“
Sometimes your belief system is really your fears attached to rules.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy.
In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers...
Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make. What would be the point, for example, if a majority of our people decided to be self-employed?
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means.
”
”
Wendell Berry (The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays)
“
The first thing a proprietor learns, and painfully at that, is: Trust is fine, but control is better.
”
”
Elfriede Jelinek (The Piano Teacher)
“
Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been to much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is.
”
”
Rose Wilder Lane
“
The 7 Steps to Transformation:
1. Dream it.
2. Envision it.
3. Think it.
4. Grow it.
5. Become it.
6. Live it.
7. OWN it.
”
”
Germany Kent
“
We learned that leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory, particularly when doubters question whether victory is even possible. As
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
We have not noticed how fast the rest has risen. Most of the industrialized world--and a good part of the nonindustrialized world as well--has better cell phone service than the United States. Broadband is faster and cheaper across the industrial world, from Canada to France to Japan, and the United States now stands sixteenth in the world in broadband penetration per capita. Americans are constantly told by their politicians that the only thing we have to learn from other countries' health care systems is to be thankful for ours. Most Americans ignore the fact that a third of the country's public schools are totally dysfunctional (because their children go to the other two-thirds). The American litigation system is now routinely referred to as a huge cost to doing business, but no one dares propose any reform of it. Our mortgage deduction for housing costs a staggering $80 billion a year, and we are told it is crucial to support home ownership, except that Margaret Thatcher eliminated it in Britain, and yet that country has the same rate of home ownership as the United States. We rarely look around and notice other options and alternatives, convinced that "we're number one.
”
”
Fareed Zakaria (The Post-American World)
“
The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind — of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed. For most people this involves (1) finding a way to become calm and focused, (2) learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, (3) finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with the people around you, (4) not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways that you have managed to survive.
”
”
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
“
I learned that you can't truly own anything, that true ownership comes only in the moment of giving.
”
”
Mia Farrow (What Falls Away: A Memoir)
“
We learned that leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory, particularly when doubters question whether victory is even possible.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
Nothing in the tangible word that isn't living has any value beyond a dollar amount. Considering that dollars can only buy more tangible and inanimate objects, it would seem a far more worthwhile goal to instead learn to place value on the treasures of the mind. Memories, knowledge and skill together are the only things we will ever actually own.
”
”
Ashly Lorenzana
“
I think men mostly have to learn to be anarchists. Women don’t have to learn.”
Vokep shook his head grimly. “It’s the kids,” he said. “Having babies. Makes ’em propertarians. They won’t let go.” He sighed. “Touch and go, brother, that’s the rule. Don’t ever let yourself be owned.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia)
“
An education is truly “fitted for freedom” only if it is such as to produce free citizens, citizens who are free not because of wealth or birth, but because they can call their minds their own. Male and female, slave-born and freeborn, rich and poor, they have looked into themselves and developed the ability to separate mere habit and convention from what they can defend by argument. They have ownership of their own thought and speech, and this imparts to them a dignity that is far beyond the outer dignity of class and rank.
”
”
Martha C. Nussbaum
“
Anyway, I learned an important lesson from all of this: While gun ownership is
morally reprehensible in the civilized world, firepower is more or less
de rigeur in a zombie apocalypse.
”
”
John Green (Zombicorns)
“
Own your mistakes, learn from them; apologize if you have to, and then, be unapologetically you.
”
”
TemitOpe Ibrahim
“
if there is any part of our lives that we haven’t turned over to Christ, the devil reminds him, ‘No, that one isn’t totally yours. I still have this patch of ground here.’ “Jesus is totally committed to us. And until we learn to be totally surrendered to him, we’ll never find the joy of what it means to fully belong to him. That is the key to every believer’s life — full ownership by Christ. Everything we are and want to be belong to him. “The Lord wants to have ownership of your life. If there is anything hindering this from happening, I invite you to come forward now and lay it before Christ.
”
”
Ravi Zacharias (Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows)
“
Learn to enjoy things without owning them. Ownership is nothing, access is everything. Visit a library, a park, or a museum.
”
”
Joshua Becker (Simplify: 7 Guiding Principles to Help Anyone Declutter Their Home and Life)
“
all animals, including humans, need to see the connection between action and consequence in order to learn or react appropriately.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
students take ownership of their education when they learn from one another
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
The most viable method of elaborating the natural-rights statement of the libertarian position is to divide it into parts, and to begin with the basic axiom of the “right to self-ownership.” The right to self-ownership asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to “own” his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference. Since each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the right to self-ownership gives man the right to perform these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation.
”
”
Murray N. Rothbard (For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto)
“
Take more selfies. Not because you need validation or likes or comments. but because you are here on this earth. Alive and holy and true. And yes, your beauty deserves to be seen and known, most especially by you. You are worthy of being the subject of your own art. It is okay to capture the process of your own becoming. To be your own kind and gentle and fierce witness. To learn the truth of your eyes and your skin and your bones. To choose to show what wants to be shown, to name what wishes to be named, to claim ownership of the story that is told about you by being the one to tell it.
Dear girl. YOU are the greatest art you will ever create. The masterpiece. The magnum opus. You’re it. However you want to be.
Look at yourself now, miracle that you are, look at yourself and soak in the wonder, until you no longer want to look away.
”
”
Jeanette LeBlanc
“
God’s ownership of everything also changes the kind of question we ask in giving. Rather than, “How much of my money should I give to God?” we learn to ask, “How much of God’s money should I keep for myself?” The difference between these two questions is of monumental proportions.
”
”
Richard J. Foster (Seeking the Kingdom: Devotions for the Daily Journey of Faith)
“
In cognitive therapy, we learn to take greater ownership of or responsibility for the catastrophic value judgments that distress us.
”
”
Donald J. Robertson (How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius)
“
Managers...give orders, not ownership. Leaders, on the other hand, ask themselves, "How do I get this person to do what I want them to do and make sure they feel good about doing it?
”
”
Kristen Hadeed (Permission to Screw Up: How I Learned to Lead by Doing (Almost) Everything Wrong)
“
Passion needs to be at the heart of the project. Passion is infectious, so the more people who are enthusiastic about the project the better. Where and when a solution or answer does not easily present itself, there needs to be enough belief and energy for the project that still drives the production forward. Without the passion to go through whatever it is that will be thrown your way, you will not make it to opening night.
”
”
Teddy Hayes (The Guerrilla Guide To Being A Theatrical Producer)
“
The faculty and students share ownership of the learning outcomes; the students assume responsibility for their learning, and the faculty assumes responsibility for providing appropriate resources for that learning.
”
”
Tina Goodyear (Competency-Based Education and Assessment: The Excelsior Experience)
“
Buffett reminded folks that to buy a stock is to buy part ownership of a business. Don’t get hung up on daily price quotes. Instead, think about business performance and what you would pay for the business, just as you would a farm.
”
”
Daniel Pecaut (University of Berkshire Hathaway: 30 Years of Lessons Learned from Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger at the Annual Shareholders Meeting)
“
If you have some working knowledge of business and accounting and have a lot of patience to ride out market ups and downs, you can be a stock picker. You just need to understand that stocks are proportionate ownership of earning businesses.
”
”
Naved Abdali
“
I can remember many times when my boat crew struggled. It was easy to make excuses for our team’s performance and why it wasn’t what it should have been. But I learned that good leaders don’t make excuses. Instead, they figure out a way to get it done and win.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
Since everyone around you agrees ever since there were people on earth that land is value, or labor is value, or learning is value, or title, degree, necklaces, murex shells, the ownership of slaves. Everyone knows bees sting and ghosts haunt and giving your robes away humiliates your rivals. That the enemies are barbarians. That wise men swim through the rock of the earth; that houses breed filth, airstrips attract airplanes, tornadoes punish, ancestors watch, and you can buy a shorter stay in purgatory. The black rock is holy, or the scroll; or the pangolin is holy, the quetzal is holy, this tree, water, rock, stone, cow, cross, or mountain--and it's all true. The Red Sox. Or nothing at all is holy, as everyone intelligent knows.
”
”
Annie Dillard (The Abundance)
“
Although I play an important part in the facilitation of these lessons, the students take ownership of the problem-solving and reflection portions and display great leadership skills while collaborating with one another. Students rave about how much fun each experience is, and I’m meeting all of my objectives, Essential Questions, and Common Core standards along the way!
”
”
Paul Solarz (Learn Like a PIRATE: Empower Your Students to Collaborate, Lead, and Succeed)
“
As actor and comedian Lily Tomlin once said, “The road to success is always under construction.” So don’t allow yourself to be detoured from getting to your ONE Thing. Pave your way with the right people and place. BIG IDEAS Start saying “no.” Always remember that when you say yes to something, you’re saying no to everything else. It’s the essence of keeping a commitment. Start turning down other requests outright or saying, “No, for now” to distractions so that nothing detracts you from getting to your top priority. Learning to say no can and will liberate you. It’s how you’ll find the time for your ONE Thing. Accept chaos. Recognize that pursuing your ONE Thing moves other things to the back burner. Loose ends can feel like snares, creating tangles in your path. This kind of chaos is unavoidable. Make peace with it. Learn to deal with it. The success you have accomplishing your ONE Thing will continually prove you made the right decision. Manage your energy. Don’t sacrifice your health by trying to take on too much. Your body is an amazing machine, but it doesn’t come with a warranty, you can’t trade it in, and repairs can be costly. It’s important to manage your energy so you can do what you must do, achieve what you want to achieve, and live the life you want to live. Take ownership of your environment. Make sure that the people around you and your physical surroundings support your goals. The right people in your life and the right physical environment on your daily path will support your efforts to get to your ONE Thing. When both are in alignment with your ONE Thing, they will supply the optimism and physical lift you need to make your ONE Thing happen. Screenwriter Leo Rosten pulled everything together for us when he said, “I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.” Live with Purpose, Live by Priority, and Live for Productivity. Follow these three for the same reason you make the three commitments and avoid the four thieves—because you want to leave your mark. You want your life to matter. 18
”
”
Gary Keller (The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results)
“
The shareholders who own the businesses in this book have other, nonfinancial priorities in addition to their financial objectives. Not that they don’t want to earn a good return on their investment, but it’s not their only goal, or even necessarily their paramount goal. They’re also interested in being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great service to customers, having great relationships with their suppliers, making great contributions to the communities they live and work in, and finding great ways to lead their lives. They’ve learned, moreover, that to excel in all those things, they have to keep ownership and control inside the company and, in many cases, place significant limits on how much and how fast they grow. The wealth they’ve created, though substantial, has been a byproduct of success in these other areas. I call them small giants.
”
”
Bo Burlingham (Small Giants: Companies That Choose to be Great Instead of Big)
“
God designed the universe according to his nature, life works better when we do it his way. When we are caring, responsible, and attuned to him, we have a better prospect of a good life. Reality is on your side. It is constructed so that immaturity causes your child some discomfort; ownership should bring some measure of satisfaction and fulfillment. Allow your child to experience both realities so as to learn boundaries: “Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in slave labor” (Proverbs 12:24).
”
”
Henry Cloud (Boundaries with Kids: When to Say Yes, How to Say No)
“
In general, the values of our culture require that perspectives remain unintegrated—for once it is integrated, a perspective gives us sensitivity rather than leverage; kinship rather than ownership; responsibility rather than power; and an attentiveness to the present rather than to schemata. Our patrifocal culture warns that such sensitivities are hindrances to our willpower—and we learn our lessons early, so that our resistance to the integration we so desperately need is often too subtle to notice.
”
”
Philip Shepherd (New Self, New World: Recovering Our Senses in the Twenty-First Century)
“
She pulls up to the drive way
Parks the car, Gets Out, Walks up to the door,
And embraces me with an iron hold
She is a friend and hugs me the same way she used to,
Her hands sliding into their old creases along my body
I let her into the house, knowing I could never refuse
As she walks through my doors, she reminds me why she stands in my living room
She tells me that she has returned because of my actions
I didn’t learn from the last time
Its my fault
I should have been better, she berates me
I should have let people in, she tells me
I should not have gotten mad, she shares with me
I should not have locked myself away, she lets me know
I silently bear all the responsibility for her return
As we start to get deep into conversation, I realize she has brought her bags
Suitcase after suitcase lets me know she is here to stay
She tells me she will run my life from now on
She will make my schedule
She will direct how I act
She has come to my doors, breached my walls,
destroyed my defenses, and announced her ownership.
Crownless in my own kingdom
I am defeated.
This old friend is called Loneliness
”
”
Anonymous
“
Some may wonder how Navy SEAL combat leadership principles translate outside the military realm to leading any team in any capacity. But combat is reflective of life, only amplified and intensified. Decisions have immediate consequences, and everything—absolutely everything—is at stake. The right decision, even when all seems lost, can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The wrong decision, even when a victorious outcome seems all but certain, can result in deadly, catastrophic failure. In that regard, a combat leader can acquire a lifetime of leadership lessons learned in only a few deployments.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
Liberals hate the Pilgrims for their religious faith and devotion, but they should hate the Pilgrims because the Pilgrims learned the hard way that liberalism just doesn’t put food on the table. Collective farming is a recipe for collective starvation. No sense of ownership means no sense of personal responsibility. The Pilgrims learned it in 1620. The French learned it in 1789. (Although they could stand to learn it again.) The Soviets learned it in 1989. The Chinese are learning it right now. And when everyone is hoping that someone else will put food on their table, it creates not only starvation—it creates discord.
”
”
Michael Gallagher (50 Things Liberals Love to Hate)
“
They came late to the empty land and looked with bitterness upon the six wolves watching them from the horizon's rim. With them was a herd of goats and a dozen black sheep. They took no account of the wolves' possession of this place, for in their minds ownership was the human crown that none other had the right to wear. The beasts were content to share in survival's struggle, in hunt and quarry, and the braying goats and bawling sheep had soft throats and carelessness was a common enough flaw among herds; and they had not yet learned the manner of these two-legged intruders. Herds were fed upon by many creatures. Often the wolves shared their meals with the crows and coyotes, and had occasion to argue with lumbering bears over a delectable prize.
When I came upon the herders and their longhouse on a flat above the valley, I found six wolf skulls spiked above the main door. In my travels as a minstrel I knew enough that I had no need to ask - this was a tale woven into our kind, after all. No words, either, for the bear skins on the walls, the antelope hides and elk racks. Not a brow lifted for the mound of bhederin bones in the refuse pit, or the vultures killed by the poison-baited meat left for the coyotes.
That night I sang and spun tales for my keep. Songs of heroes and great deeds and they were pleased enough and the beer was passing and the shank stew palatable.
Poets are sembling creatures, capable of shrugging into the skin of man, woman, child and beast. There are some among them secretly marked, sworn to the cults of the wilderness. And that night I shared out my poison and in the morning I left a lifeless house where not a dog remained to cry, and I sat upon a hill with my pipe, summoning once more the wild beasts. I defend their ownership when they cannot, and make no defence against the charge of murder; but temper your horror, friends: there is no universal law that places a greater value upon human life over that of a wild beast. Why would you ever imagine otherwise?
”
”
Steven Erikson
“
Instead of educating college students for jobs that are about to disappear under the rising tide of technology, twenty-first-century universities should liberate them from outdated career models and give them ownership of their own futures. They should equip them with the literacies and skills they need to thrive in this new economy defined by technology, as well as continue providing them with access to the learning they need to face the challenges of life in a diverse, global environment. Higher education needs a new model and a new orientation away from its dual focus on undergraduate and graduate students. Universities must broaden their reach to become engines for lifelong learning.
”
”
Joseph E. Aoun (Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (The MIT Press))
“
The cooperative approach has politically progressive roots—the theory is that students take ownership of their education when they learn from one another—but according to elementary school teachers I interviewed at public and private schools in New York, Michigan, and Georgia, it also trains kids to express themselves in the team culture of corporate America. “This style of teaching reflects the business community,” one fifth-grade teacher in a Manhattan public school told me, “where people’s respect for others is based on their verbal abilities, not their originality or insight. You have to be someone who speaks well and calls attention to yourself. It’s an elitism based on something other than merit.” “Today the world of business works in groups, so now the kids do it in school,” a third-grade teacher in Decatur, Georgia, explained.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
I will revisit the details of repair, including lengthier scripts for handling these tricky moments, in the next part of this book. But for now, I want to offer some baseline to-dos: Say you’re sorry, share your reflections with your child—restating your memory of what happened, so your kid knows it wasn’t all in his head—and then say what you wish you had done differently and what you plan to do differently now and in the future. It’s important to take ownership over your role (“Mommy was having big feelings that came out in a yelling voice. Those were my feelings and it’s my job to work on managing them better. It’s never your fault when I yell and it’s not your job to figure out how I can stay calmer. I love you”) instead of insinuating that your child “made you” react in a certain way. And remember: as a parent, you are your child’s role model. When your child sees you as a work in progress, he learns that he, too, can learn from his struggles and take responsibility when he acts in a way he isn’t proud of.
”
”
Becky Kennedy (Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction)
“
Disney now unofficially tolerates hundreds of small online shops run by die-hard fans selling T-shirts, buttons, pins, patches, jewelry, and thousands more items that leverage Disney characters. These stores don’t pay Disney a dime in licensing fees. Why the pivot to tolerating knockoffs? Because Disney learned that fan-made, unlicensed twenty-five-dollar T-shirts drive their wearers to Disney parks, where they buy expensive entrance tickets and pass the day spending even more money. Another reason for Disney’s newfound tolerance: it has discovered the marketing research value from the hundreds of small knockoff shops. These shops turn out to be a vibrant source of ideas for new official Disney merchandise. In 2016 the online vendor Bibbidi Bobbidi Brooke came out with a hugely popular line of rose-gold sequined Mickey ears, something that had not occurred to the Disney licensors. So Disney copied the design, which sold out immediately in its official stores. Bibbidi Bobbidi Brooke was gracious, posting “always excited to see new merch offerings.” Her fans replied, “Yours will always be the original!!!” Everyone wins.
”
”
Michael A. Heller (Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives)
“
Looking back on all my interviews for this book, how many times in how many different contexts did I hear about the vital importance of having a caring adult or mentor in every young person’s life? How many times did I hear about the value of having a coach—whether you are applying for a job for the first time at Walmart or running Walmart? How many times did I hear people stressing the importance of self-motivation and practice and taking ownership of your own career or education as the real differentiators for success? How interesting was it to learn that the highest-paying jobs in the future will be stempathy jobs—jobs that combine strong science and technology skills with the ability to empathize with another human being? How ironic was it to learn that something as simple as a chicken coop or the basic planting of trees and gardens could be the most important thing we do to stabilize parts of the World of Disorder? Who ever would have thought it would become a national security and personal security imperative for all of us to scale the Golden Rule further and wider than ever? And who can deny that when individuals get so super-empowered and interdependent at the same time, it becomes more vital than ever to be able to look into the face of your neighbor or the stranger or the refugee or the migrant and see in that person a brother or sister? Who can ignore the fact that the key to Tunisia’s success in the Arab Spring was that it had a little bit more “civil society” than any other Arab country—not cell phones or Facebook friends? How many times and in how many different contexts did people mention to me the word “trust” between two human beings as the true enabler of all good things? And whoever thought that the key to building a healthy community would be a dining room table? That’s why I wasn’t surprised that when I asked Surgeon General Murthy what was the biggest disease in America today, without hesitation he answered: “It’s not cancer. It’s not heart disease. It’s isolation. It is the pronounced isolation that so many people are experiencing that is the great pathology of our lives today.” How ironic. We are the most technologically connected generation in human history—and yet more people feel more isolated than ever. This only reinforces Murthy’s earlier point—that the connections that matter most, and are in most short supply today, are the human-to-human ones.
”
”
Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)
“
We have learned from Ludwig von Mises how to respond to the socialists’ evasion (immunization) strategy. As long as the defining characteristic— the essence—of socialism, i.e., the absence of the private ownership of the factors of production, remains in place, no reform will be of any help. The idea of a socialist economy is a contradictio in adjecto, and the claim that socialism represents a higher, more efficient mode of social production is absurd. In order to reach one’s own ends efficiently and without waste within the framework of an exchange economy based on division of labor, it is necessary that one engage in monetary calculation (cost-accounting). Everywhere outside the system of a primitive self-sufficient single household economy, monetary calculation is the sole tool of rational and efficient action. Only by being able to compare inputs and outputs arithmetically in terms of a common medium of exchange (money) can a person determine whether his actions are successful or not. In distinct contrast, socialism means to have no economy, no economizing, at all, because under these conditions monetary calculation and cost-accounting is impossible by definition. If no private property in the factors of production exists, then no prices for any production factor exist; hence, it is impossible to determine whether or not they are employed economically. Accordingly, socialism is not a higher mode of production but rather economic chaos and regression to primitivism.
”
”
Hans-Hermann Hoppe (The Great Fiction)
“
Equity financing, on the other hand, is unappealing to cooperators because it may mean relinquishing control to outside investors, which is a distinctly capitalist practice. Investors are not likely to buy non-voting shares; they will probably require representation on the board of directors because otherwise their money could potentially be expropriated. “For example, if the directors of the firm were workers, they might embezzle equity funds, refrain from paying dividends in order to raise wages, or dissipate resources on projects of dubious value.”105 In any case, the very idea of even partial outside ownership is contrary to the cooperative ethos. A general reason for traditional institutions’ reluctance to lend to cooperatives, and indeed for the rarity of cooperatives whether related to the difficulty of securing capital or not, is simply that a society’s history, culture, and ideologies might be hostile to the “co-op” idea. Needless to say, this is the case in most industrialized countries, especially the United States. The very notion of a workers’ cooperative might be viscerally unappealing and mysterious to bank officials, as it is to people of many walks of life. Stereotypes about inefficiency, unprofitability, inexperience, incompetence, and anti-capitalism might dispose officials to reject out of hand appeals for financial assistance from co-ops. Similarly, such cultural preconceptions may be an element in the widespread reluctance on the part of working people to try to start a cooperative. They simply have a “visceral aversion” to, and unfamiliarity with, the idea—which is also surely a function of the rarity of co-ops itself. Their rarity reinforces itself, in that it fosters a general ignorance of co-ops and the perception that they’re risky endeavors. Additionally, insofar as an anti-democratic passivity, a civic fragmentedness, a half-conscious sense of collective disempowerment, and a diffuse interpersonal alienation saturate society, this militates against initiating cooperative projects. It is simply taken for granted among many people that such things cannot be done. And they are assumed to require sophisticated entrepreneurial instincts. In most places, the cooperative idea is not even in the public consciousness; it has barely been heard of. Business propaganda has done its job well.106 But propaganda can be fought with propaganda. In fact, this is one of the most important things that activists can do, this elevation of cooperativism into the public consciousness. The more that people hear about it, know about it, learn of its successes and potentials, the more they’ll be open to it rather than instinctively thinking it’s “foreign,” “socialist,” “idealistic,” or “hippyish.” If successful cooperatives advertise their business form, that in itself performs a useful service for the movement. It cannot be overemphasized that the most important thing is to create a climate in which it is considered normal to try to form a co-op, in which that is seen as a perfectly legitimate and predictable option for a group of intelligent and capable unemployed workers. Lenders themselves will become less skeptical of the business form as it seeps into the culture’s consciousness.
”
”
Chris Wright (Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States)
“
We have become so trusting of technology that we have lost faith in ourselves and our born instincts. There are still parts of life that we do not need to “better” with technology. It’s important to understand that you are smarter than your smartphone. To paraphrase, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your Google. Mistakes are a part of life and often the path to profound new insights—so why try to remove them completely? Getting lost while driving or visiting a new city used to be an adventure and a good story. Now we just follow the GPS. To “know thyself” is hard work. Harder still is to believe that you, with all your flaws, are enough—without checking in, tweeting an update, or sharing a photo as proof of your existence for the approval of your 719 followers. A healthy relationship with your devices is all about taking ownership of your time and making an investment in your life. I’m not calling for any radical, neo-Luddite movement here. Carving out time for yourself is as easy as doing one thing. Walk your dog. Stroll your baby. Go on a date—without your handheld holding your hand. Self-respect, priorities, manners, and good habits are not antiquated ideals to be traded for trends. Not everyone will be capable of shouldering this task of personal responsibility or of being a good example for their children. But the heroes of the next generation will be those who can calm the buzzing and jigging of outside distraction long enough to listen to the sound of their own hearts, those who will follow their own path until they learn to walk erect—not hunched over like a Neanderthal, palm-gazing. Into traffic. You have a choice in where to direct your attention. Choose wisely. The world will wait. And if it’s important, they’ll call back.
”
”
Jocelyn K. Glei (Manage Your Day-To-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind)
“
Mikhail’s hands were gentle as he helped her to lie down. He caressed her silky hair, bent to kiss her tenderly. “You have no idea what you did for me tonight. Thank you, Raven.”
Her eyes were closed, lashes lying like two dark crescents against her soft skin. She smiled. “Someone has to show you what love is, Mikhail. Not possession or ownership, but real unconditional love.” Her hand rose, and even with her eyes closed, her fingertips unerringly found the lines around his mouth. “You need to remember how to play, to laugh. You need to learn to like yourself more.”
The hard edges of his mouth softened, curved. “You sound like the priest.”
“I hope you confessed that you took advantage of me,” she teased.
Mikhail’s breath caught in his throat. Guilt washed over him. He had taken advantage. Maybe not the first time, when he was so out of control after such isolation. It had been necessary to make the exchange to save her life. But the second time had been pure selfishness. He had wanted the sexual rush, the total completion of the ritual. And he had uttered the ritual words. They were bound. He knew it, felt the rightness of it, felt the healing in his soul only a true lifemate could effect.
“Mikhail? I was teasing you.” The long lashes fluttered, lifted so her eyes could confirm what her fingertips tracing his frown told her.
His teeth caught her finger, his tongue stroking over her skin. His mouth was hot, erotic, his eyes burning down at her.
Answering heat leapt into her eyes. Raven laughed softly. “You have it all, don’t you? Charm, you’re so sexy you should be locked up, and you have a smile men would kill for. Or women, however you want to look at it.”
He bent to kiss her, one hand closing over her breast possessively. “You need to mention what a great lover I am. Men need to hear these things.”
“Really?” She arched an eyebrow at him. “I don’t dare. You’re already as arrogant as I can stand.”
“You are crazy about me. I know. I read minds.” He suddenly grinned mischievously, like a little boy.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Prince (Dark, #1))
“
Everywhere you look with this young lady, there’s a purity of motivation,” Shultz told him. “I mean she really is trying to make the world better, and this is her way of doing it.” Mattis went out of his way to praise her integrity. “She has probably one of the most mature and well-honed sense of ethics—personal ethics, managerial ethics, business ethics, medical ethics that I’ve ever heard articulated,” the retired general gushed. Parloff didn’t end up using those quotes in his article, but the ringing endorsements he heard in interview after interview from the luminaries on Theranos’s board gave him confidence that Elizabeth was the real deal. He also liked to think of himself as a pretty good judge of character. After all, he’d dealt with his share of dishonest people over the years, having worked in a prison during law school and later writing at length about such fraudsters as the carpet-cleaning entrepreneur Barry Minkow and the lawyer Marc Dreier, both of whom went to prison for masterminding Ponzi schemes. Sure, Elizabeth had a secretive streak when it came to discussing certain specifics about her company, but he found her for the most part to be genuine and sincere. Since his angle was no longer the patent case, he didn’t bother to reach out to the Fuiszes. — WHEN PARLOFF’S COVER STORY was published in the June 12, 2014, issue of Fortune, it vaulted Elizabeth to instant stardom. Her Journal interview had gotten some notice and there had also been a piece in Wired, but there was nothing like a magazine cover to grab people’s attention. Especially when that cover featured an attractive young woman wearing a black turtleneck, dark mascara around her piercing blue eyes, and bright red lipstick next to the catchy headline “THIS CEO IS OUT FOR BLOOD.” The story disclosed Theranos’s valuation for the first time as well as the fact that Elizabeth owned more than half of the company. There was also the now-familiar comparison to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. This time it came not from George Shultz but from her old Stanford professor Channing Robertson. (Had Parloff read Robertson’s testimony in the Fuisz trial, he would have learned that Theranos was paying him $500,000 a year, ostensibly as a consultant.) Parloff also included a passage about Elizabeth’s phobia of needles—a detail that would be repeated over and over in the ensuing flurry of coverage his story unleashed and become central to her myth. When the editors at Forbes saw the Fortune article, they immediately assigned reporters to confirm the company’s valuation and the size of Elizabeth’s ownership stake and ran a story about her in their next issue. Under the headline “Bloody Amazing,” the article pronounced her “the youngest woman to become a self-made billionaire.” Two months later, she graced one of the covers of the magazine’s annual Forbes 400 issue on the richest people in America. More fawning stories followed in USA Today, Inc., Fast Company, and Glamour, along with segments on NPR, Fox Business, CNBC, CNN, and CBS News. With the explosion of media coverage came invitations to numerous conferences and a cascade of accolades. Elizabeth became the youngest person to win the Horatio Alger Award. Time magazine named her one of the one hundred most influential people in the world. President Obama appointed her a U.S. ambassador for global entrepreneurship, and Harvard Medical School invited her to join its prestigious board of fellows.
”
”
John Carreyrou (Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup)
“
SELF-MANAGEMENT Trust We relate to one another with an assumption of positive intent. Until we are proven wrong, trusting co-workers is our default means of engagement. Freedom and accountability are two sides of the same coin. Information and decision-making All business information is open to all. Every one of us is able to handle difficult and sensitive news. We believe in collective intelligence. Nobody is as smart as everybody. Therefore all decisions will be made with the advice process. Responsibility and accountability We each have full responsibility for the organization. If we sense that something needs to happen, we have a duty to address it. It’s not acceptable to limit our concern to the remit of our roles. Everyone must be comfortable with holding others accountable to their commitments through feedback and respectful confrontation. WHOLENESS Equal worth We are all of fundamental equal worth. At the same time, our community will be richest if we let all members contribute in their distinctive way, appreciating the differences in roles, education, backgrounds, interests, skills, characters, points of view, and so on. Safe and caring workplace Any situation can be approached from fear and separation, or from love and connection. We choose love and connection. We strive to create emotionally and spiritually safe environments, where each of us can behave authentically. We honor the moods of … [love, care, recognition, gratitude, curiosity, fun, playfulness …]. We are comfortable with vocabulary like care, love, service, purpose, soul … in the workplace. Overcoming separation We aim to have a workplace where we can honor all parts of us: the cognitive, physical, emotional, and spiritual; the rational and the intuitive; the feminine and the masculine. We recognize that we are all deeply interconnected, part of a bigger whole that includes nature and all forms of life. Learning Every problem is an invitation to learn and grow. We will always be learners. We have never arrived. Failure is always a possibility if we strive boldly for our purpose. We discuss our failures openly and learn from them. Hiding or neglecting to learn from failure is unacceptable. Feedback and respectful confrontation are gifts we share to help one another grow. We focus on strengths more than weaknesses, on opportunities more than problems. Relationships and conflict It’s impossible to change other people. We can only change ourselves. We take ownership for our thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions. We don’t spread rumors. We don’t talk behind someone’s back. We resolve disagreements one-on-one and don’t drag other people into the problem. We don’t blame problems on others. When we feel like blaming, we take it as an invitation to reflect on how we might be part of the problem (and the solution). PURPOSE Collective purpose We view the organization as having a soul and purpose of its own. We try to listen in to where the organization wants to go and beware of forcing a direction onto it. Individual purpose We have a duty to ourselves and to the organization to inquire into our personal sense of calling to see if and how it resonates with the organization’s purpose. We try to imbue our roles with our souls, not our egos. Planning the future Trying to predict and control the future is futile. We make forecasts only when a specific decision requires us to do so. Everything will unfold with more grace if we stop trying to control and instead choose to simply sense and respond. Profit In the long run, there are no trade-offs between purpose and profits. If we focus on purpose, profits will follow.
”
”
Frederic Laloux (Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness)
“
how much more control and opportunities would African-Americans have if ownership was part of the mix and not just participation?
”
”
Ash Cash (The Wake Up Call: Financial Inspiration Learned from 4:44 + A Step by Step Guide on How to Implement Each Financial Principle)
“
safely connected world: inclusiveness, willingness to repair, scaffolding, and support in struggling. This model allows people to develop security, flexibility, and coherent working models of attachment, through inclusiveness (responding to the entire range of their experience, and staying curious about internal needs, wants, desires, and beliefs, which fosters a relaxed approach to psychological exploration); a willingness to repair disruptions (as we as therapists take ownership of our own parts, while being appropriately transparent, which allows the client to learn and expect that disruption doesn’t disrupt the underlying solid therapeutic connection); scaffolding (helping the client to find the necessary baby steps in accessing their inner world, translating that into words, linking what’s going on inside their self-system with the intersubjective presence of the therapist); and support the client in a willingness to struggle (actively engaging, setting limits, making room for protest, all while staying connected through the conflict).
”
”
Deirdre Fay (Attachment-Based Yoga & Meditation for Trauma Recovery: Simple, Safe, and Effective Practices for Therapy)
“
Taking responsibility in choosing our own math materials is better than getting struck with resources which we don't find particularly useful.
”
”
Math Vault (The Definitive Guide to Learning Higher Mathematics — 10 Principles to Mathematical Transcendence)
“
I learned that good leaders don’t make excuses. Instead, they figure out a way to get it done and win.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
A leader’s checklist for planning should include the following: • Analyze the mission. —Understand higher headquarters’ mission, Commander’s Intent, and endstate (the goal). —Identify and state your own Commander’s Intent and endstate for the specific mission. • Identify personnel, assets, resources, and time available. • Decentralize the planning process. —Empower key leaders within the team to analyze possible courses of action. • Determine a specific course of action. —Lean toward selecting the simplest course of action. —Focus efforts on the best course of action. • Empower key leaders to develop the plan for the selected course of action. • Plan for likely contingencies through each phase of the operation. • Mitigate risks that can be controlled as much as possible. • Delegate portions of the plan and brief to key junior leaders. —Stand back and be the tactical genius. • Continually check and question the plan against emerging information to ensure it still fits the situation. • Brief the plan to all participants and supporting assets. —Emphasize Commander’s Intent. —Ask questions and engage in discussion and interaction with the team to ensure they understand. • Conduct post-operational debrief after execution. —Analyze lessons learned and implement them in future planning.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
None of us are perfect. You are still learning and growing. We all are. And this is a lesson for you: if you reengage on this task, if you do a stern self-assessment of how you lead and what you can do better, the outcome will be different. But it starts here. It starts at the board meeting when you go in, put your ego aside, and take ownership for the company’s failure here.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
As he sat there thinking, he sensed movement above him. Looking up, he saw a pair of hawks flying high in the sky. He watched the hawks as they drifted on the wind. Although their flight appeared to have no pattern, it made a certain kind of sense to the boy. It was just that he couldn’t grasp what it meant. He followed the movement of the birds, trying to read something into it. Maybe these desert birds could explain to him the meaning of love without ownership. He felt sleepy. In his heart, he wanted to remain awake, but he also wanted to sleep. “I am learning the Language of the World, and everything in the world is beginning to make sense to me . . . even the flight of the hawks,” he said to himself.
”
”
Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
“
We learned that leadership requires belief in the mission and unyielding perseverance to achieve victory,
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
This book is a compilation of interesting ideas that have strongly influenced my thoughts and I want to share them in a compressed form. That ideas can change your worldview and bring inspiration and the excitement of discovering something new. The emphasis is not on the technology because it is constantly changing. It is much more difficult to change the accompanying circumstances that affect the way technological solutions are realized. The chef did not invent salt, pepper and other spices. He just chooses good ingredients and uses them skilfully, so others can enjoy his art. If I’ve been successful, the book creates a new perspective for which the selection of ingredients is important, as well as the way they are smoothly and efficiently arranged together.
In the first part of the book, we follow the natural flow needed to create the stimulating environment necessary for the survival of a modern company. It begins with challenges that corporations are facing, changes they are, more or less successfully, trying to make, and the culture they are trying to establish. After that, we discuss how to be creative, as well as what to look for in the innovation process.
The book continues with a chapter that talks about importance of inclusion and purpose. This idea of inclusion – across ages, genders, geographies, cultures, sexual orientation, and all the other areas in which new ways of thinking can manifest – is essential for solving new problems as well as integral in finding new solutions to old problems. Purpose motivates people for reaching their full potential. This is The second and third parts of the book describes the areas that are important to support what is expressed in the first part. A flexible organization is based on IT alignment with business strategy. As a result of acceleration in the rate of innovation and technological changes, markets evolve rapidly, products’ life cycles get shorter and innovation becomes the main source of competitive advantage.
Business Process Management (BPM) goes from task-based automation, to process-based automation, so automating a number of tasks in a process, and then to functional automation across multiple processes andeven moves towards automation at the business ecosystem level. Analytics brought us information and insight; AI turns that insight into superhuman knowledge and real-time action, unleashing new business models, new ways to build, dream, and experience the world, and new geniuses to advance humanity faster than ever before.
Companies and industries are transforming our everyday experiences and the services we depend upon, from self-driving cars, to healthcare, to personal assistants. It is a central tenet for the disruptive changes of the 4th Industrial Revolution; a revolution that will likely challenge our ideas about what it means to be a human and just might be more transformative than any other industrial revolution we have seen yet. Another important disruptor is the blockchain - a distributed decentralized digital ledger of transactions with the promise of liberating information and making the economy more democratic.
You no longer need to trust anyone but an algorithm. It brings reliability, transparency, and security to all manner of data exchanges: financial transactions, contractual and legal agreements, changes of ownership, and certifications. A quantum computer can simulate efficiently any physical process that occurs in Nature. Potential (long-term) applications include pharmaceuticals, solar power collection, efficient power transmission, catalysts for nitrogen fixation, carbon capture, etc. Perhaps we can build quantum algorithms for improving computational tasks within artificial intelligence, including sub-fields like machine learning. Perhaps a quantum deep learning network can be trained more efficiently, e.g. using a smaller training set. This is still in conceptual research domain.
”
”
Tomislav Milinović
“
reconsider their place in their world, to look at things differently, to take risks, be creative, have ownership and create,
”
”
Tait Coles (Never Mind the Inspectors: Here's Punk Learning)
“
Professional developers do not prevent others from working in the code. They do not build walls of ownership around code. Rather, they work with each other on as much of the system as they can. They learn from each other by working with each other on other parts of the system.
”
”
Robert C. Martin (Clean Coder, The: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers (Robert C. Martin Series))
“
We have also learned that we're much more driven by all kinds of intangible, emotional forces: the need to be recognized and to feel ownership; to feel a sense of accomplishment; to find the security of a long-term commitment and a sense of shared purpose. We want to feel as if our labor and lives matter in some way, even after death.
”
”
Dan Ariely (Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations (TED Books))
“
What we are mistaking for a voluntary attraction of animals to humans can be explained by the “imprint phenomenon.” This biological process, first described by Konrad Lorenz, is responsible for the fact that animals, including humans, learn species-specific information, behaviours, and skills at specific points in their development. Imprinting is how animals learn early to attach to their mothers and identify with members of their own species. It is the mechanism that allows us to domesticate animals and nurture intimate relationships with them; as long as we integrate or selves into young animals’ lives before the attachment period ends, we can divert their identification with their own families and species onto ourselves.
”
”
Charles Danten (Un vétérinaire en colère - Essai sur la condition animale)
“
Look at stocks as part ownership of a business. 2. Look at Mr. Market—volatile stock price fluctuations—as your friend rather than your enemy. View risk as the possibility of permanent loss of purchasing power, and uncertainty as the unpredictability regarding the degree of variability in the possible range of outcomes. 3. Remember the three most important words in investing: “margin of safety.” 4. Evaluate any news item or event only in terms of its impact on (a) future interest rates and (b) the intrinsic value of the business, which is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out during its remaining life, adjusted for the uncertainty around receiving those cash flows. 5. Think in terms of opportunity costs when evaluating new ideas and keep a very high hurdle rate for incoming investments. Be unreasonable. When you look at a business and get a strong desire from within saying, “I wish I owned this business,” that is the kind of business in which you should be investing. A great investment idea doesn’t need hours to analyze. More often than not, it is love at first sight. 6. Think probabilistically rather than deterministically, because the future is never certain and it is really a set of branching probability streams. At the same time, avoid the risk of ruin, when making decisions, by focusing on consequences rather than just on raw probabilities in isolation. Some risks are just not worth taking, whatever the potential upside may be. 7. Never underestimate the power of incentives in any given situation. 8. When making decisions, involve both the left side of your brain (logic, analysis, and math) and the right side (intuition, creativity, and emotions). 9. Engage in visual thinking, which helps us to better understand complex information, organize our thoughts, and improve our ability to think and communicate. 10. Invert, always invert. You can avoid a lot of pain by visualizing your life after you have lost a lot of money trading or speculating using derivatives or leverage. If the visuals unnerve you, don’t do anything that could get you remotely close to reaching such a situation. 11. Vicariously learn from others throughout life. Embrace everlasting humility to succeed in this endeavor. 12. Embrace the power of long-term compounding. All the great things in life come from compound interest.
”
”
Gautam Baid (The Joys of Compounding: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning, Revised and Updated (Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing Series))
“
First, I am thrilled that paramedics are finally getting the respect they deserve for being the professionals they can be. The scope of practice is expanding, and patient care modalities are improving, seemingly by the minute. Patient outcomes are also improving as a result, and EMS is passing through puberty and forging into adulthood. On the other hand, autonomy in the hands of the “lesser-motivated,” can be a very dangerous thing. You know as well as I do that there are still plenty of providers who operate from a subjective, complacent, and downright lazy place. Combined with the ever-expanding autonomy, that provider just became more dangerous than he or she ever has been – to the patients and to you. Autonomy in patient care places more pressure for excellence on the provider charged with delivering it, and also on the partner and crew members on scene. Since the base hospital is not involved like it once was, they are likewise less responsible for the errors and omissions of the medics on the scene. Now more than ever, crew members are being held to answer for the mistakes and follies of their coworkers; now more than ever, EMS providers are working without a net. What’s next? I predict (and hope) emergency medical Darwinism is going to force some painful and necessary changes. First, increasing autonomy is going to result in the better and best providing superior patient care. More personal ownership of the results is going to manifest in outcomes such as increased cardiac arrest survival rates, faster and more complete stroke recovery, and significantly better outcomes for STEMI patients, all leading to the brass ring: EMS as a profession, not just a job. On the flip side of that coin, you will see consequences for the not-so-good and completely awful providers. There will be higher instances of licensure action, internal discipline, and wash-out. Unfortunately, all those things will stem from generally preventable negative patient outcomes. The danger for the better provider will be in the penumbra; the murky, gray area of time when providers are self-categorizing. Specifically, the better provider who is aware of the dangerously poor provider but does nothing to fix or flush him or her, is almost certain to be caught up in a bad situation caused by sloppy, complacent, or ultimately negligent patient care that should have been corrected or stopped. The answer is as simple as it is difficult. If you are reading this, it is more likely because you are one of the better, more committed, more professional providers. This transition is up to you. You must dig deep and find the strength necessary to face the issue and force the change; you have to demand more from yourself and from those around you. You must have the willingness to help those providers who want it – and respond to those who need it, but don’t want it – with tough love by showing them the door. In the end, EMS will only ever be as good as you make it. If you lay silent through its evolution, you forfeit the right to complain when it crumbles around you.
”
”
David Givot (Sirens, Lights, and Lawyers: The Law & Other Really Important Stuff EMS Providers Never Learned in School)
“
Bunch of Quotes …
Legend: #/ = page number
12/ Money as Archetype. The key point is that money must have power over us inwardly in order to have power in the world. We must believe in its value before we will change our conduct based on whether or not we will receive it. In the broadest sense, money becomes a vehicle of relationship. It enables us to make choices and cooperate with one another, it singlas what we will do with our energy.
16/ The Latin word moneta derives from the Indo-European root men-, which means to use one’s mind or think. The goddess Moneta is modeled on the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne. Contained in the power to remember is the ability to warn, so Moneta is also considered to be a goddess who can give warnings. To suggest money can affect us in different ways we might remember that the Greek words menos (which means spirit, courage, purpose) and mania (which means madness) come from the same root as memory and Moneta. Measurement, from the Indo-European root me-, also relates to mental abilities and is a crucial aspect of money.
95/ [Crawford relates the experience of a friend], a mother, whose only son suffered from drug addiction. … At last she overcame her motherly instincts and refused him a place to stay and food and money. [She gave him a resources list for dealing with addiction.]
98/ Even an addition, according to psychologist C.G. Jung, a form of spiritual craving. Jung expressed this viewpoint in correspondence with Bill Wilson (Bill W), the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
107/ The inner search is not a denial of our outer needs, but rather in part a way of learning the right attitudes and actions with which to deal with the outer world—including money and ownership.
114/ Maimonodes, Golden Ladder of Charity. [this list is from charitywatch.org]
Maimonides, a 12th century Jewish scholar, invented the following ladder of giving. Each rung up represents a higher degree of virtue:
1. The lowest: Giving begrudgingly and making the recipient feel disgraced or embarrassed.
2. Giving cheerfully but giving too little.
3. Giving cheerfully and adequately but only after being asked.
4. Giving before being asked.
5. Giving when you do not know who is the individual benefiting, but the recipient knows your identity.
6. Giving when you know who is the individual benefiting, but the recipient does not know your identity.
7. Giving when neither the donor nor the recipient is aware of the other's identity.
8. The Highest: Giving money, a loan, your time or whatever else it takes to enable an individual to be self-reliant.
129/ Remember as this myth unfolds [Persephone] that we are speaking of inheritance in the larger sense. What we inherit is not merely money and only received at death, but it is everything, both good and bad, that we receive from our parents throughout our lifetime. When we examine such an inheritance, some of what we receive will be truly ours and worthwhile to keep. The rest we must learn to surrender if we are to get on with our own lives.
133/ As so happens, the child must deal with what the parent refuses to confront.
146/ Whether the parent is alive or dead, the child may believe some flaw in the parent has crippled and limited the child’s life. To become attached to this point of view is damaging, because the child fails to take responsibility for his or her own destiny.
”
”
Tad Crawford
“
The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind - of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed. For most people this involves (1) finding a way to become calm and focused, (2) learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, (3) finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with the people around you, (4) not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways that you have managed to survive".
”
”
Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
“
We listened to three players. They were two old men and one woman of indeterminate age who played the concertina. They had a natural expertise that made it seem the music wasn’t a thing learned. They had no ownership of it either. The tunes were in the air thereabouts. They were theirs only in the same way the fields and the rushes and the rain were. They were of that place and had both the poverties and richness of it. And perhaps because of the complex of emotions I was feeling that evening, and because none of them could find their way into words, the more the musicians played the more it struck me that Irish music was a language of its own, accommodating expression of ecstasy and rapture and lightness and fun as well as sadness and darkness and loss, and that in its rhythms and repetitions was the trace history of humanity thereabouts, going round and round.
”
”
Niall Williams (This Is Happiness)
“
But still, we seem to be separate, independent entities. After all, the mind reasons, I can’t open your hand or feel your headache, so doesn’t that prove that we are separate? Well, not really. I am no more conscious of the actions of “my” blood cells than I am of “your” headache, and I’m no more in control of “my” spleen than I am of the opening and closing of “your” hand. The boundary lines and the sense of ownership are conceptual abstractions we learn.
”
”
Joan Tollifson (Nothing to Grasp)
“
Discipline starts every day when the first alarm clock goes off in the morning. I say “first alarm clock” because I have three, as I was taught by one of the most feared and respected instructors in SEAL training: one electric, one battery powered, one windup. That way, there is no excuse for not getting out of bed, especially with all that rests on that decisive moment. The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win—you pass the test. If you are mentally weak for that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, that weakness translates to more significant decisions. But if you exercise discipline, that too translates to more substantial elements of your life. I learned in SEAL training that if I wanted any extra time to study the academic material we were given, prepare our room and my uniforms for an inspection, or just stretch out aching muscles, I had to make that time because it did not exist on the written schedule. When I checked into my first SEAL Team, that practice continued. If I wanted extra time to work on my gear, clean my weapons, study tactics or new technology, I needed to make that time. The only way you could make time, was to get up early. That took discipline.
”
”
Jocko Willink (Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win)
“
Encouraging enquiry-based learning empowers students to take ownership of their education by fostering curiosity, independence, and a lifelong love of learning, preparing them to thrive in an ever-evolving world.
”
”
Asuni LadyZeal
“
After a lifetime of contorting myself to fit into boxes never meant for the likes of me—it’s true. I got tired of feeling ashamed all the time. It is wildly subversive to say that I no longer feel ashamed—not in body, soul, beliefs, or movement through the world, not for who, what, or how I am. I do not hold an apology for the ways, hows, and whos of my work, my desire, and my love. There is an ownership of power in this simple fact that refuses to fit into words. But if you see me, you’ll know it.
Sovereignty. That’s what I call it. Somehow, through all the twists and turns and fuckery of this life, I became a woman who is sovereign unto herself.
Does this mean I’ve beaten all my demons and that I don’t give a fuck, and that everything is peachy keen all the time? Oh, hell no. Not even close. I am a woman who will forever be grappling with herself—pushing and growing and expanding and contracting, learning and unlearning, and tripping over the same lessons 50 times or more on the way to integration. It gets messy in this brain, heart, and body of mine. That’s just how I’m made.
But the fact remains that no person, relationship, religion, belief system, or organization holds me to any agreement that negates my contract with myself.
Fact: Your shame serves nobody. In fact, where there is shame, there is no pleasure. It is your pleasure that the universe spirals eternally toward.
There comes a time in human evolution when a woman gets tired of asking permission to live, breathe, be, and love in the most honest and true way. When she stops looking outside of herself, she writes her own permission slip and doesn’t look back. A time when she is ready to own her story. Remove the masks. Shed the shame. Speak and write and live as a human sovereign unto herself.
Are you ready to be subversive? How about revolutionary? Is this finally your time?
”
”
Jeanette LeBlanc
“
You have to learn the difference between a need, which should be met, and an entitled desire, which should be starved. Meeting a need leads to life, and feeding an entitlement leads to destruction. It comes down to this: that which creates love, growth, and ownership vs. that which creates superiority or a demand for special treatment.
”
”
John Townsend (The Entitlement Cure: Finding Success at Work and in Relationships in a Shortcut World)
“
Rich Crandall, who directs the K–12 Lab, says a key to successful implementation of design thinking is to build ownership from the ground up. “It’s important that design thinking doesn’t feel like an add-on or an extra thing that teachers have to do,” he says. When teachers come to the idea willingly and see how it connects to what they are already doing in the classroom, they’re more likely to invest the time and effort to learn new processes and strategies for working with students.
”
”
Suzie Boss (Bringing Innovation to School: Empowering Students to Thrive in a Changing World (Solutions))
“
With practice, you will learn to understand yourself better and increasingly learn what conviction feels like. As you search for it, you will get better at gearing your efforts to work in a way that will help you get to that feeling. Leaders don’t look for excuses for why they can’t act like an owner. Instead, they embrace the challenge of ownership and encourage their teams to do the same. It helps if, as subordinates, they were regularly encouraged and empowered by their bosses to put themselves in the shoes of decision makers. “Superb professionals define their jobs broadly,” one of my former bosses regularly said to me. “They are always thinking several levels up.” This may explain why many business schools, including Harvard, teach using the case method. This approach certainly can be used to teach analytical techniques, but, for me, it is primarily an exercise in learning to get to conviction. After you’ve studied all the facts of the case on your own, and after you’ve debated those facts in study groups before class and again in class, what do you believe? What would you do if you were in the shoes of the protagonist? The case method attempts to simulate what leaders go through every day. Decision makers are confronted with a blizzard of facts: usually incomplete, often contradictory, and certainly confusing. With help from colleagues, they have to sort things out. Through the case method, students learn to put themselves in the shoes of the decision maker, imagine what that might feel like, and then work to figure out what they believe. This mind-set is invaluable in the workplace. It forces you to use your broad range of skills. It guides you as to what additional analysis and work needs to be done to figure out a particular business challenge. Leaders don’t need to always have conviction, but they do need to learn to search for it. This process never ends. It is a way of thinking. Every day, as you are confronted with new and unexpected challenges, you need to search for conviction. You need to ask yourself: What do I believe? What would I do if I were a decision maker? Aspiring leaders need to resist the temptation to make excuses, such as I don’t have enough power, or it’s not my job, or nobody in the company cares what I think, or there just isn’t time. They must let those excuses go and put themselves mentally in the shoes of the decision maker. From that vantage point, they will start to get a better idea how it feels to bear the weight of ownership.
”
”
Robert S. Kaplan (What You Really Need to Lead: The Power of Thinking and Acting Like an Owner)
“
leadership is a verb, it’s not a noun, it is about taking ownership responsibility and accountability for transforming something.
”
”
Bala V Balachandran (Living Legends, Learning Lessons)
“
In any case, predictability leads to boredom and boredom leads to the loss of talented people. It also leads to results that rivals find easy to copy. It is better to take an experimental approach: share processes, encourage the collective ownership of ideas, and enable teams to learn from one another.
”
”
Anonymous
“
And I can help my students grow by creating a classroom culture in which they have ownership of their learning.
”
”
Paul Solarz (Learn Like a PIRATE: Empower Your Students to Collaborate, Lead, and Succeed)
“
There is about our house a need. The running, pulsating restlessness of the four boys as they struggle to learn and grow; the world embraces them….All this wonder needs a counterpart. We need some starched crisp frocks to go with all our torn-kneed blue jeans and helmets. We need some soft blond hair to off-set those crew cuts. We need a doll house to stand firm against our forts and rackets and thousand baseball cards. We need a cut-out star to play alone while the others battle to see who’s ‘family champ.’ We even need someone…who could sing the descant to “Alouette,” while outside they scramble to catch the elusive ball aimed ever roofward, but usually thudding against the screens. We need a legitimate Christmas angel—one who doesn’t have cuffs beneath the dress. We need someone who’s afraid of frogs. We need someone to cry when I get mad—not argue. We need a little one who can kiss without leaving egg or jam or gum. We need a girl. We had one once—she’d fight and cry and play and make her way just like the rest. But there was about her a certain softness. She was patient—her hugs were just a little less wiggly. Like them, she’d climb in to sleep with me, but somehow she’d fit. She didn’t boot and flip and wake me up with pug nose and mischievous eyes a challenging quarter-inch from my sleeping face. No—she’d stand beside our bed till I felt her there. Silently and comfortable, she’d put those precious, fragrant locks against my chest and fall asleep. Her peace made me feel strong, and so very important. “My Daddy” had a caress, a certain ownership which touched a slightly different spot than the “Hi Dad” I love so much. But she is still with us. We need her and yet we have her. We can’t touch her, and yet we can feel her. We hope she’ll stay in our house for a long, long time. Love Pop
”
”
Jon Meacham (Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush)
“
Understand exactly what you are getting when you hire a coach. You have made an investment to rent that coach and driver based on a specific itinerary. You do not assume ownership of the coaches or driver in any form or fashion. The carrier has agreed to transport your group safely and to make your experience as pleasant and comfortable as possible. Cooperate with the carrier!
”
”
Craig Speck (The Ultimate Common Sense Ground Transportation Guide For Churches and Schools: How To Learn Not To Crash and Burn)
“
Looking back on all my interviews for this book, how many times in how many different contexts did I hear about the vital importance of having a caring adult or mentor in every young person’s life? How many times did I hear about the value of having a coach—whether you are applying for a job for the first time at Walmart or running Walmart? How many times did I hear people stressing the importance of self-motivation and practice and taking ownership of your own career or education as the real differentiators for success? How interesting was it to learn that the highest-paying jobs in the future will be stempathy jobs—jobs that combine strong science and technology skills with the ability to empathize with another human being? How
”
”
Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)
“
To reset the accountability dynamic internally, Friends should have a level-setting conversation with each member of their team, to clarify goals, roles, and responsibilities. And, crucially for all leaders who are learning about themselves, Friends must take 100 percent ownership for the dynamic they’ve created up to this point. You earn the right to ask people to adapt to a new agreement by acknowledging your role in creating and perpetuating the old one. The
”
”
Jonathan Raymond (Good Authority: How to Become the Leader Your Team Is Waiting For)
“
You will learn about the twinned natures of fate and faith, at times spun together in threads fine as cotton candy, that taste just as sweet and evaporate just as quick. It is not right to say that you will have her, because you cannot truly possess another person. Nor should you even want such a thing.
”
”
Trevor Dodge (The Laws of Average)
“
To start with the Altair needed a language out of which to create programs. Gates and Allen called the small Albuquerque, New Mexico, company that made the Altair and promised to supply a language. They chose Basic, originally designed in the 1960s for the sorts of minicomputers made by Digital. Basic (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was ideal for short programs and easier to learn than Fortran because its instructions were simpler. The language caught on widely, and its authors, two Dartmouth College professors, asserted no ownership rights over the program, allowing anyone to use or modify it free of charge. Within six weeks, Gates and Allen had written a version of Basic for the Altair and formed a partnership called Microsoft to peddle the program. Allen flew to New Mexico to strike a deal. Soon Microsoft’s Basic sold so well, even at its five-hundred-dollar price, that Gates left Harvard. He never returned. The
”
”
G. Pascal Zachary (Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft)
“
Getting into the club’s tax information gave me Yukiko’s last name: Nohara. From there, I was able to learn a reasonable amount. She was twenty-seven years old, born in Fukuoka, educated at Waseda University. She lived in an apartment building on Kotto-dori in Minami-Aoyama. No arrests. No debt. Nothing remarkable. The club was more interesting, and more opaque. It was owned by a succession of offshore corporations. If there were any individual names tied to its ownership, they existed only on certificates of incorporation in someone’s vault, not on computers, where I might have gotten to them. Whoever owned the club didn’t want the world to know of the association. In itself, this wasn’t damning. Cash businesses are always mobbed up.
”
”
Barry Eisler (A Lonely Resurrection (John Rain #2))
“
learning—we have learned how to increase productivity, the outputs that can be produced with any inputs. There are two aspects of learning that we can distinguish: an improvement in best practices, reflected in increases in productivity of firms that marshal all available knowledge and technology, and improvements in the productivity of firms as they catch up to best practices. In fact, the distinction may be somewhat artificial; there may be no firm that has employed best practices in every aspect of its activities. One firm may be catching up with another in some dimension, but the second firm may be catching up with the first in others. In developing countries, almost all firms may be catching up with global best practices; but the real difference between developing and developed countries is the larger fraction of firms that are significantly below global best practices and the larger gap between their productivity and that of the best-performing firms. While we are concerned in this book with both aspects of learning, it is especially the learning associated with catching up that we believe has been given short shrift in the economics literature, and which is central to improvements in standards of living, especially in developing countries. But as we noted in chapter 1, the two are closely related; because of the improvements in best practices by the most innovative firms, most other firms are always engaged in a process of catching up. While the evidence of Solow and the work that followed demonstrated (what to many seems obvious) the importance of learning for increases in standards of living, to further explicate the role of learning, the first three sections of this chapter marshal other macro- and microeconomic evidence. In particular, we stress the pervasive gap between best practices and the productivity of most firms. We argue that this gap is far more important than the traditional allocative inefficiencies upon which most of economics has focused and is related to learning—or more accurately, the lack of learning. The final section provides a theoretical context within which to think about the sources of sustained increases in standards of living, employing the familiar distinction of movements of the production possibilities curve and movements toward the production possibilities curve. Using this framework, we explain why it is that we ascribe such importance to learning. Macroeconomic Perspectives There are several empirical arguments that can be brought to bear to support our conclusion concerning the importance of learning. The first is a simple argument: In theory, leading-edge technology is globally available. Thus, with sufficient capital and trained labor (or sufficient mobility for capital and trained labor), all countries should enjoy comparable standards of living. The only difference would be the rents associated with ownership of intellectual property rights and factor supplies. Yet there is an enormous divergence in economic performance and standards of living across national economies, far greater than can be explained by differences in factor supplies.1 And this includes many low-performing economies with high levels of capital intensity (especially among formerly socialist economies) and highly trained labor forces. Table 2.1 presents a comparison of formerly socialist countries with similar nonsocialist economies in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the state-controlled model of economic activity. TABLE 2.1 Quality of Life Comparisons, 1992–1994 (U.S. $) Source: Greenwald and Khan (2009), p. 30. In most of these cases, at the time communism was imposed after World War II, the subsequently socialist economies enjoyed higher levels of economic development than
”
”
Joseph E. Stiglitz (Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress)
“
TaskRabbit has 25,000 contractors, about 10 percent of whom rely on it for full-time income. Founded five years ago, the company has almost $38 million in venture backing. Arun Sundararajan, an NYU business professor who studies emerging digital economies, said it's not possible to determine whether the complaints are from a vocal minority or represent widespread dissatisfaction. "It seemed like (the new model) was a necessary shift for TaskRabbit to grow, but they may have underestimated the extent to which providers and clients felt a sense of ownership over doing things the old way," he said. "In any marketplace, the people who are trading start to feel engaged with the process they have learned.
”
”
Anonymous
“
Manage Your Team’s Collective Time Time management is a group endeavor. The payoff goes far beyond morale and retention. ILLUSTRATION: JAMES JOYCE by Leslie Perlow | 1461 words Most professionals approach time management the wrong way. People who fall behind at work are seen to be personally failing—just as people who give up on diet or exercise plans are seen to be lacking self-control or discipline. In response, countless time management experts focus on individual habits, much as self-help coaches do. They offer advice about such things as keeping better to-do lists, not checking e-mail incessantly, and not procrastinating. Of course, we could all do a better job managing our time. But in the modern workplace, with its emphasis on connectivity and collaboration, the real problem is not how individuals manage their own time. It’s how we manage our collective time—how we work together to get the job done. Here is where the true opportunity for productivity gains lies. Nearly a decade ago I began working with a team at the Boston Consulting Group to implement what may sound like a modest innovation: persuading each member to designate and spend one weeknight out of the office and completely unplugged from work. The intervention was aimed at improving quality of life in an industry that’s notorious for long hours and a 24/7 culture. The early returns were positive; the initiative was expanded to four teams of consultants, and then to 10. The results, which I described in a 2009 HBR article, “Making Time Off Predictable—and Required,” and in a 2012 book, Sleeping with Your Smartphone , were profound. Consultants on teams with mandatory time off had higher job satisfaction and a better work/life balance, and they felt they were learning more on the job. It’s no surprise, then, that BCG has continued to expand the program: As of this spring, it has been implemented on thousands of teams in 77 offices in 40 countries. During the five years since I first reported on this work, I have introduced similar time-based interventions at a range of companies—and I have come to appreciate the true power of those interventions. They put the ownership of how a team works into the hands of team members, who are empowered and incentivized to optimize their collective time. As a result, teams collaborate better. They streamline their work. They meet deadlines. They are more productive and efficient. Teams that set a goal of structured time off—and, crucially, meet regularly to discuss how they’ll work together to ensure that every member takes it—have more open dialogue, engage in more experimentation and innovation, and ultimately function better. CREATING “ENHANCED PRODUCTIVITY” DAYS One of the insights driving this work is the realization that many teams stick to tried-and-true processes that, although familiar, are often inefficient. Even companies that create innovative products rarely innovate when it comes to process. This realization came to the fore when I studied three teams of software engineers working for the same company in different cultural contexts. The teams had the same assignments and produced the same amount of work, but they used very different methods. One, in Shenzen, had a hub-and-spokes org chart—a project manager maintained control and assigned the work. Another, in Bangalore, was self-managed and specialized, and it assigned work according to technical expertise. The third, in Budapest, had the strongest sense of being a team; its members were the most versatile and interchangeable. Although, as noted, the end products were the same, the teams’ varying approaches yielded different results. For example, the hub-and-spokes team worked fewer hours than the others, while the most versatile team had much greater flexibility and control over its schedule. The teams were completely unaware that their counterparts elsewhere in the world were managing their work differently. My research provide
”
”
Anonymous
“
Giving students more ownership does not mean that teachers give up their responsibility to direct student learning. Many apps and tools, such as wikis and blogs, allow teachers to access student work and monitor their progress. Formative assessment also provides information that teachers can use to recommend goals and strategies. Cloud applications, like calendars, can also be shared so teachers can make sure students meet standards while building critical self-direction skills.
”
”
Peggy Grant (Personalized Learning: A Guide to Engaging Students with Technology)
“
What we found developing at Gustavus Adolphus was a sense that we should all be sharing the responsibility for teaching writing. We formed a writing committee that consisted of professors from many different disciplines, and we invited proposals for ‘W’ courses from the entire faculty. The response was instantaneous. As soon as the ownership of writing by the English department was lost, people in other fields said, ‘I’d be willing to give it a try.
”
”
William Zinsser (Writing to Learn: How to Write--And Think--Clearly about Any Subject at All)
“
What Can You Do About a Passive Child? Parents of passive children have a double problem. These kids have the same boundary problems of irresponsibility or resistance to ownership, but it’s harder to engage them in the learning process. Here are some ways children exhibit passivity: • Procrastination. The child responds to you at the last possible moment. He finishes school tasks late and “makes” you wait in the car for him to get ready for school or other meetings. When you ask him to turn the music down or set the dinner table, a normally energetic and quick-moving child slows his pace down immeasurably. He takes enormous time to do what he doesn’t want, and little time to do what he wants. • Ignoring. Your child shuts your instruction out, either pretending not to hear you or simply disregarding you. She keeps attending to her toy, her book, or her daydreaming. • Lack of initiative and risk-taking. Your child avoids new experiences, such as meeting new friends or trying out a sport or artistic medium, and he stays in familiar activities and patterns. • Living in a fantasy world. Your child tends to be more inward-oriented than invested in the real world. He seems happier and more alive when he is lost in his head, and he retreats there at the first sign of problems or discomfort. • Passive defiance. The child resists your requests by looking blankly or sullenly at you, then simply doing nothing. She is obviously angry or contemptuous of your authority, but shows you without words. • Isolation. Your child avoids contact with others, preferring to stay in her room. Rather than confront, argue, or fight with you, she instead reacts against some problem you present by leaving you. Passive kids aren’t bad or evil. They simply have a particular way of approaching life that
”
”
Henry Cloud (Boundaries with Kids: When to Say Yes, How to Say No)
“
Face life’s challenges head-on.
Make peace with your body.
Take responsibility for your heart.
Build a meaningful career.
Learn how to handle the tough times.
Face your anxieties.
Take ownership of your finances.
Master the use of your time.
Practice dynamic communication.
Find the right level of flexibility.
In short, own up.
”
”
Stacy Kaiser (How to Be a Grown Up: The Ten Secret Skills Everyone Needs to Know)
“
When you guide and don’t tell, people may fail a bit more, but they will also grow more, learn more, have more ownership, and bring more results to the company table.” Give
”
”
Roger Connors (Fix It: Getting Accountability Right)
“
Encouraging self-regulated learning through the development of metacognitive skills empowers students to take ownership of their learning journey, fostering independence, responsibility, and a deeper understanding of their own learning processes.
”
”
Asuni LadyZeal
“
Personalized empowerment plans are the cornerstone of transformative teaching, fostering a sense of ownership and agency in every student.
”
”
Asuni LadyZeal
“
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. Their actions flung them into a world filled with sin, misery, and death. In the theology of Marxism, Man ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in nature and learned that he could own private property and upon that ownership divide his labor, which alienates him from himself as a creative and social species. In his fallen form, estranged from his species-being (his humanity), he finds himself in a society stratified into classes, which leads to conflict, exploitation, misery, and oppression. To re-enter (and, in fact, re-create) the kingdom of God—Man’s kingdom on Earth—he must establish a communist society by abolishing private property, which is nothing more than materialized “human self-estrangement.
”
”
Logan Lancing (The Queering of the American Child: How a New School Religious Cult Poisons the Minds and Bodies of Normal Kids)
“
In mid-1986, Letterman got an unexpected call from Dave Tebet, the Carson Productions executive who worked with “Late Night.” Tebet said that he and Henry Bushkin, Johnny Carson’s extremely powerful attorney, business partner, and author of his 2013 tell-all, wanted to meet with Letterman—by himself, totally confidentially. Letterman was stunned when he heard what they had come to propose: They were offering him the “Tonight ” show; they wanted him to take Johnny Carson’s job. Bushkin, in his role as head of Carson Productions, said that the company intended to maintain ownership of the “Tonight ” show after Johnny stepped down, and now was the time to line up Letterman to slip into Johnny’s chair. The details were vague, and to Letterman they sounded deliberately so. He said he was flattered, he listened politely, but his radar was signaling a warning. Neither man told Letterman how or when this ascension would be accomplished, a problem that started sounding even worse when Bushkin advised Letterman that no one at NBC or anywhere else knew of the plan yet—not even Carson.
Letterman, already nervous, now started to feel as if he were getting close to a fire he didn’t want to be in the same campground with. They asked Letterman not to tell anyone, not even his management. They would get back to him.
The more Letterman thought about it, the more it sounded like a palace coup. His immediate instinct was to stay out of this, because there was going to be warfare of some sort. He feared Carson would interpret this maneuver as plotting and he guessed what might happen next: Johnny’s best friend Bushkin wouldn’t take the fall. Nor would his old crony, Tebet. It would be the punk who got blamed for engineering this.
Letterman broke his promise and called Peter Lassally, Carson’s producer. Lassally was shocked by what he heard. He suspected that Bushkin was involved in all sorts of machinations that never benefited Carson. He thought about telling Johnny, but other attempts to alert the star to questionable activities by Bushkin had been harshly rebuffed. Lassally decided to see what developed and advised Dave to keep Bushkin and Tebet at a distance.
Letterman had a couple of more phone calls from Bushkin and Tebet about the deal; they discussed it with Ron Ellberger, the Indianapolis attorney that Letterman still employed. Tebet blamed the lawyer for muddying up the deal, and eventually said that Carson knew of the plan and had approved of the idea of lining up Letterman for the future.
But Tebet was lying; Carson had never heard a word about it, and when he did—long after the approach had taken place and Bushkin and Tebet were both long gone—Carson exploded with rage at the thought that this plotting had gone on behind his back. He knew exactly what he would have done if he had learned of it at the time: He would have fired Bushkin and Tebet before another day elapsed. Letterman had guessed right in steering clear of the coup. When he learned that Carson hadn’t known what was going on, Letterman was deeply thankful for his cautious instincts.
When the offer from Bushkin melted away, Letterman tried not to give it any second thoughts. Only for the briefest time did he think that he might have walked away from an offer to host the “Tonight” show. The next time, it would not be nearly so easy to take.
”
”
Bill Carter (The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno & the Network Battle for the Night)
“
When we want to move from plus three to plus eight in our lives, though, the exercise of will is more important than rearranging external props. Building strengths and virtues and using them in daily life are very much a matter of making choices. Building strength and virtue is not about learning, training, or conditioning, but about discovery, creation, and ownership.
”
”
Martin E.P. Seligman (Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment)
“
Discover the advantages of fractional ownership in real estate. Learn how you can invest in luxury properties with lower capital and reduced management responsibilities.
Visit - BRIKitt
”
”
Brikitta O. Hairston
“
If you are a part of a conversation in which your colleagues of color are being othered, it's incumbent upon you to speak up. Be the person to say, "This is not right" or "It's time that you learn her name", or "She actually doesn't look anything like the other woman you are confusing with her, except for the fact that they are both Asian".
”
”
Lauren Wesley Wilson (What Do You Need?: How Women of Color Can Take Ownership of Their Careers to Accelerate Their Path to Success)