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There was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five . . . so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.
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John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
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Sometimes not getting what you want is a brilliant stroke of luck.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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It's sometimes easier to help others rather than helping yourself. The trick is to listen to your "self" as a friend. This may be the simplest change you ever make in life, with the biggest impact.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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No one will ever blame you for trying to get it right.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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No one can take the shot for you.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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Find your focus by seeking all that is good in your life.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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Once you figure out what you want in life—expect nothing less.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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Needs cause motivation. Deep-rooted desires for esteem, affection, belonging, achievement, self-actualization, power, and control motivate us to push for what we want and need in our lives.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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When healthy competition prevails -- you come out to play and you play to win.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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To gain self-respect, you need to put yourself first.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
“
Competition is healthy. Especially when all your competitors are unhealthy, and hopefully sick and absent during the competition.
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Jarod Kintz (99 Cents For Some Nonsense)
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The value of routine; trusting your swing.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
“
Awareness makes us emotionally brilliant.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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The decide word is so powerful. It's amazing what you can do once you decide to do it.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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When the awareness of what is achievable brushes your life, your journey has begun.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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Do you know about the spoons? Because you should. The Spoon Theory was created by a friend of mine, Christine Miserandino, to explain the limits you have when you live with chronic illness. Most healthy people have a seemingly infinite number of spoons at their disposal, each one representing the energy needed to do a task. You get up in the morning. That’s a spoon. You take a shower. That’s a spoon. You work, and play, and clean, and love, and hate, and that’s lots of damn spoons … but if you are young and healthy you still have spoons left over as you fall asleep and wait for the new supply of spoons to be delivered in the morning. But if you are sick or in pain, your exhaustion changes you and the number of spoons you have. Autoimmune disease or chronic pain like I have with my arthritis cuts down on your spoons. Depression or anxiety takes away even more. Maybe you only have six spoons to use that day. Sometimes you have even fewer. And you look at the things you need to do and realize that you don’t have enough spoons to do them all. If you clean the house you won’t have any spoons left to exercise. You can visit a friend but you won’t have enough spoons to drive yourself back home. You can accomplish everything a normal person does for hours but then you hit a wall and fall into bed thinking, “I wish I could stop breathing for an hour because it’s exhausting, all this inhaling and exhaling.” And then your husband sees you lying on the bed and raises his eyebrow seductively and you say, “No. I can’t have sex with you today because there aren’t enough spoons,” and he looks at you strangely because that sounds kinky, and not in a good way. And you know you should explain the Spoon Theory so he won’t get mad but you don’t have the energy to explain properly because you used your last spoon of the morning picking up his dry cleaning so instead you just defensively yell: “I SPENT ALL MY SPOONS ON YOUR LAUNDRY,” and he says, “What the … You can’t pay for dry cleaning with spoons. What is wrong with you?” Now you’re mad because this is his fault too but you’re too tired to fight out loud and so you have the argument in your mind, but it doesn’t go well because you’re too tired to defend yourself even in your head, and the critical internal voices take over and you’re too tired not to believe them. Then you get more depressed and the next day you wake up with even fewer spoons and so you try to make spoons out of caffeine and willpower but that never really works. The only thing that does work is realizing that your lack of spoons is not your fault, and to remind yourself of that fact over and over as you compare your fucked-up life to everyone else’s just-as-fucked-up-but-not-as-noticeably-to-outsiders lives. Really, the only people you should be comparing yourself to would be people who make you feel better by comparison. For instance, people who are in comas, because those people have no spoons at all and you don’t see anyone judging them. Personally, I always compare myself to Galileo because everyone knows he’s fantastic, but he has no spoons at all because he’s dead. So technically I’m better than Galileo because all I’ve done is take a shower and already I’ve accomplished more than him today. If we were having a competition I’d have beaten him in daily accomplishments every damn day of my life. But I’m not gloating because Galileo can’t control his current spoon supply any more than I can, and if Galileo couldn’t figure out how to keep his dwindling spoon supply I think it’s pretty unfair of me to judge myself for mine. I’ve learned to use my spoons wisely. To say no. To push myself, but not too hard. To try to enjoy the amazingness of life while teetering at the edge of terror and fatigue.
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Jenny Lawson (Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things)
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Let go of toxic control, in order to regain healthy control.
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Kayla Rose Kotecki
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Genuine self esteem – please understand this – genuine self esteem is not competitive or comparative. Genuine self esteem isn’t expressed by self-glorification at the expense of others, or by trying to make yourself superior to everyone else, or diminishing others in order to elevate yourself. Arrogance, boastfulness, the overestimation of your abilities, reflect low self esteem, even though we’re often encouraged to believe the opposite. In human beings, joy in the simple fact of existence is a core meaning of healthy self esteem. Thus understood, how can you possibly have too much of it?
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Nathaniel Branden
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Successful people consistently put their best "self" forward.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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Extend your "best before" date by living a youthful life.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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Upon achieving a lifelong dream, I thought, this is the way to live your life -- in the moment, and to the fullest.
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Lorii Myers (Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success (3 Off the Tee, #2))
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Marriage is not a competition. Marriage is completion of two souls.
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Abhijit Naskar (Wise Mating: A Treatise on Monogamy (Humanism Series))
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Dear Charls. Whatever will you do with your own Kemptian silk? It will spoil on the road.’ ‘We aren’t carrying any Kemptian silk,’ said the Prince. It took a moment for those words to be understood, and then Makon’s expression changed. ‘Oh, did you think we were? I’m afraid you undercut yourself for no reason.’ A look of fury had appeared on Makon’s face. The Prince said, ‘A little healthy competition.’ Dinner
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C.S. Pacat (The Adventures of Charls, the Veretian Cloth Merchant (Captive Prince Short Stories, #3))
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A person functioning exclusively in the Cartesian mode may be free from manifest symptoms but cannot be considered mentally healthy. Such individuals typically lead ego-centred, competitive, goal-oriented lives. Overpreoccupied with their past and their future, they tend to have a limited awarenessof the present and thus a limited ability to derive satisfaction from ordinary activities in everyday life. They concentrate on manipulating the external world and measure their living standard by the quantity of material possessions, while they become ever more alienated from their inner world and unable to appreciate the process of life. For people whose existence is dominated by this mode of experience no level of wealth, power, or fame will bring genuine satisfaction
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Fritjof Capra
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This book explains how it became fashionable to pathologize the behavior of millions of healthy male children. We have turned against boys and forgotten a simple truth: the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal males are responsible for much of what is right in the world. No one denies that boys’ aggressive tendencies must be mitigated and channeled toward constructive ends. Boys need (and crave) discipline, respect, and moral guidance. Boys need love and tolerant understanding. But being a boy is not a social disease.
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Christina Hoff Sommers (The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men)
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Most would live into adulthood, as Patrick had.
(Which meant there was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five…so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.)
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John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
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You take your natural vices and call them virtues. Of which greed is the most despicable. That and betrayal of commonality. After all, whoever decided that competition is always and without exception a healthy attribute? Why that particular path to self-esteem? Your heel on the hand of the one below. This is worth something? Let me tell you, it’s worth nothing. Nothing lasting. Every monument that exists beyond the moment—no matter which king, emperor or warrior lays claim to it—is actually a testament to the common, to co-operation, to the plural rather than the singular.
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Steven Erikson (Midnight Tides (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #5))
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Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals.
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G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
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The Pygmies and the Bushmen, these oldest of all peoples, remind us that our capacities for mutuality, cooperation, and empathy are every bit as real and every bit as much a part of our humanity as our capacities for greed, competition, and exclusiveness. Raising their children with unlimited respect and treating each person as having infinite worth, they have survived longer than any other culture known to science.
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John Robbins (Healthy at 100: The Scientifically Proven Secrets of the Worlds Healthiest & Longest-Lived Peoples)
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I see before me a person who is sacrificial, honest, and courageous; a good friend and family member, not cynical, not egotistical, but empathetic and good-hearted, who feels responsibility, is attentive, and is capable of keeping secrets, who does not misuse their power, does not gossip, and can master their ambition, who is just, demands quality, an internationalist and not envious, who generally behaves in a friendly way and does not judge others easily, who is persistent, has initiative, conscious of duty, critical, self-critical and conscientious, who relates well to learning or ignorance, and who is capable of self-education (self-perfection), who has self-control, who is sincere and strives for freedom for themself and others, whose ethics are at a similarly high level, who is modest, able to love others, who has solidarity, tolerance and politeness, has a healthy competitiveness, is helpful, peaceful, and well-intentioned, who shows
respect to those who merit it, etc. This kind of person is definitely an exemplary moral authority. Whoever has in themselves all of the qualities above to a high level is a moral genius, even if they never become a hero, and even if those around them never consider them to be one.
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László Polgár (Bring Up Genius! (Nevelj zsenit!))
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Stop Competing With Everyone Competition can be healthy, and even fun at times, as long as we are not too attached to the end result.
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Alexis G. Roldan (Zen: The Ultimate Zen Beginner’s Guide: Simple And Effective Zen Concepts For Living A Happier and More Peaceful Life)
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last frontier of competitive advantage will be the transformation of unhealthy organizations into healthy ones,
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Patrick Lencioni (The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business)
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When we are healthy, 3s are productive, persuasive, and inspiring. When we are unhealthy, we become obsessed with success and with winning and with destroying the competition.
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Rachel Held Evans (Wholehearted Faith)
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Cash Cows: Businesses with high relative share in low-growth markets will produce healthy cash flow, which can be used to fund other, developing businesses.
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Michael E. Porter (Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors)
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The third dimension is that the rebel is not interested in domination over others. He has no lust for power, because that is the ugliest thing in the world. The lust for power has destroyed humanity and has not allowed it to be more creative, to be more beautiful, to be more healthy, to be more wholesome. And it is this lust for power that ultimately leads to conflicts, competitions, jealousies, and finally to wars. Lust for power is the foundation of all wars. If you look at human history, the whole of it is nothing but a history of wars, man killing man. Reasons have changed, but the killing continues.
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Osho (Living on Your Own Terms: What Is Real Rebellion?)
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Healthy competition is not detrimental to our well-being and progress. It is advantageous. It highlights the skills that others have. It’s a teaching and motivating device. It helps us to see the weaker areas within ourselves that need improvement. Other people’s strengths are not disadvantageous to us. They can inspire and push us to develop those same elements within our own being. Turn the flame of jealousy into the fire of self-improvement.
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Donna Goddard (Writing: A Spiritual Voice (The Creative Spirit Series, #2))
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Yet being in the spotlight is also dangerous because a child's success may be construed by a narcissistic mother as competition. In self-defense, a son or daughter may insist that any achievement is a fluke, and any award is undeserved or is really a tribute to their mother. They suppress their own healthy narcissism to please a mother . . they believe any success is a mistake and at any moment they will be "found out" and identified as a fake or a fraud. The mind-set is, "I am succeeding because I can fake excellence, but inside I am not really worthy or not really able." Such self-effacement is common in people who are pressured to excel and also primed to assure others . . . that they are subservient and inferior.
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Terri Apter (Difficult Mothers: Understanding and Overcoming Their Power)
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In reality, the vagina is not a game of soccer to be kicked around like a ball. Its goal is to love and not keep score of how many times it’s beaten the competition. Having a vagina is a beautiful thing and shouldn’t be locked up or controlled by those who do not have one.
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Sadiqua Hamdan (Happy Am I. Holy Am I. Healthy Am I.)
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Any vigorous competition will entail at least two elements: offense and defense. Offense is the effort you put into scoring against your opponents, and defense is the effort you apply to stop them from scoring against you. Those who suggest that "a little healthy competition can't hurt" are thinking only of the offense part....
The offense component of internal competition is problematic, but the defense component is always injurious. When peer managers play defense against each other (try to stop each other from scoring), they are engaging in anticooperation.
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Tom DeMarco (Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency)
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A person functioning exclusively in the Cartesian mode may be free from manifest assumptions but cannot be considered mentally healthy. Such individuals typically lead ego-centered, competitive, goal-oriented lives. They tend to be unable to derive satisfaction from ordinary activities in everyday life and can become alienated from their inner world. For people whose existence is dominated by this mode of experience no level of wealth, power, or fame will bring genuine satisfaction. They become infused with a sense of meaninglessness, futility, and even absurdity that no amount of external success can dispel.
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Fritjof Capra (Uncommon Wisdom : Conversations With Remarkable People)
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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.
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John Doerr (Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs)
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The theory is that free markets are principally about maximising efficiency, but in truth, free markets are not efficient at all. Admiring capitalism for its efficiency is like admiring Bob Dylan for his singing voice: it is to hold a healthy opinion for an entirely ridiculous reason. The market mechanism is loosely efficient, but the idea that efficiency is its main virtue is surely wrong, because competition is highly inefficient. Where I live, I can buy groceries from about eight different places; I’m sure it would be much more ‘efficient’ if Waitrose, M&S, Lidl and the rest were merged into one huge ‘Great Grocery Hall of The People’.
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Rory Sutherland (Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life)
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Imagine what we could achieve if we all tried to help, or if at the very least we caused no harm. Imagine if we tried to be of worth rather than stockpile wealth. Or if we tried to contribute rather than compete. What if we committed to not just being the best husbands or wives, mothers or fathers, siblings and friends, but also the best neighbours and the best strangers?
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Freequill (What's Going On? How Can We Help?: The consequences of capitalism and actionable steps towards a healthy and sustainable future)
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Which meant there was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five . . . so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.
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John Green
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Shame: Is fear of ridicule and belittling used to manage people and/or to keep people in line? Is self-worth tied to achievement, productivity, or compliance? Are blaming and finger-pointing norms? Are put-downs and name-calling rampant? What about favoritism? Is perfectionism an issue? Comparison: Healthy competition can be beneficial, but is there constant overt or covert comparing and ranking? Has creativity been suffocated? Are people held to one narrow standard rather than acknowledged for their unique gifts and contributions? Is there an ideal way of being or one form of talent that is used as measurement of everyone else’s worth? Disengagement: Are people afraid to take risks or try new things? Is it easier to stay quiet than to share stories, experiences, and ideas? Does it feel as if no one is really paying attention or listening? Is everyone struggling to be seen and heard?
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Brené Brown (Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead)
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I started to berate myself for having the audacity to be sad when I knew other people were having it worse. Which is an absolutely batshit mental way to try to process emotions. It’s very common, though. I bet you do it, too, you fucking idiot. “Well, I’m having a hard time at the moment, but it’s not as bad as so-and-so who is going through all this PLUS these extra things.” Ah yes, turning emotions into a competition. How incredibly healthy. I can’t see how this could ever go wrong.
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Daniel Sloss (Everyone You Hate Is Going to Die: And Other Comforting Thoughts on Family, Friends, Sex, Love, and More Things That Ruin Your Life)
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Asked me what?” Just the sound of his voice twists my stomach into a knot of unpleasant emotions like guilt, sadness, and fear. And longing. I might as well admit there’s some of that, too. Only it has too much competition to ever win out. I watch as Peeta crosses to the table, the sunlight from the window picking up the glint of fresh snow in his blond hair. He looks strong and healthy, so different from the sick, starving boy I knew in the arena, and you can barely even notice his limp now. He sets a loaf of fresh-baked bread on the table and holds out his hand to Haymitch. “Asked you to wake me without giving me pneumonia,” says Haymitch, passing over his knife. He pulls off his filthy shirt, revealing an equally soiled undershirt, and rubs himself down with the dry part. Peeta smiles and douses Haymitch’s knife in white liquor from a bottle on the floor. He wipes the blade clean on his shirttail and slices the bread. Peeta keeps all of us in fresh baked goods. I hunt. He bakes. Haymitch drinks. We have our own ways to stay busy, to keep thoughts of our time as contestants in the Hunger Games at bay. It’s not until he’s handed Haymitch the heel that he even looks at me for the first time. “Would you like a piece?” “No, I ate at the Hob,” I say. “But thank you.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own, it’s so formal. Just as it’s been every time I’ve spoken to Peeta since the cameras finished filming our happy homecoming and we returned to our real lives. “You’re welcome,” he says back stiffly. Haymitch tosses his shirt somewhere into the mess. “Brrr. You two have got a lot of warming up to do before showtime.” He’s right, of course. The audience will be expecting the pair of lovebirds who won the Hunger Games. Not two people who can barely look each other in the eye. But all I
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Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
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socialised to be stoic, competitive, dominant and aggressive, the APA observes, have been proven to be less likely to engage in healthy behaviours, such as accessing preventative health care or looking after themselves – a tendency that extends to seeking out psychological help. However, even in the face of robust evidence that ‘men who bought into traditional notions of masculinity were more negative about seeking mental health services than those with more flexible gender attitudes’, MRAs prefer to die on the hill of defending those very same ‘traditional notions of masculinity’ than recognise that this could be a huge potential step towards tackling one of the greatest issues facing men today. They are, in other words, some of the most robust defenders of the precise problems they claim to want to eradicate.
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Laura Bates (Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists, the Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All)
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The theme of the women's movement is female is beautiful, female is lovable; its agenda is for us to love ourselves as women, to deeply honor and respect ourselves and all women; not just women we agree with, not just other Lesbians or other heterosexual women, not just white or brown or black women, not just poor or working-class or middle-class or upper-class women, not just “well-adjusted” women, or healthy women, or women who smell good and brush their teeth regularly, or women who have accepted Jesus as their savior, or women who worship the Goddess. All women. And not just to like them, not just to find them non-disgusting, tolerable, okay. But to love them—completely, passionately, madly. To be full of compassion for one another, to be slow to take offense and quick to forgive. To conquer in ourselves the fierce pangs of competition and jealousy, and to rejoice genuinely in one another's success.
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Sonia Johnson (Going Out of Our Minds: The Metaphysics of Liberation)
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First, it is the duty of black men to judge the South discriminatingly. The present generation of Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for it. Furthermore, to no class is the indiscriminate endorsement of the recent course of the South toward Negroes more nauseating than to the best thought of the South. The South is not “solid’; it is a land in the ferment of social change, wherein forces of all kinds are fighting for supremacy; and to praise the ill the South is today perpetrating is just as wrong as to condemn the good. Discriminating and broad-minded criticism is what the South needs,—needs it for the sake of her own white sons and daughters, and for the insurance of robust, healthy mental and moral development.
Today even the attitude of the Southern whites toward the blacks is not, as so many assume, in all cases the same; the ignorant Southerner hates the Negro, the workingmen fear his competition, the money-makers wish to use him as a laborer, some of the educated see a menace in his upward development, while others—usually the sons of the masters—wish to help him to rise. National opinion has enabled this last class to maintain the Negro common schools, and to protect the Negro partially in property, life, and limb. Through the pressure of the money-makers, the Negro is in danger of being reduced to semi-slavery, especially in the country districts; the workingmen, and those of the educated who fear the Negro, have united to disfranchise him, and some have urged his deportation; while the passions of the ignorant are easily aroused to lynch and abuse any black man. To praise this intricate whirl of thought and prejudice is nonsense; to inveigh indiscriminately against “the South” is unjust; but to use the same breath in praising Governor Aycock, exposing Senator Morgan, arguing with Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, and denouncing Senator Ben Tillman, is not only sane, but the imperative duty of thinking black men.
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W.E.B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk)
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Dear KDP Author,
Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year.
With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution – places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if “publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.” Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion.
Well… history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Fast forward to today, and it’s the e-book’s turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette – a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate – are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive.
Perhaps channeling Orwell’s decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn’t only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette’s readers.
The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will “devalue books” and hurt “Arts and Letters.” They’re wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books.
Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive.
Moreover, e-books are highly price elastic. This means that when the price goes down, customers buy much more. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that’s 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.
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Amazon Kdp
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Located on 9th Avenue in New York City, B& H Photo is the largest non-chain photo and video equipment store in the United States and the second largest in the world —only Yodobashi Camera in downtown Tokyo is bigger. The owners, along with many of their employees, are Hasidic Jews who dress just as their eighteenth-century ancestors did in Eastern Europe. On any given day, 8,000 to 9,000 people pass through the front door. Yet 70 percent of their business is online, serviced by a 200,000-square-foot warehouse located nearby in Brooklyn. Even in a competitive marketplace, B& H won’t conduct business on the Sabbath or on about a half-dozen Jewish holidays during the year. They close their doors at 1 p.m. on Fridays and keep them closed all day Saturday, the biggest shopping day of the week. During Sabbath, customers can peruse the B& H website, but they can’t make an online order. Recently a customer asked the B& H director of communications how they could close not just the retail store but also the website on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the busiest shopping day of the year. The director simply replied, “We respond to a higher authority.” 17
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Peter Scazzero (The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World)
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Often, a parent indulges a child by stepping in to save him from disagreeable circumstances (an argument with a friend) or from defeat (questioning a judge at a musical competition). The problem is that overindulgence can interfere with a child’s ability to build resilience in response to the normal bumps and pitfalls of life. This is how vulnerability can be spawned. Instead of building healthy self-esteem, these children develop a kind of helplessness because they have not learned to integrate the pluses and minuses in their life, says Ronningstam. “They’re not prepared for a rainy day.
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Claudia Kalb (Andy Warhol was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History's Great Personalities)
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As Nate Silver, author of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t, points out, “ice cream sales and forest fires are correlated because both occur more often in the summer heat. But there is no causation; you don’t light a patch of the Montana brush on fire when you buy a pint of Häagen-Dazs.” Of course, it’s no surprise that correlation isn’t the same as causality. But although most organizations know that, I don’t think they act as if there is a difference. They’re comfortable with correlation. It allows managers to sleep at night. But correlation does not reveal the one thing that matters most in innovation—the causality behind why I might purchase a particular solution. Yet few innovators frame their primary challenge around the discovery of a cause. Instead, they focus on how they can make their products better, more profitable, or differentiated from the competition. As W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement that transformed manufacturing, once said: “If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.” After decades of watching great companies fail over and over again, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is, indeed, a better question to ask: What job did you hire that product to do? For me, this is a neat idea. When we buy a product, we essentially “hire” something to get a job done. If it does the job well, when we are confronted with the same job, we hire that same product again. And if the product does a crummy job, we “fire” it and look around for something else we might hire to solve the problem. Every day stuff happens to us. Jobs arise in our lives that we need to get done. Some jobs are little (“ pass the time while waiting in line”), some are big (“ find a more fulfilling career”). Some surface unpredictably (“ dress for an out-of-town business meeting after the airline lost my suitcase”), some regularly (“ pack a healthy, tasty lunch for my daughter to take to school”). Other times we know they’re coming. When we realize we have a job to do, we reach out and pull something into our lives to get the job done. I might, for example, choose to buy the New York Times because I have a job to fill my time while waiting for a doctor’s appointment and I don’t want to read the boring magazines available in the lobby. Or perhaps because I’m a basketball fan and it’s March Madness time. It’s only when a job arises in my life that the Times can solve for me that I’ll choose to hire the paper to do it. Or perhaps I have it delivered to my door so that my neighbors think I’m informed—and nothing about their ZIP code or median household income will tell the Times that either.
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Clayton M. Christensen (Competing Against Luck)
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Part of me wonders, in a world that seems so divided and divisive, if we’re really at odds with one another or if we’re just feeling entitled and lazy. Maybe we’re just so bored with our comfortable lives that we have to find something to fill our time. As humans, we are wired for a challenge, so if we don’t challenge ourselves, we’ll find petty drama and arguments to keep us busy. Spend time around people who are truly working to bring the best version of themselves to the world, and my guess is that we won’t feel much like arguing anymore.
You become like the people with whom you spend the most time. So it should be no surprise that spending time with people who beat me constantly didn’t deter me from finishing first. Instead, it helped me access my own will to win. Why is it that we get so caught up with thinking that beating someone is bad for them? What if winning is the kindest, bravest, most helpful thing you can do?
Healthy competition teaches us. It doesn’t hold us back. It pushes us forward. When we bring our best to the competition, it challenges everyone to dig deep and discover their hidden talents, their buried tenacity, their untapped skill. You were put on this Earth to do something amazing. Something nobody else can do. The only way you can do that thing is to tap into your deepest power, your greatest potential. Far too many of us are missing it because we’re worried about making a way for someone else.
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Scott Hamilton (Finish First: Winning Changes Everything)
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The relation between experimentalists and theorists is often one of healthy competition for truth and less healthy competition for fame.
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Alvaro de Rujula
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Growing demand of meditation in children’s life.
In this fast phasing life, we see around us that small children are showing the sign of anxiety, stress and restlessness. This is all because of increasing competition among them. It may be study, sports or other activities, every child wants to come top in the race. Infact parents put pressure on their child to come top in class or by comparing with other childrens. All these things create stress on the child mind at the very early age which is not good for the health of the child.
We all know that meditation is a tool that provides peace, helps in reducing stress n make balance in life. If a child do meditation, it is really very helpful for her / his healthy life & for mind also.
Now the question is that will the children love meditation?
To make our children comfortable, we need to explore some practical meditation techniques which helps in reducing their stress or give them some kind of enjoyment to make them relax.
Build up a meditation atmosphere at home as children have the tendency to copy their parents so start mediation at home when your child observe you he / she will learn from you.
Start a day with short time mediation then gradually increasing time seeing your child interest.
Do exercise like Pranayama, sing & chant of mantras like OM,Gayatri mantra, do Yoga and play little games.
You can incorporates meditation in your children life through the way of games .
I personally recommend you that don’t force your child to meditate. You need to build this as a natural habit in you child by presenting it before them in a simple n interesting way.
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Joann Kinlaw (The little Prince & Princess Ball)
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A CHANGING SOCIETY
What does today’s high incidence of social anxiety tell us about modern society? As we’ve seen, social anxiety is connected to a person’s drive for self-preservation and a feeling of safety. It is natural to withdraw from situations that we expect will lead to pain. Avoidance—while not necessarily healthy—is logical. Because the negative social experience of a growing number of people has caused them emotional pain and suffering, the number of individuals who choose to avoid socializing is increasing at an alarming rate. The sometimes wide distance among family members these days only adds to isolation. And the anonymity of large cities creates a vacuum in which many lonely people co-exist, often leading solitary lives in which they pursue their interests and activities alone.
We live in a society in which social fears are perhaps not unjustified. As cities become denser, isolation seems to be the best way to counter urban decay. Consider the dangers of the outside world: Crime rates are soaring. Caution—and its companion, fear—are in the air. As the twentieth century draws to a close, we find ourselves in a society where meeting people can be difficult.
These larger forces can combine to create a further sense of distance among people. Particularly significant is the change that has taken place as the social organization of the smaller-scale community gives way to that of the larger, increasingly fragmented city. In a “hometown” setting, the character of daily life is largely composed of face-to-face relations with friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members. But in the hustle and bustle of today’s cities, whose urban sprawls extend to what author Joel Garreau has called Edge Cities—creating light industrial suburbs even larger than the cities they surround—the individual can get lost. It is common in these areas for people to focus solely on themselves, seldom getting to know their neighbors, and rarely living close to family. We may call these places home, but they are a far cry from the destination of that word as we knew it when we were children.
Today’s cities are hotbeds of competition on all levels, from the professional to the social. It often seems as if only the most sophisticated “win.” To be ready for this constant challenge, you have to be able to manage in a stressful environment, relying on a whole repertoire of social skills just to stay afloat. This competitive environment can be terrifying for the socially anxious person.
The 1980s were a consumer decade in which picture-perfect images on television and in magazines caused many of us to cast our lots with either the haves or the have-nots. Pressure to succeed grew to an all-time high. For those who felt they could not measure up, the challenge seemed daunting. I think the escalating crime rate in today’s urban centers—drugs, burglary, rape, and murder—ties into this trend and society’s response to the pressure. In looking at the forces that influence the social context of modern life, it is clear that feelings of frustration at not “making it” socially and financially are a component in many people’s choosing a life of crime. Interactive ability determines success in establishing a rewarding career, in experiencing relationships. Without these prospects, crime can appear to be a quick fix for a lifelong problem.
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Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
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Becca’s an eager one. Her ambition rubs some of the others the wrong way, but healthy competition pushes everyone to be better. And Mae respects Becca’s hunger. That’s what success boils down to, really, what separates the middling from the great.
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Joanne Ramos (The Farm)
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Be careful of your peers. They are sometimes harmless, sometimes even helpful. They can also be deadly. If you intend to do well in your chosen career, be careful about spending too much time with struggling peers. No matter how sweetly it dresses, the ego cannot help but feel that one person's success is an opportunity taken away from itself in an intensely competitive market. Don’t fall prey to it, and make sure you are not one of those egos yourself. Healthy competition is not detrimental to our well-being and progress. It is advantageous. It highlights the skills that others have. It is a teaching and motivating device. It helps us to see the weaker areas within ourselves that need improvement. Other people’s strengths are not disadvantageous to us. They can inspire and push us to develop those elements within our being. Turn the flame of jealousy into the fire of self-improvement.
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Donna Goddard (Writing: A Spiritual Voice (The Creative Spirit Series, #2))
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Among those who have always lived in a democracy, this story will raise few eyebrows. After all, in a free world, competition of ideas and of parties flourishes and allegiances are often based on a single common principle or purpose that struggles against a competing point of view. Though generally healthy for a society, this competition can be quite dangerous if we lose sight of the fact that there is a far greater divide between the world of freedom and the world of fear than there is between the competing factions within a free society. If we fail to recognize this, we lose moral clarity. The legitimate differences among us--the shades of gray in a free society--will be wrongly perceived as black and white. Then the real black and white line that divides free societies from fear societies, the real line that divides good from evil will no longer be distinguishable.
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Natan Sharansky (The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny And Terror)
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Rule 4. Disagree better. Be part of a healthy competition of ideas.
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Arthur C. Brooks (Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt)
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Take notice of how viewing these people as your competition really isn’t healthy to your relationship. What if, instead, you began to view them as on your team?
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Amy Morin (13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success)
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Imagine a Sapiens group - a tribe of five hundred, say, in bands of twenty-five or so--living around 55,000 years ago in the lowlands near the headwaters of the White Nile in what is today southern Sudan. They are the inheritors of the modern culture that has spread from southern Africa, and they survive with the skillful hunting and fishing techniques developed over the millennia, the close-knit organizations that establish and maintain group harmony, the communications capabilities of at least a rudimentary language, and a healthy diet based on both plants and animals in abundance. But there are other inheritor bands around, for the region is fertile and the climate generally benign, and they continue to grow in population and this means that in time it gets harder and harder to find new fields of tubers, or large herds of impala, or the usual swamp tortoises. Human pressure on the area is pushing it past its carrying capacity, and relations with other bands in other tribes become increasingly stressful as competition intensifies.
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Kirkpatrick Sale (After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination)
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As with war, suppressing reactive aggression and following rules are fundamental to most sports. Indeed, sports might have evolved as a way to teach impulse control along with skills useful for hunting and controlled proactive fighting. What is more unsportsmanlike than punching an opponent who scores a goal or, even worse, punching a teammate who scores instead of you? Professional tennis players aren’t even allowed to say rude things on court. Surely other hominins including Neanderthals engaged in play, but I hypothesize that sports evolved when humans became self-domesticated. As noted above, it is primarily among domesticated species that adults play, and among the many reasons humans in every culture play sports, one is to teach cooperation and learn to restrain reactive aggression. Regardless of whether you are trying to beat your opponent to a pulp in a cage or impress the judges of a synchronized swimming competition, to be a “good sport” you have to play by the rules, control your temper, and get along with others. Sports also foster habits like discipline and courage that are crucial for proactive aggression such as warfare. Perhaps the Battle of Waterloo really was won on the playing fields of Eton.
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Daniel E. Lieberman (Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding)
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In a healthy capitalist economy wealth is always at risk. Competition spurs innovation, disrupts the established order, and creates winners—but also losers. Joseph Schumpeter called it the “gale of creative destruction.” But today in America, those who’ve benefited from prior storms have suppressed that gale, stifling creativity and competition.
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Scott Galloway (Adrift: America in 100 Charts)
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What we must do to avoid this trap is to alter our perspective: instead of instantly focusing on individuals and the drama of the failed action, we must focus on the overall group dynamic. Fix the dynamic, create a productive culture, and not only will we avoid all of the above evils but we will trigger a much different, upward pull within the group. What creates a functional, healthy dynamic is the ability of the group to maintain a tight relationship to reality. The reality for a group is as follows: It exists in order to get things done, to make things, to solve problems. It has certain resources it can draw upon—the labor and strengths of its members, its finances. It operates in a particular environment that is almost always highly competitive and constantly changing. The healthy group puts primary emphasis on the work itself, on getting the most out of its resources and adapting to all of the inevitable changes. Not wasting time on endless political games, such a group can accomplish ten times more than the dysfunctional variety. It brings out the best in human nature—people’s empathy, their ability to work with others on a high level. It remains the ideal for all of us. We shall call this ideal the reality group.
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Robert Greene (The Laws of Human Nature)
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There the sight of a ship about to depart inspires him to make some remarkable observations on order and disorder in societies. Apollonius sees the crew as a community whose success or failure depends on the nature of the relations between its members: Now if a single member of this community abandoned any one of his particular tasks or went about his naval duties in an inexperienced manner, they would have a bad voyage and would themselves impersonate the storm; but if they vie with one another and are rivals only with the object of one showing himself as good a man as the other, then their ship will make the best of all havens, and all their voyage will be one of fair weather and fair sailing, and the precaution they exercise about themselves will prove to be as valuable as if Poseidon our lord of safety, were watching over them.4 In short, there are good rivalries, and there are bad ones. There is the healthy emulation of those who "rival one another only in efficiency, each one doing his duty." There are the unhealthy rivalries of those who "do not master themselves." Not contributing at all to the smooth operation of societies, these unrestrained rivalries only weaken them. Those given over to them "will impersonate the storm." It's not external enemies that ruin societies; it's the unlimited ambitions, the unbridled competitions, that divide human beings rather than unite them.
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René Girard (I See Satan Fall Like Lightning)
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Characteristics of Healthy, Constructive Anger Characteristics of Unhealthy, Destructive Anger 1. You express your feelings in a tactful way. 1. You deny your feelings and pout (passive aggression) or lash out and attack the other person (active aggression). 2. You try to see the world through the other person’s eyes, even if you disagree. 2. You argue defensively and insist there’s no validity in what the other person is saying. 3. You convey a spirit of respect for the other person, even though you may feel quite angry with him or her. 3. You believe the other person is despicable and deserving of punishment. You appear condescending or disrespectful. 4. You do something productive and try to solve the problem. 4. You give up and see yourself as a helpless victim. 5. You try to learn from the situation so you will be wiser in the future. 5. You don’t learn anything new. You feel that your view of the situation is absolutely valid. 6. You eventually let go of the anger and feel happy again. 6. Your anger becomes addictive. You won’t let go of it. 7. You examine your own behavior to see how you may have contributed to the problem. 7. You blame the other person and see yourself as an innocent victim. 8. You believe that you and the other person both have valid ideas and feelings that deserve to be understood. 8. You insist that you are entirely right and the other person is entirely wrong. You feel convinced that truth and justice are on your side. 9. Your commitment to the other person increases. Your goal is to feel closer to him or her. 9. You avoid or reject the other person. You write him or her off. 10. You look for a solution where you can both win and nobody has to lose. 10. You feel like you’re in a battle or a competition. If one person wins, you feel that the other one will be a loser. Now that you’ve examined sadness and anger, I’d like you to compare healthy fear with neurotic anxiety. What are some of the differences? Think about the kinds of events that might bring on these feelings, how long the feelings last, whether the thoughts are realistic or distorted, and so forth. See if you can think of five differences, and list them here. The answer to this exercise is on page 88. Try to come up with your own ideas before you look. Characteristics of Healthy Fear Characteristics of Neurotic Anxiety 1. 1. 2. 2. 3. 3. 4. 4. 5. 5. Similarly, healthy remorse is not the same as neurotic guilt. What are some of the differences? List them here. Characteristics of Healthy Remorse Characteristics of
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David D. Burns (Ten Days to Self-Esteem)
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Entitled leaders act as if the world revolves around them. Their thinking goes something like this: I’ve been blessed. I have gifts and influence. I have worked hard and deserve to be treated well. This is what I refer to as “power over” others leadership. The opposite of an entitled leader is a grateful leader. Grateful leaders continually marvel at all they have received from God. But as a leader’s sense of gratitude shrinks, their sense of entitlement grows in equal measure. While the world practices a “power over” strategy characterized by dominance and win-lose competitiveness, Jesus taught a “power under” strategy characterized by humility and sacrificial service. In the world, says Jesus, leaders throw their weight around, “[but it is] not so with you. . . . Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” (Mark 10:42 – 43). While Jesus is the invisible God who holds all things together — Almighty, eternal, immortal, and infinite — he became human, temporal, mortal, and finite. Jesus demonstrated his power not by force or control, but by choosing to come under us, humbly washing feet and dying for our sins. He carefully stewarded his power: “[Christ Jesus,] who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:6 – 7).
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Peter Scazzero (The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World)
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As the barriers that used to protect incumbents from the forces of creative destruction crumble and fall, once-great companies increasingly find themselves on the defensive. Turns out a lot of companies weren’t quite as invincible as they thought they were—and were overly dependent on customer ignorance, distribution monopolies, knowledge asymmetries, and other fast-disappearing sources of economic friction. In this hyper-dynamic, hyper-competitive environment, every organization is either going forwards or going backwards—there’s no standing still. Getting better is no longer enough; today, a company must be capable of getting different—of proactively challenging and changing the fundamental assumptions that underlie its business model. Problem is, the legacy management processes found in most organizations do little to serve the cause of proactive change. Building organizations that are deeply adaptable, that are innovative at their core, and that are engaging, exciting places to work—building healthy organizations—requires some deep rethinking about how we put our organizations together.
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Scott Keller (Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage)
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Wanting our kids to be successful is natural,” says Palo Alto psychiatrist Stacy Budin. “But the less healthy part comes from the hyper drive in our communities for kids to set themselves apart and shine in one way or another, or in all ways. There’s so much pressure for kids to achieve that it can become the focus of the mother’s life to ensure that high achievement happens. Some mothers seem to have nothing but their kids’ SATs and accomplishments to talk about. Then, when college admission offers come, the competitiveness, bragging, and comparisons are hard for all but the few who have the most to brag about. It’s not great for kids and it’s not great for mothers.”32 And what’s more, this great achievement race is all calibrated to a college admission system that is very, very broken.
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Julie Lythcott-Haims (How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success)
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While competition is good, often considered healthy, comparison is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Thus it’s time to stop comparing yourself to others and realize your own value and worth.
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Andy C.E. Brown (Self Confidence - 52 Proven Ways To Gain Self Confidence, Boost Your Self Esteem and End Self Doubt)
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PERFECTIONISM Perfectionism flows from the core of toxic shame. A perfectionist has no sense of healthy shame; he has no internal sense of limits. Perfectionists never know how much is good enough. Perfectionism is learned when one is valued only for doing. When parental acceptance and love are dependent upon performance, perfectionism is created. The performance is always related to what is outside the self. The child is taught to strive onward. There is never a place to rest and have inner joy and satisfaction. Perfectionism always creates a superhuman measure by which one is compared. And no matter how hard one tries, or how well one does, one never measures up. Not measuring up is translated into a comparison of good versus bad, better versus worse. Good and bad lead to moralizing and judgmentalism. Perfectionism leads to comparison making. Kaufman writes: “When perfectionism is paramount, the comparison of self with others inevitably ends in the self feeling the lesser for the comparison.” Comparison making is one of the major ways that one continues to shame oneself internally. One continues to do to oneself on the inside what was done on the outside. Judgment and comparison making lead to a destructive kind of competitiveness. Competition aims at outdoing others, rather than simply being the best one can be. Competing to be better than others is mood altering and becomes addictive.
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John Bradshaw (Healing the Shame that Binds You)
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There is no such thing as "healthy" competition within a knowledge organization; all internal competition is destructive. The nature of our work is that it cannot be done by any single person in isolation. Knowledge work is by definition collaborative.
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Tom DeMarco (Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency)
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The truth is that our market economy is a finely tuned legal and moral system that has evolved over hundreds of years. It is not a natural condition, but an extremely sophisticated institutional construction, one that requires constant monitoring and enforcement. The system of property rights alone requires a massive legal-bureaucratic apparatus just to keep track of who owns what and who owes what to whom. Consumer protection laws, which establish the basic rules designed to ensure that competition remains “healthy,” are also an enormous legal apparatus. (It was estimated, for instance, that after the “velvet revolution,” the Czech Republic needed to pass eighty thousand pages of law in order to get its product standards up to minimum European Union levels.) Furthermore, the number of regulations must increase every time someone finds a more ingenious way of circumventing the old ones (in the same way that the number of rules governing sport increases every time someone finds a new way of cheating).
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Joseph Heath (The Efficient Society: Why Canada Is As Close To Utopia As It Gets)
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If we start with the attitude that different viewpoints are additive rather than competitive, we become more effective because our ideas or decisions are honed and tempered by that discourse. In a healthy, creative culture, the people in the trenches feel free to speak up and bring to light differing views that can help give us clarity.
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Ed Catmull
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A neutrality law would dampen this healthy competition.
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Anonymous
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Managers aren’t looking for ten- or twenty-year change programs—they want simple, objective goals: profit, growth, healthy quarterly reports, trained people, orderly markets, competitive advantage. Until these organizations face reality, give up the futile quest for control and begin to respect such concepts as workplace democracy, the need to question everything, and the search for a more balanced existence, even the most modest goals will be beyond reach.
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Ricardo Semler (The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works)
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When faced with complexity, it is reassuring to tell ourselves that we can uncover and understand every facet of every problem if we just try hard enough. But that’s a fallacy. The better approach, I believe, is to accept that we can’t understand every facet of a complex environment and to focus, instead, on techniques to deal with combining different viewpoints. If we start with the attitude that different viewpoints are additive rather than competitive, we become more effective because our ideas or decisions are honed and tempered by that discourse. In a healthy, creative culture, the people in the trenches feel free to speak up and bring to light differing views that can help give us clarity.
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
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How people feel can be more a factor in the success of a change than what they think. Anxiety of any kind can only complicate the task of change introduction. That’s why the period of sudden decline of corporate fortunes is exactly the worst moment to introduce a change. People are uneasy about their jobs, worried about lasting corporate health, perhaps shocked by the vitality of the competition. In retrospect, a far better time to introduce the change would have been back in the period of healthy growth. Growth always carries with it a certain necessity for change. You may have to hire more people, expand to larger quarters, diversify or centralize, all to accommodate your own burgeoning success. But growth feels good; it feels like winning. It even feels good enough to reduce the amount of change resistance.
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Tom DeMarco (Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency)
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The better approach, I believe, is to accept that we can’t understand every facet of a complex environment and to focus, instead, on techniques to deal with combining different viewpoints. If we start with the attitude that different viewpoints are additive rather than competitive, we become more effective because our ideas or decisions are honed and tempered by that discourse. In a healthy, creative culture, the people in the trenches feel free to speak up and bring to light differing views that can help give us clarity.
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
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Characteristics of Healthy, Constructive Anger Characteristics of Unhealthy, Destructive Anger 1. You express your feelings in a tactful way. 1. You deny your feelings and pout (passive aggression) or lash out and attack the other person (active aggression). 2. You try to see the world through the other person’s eyes, even if you disagree. 2. You argue defensively and insist there’s no validity in what the other person is saying. 3. You convey a spirit of respect for the other person, even though you may feel quite angry with him or her. 3. You believe the other person is despicable and deserving of punishment. You appear condescending or disrespectful. 4. You do something productive and try to solve the problem. 4. You give up and see yourself as a helpless victim. 5. You try to learn from the situation so you will be wiser in the future. 5. You don’t learn anything new. You feel that your view of the situation is absolutely valid. 6. You eventually let go of the anger and feel happy again. 6. Your anger becomes addictive. You won’t let go of it. 7. You examine your own behavior to see how you may have contributed to the problem. 7. You blame the other person and see yourself as an innocent victim. 8. You believe that you and the other person both have valid ideas and feelings that deserve to be understood. 8. You insist that you are entirely right and the other person is entirely wrong. You feel convinced that truth and justice are on your side. 9. Your commitment to the other person increases. Your goal is to feel closer to him or her. 9. You avoid or reject the other person. You write him or her off. 10. You look for a solution where you can both win and nobody has to lose. 10. You feel like you’re in a battle or a competition. If one person wins, you feel that the other one will be a loser.
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David D. Burns (Ten Days to Self-Esteem)
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I always worried that you would find another man to take better care of you. You’re a good-looking woman and I wouldn’t have blamed you. The wife of a SEAL is not an easy job.” The quiet words held brutal honesty. “I wouldn’t have cheated on you. I had opportunities definitely, but that’s not the kind of person I am.” Harper smiled and looked down at his lap. “What?” she asked. His hard silver-grey eyes flicked up to her face, seeming to glow. “Is it wrong that I like knowing men wanted you?” Cat shook her head, laughing. “Really? I profess my commitment to our marriage and you get jacked knowing men were after me?” Harper made a face, looking sheepish. “What can I say? You’ve always turned me on but there’s something about having what another man wants that satisfies the competitive caveman in me.” By the pleasure curling in her stomach it apparently satisfied something in her as well. The desire she had banked all day returned. Cat played with her half empty water glass, swirling the base in the moisture on the table. “It always made me excited when I saw women looking at you as well,” she admitted. “But I worried when you weren’t around.” Harper narrowed his eyes and leaned forward, invading her personal space. “I never cheated. Ever. Were there opportunities? Of course. But I was never tempted. Most of the women that hit on me I couldn’t even stand to listen to.” Some knot of tangled emotion eased in her chest. Harper was a virile man. He had a healthy sex drive. When they’d been together they’d loved almost every day. But in the back of her mind had been the fear that he’d sated those drives with someone else. Tears smarted her eyes as the relief flowed through her. She looked down at her plate, unwilling to let him see. Hard fingers tilted her face up. Anger sparked in his silver eyes. “I would never cheat on you. I take my marriage vows seriously. I always have.” She nodded and a tear dripped down her cheek. “I know you have but a year and a half is a really long time. Longer than any of your deployments. I guess I kind of expected…well, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had.” “But I would have blamed me and that’s not something I need on my conscience, not along with everything else,” he told her firmly. “Besides, I’ve never been drawn to anyone else since I met you. Did I tell you you look beautiful today? Because you do.” With
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J.M. Madden (Embattled SEAL (Lost and Found #4))
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Competition means no profit for everybody , no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival so why do people believe that competition is healthy ? .......
....The more we compete the less we gain .
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Peter Thiel (Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future)
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If you play just to stay healthy and not to win, by all means, keep playing.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
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Perfectionism is correlated with depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis or missed opportunities. The fear of failing, making mistakes, not meeting people’s expectations, and being criticized keeps us outside of the arena where healthy competition and striving unfolds.
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Brené Brown (Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead)
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Businesses that were not profitable did not survive for long in a competitive marketplace, because profits are essential to the long-term survival and flourishing of all businesses. Without profits, entrepreneurs cannot make the necessary investments to replace their depreciating buildings and equipment or to adapt to the always-evolving and competitive marketplace. The need for profit is universal for all businesses in a healthy market economy.
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Rajendra Sisodia (Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business)
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History and daily life demonstrate both our capacity for hatred, violence, competition, and greed and our capacity for love, tenderness, cooperation, and compassion. Healthy societies nurture the latter and make it easy to live in balance with one another and nature. In consequence, they enjoy an abundance of what is most important to human happiness and well-being. Dysfunctional societies nurture the former and in consequence suffer scarcity and deprivation.
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David C. Korten (When Corporations Rule the World)
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Healthy Masculine Energy • creates safety • witnesses without judgment • holds space • present without a goal • integrity & awareness • guides • committed to truth • listens deeply • supportive & encouraging • faces fears/knows death • humble • seeks mentorship • reflective • peaceful & grounded • observes beyond what is seen • responds instead of reacting Healthy Feminine Energy • intuitive • loving • playful & expressive • fluid • heart-centered • surrenders • connecting • births, creates, manifests • vulnerable • compassionate • sensual & affectionate • connected to nature • receives • connected to Source energy • authentic • trusts Wounded Masculine Energy • aggressive • stuck in mind/not present • cold & distant • competitive • withdrawn • bullying • struggles to communicate needs • has to be right • reactive • withdrawn—runs from love • narcissistic • needs to fix • avoidant attachment • afraid of failure • ignores emotions Wounded Feminine Energy • irrational • desperate • needy • manipulative • insecure—seeks external validation • inauthentic • chases love/obsesses • victim • critical • people pleasing • projects emotions onto others • lack of boundaries • anxious attachment • fears loss • seeks external
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Dené Logan (Sovereign Love: A Guide to Healing Relationships by Reclaiming the Masculine and Feminine Within)
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I believe that all successful organizations share two qualities: they are smart, and they are healthy. An organization demonstrates that it is smart by developing intelligent strategies, marketing plans, product features, and financial models that lead to competitive advantage over its rivals. It demonstrates that it is healthy by eliminating politics and confusion, which leads to higher morale, lower turnover, and higher productivity.
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Patrick Lencioni (The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable)
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healthy companies are far less susceptible to ordinary problems than unhealthy ones. During difficult times, for instance, employees will remain committed to a healthy organization and stay with it longer, ultimately working to reestablish competitive advantage.
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Patrick Lencioni (The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: A Leadership Fable)
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Emotional resilience is a protective factor against the development of stress, anxiety and depression, while also contributing to reduced sickness days within employment due to employees being more adept in managing adversity. Resilient individuals have more effective coping strategies in dealing with life and challenging events such as a bereavement or loss of a relationship, job or role. Consequently, they are more likely to maintain performance during adversity. Emotional resilience contributes to healthy behaviours, higher qualifications and skills, better employment, better mental well being, and quicker recovery from illness, which can also provide organisations with a competitive edge.
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Martina Witter (Resilience in the Workplace: From Surviving to thriving in the workplace, in business and as an entrepreneur)
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It's only the savages who boast about healthy competition. Competition is but fodder for division and self-obsession.
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Abhijit Naskar (Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans)
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Schmidt started 2012 with new, modern packaging for the deodorant, which was designed to set it apart from the competition. She looked beyond the direct-to-consumer sales channels and the natural and wellness retailers that her competitors used almost exclusively; in 2015, she expanded into traditional grocery stores and pharmacies, which allowed her to reach more customers and to enable greater access to healthy natural products. Her creativity, innovation, and hard work paid off. Schmidt earned appearances on Fox News and The Today Show; mentions on social media from celebrities and influencers; articles in national publications; and distribution on the shelves of Target and Walmart. Though it was bittersweet, Jaime realized that a larger company with more resources could bring her vision and mission to an even wider customer base, and she signed the deal with Unilever right before Christmas 2017. Reflecting on her journey, she says, “When I’m asked about what made Schmidt’s so successful, I often say that my customers were my business plan. It started when I listened to those at the farmer’s market, and it continued through each step of growth. Staying hyper-tuned-in to my customers always guided and served me.” Not sales. Not marketing. Customers, educating, and being educated.
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Sahil Lavingia (The Minimalist Entrepreneur: How Great Founders Do More with Less)
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The only healthy & successful competition in life is competing against your own self & not against others!
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Hisham Fawzi
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Axios In-House Newsletters Lights On from our revenue team . . . Cranes from Axios Local . . . Click Clack from our web-traffic guru . . . The Funnel from our head of growth . . . The TopLine from our sales warriors. • Those are just a few of the newsletters regularly published by Axios execs using Axios HQ—for their bosses, their teams and their colleagues across the company. Why it matters: This gives winners a forum for sharing best practices, encourages healthy competition among business units and gets rid of silos—everyone has visibility on what everyone’s up to. Between the lines: For the cofounders, these updates are an early-warning system for anyone’s activities that might be veering away from company goals. In one Sunday evening, we can be sure everyone’s on track and spot pockets that need our attention, encouragement or kudos. • And here’s our favorite part: When we have one-on-one meetings with our leaders, we’re already caught up. So we can use that time to talk through innovations, insights, bottlenecks, disruptions.
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Jim Vandehei (Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less)
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Sagittarius: With this sign, you’ll find a great exercise and sports-minded partner. They will enjoy many of the same activities, and this pair will form a healthy sense of competition. This can turn into an aggressive and physical competition, but only if the two of you allow it to go that direction. This also affects the sex life of the pair, where things will be “hot and heavy” more often than not, due to the amount of pent-up, competitive energies.
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Luna Sidana (Astrology: The 12 Zodiac Signs: Their Traits, Their Meanings & The Nature of Your Soul)
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Competition can be healthy, it can also be destructive.
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Jade West (Sugar Daddies)
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Perfectionism is not the key to success. In fact, research shows that perfectionism hampers achievement. Perfectionism is correlated with depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis, or missed opportunities. The fear of failing, making mistakes, not meeting people’s expectations, and being criticized keeps us outside the arena where healthy competition and striving unfolds.
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Brené Brown (Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.)