” It is this brain area, for instance, that allows us to recognize a word regardless of its size, position, font, or cAsE, whether UPPERCASE or lowercase.39 In any literate person, this region, which is located in the same spot in all of us (give or take a few millimeters), serves a dual role: it first identifies a string of learned characters, and then, through its direct connections to language areas,40 it allows those characters to be quickly translated into sound and meaning. What would happen if we scanned an illiterate child or adult as she progressively learned to read? If the theory is correct, then we should literally see her visual cortex reorganize. The neuronal recycling theory predicts that reading should invade an area of the cortex normally devoted to a similar function and repurpose it to this novel task. In the case of reading, we expect a competition with the preexisting function of the visual cortex, which is to recognize all sorts of objects, bodies, faces, plants, and places.

Living in this niche therefore requires both individual and collective creativity, intensive cooperation, a tolerance for strangers and crowds, and a degree of openness and trust that is entirely unmatched among our closest primate relatives. Compared to fiercely individualistic and relentlessly competitive chimpanzees, for instance, we are like goofy, tail-wagging puppies. We are almost painfully docile, desperately in need of affection and social contact, and wildly vulnerable to exploitation. As Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an anthropologist and primatologist, notes, it is remarkable that hundreds of people will cram themselves shoulder to shoulder into a tiny airplane, obediently fasten their seat belts, eat their packets of stale crackers, watch movies and read magazines and chat politely with their neighbors, and then file peacefully off at the other end. If you packed a similar number of chimpanzees onto a plane, what you’d end up with at the other end is a long metal tube full of blood and dismembered body parts.6 Humans are powerful in groups precisely because we are weak as individuals, pathetically eager to connect with one another, and utterly dependent on the group for survival.

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.

American Girl dolls are nice. But they aren’t amazing. In recent years Toys“ R” Us, Walmart, and even Disney have all tried to challenge American Girl’s success with similar dolls (Journey Girls, My Life, and Princess & Me)—at a fraction of the price—but to date, no one has made a dent. American Girl is able to command a premium price because it’s not really selling dolls. It’s selling an experience. When you see a company that has a product or service that no one has successfully copied, like American Girl, rarely is it the product itself that is the source of the long-term competitive advantage, something American Girl founder Pleasant Rowland understood. “You’re not trying to just get the product out there, you hope you are creating an experience that will do the job perfectly,” says Rowland. You’re creating experiences that, in effect, make up the product’s résumé: “Here’s why you should hire me.” That’s why American Girl has been so successful for so long, in spite of numerous attempts by competitors to elbow in. My wife, Christine, and I were willing to splurge on the dolls because we understood what they stood for. American Girl dolls are about connection and empowering self-belief—and the chance to savor childhood just a bit longer. I have found that creating the right set of experiences around a clearly defined job—and then organizing the company around delivering those experiences (which we’ll discuss in the next chapter)—almost inoculates you against disruption. Disruptive competitors almost never come with a better sense of the job. They don’t see beyond the product.

In 2000, for instance, two statisticians were hired by the YMCA—one of the nation’s largest nonprofit organizations—to use the powers of data-driven fortune-telling to make the world a healthier place. The YMCA has more than 2,600 branches in the United States, most of them gyms and community centers. About a decade ago, the organization’s leaders began worrying about how to stay competitive. They asked a social scientist and a mathematician—Bill Lazarus and Dean Abbott—for help. The two men gathered data from more than 150,000 YMCA member satisfaction surveys that had been collected over the years and started looking for patterns. At that point, the accepted wisdom among YMCA executives was that people wanted fancy exercise equipment and sparkling, modern facilities. The YMCA had spent millions of dollars building weight rooms and yoga studios. When the surveys were analyzed, however, it turned out that while a facility’s attractiveness and the availability of workout machines might have caused people to join in the first place, what got them to stay was something else. Retention, the data said, was driven by emotional factors, such as whether employees knew members’ names or said hello when they walked in. People, it turns out, often go to the gym looking for a human connection, not a treadmill. If a member made a friend at the YMCA, they were much more likely to show up for workout sessions. In other words, people who join the YMCA have certain social habits. If the YMCA satisfied them, members were happy. So if the YMCA wanted to encourage people to exercise, it needed to take advantage of patterns that already existed, and teach employees to remember visitors’ names.

One day in the dojo (the martial-arts studio) before our karate class began, I witnessed the power of a concentrated focus unlike anything that I’d ever seen growing up in the heartland of northern Missouri. On that day, our instructor walked into the room and asked us to do something very different from the form and movement practices that were familiar to us. He explained that he would seat himself in the center of the thick mat where we honed our skills, close his eyes, and go into a meditation. During this exercise, he would stretch his arms out on either side of his body, with his palms open and facedown. He asked us to give him a couple of minutes to “anchor” himself in this T position and then invited us to do anything that we could to move him from his place. The men in our class outnumbered the women by about two to one, and there had always been a friendly competition between the sexes. On that day, however, there was no such division. Together, we all sat close to our instructor, silent and motionless. We watched as he simply walked to the center of the mat, sat down with his legs crossed, closed his eyes, held out his arms, and changed his breathing pattern. I remember that I was fascinated and observed closely as his chest swelled and shrank, slower and slower with each breath until it was hard to tell that he was breathing at all. With a nod of agreement, we moved closer and tried to move our instructor from his place. At first, we thought that this was going to be an easy exercise, and only a few of us tried. As we grabbed his arms and legs, we pushed and pulled in different directions with absolutely no success. Amazed, we changed our strategy and gathered on one side of him to use our combined weight to force him in the opposite direction. Still, we couldn’t even budge his arms or the fingers on his hands! After a few moments, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and with the gentle humor we’d come to respect, he asked, “What happened? How come I’m still sitting here?” After a big laugh that eased the tension and with a familiar gleam in his eyes, he explained what had just happened. “When I closed my eyes,” he said, “I had a vision that was like a dream, and that dream became my reality. I pictured two mountains, one on either side of my body, and myself on the ground between the peaks.” As he spoke, I immediately saw the image in my mind’s eye and felt that he was somehow imbuing us with a direct experience of his vision. “Attached to each of my arms,” he continued, “I saw a chain that bound me to the top of each mountain. As long as the chains were there, I was connected to the mountains in a way that nothing could change.” Our instructor looked around at the faces that were riveted on each word he was sharing. With a big grin, he concluded, “Not even a classroom full of my best students could change my dream.” Through a brief demonstration in a martial-arts classroom, this beautiful man had just given each of us a direct sense of the power to redefine our relationship to the world. The lesson was less about reacting to what the world was showing us and more about creating our own rules for what we choose to experience. The secret here is that our instructor was experiencing himself from the perspective that he was already fixed in one place on that mat. In those moments, he was living from the outcome of his meditation. Until he chose to break the chains in his imagination, nothing could move him. And that’s precisely what we found out.

Earth (481-640) People with this personality type are likely to become successful leaders. You tend to be more disciplined and careful at planning tasks. Loyalty and trust are important equations in your relationships hence they prove to be your strength in hard times. You respect others and keep people united which makes people flourish under your leadership. Earth signs are efficient decision makers hence always remain firm on the step they took. Fire: (400-300) Fire people are smart enthusiastic and energetic to be around. You are very competitive and curious, and more often very passionate about your goals and desires. Trusting people with a job or any important personal task is hard hence making emotional connections are difficult for you. making friends or getting a lover, your life is full of drama and there’s always a lot happening around you. You are intelligent and always find new ways to do things Water (160-320) Water people are kind and empathetic but sensitive. And you sometimes tend to become people pleasers. being quite impulsive and always in a hurry, you make decisions haphazardly. Water people are shy and introverted while partying around with friends on a weekend would be the last thing you want to do. You dread small talk and expressing yourself to a group of people is quite a demanding job. People feel relaxed in your presence you bring out the best in them. Decision-making can be demanding and you are sometimes regretful of overthinking and hence not capable of finding a firm decision. Air: (0-160) You have quite an entrancing personality. People are naturally drawn towards you and find your company comforting and friendly. Air signs are naturally smart and quite efficient in their workplace. While using your challenges and opportunities wisely you are likely to have great careers. you are good at advising your colleagues. But being bound in a relationship sometimes doesn’t seem to help you, rather you respect open free yet intimate emotional connections. Air people who are artistic and creative always look at things from a unique lens. So now you know your element.

How do you build peaks? You create a positive moment with elements of elevation, insight, pride, and/ or connection. We’ll explore those final three elements later, but for now, let’s focus on elevation. To elevate a moment, do three things: First, boost sensory appeal. Second, raise the stakes. Third, break the script. (Breaking the script means to violate expectations about an experience—the next chapter is devoted to the concept.) Moments of elevation need not have all three elements but most have at least two. Boosting sensory appeal is about “turning up the volume” on reality. Things look better or taste better or sound better or feel better than they usually do. Weddings have flowers and food and music and dancing. (And they need not be superexpensive—see the footnote for more.IV) The Popsicle Hotline offers sweet treats delivered on silver trays by white-gloved waiters. The Trial of Human Nature is conducted in a real courtroom. It’s amazing how many times people actually wear different clothes to peak events: graduation robes and wedding dresses and home-team colors. At Hillsdale High, the lawyers wore suits and the witnesses came in costume. A peak means something special is happening; it should look different. To raise the stakes is to add an element of productive pressure: a competition, a game, a performance, a deadline, a public commitment. Consider the pregame jitters at a basketball game, or the sweaty-hands thrill of taking the stage at Signing Day, or the pressure of the oral defense at Hillsdale High’s Senior Exhibition. Remember how the teacher Susan Bedford said that, in designing the Trial, she and Greg Jouriles were deliberately trying to “up the ante” for their students. They made their students conduct the Trial in front of a jury that included the principal and varsity quarterback. That’s pressure. One simple diagnostic to gauge whether you’ve transcended the ordinary is if people feel the need to pull out their cameras. If they take pictures, it must be a special occasion. (Not counting the selfie addict, who thinks his face is a special occasion.) Our instinct to capture a moment says: I want to remember this. That’s a moment of elevation.

Rebecca Wallace-Segall, who teaches creative-writing workshops for kids and teens as director of Writopia Lab in New York City, says that the students who sign up for her classes “are often not the kids who are willing to talk for hours about fashion and celebrity. Those kids are less likely to come, perhaps because they’re less inclined to analyze and dig deep—that’s not their comfort zone. The so-called shy kids are often hungry to brainstorm ideas, deconstruct them, and act on them, and, paradoxically, when they’re allowed to interact this way, they’re not shy at all. They’re connecting with each other, but in a deeper zone, in a place that’s considered boring or tiresome by some of their peers.” And these kids do “come out” when they’re ready; most of the Writopia kids read their works at local bookstores, and a staggering number win prestigious national writing competitions. If your child is prone to overstimulation, then it’s also a good idea for her to pick activities like art or long-distance running, that depend less on performing under pressure. If she’s drawn to activities that require performance, though, you can help her thrive. When I was a kid, I loved figure skating. I could spend hours on the rink, tracing figure eights, spinning happily, or flying through the air. But on the day of my competitions, I was a wreck. I hadn’t slept the night before and would often fall during moves that I had sailed through in practice. At first I believed what people told me—that I had the jitters, just like everybody else. But then I saw a TV interview with the Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt. She said that pre-competition nerves gave her the adrenaline she needed to win the gold. I knew then that Katarina and I were utterly different creatures, but it took me decades to figure out why. Her nerves were so mild that they simply energized her, while mine were constricting enough to make me choke. At the time, my very supportive mother quizzed the other skating moms about how their own daughters handled pre-competition anxiety, and came back with insights that she hoped would make me feel better. Kristen’s nervous too, she reported. Renée’s mom says she’s scared the night before a competition. But I knew Kristen and Renée well, and I was certain that they weren’t as frightened as I was

you’ll be stuck in sucky classes! Through conversations with friends, your own research, and an understanding of the teaching and learning styles that work for you, select the classes that suit you best. If you are interested in a particular field in which you don’t have any connections, do not be afraid to reach out. Research the people in that field before approaching them and make sure you ask intelligent questions that will help you decide if you want to pursue further study. Non-academic pursuits in college can be just as important or even more important than classes and grades. College grades matter less than high school grades (except when applying to highly competitive graduate and medical

In 2014, some 60,000 women entrepreneurs cover a population of a hundred million deep in rural India where there is poor road and media connectivity. These women doubled their household income in no time. Women started to gain social respectability and for Unilever it was competitive advantage in distribution. “What a tremendous win-win he helped us create.

He comes next to a consideration of the passions. 'Endeavour' may be defined as a small beginning of motion; if towards something, it is desire, and if away from something it is aversion. Love is the same as desire, and hate is the same as aversion. We call a thing 'good' when it is an object of desire, and 'bad' when it is an object of aversion. (It will be observed that these definitions give no objectivity to 'good' and 'bad'; if men differ in their desires, there is no theoretical method of adjusting their differences.) There are definitions of various passions, mostly based on a competitive view of life; for instance, laughter is sudden glory. Fear of invisible power, if publicly allowed, is religion; if not allowed, superstition. Thus the decision as to what is religion and what superstition rests with the legislator. Felicity involves continual progress; it consists in prospering, not in having prospered; there is no such thing as a static happiness—excepting, of course, the joys of heaven, which surpass our comprehension. Will is nothing but the last appetite or aversion remaining in deliberation. That is to say, will is not something different from desire and aversion, but merely the strongest in a case of conflict. This is connected, obviously, with Hobbes's denial of free will. Unlike most defenders of despotic government, Hobbes holds that all men are naturally equal. In a state of nature, before there is any government, every man desires to preserve his own liberty, but to acquire dominion over others; both these desires are dictated by the impulse to self-preservation. From their conflict arises a war of all against all, which makes life 'nasty, brutish, and short'. In a state of nature, there is no property, no justice or injustice; there is only war, and 'force and fraud are, in war, the two cardinal virtues'. The second part tells how men escape from these evils by combining into communities each subject to a central authority. This is represented as happening by means of a social contract. It is supposed that a number of people come together and agree to choose a sovereign, or a sovereign body, which shall exercise authority over them and put an end to the universal war.

For some time now, the conventional wisdom at most agencies has been to partner with experts in specific fields—social networking, gaming, mobile, or any other discipline—in order to “get the best people for the job.” But given the success of AKQA, R/GA, and so many other innovators, perhaps it can be argued that to be truly holistic in our approach, it’s better to grow innovations from one’s own stem cells, so to speak, than to try to graft on capabilities on an ad-hoc basis. Some would no doubt argue that it makes the most economic sense to hire experts to execute as needed, rather than taking on more overhead in an increasingly competitive marketplace. But it should be pointed out that it’s hard to have the original ideas themselves if your own team doesn’t have a firm grasp of the technologies. Without a cross-disciplinary team of in-house experts, who knows what opportunities you—and by extension, your clients—may miss. “It comes down to the brains that you have working with you to make it a reality,” John Butler, cofounder of Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, tells me. “The history of the ad agency is the Bernbach model—the writer and art director sitting in a room together coming up with an idea,” he says, referring to legendary adman Bill Bernbach, cofounder of DDB and the man who first combined copywriters and art directors as two-person teams. Now, all that’s changed. “[Today, there are] fifteen people sitting in a room. Media is as much a part of the creative department as a writer or an art director. And we have account planners—we call them ‘connection planners’—in the room throwing around ideas,” he says. “That facilitates getting to work that is about the experience, about ways to compel consumers to interact with your brand in a way that they become like free media” by actively promoting the brand for you. If his team worked on the old Bernbach model, Butler adds, they would never have created something like those cool MINI billboards that display messages to drivers by name that I described in the last chapter. The idea actually spun out of a discussion about 3-D glasses for print ads. “Someone in the interactive group said, ‘We can probably do that same thing with [radio frequency identification] technology.’” By using transmitters built into the billboards, and building RFID chips into MINI key fobs, “when a person drives by, it will recognize him and it will spit out a message just for him.” He adds with considerable understatement: “Through having those capabilities, in-house engineers, technical guys who know the technology and what’s available, we were able to create something that was really pretty cool.

A large society will consist of a wide variety of games-though all somehow connected, inasmuch as they have a bearing on a final societal ranking. Schools are a species of finite play to the degree that they bestow ranked awards on those who win degrees from them. Those awards in turn qualify graduates for competition in still higher games-certain prestigious colleges, for example, an then certain professional schools beyond that, with a continuing sequence of higher games in each of the professions, and so forth. It is not uncommon for families to think of themselves as a competitive unit in a broader finite game for which they are training their members in the struggle for societally visible titles.

Every network has its own fitness distribution, which tells us how similar or different the nodes in the network are. In networks where most of the nodes have comparable fitness, the distribution follows a narrowly peaked bell curve. In other networks, the range of fitnesses is very wide such that a few nodes are much more fit than most others. Google, for example, is easily tens of thousands times more interesting to all Web surfers than any personal Webpage. Indeed, the mathematical tools developed decades earlier to describe quantum gases enabled us to see that, independent of the nature of links and nodes, a network's behavior and topology are determined by the shape of its fitness distribution. But even though each system, from the Web to Holywood, has a unique fitness distribution, Bianconi's calculation indicated that in terms of topology all networks fall into one of only two possible categories. In most networks the competition does not have an easily noticeable impact on the network's topology. In some networks, however, the winner takes all the links, a clear signature of Bose-Einstein condensation. The first category includes all networks in which, despite the fierce competition for links, the scale-free topology survives. These networks display a fit-get-rich behavior, meaning that the fittest node will inevitably grow to become the biggest hub. The winner's lead is never significant, however. The largest hub is closely followed by a smaller one, which acquires almost as many links as the fittest node. At any moment we have a hierarchy of nodes whose degree distribution follows a power law. In most complex networks, the power law and the fight for links thus are not antagonistic but can coexist peacefully. In networks belonging to the second category, the winner takes all, meaning that the fittest node grabs all links, leaving very little for the rest of the nodes. Such networks develop a star topology, in which all nodes are connected to a central hub. In such a hub-and-spokes network there is a huge gap between the lonely hub and everybody else in the system. Thus a winner-takes-all network is very different from the scale-free networks we encountered earlier, where there is a hierarchy of hubs whose size distribution follows a power law. A winner-takes-all network is not scale-free. Instead there is a single hub and many tiny nodes. This is a very important distinction. In fact, Google's rapid rise is not an indication of winner-takes-all behavior; it only tells us that the fit get rich. To be sure, Google is one of the fittest hubs. But it never succeeded in grabbing all links and turning into a star. It shares the spotlight with several nodes whose number of links is comparable to Google's. When the winner takes all, there is no room for a potential challenger. Are there any real networks that display true winner-takes-all behavior? We can now predict whether a given network will follow the fit-get-rich or winner-takes-all behavior by looking at its fitness distribution. Fitness, however, remains a somewhat elusive quantity, since the tools to precisely measure the fitness of an individual node are still being developed. But winner-takes-all behavior has such a singular and visible impact on a network's structure that, if present, it is hard to miss. It destroys the hierarchy of hubs characterizing the scale-free topology, turning it into a starlike network, with a single node grabbing all the links. And there is a network in which we cannot fail to notice one node that carries the signature of a Bose-Einstein condensate. The node is called Microsoft.

FOR MY SPIRITUAL LIFE... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to help others... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with God... ? FOR MY PHYSICAL HEALTH... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to achieve my diet goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I exercise... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to relieve my stress... ? FOR MY PERSONAL LIFE... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skill at ________... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to find time for myself... ? FOR MY KEY RELATIONSHIPS... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my relationship with my spouse/partner... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my children’s school performance... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to show my appreciation to my parents... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make my family stronger... ? FOR MY JOB... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to ensure that I hit my goals... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my skills... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to help my team succeed... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to further my career... ? FOR MY BUSINESS... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more competitive... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make our product the best... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to make us more profitable... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve our customer experience... ? FOR MY FINANCES... What’s the ONE Thing I can do to increase my net worth... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to improve my investment cash flow... ? What’s the ONE Thing I can do to eliminate my credit card debt... ? BIG IDEAS So how do you make The ONE Thing part of your daily routine? How do you make it strong enough to get extraordinary results at work and in the other areas of your life? Here’s a starter list drawn from our experience and our work with others. Understand and believe it. The first step is to understand the concept of the ONE Thing, then to believe that it can make a difference in your life. If you don’t understand and believe, you won’t take action. Use it. Ask yourself the Focusing Question. Start each day by asking, “What’s the ONE Thing I can do today for [whatever you want] such that by doing it everything else will be easier or even unnecessary?” When you do this, your direction will become clear. Your work will be more productive and your personal life more rewarding. Make it a habit. When you make asking the Focusing Question a habit, you fully engage its power to get the extraordinary results you want. It’s a difference maker. Research says this will take about 66 days. Whether it takes you a few weeks or a few months, stick with it until it becomes your routine. If you’re not serious about learning the Success Habit, you’re not serious about getting extraordinary results. Leverage reminders. Set up ways to remind yourself to use the Focusing Question. One of the best ways to do this is to put up a sign at work that says, “Until my ONE Thing is done—everything else is a distraction.” We designed the back cover of this book to be a trigger —set it on the corner of your desk so that it’s the first thing you see when you get to work. Use notes, screen savers, and calendar cues to keep making the connection between the Success Habit and the results you seek. Put up reminders like, “The ONE Thing = Extraordinary Results” or “The Success Habit Will Get Me to My Goal.” Recruit support. Research shows that those around you can influence you tremendously. Starting a success support group with some of your work colleagues can help inspire all of you to practice the Success Habit every day. Get your family involved. Share your ONE Thing. Get them on board. Use the Focusing Question around them to show them how the Success Habit can make a difference in their school work, their personal achievements, or any other part of their lives.

The phrase “conflict of interest” barely begins to describe Tom Lanphier’s rabidly partisan approach to advising one of the most powerful congressional allies of the American military-industrial complex. Yet he was in good company. Air force intelligence was crammed with highly competitive analysts who believed they were in a zero-sum game not only with the Russians but also with the army and the navy. If they could make the missile-gap theory stick, America would have to respond with a crash ICBM program of its own. The dominance of the Strategic Air Command in the U.S. military hierarchy would be complete—and Convair would profit mightily. It is hardly surprising that the information Lanphier fed to Symington and Symington to every politician and columnist who would listen was authoritative, alarming, and completely, disastrously wrong. Symington’s “on the record” projection of Soviet nuclear strength, given to Senate hearings on the missile gap in late 1959, was that by 1962 they would have three thousand ICBMs. The actual number was four. Symington’s was a wild guess, an extrapolation based on extrapolations by air force generals who believed it was only responsible to take Khrushchev at his word when, for example, he told journalists in Moscow that a single Soviet factory was producing 250 rockets a year, complete with warheads. Symington knew what he was doing. He wanted to be president and believed rightly that missile-gap scaremongering had helped the Democrats pick up nearly fifty seats in Congress in the 1958 midterm elections. But everyone was at it. The 1958 National Intelligence Estimate had forecast one hundred Soviet ICBMs by 1960 and five hundred by 1962. In January 1960 Allen Dulles, who should have known better because he did know better, told Eisenhower that even though the U-2 had shown no evidence of mass missile production, the Russians could still somehow conjure up two hundred of them in eighteen months. On the political left a former congressional aide called Frank Gibney wrote a baseless five-thousand-word cover story for Harper’s magazine accusing the administration of giving the Soviets a six-to-one lead in ICBMs. (Gibney also recommended putting “a system of really massive retaliation” on the moon.) On the right, Vice President Nixon quietly let friends and pundits know that he felt his own boss didn’t quite get the threat. And in the middle, Joe Alsop wrote a devastating series of columns syndicated to hundreds of newspapers in which he calculated that the Soviets would have 150 ICBMs in ten months flat and suggested that by not matching them warhead for warhead the president was playing Russian roulette with the national future. Alsop, who lived well but expensively in a substantial house in Georgetown, was the Larry King of his day—dapper, superbly well connected, and indefatigable in the pursuit of a good story. His series ran in the last week of January 1960. Khrushchev read it in translation and resolved to steal the thunder of the missile-gap lobby, which was threatening to land him with an arms race that would bankrupt Communism. Before the four-power summit, which was now scheduled for Paris in mid-May, he would offer to dismantle his entire ICBM stockpile. No one needed to know how big or small it was; they just needed to know that he was serious about disarmament. He revealed his plan to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at a secret meeting in the Kremlin on

competition policies in the communications market such as cross-connection systems, universal service systems and subscriber

Let me use this analogy: The Kingdom of God is the tree and the needs of people are the fruit. If you want the fruit you go to the tree. Most people buy fruit at the grocery store or from a produce market. That’s fine as long as the supply lasts. What happens if the supply line is cut or a shortage occurs? Suddenly, access to the fruit is cut off. If you want to ensure a steady supply of fruit, wouldn’t it be better to own your own tree? That way fruit would be available whenever you wanted it. In the world’s system, the world is like the grocery store where we all must compete for limited resources. There is no competition in the Kingdom of God because its resources are unlimited. Every Kingdom citizen can have his or her own tree with an unfailing supply of fruit. When Jesus said, “Do not worry about what you will eat or drink or wear for clothing,” He was asking, in effect, “Why run after the fruit and compete with everybody else when you can have the tree? Seek first the tree and all of the fruit will come with it.” In a similar analogy, the Kingdom of God is the source and “all these things” are the resource. Why spend all your time and energy chasing resources when Kingdom citizenship and righteousness will give you unhindered access to the Source? Never try to live for or depend on resources because resources run out. Get connected to God, the Source, because His resources never run out.

The faithful living out of the tropos of the incarnate Christ is the challenge that faces us in all these areas, and what it entails (so Bonhoeffer and Przywara alike insist) is the patient embrace of finitude, the refusal of defensive anxiety about the Church’s privilege or influence, the recognition and valuing of the unspectacular, in life and art, as the site where we may expect the paradoxical radiance of the infinite to become visible. Christian ethics is not about dramatic and solitary choices for individual good or evil but the steady building of a culture of durable mutuality and compassion. Christian aesthetics is not about genius-driven or near-magical transmutations of this world into some imagined semblance of divine glory and abundance, but the gift of unlocking in the most ordinary setting or object the ‘grace of sense’ that allows it to be seen with (to use the word again) durable, attentive love. And Christian metaphysics? Przywara’s work clearly understands the role of Christology in developing a schematic and consistent view of analogy, depending on the recognition that whatever comes into intellectual focus in our human understanding is always already implicated in relations that make its life more than a single and containable phenomenon but something opening out on to an unlimited horizon of connection... ...authentic theology shows itself, in self-forgetting and self-dispossessing practice. The theology that we write and discuss has no substance independently of this formal content, this knowledge of how to ‘enact Christ’ in the world. And it is because of this that Przywara resists a reading of St John of the Cross’s spiritual teaching which simply identifies the ‘night of spirit’ with the negation of the creaturely. Put like this, it can suggest yet another form of the competitive ontological model which we struggle to escape from – more world, less God, and vice versa. But St John properly read – giving priority to the poems rather than the commentaries on them – characterizes the night as participation in the act of Christ the Word. The darkness of our prayer is not the result of a straightforward gap between what we can know as creatures and the unknowable depths of God, the infinite dissimilarity between finite and infinite; it is our assimilation into the infinite’s self-unveiling in the dark places of the finite world, in the wordless helplessness of the cross. And because it is in this way an entry deeper and deeper into the centre of God’s activity, it is a journey into the ‘excess’ of divine light, the overflowing of God’s absolute abundance, which is itself nothing else than agape directed towards the life and joy of the other – in the divine life and in the relation of divine to non-divine life.

When principles are at the core of your competitive strategy, you must hire for attitude first. You can train people on skills, but you can’t train them on attitude. Employees must be a good fit. Hire for attitude, orient for values, and train for skills.

If we could just pour that same enthusiasm and competitive élan we use for accumulating things, renovating, or attaining better sleep into our savings accounts and FICO scores, we might start to undo that toxic connection.

Like other primates, humans can be described either as highly cooperative animals that need to work hard to keep selfish and aggressive urges under control or as highly competitive animals that nevertheless have the ability to get along and engage in give-and-take. This is what makes socially positive tendencies so interesting: They play out against a backdrop of competition. I rate humans among the most aggressive of primates but also believe that we’re masters at connecting and that social ties constrain competition. In other words, we are by no means obligatorily aggressive. It’s all a matter of balance: Pure, unconditional trust and cooperation are naïve and detrimental, whereas unconstrained greed can only lead to the sort of dog-eat-dog world that Skilling advocated at Enron until it collapsed under its own mean-spirited weight.

Humans are adaptable precisely because they’re unfinished; the baby responds to her environment by “building” a brain that will best help her to flourish in that environment. If she has optimal conditions—physical nourishment, warm arms to carry and soothe her, a responsive caregiver who engages with her—she’ll build a brain that’s geared for prompt self-soothing, happy moods, and intimate connection. If the environment doesn’t offer her what she needs, or it seems dangerous—for instance, loud noises without accompanying reassurance—the brain she builds may be hypervigilant and distrustful, primed for fight-or-flight and competition for scarce resources.

Intelligence is not a reliable advantage in a world that’s become as connected as ours has. But flexibility is. In a world where intelligence is hyper-competitive and many previous technical skills have become automated, competitive advantages tilt toward nuanced and soft skills—like communication, empathy, and, perhaps most of all, flexibility.

Narrative: telling stories about the topic and the people involved with it (e.g., the story of Charles Darwin for evolution or of Anne Frank for the Holocaust) 2.  Quantitative: using examples connected to the topic (e.g., the puzzle of different numbers and varieties of finches spread across a dozen islands in the Galapagos) 3.  Logic: identifying the key elements or units and exploring their logical connections (e.g., how Malthus’s argument about human survival in the face of insufficient resources can be applied to competition among biological species) 4.  Existential: addressing big questions, such as the nature of truth or beauty, life and death 5.  Aesthetic: examining instances in terms of their artistic properties or capturing the examples themselves in works of art (e.g., observing the diverse shapes of the beaks of finches; analyzing the expressive elements in the trio) 6.  Hands-on: working directly with tangible examples (e.g., performing the Figaro trio, breeding fruit flies to observe how traits change over the generations) 7.  Cooperative or social: engaging in projects with others where each makes a distinctive contribution to successful execution

Whether we realize it or not, the pace of change has created the impression that we have only two choices: adapt quickly to stay marketable, employable, and desirable; or fall back and lose out. This sets up a state of competition between tradition and innovation, between old and young, between online and physical communities, and between transactional and human interactions

It is connected with the subject of competition. Please remember that. If there is competition at the core of a person’s interpersonal relationships, he will not be able to escape interpersonal relationship problems or escape misfortune. YOUTH: Why not? PHILOSOPHER: Because at the end of a competition, there are winners and losers.

The situation becomes even more fraught for women in their late thirties and forties whose biological clocks are ticking. Donovan told me that women at such gatherings often try to get to eligible men they want to meet early on, lest someone else get to them first and make a connection. On the rare instance when a new single guy enters the room, Donovan described an 'almost palpable, heightened state of awareness' among the women. They know - even if they're loath to admit it - 'that a competition has just begun

In the complex game that is an ecosystem, every player is connected to some, but not all, others, a web not just of food but of competition, of who lives where, of light and shade, and of internal disputes within species. Extinction bursts through that web, breaking connections and threatening its integrity. Sever one strand, and it wavers, reshapes, but survives. Tear another, and it will still hold. Over long periods, repairs are made as species adapt, and new balances are reached, new associations made. If enough strands are broken at once, the web will collapse, drifting in the breeze, and the world will have to make do with what little remains. So, after a mass extinction event, a turnover happens, with new species appearing, the web self-repairing. Where

For this, the algorithm computes two values for each vertex v, the order number dfs_num[ v], attributed at the beginning of the processing of the vertex, and dfs_min[ v]. The latter value is defined as the minimum of dfs_num[ u] over all the vertices u that are not already in a strongly connected component—and hence still waiting—and reachable from v by a sequence of tree arcs, eventually followed by a single back arc. This value is defined as

In the complex game that is an ecosystem, every player is connected to some, but not all, others, a web not just of food but of competition, of who lives where, of light and shade, and of internal disputes within species. Extinction bursts through that web, breaking connections and threatening its integrity. Sever one strand, and it wavers, reshapes, but survives. Tear another, and it will still hold. Over long periods, repairs are made as species adapt, and new balances are reached, new associations made. If enough strands are broken at once, the web will collapse, drifting in the breeze, and the world will have to make do with what little remains.

Nyayang has received some warnings from a few family members telling her who to avoid. Chuol has talked to her about how he wants her to be. There is nothing desirable about a woman who gets easily wound up in a crowd of women, simply for being part of the same community. When Chuol’s mother comes to her and speaks these scenarios in her ears again, it gets Nyayang thinking. “These are bad women. They have no respect for their husbands. Whose wife could leave her house, come in between compounds and brazenly open her mouth and say things that only an elephant could swallow? These women are misleaders. They don’t like seeing young women like you staying in their marriages, because in many ways, they are not really in one. They are just misleaders.” She says this to her daughter-in-law in a way that it seems as if she is not really talking to her, but the fact that there is not any other wife in the compound narrows it down to Nyayang that she is speaking to her. Nyayang looks around. She doesn’t know anything about what she is talking about. Women get into fights all the time. Sometimes it is about their children, other times it is about their husbands. There is no connection, Nyayang thinks. But she is not supposed to say anything and so she says nothing. But the mother-in-law knows what she is talking about, she just came back from separating some women. She knows what she is talking about. But, even if she knows, is there any reason to talk about these lost souls who have often had the misfortune of being on the wrong side of other women? That is all they know. Blaming each other.

Build Emotional Connection With Your Fans | Brand Loyalty The way influencers communicate with fans is continuously evolving. we discuss few ways so that you can keep on top of trends to grow the fanbase, keep fans engaged and engender loyalty in Velvetrope. 1. Offer something interactive to get fans engaged : quizzes, polls, and competitions are great ways to engage fans. There are many ways to build fan engagement such as asking followers for feedback, creating quizzes, polls, and competitions. Velvetrope is the best for this. 2. Create unique video content that appeals to your fans: The next generation of fans is growing up surrounded by digital and social content. Therefore, Influencer needs to work harder to ensure their content is unique, engaging, and stands out amongst the rest. Video content might take the shape of exercise tutorials, “top 10” countdowns, “best moment” sizzles, workout tip videos, player interviews, product and service videos, live streams, fan testimonials, competition announcements, and more. Velvetrope is a CRM application that lets you perform all of the above, as well as publish fresh information and make announcements. You can connect with your Fans easily. Velvetrope makes it easy for you to share your most recent blogs, videos, podcasts, and other special content with your followers. Begin sharing your unique content with your VIPs as soon as possible. Share exclusive content with your fans. Post, Stream, and Share: Everybody Makes Money via Velvetrope. You can create a referral program for your VIPs to share with their friends and VIPs. For your referral program, you can use our AI recommendations or create your own rewards. #engagementwithaudience #fanengagementapp

Competitive individualism consists of a set of values and beliefs deeply connected to the lived experiences people have within capitalist markets: the desirability of being intensively competitive and trying to be better than others; the social norm of measuring one's self-worth through comparisons with others; the moral importance of people taking responsibility for their own fates as individuals rather than relying on help from others; the virtue of being independent and the corresponding stigma of being dependent.

With functional uniqueness being so elusive, marketing guru Philip Kotler suggested that firms focus instead on an Emotional Selling Proposition (ESP). In other words, that the task of marketing is to generate an emotional connection to the brand that is so strong that customers perceive difference from the competition.

Saipem, an Italian-based company founded in 1957, has built some of the world's largest energy and infrastructure projects. It is organized into five business divisions that focus on onshore and offshore drilling, engineering and construction, and conceptual design services. Given its connection to oil and gas contracts, which effectively collapsed in 2014 with a plunge in oil prices, it has had to set a course beyond fossil fuels and rethink everything about its business. This "change or die" scenario sets the tone for its reporting and disclosure. Its 2019 sustainability report acknowledges the scenario it is facing and tackles the issue of the low-carbon transition head-on. At its core is the organziations rallying call, or "the four challenges," which describe the context and frame the opportunities it must capture to remain competitive.

Professional achievement is not a substitute for happiness, personal connection, and meaning. Many people eventually experience intense regret for having worked too hard. This regret can be avoided by having more white space with your loved ones and passions. The Thieves of Time—Drive, Excellence, Information, and Activity—show up at home in our compulsive and competitive doing, comparing, and overachieving. In order to have a life at home with depth, you must dethrone your devices so you can be present for the people who matter most. If you’re a parent, it’s never too late to slow down, pay attention, and share white space with your children. Don’t miss the ride. ASK YOURSELF What do I need to seize right now before I miss it?

Comparison is the crush of conformity from one side and competition from the other—it’s trying to simultaneously fit in and stand out.

But as the cyberpunk writer Bruce Sterling points out, connectivity is not necessarily a symbol of affluence and plenty. It is, in a sense, the poor who most prize connectivity. Not in the sense of the old classic stereotype that 'the poor love their cellphones': no powerful group would turn down the opportunities that smartphones and social media offer. The powerful simply engage differently with the machine. But any culture that values connectivity so highly must be as impoverished in its social life as a culture obsessed with happiness is bitterly depressed. What Bruce Alexander calls the state of permanent 'psychosocial dislocation' in late capitalism, with life overrun by the law of markets and competition, is the context for soaring addiction rates. It is as if the addictive relationships stands in for the social relationships that have been upended by the turbulence of capitalism. The nature of this social poverty can be recognized in a situation typical of a social industry addict. We often use our smartphones to take us away from a social situation, without actually leaving that situation. We develop ways of simulating conversational awareness while attending to our phones, a technique known as 'phubbing.' We experience this weirdly detached 'uniform distancelessness,' as Christopher Bollas calls it. We becomes nodes in the network, equivalent to 'smart' devices, mere points for relay for fragments of information; as much extensions of the tablet or smartphone as they are of us. We prefer the machine when human relationships have become disappointing.

Your Competition Has Network Effects, Too To figure out a response, it’s important to acknowledge a common myth about defensibility and moats: that somehow, network effects will magically help you fend off competition. This is a myth repeated again and again in startup pitch presentations to investors and entrepreneurs. It’s a lie that entrepreneurs tell to themselves. It isn’t true—simply having network effects is not enough, because if your product has them, it’s likely that your competitors have them, too. Whether you are a marketplace, social network, workplace collaboration tool, or app store, you are in a “networked category.” It’s intrinsic in these categories that every player is a multi-sided network that connects people, and is governed under the dynamics of Cold Start Theory. Effective competitive strategy is about who scales and leverages their network effects in the best way possible. No wonder we often see smaller players upend larger ones, in an apparent violation of Metcalfe’s Law. If every product in a category can rely on their network, then it’s not about who’s initially the largest. Instead, the question is, who is doing the best job amplifying and scaling their Acquisition, Engagement, and Economic effects. It’s what we see repeatedly over time: MySpace was the biggest social network in the mid-2000s and lost to Facebook, then a smaller, newer entrant with a focus on college networks with stronger product execution. HipChat was ahead in workplace communication, but was upended by Slack. Grubhub created a successful, profitable multibillion-dollar food-ordering company, but has rapidly lost ground to Uber Eats and DoorDash.

[Women] tend to see the workplace as a network of connections where friendships are established as people cooperate to produce work. Nothing is wrong with that viewpoint until you realize that, by and large, the work world was created by men—males who tend to see the workplace as a field for competition

Alienation is inevitable when our inner sense of value becomes status-driven, hinging on externally imposed standards of competitive achievement and acquisition, and a highly conditional acceptance — I should say "acceptability" — in others' eyes. With the erosion of the middle class in recent decades, people who judged themselves in terms of wordly success have sustained a perceived loss of worth. The promise of the middle-class dream has largely evaporated, to the distress and deep anger of many. But even people perched atop the economic pyramid can experience a devaluation of self, for the simple reason that materialistic values run counter to the need for meaning, for purpose beyond self-serving endeavors. There are no moral fingers to wag here. Objectively, it is the case that centering on the self's evanescent desires to the exclusion of communal needs results in a diminished connection to our deepest selves, which is to say the parts of us that generate and sustain true well-being. Whatever "wins" our personality can rack up, whatever momentary sense of security we gain through our various identities, however much we burnish our image or self-image with material gains — these are a flimsy replacement for the rewards (and challenges) of being alive to one's humanity. An investor dabbling daily in millions told Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg, "I feel like I'm wasting my life. When I die, is anyone going to care that I earned an extra percentage point on my return? My work feels totally meaningless." That loss of meaning, Duhigg says, afflicts "even professionals given to lofty self-images, like those in medicine and law." Why would this be? the author wondered. The answer: "Oppresive hours, political infighting, increased competition sparked by globalization, an 'always-on culture' bred by the internet — but also something that's hard for these professionals to put their finger on, an underlying sense that their work isn't worth the grueling effort they're putting into it." It's simple economics, really: artificial inflation (of self-concept, of identity, of material ambition) is bound to lead to a downturn or even a crash when the bubble inevitable burts.

Seek clarity on who you want to be, how you want to interact with others, what you want, and what will bring you the greatest meaning. As every project or major initiative begins, you ask questions such as “What kind of person do I want to be while I’m doing this?” “How should I treat others?” “What are my intentions and objectives?” “What can I focus on that will bring me a sense of connection and fulfillment?” High performers ask these types of questions not only at the beginning of an endeavor but consistently throughout. They don’t just “get clarity” once and develop a mission statement that lasts the test of time; they consistently seek clarity again and again as times change and as they take on new projects or enter new social situations. This kind of routine self-monitoring is one of the hallmarks of their success. Generate energy so that you can maintain focus, effort, and wellbeing. To stay on your A game, you’ll need to actively care for your mental stamina, physical energy, and positive emotions in very specific ways. Raise the necessity for exceptional performance. This means actively tapping into the reasons you absolutely must perform well. This necessity is based on a mix of your internal standards (e.g., your identity, beliefs, values, or expectations for excellence) and external demands (e.g., social obligations, competition, public commitments, deadlines). It’s about always knowing your why and stoking that fire all the time so you feel the needed drive or pressure to get at it. Increase productivity in your primary field of interest. Specifically, focus on prolific quality output (PQO) in the area in which you want to be known and to drive impact. You’ll also have to minimize distractions (including opportunities) that steal your attention from creating PQO. Develop influence with those around you. It will make you better at getting people to believe in and support your efforts and ambitions. Unless you consciously develop a positive support network, major achievements over the long haul are all but impossible. Demonstrate courage by expressing your ideas, taking bold action, and standing up for yourself and others, even in the face of fear, uncertainty, threat, or changing conditions. Courage is not an occasional act, but a trait of choice and will.

GOLF (Men’s Journal, 1992) The smooth, long, liquid sweep of a three wood smacking into the equator of a dimpled Titleist … It makes a potent but slightly foolish noise like the fart of a small, powerful nature god. The ball sails away in a beautiful hip or breast of a curve. And I am filled with joy. At least that’s what I’m filled with when I manage to connect. Most of my strokes whiz by the tee the way a drunk passes a truck on a curve or dig into the turf in a manner that is more gardening than golf. But now and then I nail one, and each time I do it’s an epiphany. This is how the Australopithecus felt, one or two million years ago, when he first hit something with a stick. Puny hominoid muscles were amplified by the principles of mechanics so that a little monkey swat suddenly became a great manly engine of destruction able to bring enormous force to bear upon enemy predators, hunting prey, and the long fairway shots necessary to get on the green over the early Pleistocene’s tar pit hazards. Hitting things with a stick is the cornerstone of civilization. Consider all the things that can be improved by hitting them with a stick: veal, the TV, Woody Allen. Having a dozen good sticks at hand, all of them well balanced and expertly made, is one reason I took up golf. I also wanted to show my support for the vice president. I now know for certain that Quayle is smarter than his critics. He’s smart enough to prefer golf to spelling. How many times has a friend called you on a Sunday morning and said, “It’s a beautiful day. Let’s go spell potato”? I waited until I was almost forty-five to hit my first golf ball. When I was younger I thought golf was a pointless sport. Of course all sports are pointless unless you’re a professional athlete or a professional athlete’s agent, but complex rules and noisy competition mask the essential inanity of most athletics. Golf is so casual. You just go to the course, miss things, tramp around in the briars, use pungent language, and throw two thousand dollars’ worth of equipment in a pond. Unlike skydiving or rugby, golf gives you leisure to realize it’s pointless. There comes a time in life, however, when all the things that do have a point—career, marriage, exercising to stay fit—start turning, frankly, golflike. And that’s when you’re ready for

The connection between birthrates and politics is arresting. In 2012 each of the ten states with the highest fertility rates voted for Mitt Romney. The top five were the mostly rural states of Utah, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Idaho. None are remotely politically competitive at the presidential level. In contrast, all eleven states with birthrates below sixty births per thousand women of childbearing age went to Barack Obama, with Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Connecticut making up the bottom five in fertility.

My hand is cramping up as I go into a whirl writing out rebuttal points. I glance at the audience again and my eyes connect with Tia and for one second, one minuscule nanosecond, I detect we're on the same wavelength: she's also worried we'll lose. It's the only time we're connected together against another object - not each other.

There are many different Sponsor Programs available including several that give you a competition-free exclusive position. Sponsors are needed for each hour for the phone banks; for the Interview Area, where guests are interviewed by celebrity hosts; for table banners; and much more. There are even a few 1 and 2 minute Video Presentation Opportunities (company exposure) available. In all cases, representatives of your firm come on the show for you, your people, and your products. We will also assist you every step of the way with your employee fundraising event or other promotion, to raise the funds for your sponsorship. There really is no good reason not to participate. As a sponsor, you'll be showing your concern for the community, in connection with a situation that, at one time or another, will affect over 35% of all families! Arthritis is one of the most common, frustrating, debilitating diseases. It is understandably of great concern to a great many people. Also, the Arthritis Foundation has an excellent track record in terms of appropriate use of funds for research and education (rather than organizational overhead). We believe that real cures for arthritis are just around the corner; you can help get us there! With our Telethon on Channel 10, we will benefit from their superior production capability, involvement of their popular celebrities, and advance promotional opportunities. Our Telethon will be on for several hours immediately before and again immediately after an NBA Basketball Game, which we believe will increase our viewership. And, of course, we're mixing our live, local show with a “feed” from the National Telethon, featuring major Hollywood entertainers. Everything points to our highest, most responsive viewership ever! You'll be in good company, too, with local and national sponsors like: Thrifty, Sears, Allstate, Greyhound, Prudential, and Procter & Gamble. To summarize, you have an opportunity to … Help a good, worthy cause Gain valuable TV exposure and publicity Get all the benefits with little or no money out of your present budget — we'll work with your employees to raise the funds! Possibly have exclusive position, if you act quickly Have complete, step-by-step assistance from our staff Why not give me a call; let's arrange a meeting where I can personally explain the different “standard opportunities” available and then “brainstorm” with you about the best way for your business to participate. There's no obligation, of course, and certainly no pressure, but, together, we just may figure out the perfect situation for your business. Thank you for you consideration, Joel L. Beck Telethon Chairman for the Arthritis Foundation JLB/va _______ Letter reprinted with permission of Dan Kennedy (writer) and Joel Beck, former telethon chairman, Arizona.

But in the genealogical plots of Dickens, which manage, against all the odds, and through extravagantly implausible coincidences, to work themselves out against the hostile background of the vast London crowds, we can identify the same narratological problem to which Joyce and Proust seek a queer structural solution: the competition for control of the narrative between the genealogical family and alternative forms of human connections.

When we arrive on planet Earth, we are complete, integrated beings. We are open to all possibilities. Over time, we build walls believing that these walls will keep us safe and that the connections that we have established inside the walls are ours to keep. We create a delusory cognition that we possess everything within the wall. Slowly, the open space we started with becomes a maze and we are lost inside! The islands need to be bridged. We need to complete with everyone, with everything instead of isolating them and competing. Competition does not ensure survival; completion does. Understand, with the competition you may have survival success, but you will never expand. Success in crisis moments is only survival success, not life success. Success in life happens only with completion.

Maybe what makes a day good or valuable or worthwhile is not what you accomplished, what work you did or thing you fixed or task you checked off a list. Maybe there are other metrics—pleasure, connection, caring for someone, learning something new, experiencing delight. Increasingly, when I think about how to measure a day, a season, a life, I’m committed to different metrics, to abundance instead of scarcity, to care instead of competition, to meaning instead of measuring.

Being an American boy is a setup. We train boys to believe that the way to become a man is to objectify and conquer women, value wealth and power above all, and suppress any emotions other than competitiveness and rage. Then we are stunned when our boys become exactly what we have trained them to be. Our boys cannot follow our directions, but they are cheating and dying and killing as they try to. Everything that makes a boy human is a “real man’s” dirty secret. Our men are caged, too. The parts of themselves they must hide to fit into those cages are the slices of their humanity that our culture has labeled “feminine”—traits like mercy, tenderness, softness, quietness, kindness, humility, uncertainty, empathy, connection. We tell them, “Don’t be these things, because these are feminine things to be. Be anything but feminine.” The problem is that the parts of themselves that our boys have been banished from are not feminine traits; they are human traits. There is no such thing as a feminine quality, because there is no such thing as masculinity or femininity. “Femininity” is just a set of human characteristics a culture pours into a bucket and slaps with the label “feminine.” Gender is not wild, it’s prescribed. When we say, “Girls are nurturing and boys are ambitious. Girls are soft and boys are tough. Girls are emotional and boys are stoic,” we are not telling truths, we are sharing beliefs—beliefs that have become mandates. If these statements seem true, it’s because everyone has been so well programmed. Human qualities are not gendered. What is gendered is permission to express certain traits. Why? Why would our culture prescribe such strict gender roles? And why would it be so important for our culture to label all tenderness and mercy as feminine? Because disallowing the expression of these qualities is the way the status quo keeps its power. In a culture as imbalanced as ours—in which a few hoard billions while others starve, in which wars are fought for oil, in which children are shot and killed while gun manufacturers and politicians collect the blood money—mercy, humanity, and vulnerability cannot be tolerated. Mercy and empathy are great threats to an unjust society. So how does power squash the expression of these traits? In a misogynistic culture, all that is needed is to label them feminine. Then we can forever discount them in women and forever shame them out of men. Ta-da: no more messy, world-changing tenderness to deal with. We can continue on without our shared humanity challenging the status quo in any way.