Setting Standards High Quotes

It is clear to me now that, owing to my unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself with furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and so I inwardly attributed the same feeling to everyone.

God set His standards this high so that we won't make the mistake of aiming low. He made them unreachable so that we would never have the excuse to stop growing.

A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.

What all good teachers have in common, however, is that they set high standards for their students and do not settle for anything less.

Kevin was more demanding of himself than he was of anyone around him. He set his standards impossibly high and tried for them with everything he had, and he didn't understand why others wouldn't do the same.

They will stop calling brides beautiful after today—you have simply set the standard too high,' he said.

Public schools were not only created in the interests of industrialism—they were created in the image of industrialism. In many ways, they reflect the factory culture they were designed to support. This is especially true in high schools, where school systems base education on the principles of the assembly line and the efficient division of labor. Schools divide the curriculum into specialist segments: some teachers install math in the students, and others install history. They arrange the day into standard units of time, marked out by the ringing of bells, much like a factory announcing the beginning of the workday and the end of breaks. Students are educated in batches, according to age, as if the most important thing they have in common is their date of manufacture. They are given standardized tests at set points and compared with each other before being sent out onto the market. I realize this isn’t an exact analogy and that it ignores many of the subtleties of the system, but it is close enough.

The beauty myth sets it up this way: A high rating as an art object is the most valuable tribute a woman can exact from her lover. If he appreciates her face and body because it is hers, that is next to worthless. It is very neat: The myth contrives to make women offend men by scrutinizing honest appreciation when they give it; it can make men offend women merely by giving them honest appreciation. It can manage to contaminate the sentence "You're beautiful," which is next to "I love you" in expressing a bond of regard between a woman and a man. A man cannot tell a woman that he loves to look at her without risking making her unhappy. If he never tells her, she is destined to be unhappy. And the "luckiest" woman of all, told she is loved because she's "beautiful," is often tormented because she lacks the security of being desired because she looks like who she lovably is.

Holy shit! Can we say unstable? Was I the only sane one around here? Well, I guess that really wasn’t setting the standard very high." -Ember, Darkness Of Light

Leaders should never be satisfied. They must always strive to improve, and they must build that mind-set into the team. They must face the facts through a realistic, brutally honest assessment of themselves and their team’s performance. Identifying weaknesses, good leaders seek to strengthen them and come up with a plan to overcome challenges. The best teams anywhere, like the SEAL Teams, are constantly looking to improve, add capability, and push the standards higher. It starts with the individual and spreads to each of the team members until this becomes the culture, the new standard. The recognition that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders facilitates Extreme Ownership and enables leaders to build high-performance teams that dominate on any battlefield, literal or figurative.

There would be love, and while it was mine, I could cling to it. I could rejoice -- in life, in the existence of love. In the existence of people like Phedre and Joscelin. Although the standards they set were impossibly high, still, I could rejoice that such courage and compassion existed in the world. I could hope and aspire.

And he never quit in the middle of something. If he started a job, he'd finish it. It was almost like a moral thing for him. He was what you'd call extremely ethical. He set pretty high standards for himself.

Set a high standard on how you treat women. Whether they appreciate it or not, don’t lower your own standards of behavior.

I looked at the ornaments on the desk. Everything standard and all copper. A copper lamp, pen set and pencil tray, a glass and copper ashtray with a copper elephant on the rim, a copper letter opener, a copper thermos bottle on a copper tray, copper corners on the blotter holder. There was a spray of almost copper-colored sweet peas in a copper vase. It seemed like a lot of copper.

Let us be about setting high standards for life, love, creativity, and wisdom. If our expectations in these areas are low, we are not likely to experience wellness. Setting high standards makes every day and every decade worth looking forward to.

A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour, ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince. They stretched their beloved lord in his boat, laid out by the mast, amidships, the great ring-giver. Far fetched treasures were piled upon him, and precious gear. I have never heard before of a ship so well furbished with battle tackle, bladed weapons and coats of mail. The massed treasure was loaded on top of him: it would travel far on out into the ocean's sway. They decked his body no less bountifully with offerings than those first ones did who cast him away when he was a child and launched him alone over the waves. And they set a gold standard up high above his head and let him drift to wind and tide, bewailing him and mourning their loss. No man can tell, no wise man in hall or weathered veteran knows for certain who salvaged that load.

Love yourself... enough to take the actions required for your happiness…enough to cut yourself loose from the drama-filled past... enough to set a high standard for relationships... enough to feed your mind and body in a healthy manner... enough to forgive yourself... enough to move on.

What is embarrassment? In general, embarrassment is an emotional response to an innocent mistake. The major reason that some of us are embarrassment-prone is that we’ve been conditioned to set unrealistically high expectations for ourselves and to judge ourselves negatively when we can’t possibly meet those standards. A second reason that makes us susceptible to embarrassment is that we’ve been taught to take our cue in evaluating ourselves from what we assume (often erroneously) to be others’ opinions of us.

Mindfulness requires being a beginner. Setting absurdly high-standards, and being unwilling to be a novice, are the joint enemies of personal progress and change. Nobody benchpresses 100 kilos the first time they enter a gym.

Have faith that you are a daughter of Heavenly Father who loves you. Determine which of your divine gifts will allow you to be a champion for Christ. Realize that you have been sent to Earth with a divine mission that is yours to achieve. Let your knowledge come from the good parts of life that surround you. Choose to set high standards and defend them. Become a great woman by doing good. Always be on the Lord's errand. Leave your mark. Be true in every situation--even when no one is watching. Let your strength come from having high moral standards. Look to Him. Stand as His witness. Become a keeper of what matters most.

Washington presented a rare case of a revolutionary leader who, instead of being blinded by political fervor, recognized that fallible human beings couldn’t always live up to the high standards he set for them.

The standards of beauty in America's über-culture are purposefully set too high so that we will buy anything in our frantic scramble to become attractive. We are meant to feel crushed, inadequate, and less-than so that we'll buy more and more things in the vain hope of "fixing" ourselves.

We were not put here on this earth to barely squeak by and settle for a lukewarm, watered-down version of life, or to live in fear of what other people will think. Our lives can’t rise any higher than our standards. Rise above settling in life or in love. And next time someone tells you your standards are too high, don’t apologize. Tell them, “Thank you.” The standards you set determine the life you get. And those who know their worth don’t even entertain the lesser things. They hold out for the best things.

Does it matter now?” Flynn asked. “I mean, no offense, but Danika’s gone.” Bryce gave him a flat look. “Really? I had no idea.” Flynn flipped her off, and the sprites ooohed at his shoulder. Bryce rolled her eyes. Exactly what Flynn needed: his own flock of cheerleaders trailing him at all hours. She said to Flynn, “Hey, remember that time you set a dragon free and we’re dumb enough to think she’d follow your orders?” “Hey, remember that time you wanted to marry me and wrote Lady Bryce Flynn in all your notebooks?” Hunt choked. Bryce countered with, “Hey, remember when you pestered me for years to hook up with you, but I have something called standards—” “This is highly unusual behavior for royals,” Hypaxia observed. “You have no idea,” Ruhn muttered, earning a smile from the queen.

Let anyone who believes that a high standard of living is the achievement of labor unions and government controls ask himself the following question: If one had a “time machine” and transported the united labor chieftains of America, plus three million government bureaucrats, back to the tenth century—would they be able to provide the medieval serf with electric light, refrigerators, automobiles, and television sets?

Christ makes Heaven the standard for God's will be done on Earth. What a high ideal is this! What power it would take to bring such a thing about! Nothing short of the Kingdom of God pulling down strongholds, overthrowing bastions of deeply entrenched sin, and then conquering this present world in such a way as to establish righteousness – nothing short of such things as these can meet the standard that Christ sets before us.

Subtle cues in your behavior will set the frame that you are a selective, high-value guy. She will pick up on this and gain interest. She expects that a guy with potential will be selective. Here are some standards worth considering: An attractive woman who takes care of herself A woman who is sociable and has friends A woman who has a real thirst for life A woman who has a great energy and a positive outlook A woman who is not a flake

Set the standard as high as you will; live to it as near as you can; and if you fail, try yourself, judge yourself, condemn yourself, if you choose. Teach and persuade your neighbor if you can; consider and compare his conduct if you please; speak your mind if you desire; but if he fails to reach your standard or his own, try him not, judge him not, condemn him not. He lies beyond your sphere; you cannot know the temptation nor the inward battle nor the weight of the circumstances upon him. You do not know how long he fought before he failed. Therefore you cannot be just. Let him alone.

If you are interested in success, it’s easy to set your standards in terms of other people’s accomplishments and then let other people measure you by those standards. But the standards you set for yourself are always more important. They should be higher than the standards anyone else would set for you, because in the end you have to live with yourself, and judge yourself, and feel good about yourself. And the best way to do that is to live up to your highest potential. So set your standards high and keep them high, even if you think no one else is looking. Somebody out there will always notice, even if it’s just you.

And that's the real reason the powerful fear open systems and networks. If anyone can set up a free voicecall to anyone else in the world, using the net, then we can all communicate with the same ease that's standard for the high and mighty. [...] And if any worker, anywhere, can communicate with any other worker, anywhere, for free, instantaneously, without the boss's permission, then, brother, look out, because the Coase cost of demanding better pay, better working conditions and a slice of the pie just got a *lot* cheaper. And the people who have the power aren't going to sit still and let a bunch of grunts take it away from them.

[Harper'd] wondered briefly if those novels were making her set her standards too high. But then she'd realized that no, actually, what those stories had done was help her not confuse lust and crushes and simple attraction and I-kind-of-like-him with something deeper and more passionate. And they'd helped her decide to wait for the real thing. She knew what love looked like. It just hadn't come along for her. Yet.

Conventional statistics is set up to be skeptical and avoid type 1 errors. The 95 percent confidence standard means that there is only 1 chance in 20 that you believe something that isn’t true. That is a very high bar. It reflects a scientific worldview in which skepticism is a virtue, credulity is not.90 As one Web site puts it, “A type I error is often considered to be more serious, and therefore more important to avoid, than a type II error.”91 In fact, some statisticians claim that type 2 errors aren’t really errors at all, just missed opportunities.

Ladies, set your standards high. Never lower them.. The day you do, you will get less then what you deserve. Every woman, deserves to be treated like a queen with respect. It's better to be single and fabulous on your own then to be in a relationship that isn't what you always dreamed of.

Shoulds can masquerade as high standards or lofty goals, but they are not the same. Goals direct us from the inside, but shoulds are paralyzing judgments from the outside. Goals feel like authentic dreams while shoulds feel like oppressive obligations. Shoulds set up a false dichotomy between either meeting an ideal or being a failure, between perfection or settling. The tyranny of the should even pits us against our own best interests.

And whether or not the educators who are trying to raise up America's students can actually set and meet higher academic standards, our cultural values make their job next to impossible. It's so much easier for pundits and politicians to point out figures and blame the people who are in the trenches every day than it is to get in there with them, or even to find out what actually goes on in those trenches. It's so much easier for parents to blame teachers when their kids get in trouble than to do the heavy lifting required at home to keep kids on track. And it's so much easier for us as a nation to cross our fingers and hope that we'll "get lucky" with the innovative "solutions" being tested on America's schools today than it is for us to roll up our sleeves and invest our own time, talent, and money in the schools that are even now-- with or without us-- shaping our nation's future.

Shorn of unattractive language about "robots" who will be producing taxes and not burglarizing homes, the general idea that schools in ghettoized communities must settle for a different set of goals than schools that serve the children of the middle class and upper middle class has been accepted widely. And much of the rhetoric of "rigor" and "high standards" that we hear so frequently, no matter how egalitarian in spirit it may sound to some, is fatally belied by practices that vulgarize the intellects of children and take from their education far too many of the opportunities for cultural and critical reflectiveness without which citizens become receptacles for other people's ideologies and ways of looking at the world but lack the independent spirits to create their own.

These are among the people I've tried to know twice, the second time in memory and language. Through them, myself. They are what I've become, in ways I don't understand but which I believe will accrue to a rounded truth, a second life for me as well as them. Cracking jokes in the mandatory American manner of people self-concious about death. This is the humor of violent surprise. How do you connect things? Learn their names. It was a strange conversation, full of hedged remarks and obscure undercurrents, perfect in its way. I was not a happy runner. I did it to stay interested in my body, to stay informed, and to set up clear lines of endeavor, a standard to meet, a limit to stay within. I was just enough of a puritan to think there must be some virtue in rigorous things, although I was careful not to overdo it. I never wore the clothes. the shorts, tank top, high socks. Just running shoes and a lightweight shirt and jeans. I ran disguised as an ordinary person. -When are you two going to have children? -We're our own children. In novels lately the only real love, the unconditional love I ever come across is what people feel for animals. Dolphins, bears, wolves, canaries. I would avoid people, stop drinking. There was a beggar with a Panasonic. This is what love comes down to, things that happen and what we say about them. But nothing mattered so much on this second reading as a number of spirited misspellings. I found these mangled words exhilarating. He'd made them new again, made me see how they worked, what they really were. They were ancient things, secret, reshapable.The only safety is in details. Hardship makes the world obscure. How else could men love themselves but in memory, knowing what they know? The world has become self-referring. You know this. This thing has seeped into the texture of the world. The world for thousands of years was our escape, was our refuge. Men hid from themselves in the world. We hid from God or death. The world was where we lived, the self was where we went mad and died. But now the world has made a self of its own.

Respect yourself enough to stop accepting disrespect. If you let people treat you like a doormat, they’ll keep wiping their feet on you. Know your worth & set high standards for yourself. It's time to say, "I’m not here for your nonsense!” Remember, self-respect is a non-negotiable. If someone can’t step up to treat you right, show them the door. Life’s too short to settle for anything less than you deserve. You’re not a doormat—you’re a damn masterpiece, so don’t let anyone treat you otherwise!

You have competition every day because you set such high standards for yourself that you have to go out every day and live up to that. —Michael Jordan

There is no such thing as perfection, there are only standards. And after you have set a standard you learn that it was not high enough. You want to surpass it.

In life, we always rise or fall to the standards we set for ourselves - Set high standards

That’s why I’m single at twenty-five and a virgin. Mom says I set my standards too high. I disagree. My only prerequisite is a pulse

The harder you work, the more substantial your reward. True ambition always stands out as long as it comes with a set of high standards and strong personal ethics.

Strive hard to be among the top performers. To do this, create a standard. Go higher than this standard. Set another higher standard; surpass it and repeat the process.

The Japanese had a highly developed sense of propriety, a complex system of social graces, and a very rigid set of standards concerning the conduct of personal relationships.

You should set high goals for yourself and believe that they are attainable.

Living up to other people's expectations, limits your potential. You'll either find they are unreasonably high, or set so low you should consider it an insult. Only you should determine how far you're prepared to go and what you'll do to get there. And no one can lay claim when you achieve success. Don't worry about meeting the standard when you are the standard

I knew by this time what Thea thought of these people and in fact of most people, with their faulty humanity. She couldn't stand them. And what her eccentricity amounted to was that she proposed a different kind of humanity altogether. I guess nothing restrains people from demanding ideal conditions. Very little restrains them from anything. Thea's standard was high, but she wasn't exactly to blame as having arbitrarily set it high. For when she talked to me about some particular person she'd be more frightened than scornful. People with whom she had to struggle scared her, and what I'd call average hypocrisy, just the incidental little whiffs of the social machine, was terribly hard on her. As for greediness or envy, fat self-smelling of appreciation, hates and destructions, fraud, gnawing, she had a very poor tolerance of them, and I'd see her go out in the eyes in a really dangerous way at a gathering.

Was I terribly rude?' It was almost as if she might care a jot. 'Yes! You were frightful!' Cassy tugged at her locks playfully. 'As rude as I was to Mr Blackall?' 'No,' Cassy conceded, laughing. 'Nobody has ever, in the history of social intercourse between the two sexes, been as rude as you were to Mr Blackall. You set impossibly high standards with him, for all womankind.

It is possible to set boundaries provided that you prioritize your own self-care. To protect ourselves in their presence, we first have to understand the way they think and manipulate. This will give us insight into their agendas, their exploitative ways of approaching the world, and the essential tools needed to safely exit interactions, friendships, and relationships with them.

Every day that starts ‘let’s just try to have a better day than yesterday’ ends in a worse one. Who gave me this shitty advice - or did I make it up? Why am I setting myself such a high standard?

Perhaps most important, set a high and clear standard for performance. If you want to have a world-class company, you must make sure that the people on your staff—be they young or old—are world-class.

Don’t talk about shit you don’t know, Billy thinks, and therein lies the dynamic of all such encounters, the Bravos speak from the high ground of experience. They are authentic. They are the Real. They have dealt much death and received much death and smelled it and held it and slopped through it in their boots, had it spattered on their clothes and tasted it in their mouths. That is their advantage, and given the masculine standard America has set for itself it is interesting how few actually qualify. Why we fight, yo, who is this we? Here in the chicken-hawk nation of blowhards and bluffers, Bravo always has the ace of bloods up its sleeve.

They’re excessively orderly in the workplace, almost to the point of being OCD. Whatever industry you work in, these people will always fail to see the bigger picture. They will exaggerate their insignificant, paltry roll to others, kidding on that they’re an actual leader in the team, yet their work is very often meaningless and inconsequential. They have an almost ritualistic compulsion to ensure things are in the right place, striving for flawlessness, setting high performance standards for others, even though it’s probably none of their business, and they can be very critical regarding their evaluations of others. In short, they’re a pain in the arse.

I was not a happy runner. I did it to stay interested in my body, to stay informed, and to set up clear lines of endeavor, a standard to meet, a limit to stay within. I was just enough of a puritan to think there must be some virtue in rigorous things, although I was careful not to overdo it. I never wore the clothes. the shorts, tank top, high socks. Just running shoes and a lightweight shirt and jeans. I ran disguised as an ordinary person.

Of course, I hated my fellow clerks one and all, and I despised them all, yet at the same time I was, as it were, afraid of them. In fact, it happened at times that I thought more highly of them than of myself. It somehow happened quite suddenly that I alternated between despising them and thinking them superior to myself. A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments. But whether I despised them or thought them superior I dropped my eyes almost every time I met anyone. I even made experiments whether I could face so and so's looking at me, and I was always the first to drop my eyes.

Then there are those of us who are simply self-critical. Even without comparing ourselves to the world’s greatest, we set such high standards for ourselves that neither we nor anyone else could ever meet them—and nothing is more destructive to creativity than this. We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection. It’s about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives. ​Chapter 13 Mastering the Commonplace Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences. To put it more starkly, it has robbed us of countless hours of the time of our lives. We awaken in the morning and hurry to get dressed. (Getting dressed doesn’t count.) We hurry to eat breakfast so that we can leave for work. (Eating breakfast doesn’t count.) We hurry to get to work. (Getting to work doesn’t count.) Maybe work will be interesting and satisfying and we won’t have to simply endure it while waiting for lunchtime to come. And maybe lunch will bring a warm, intimate meeting, with fascinating conversation. But

Studies show that girls - especially smarter ones - have severe problems in the area of self-confidence. They consistently underestimate their own ability. When asked how they think they'll do on different tasks - whether the tasks are untried or ones they've encountered before - they give lower estimates than boys do, and in general underestimate their actual performance as well. One study even showed that the brighter the girl, the less expectations she has of being successful at intellectual tasks. (...) Low self-confidence is the plague of many girls, and it leads to a host of related problems. Girls are highly suggestible and tend to change their minds about perceptual judgments if someone disagrees with them. They set lower standards for themselves. While boys are challenged by difficult tasks, girls try to avoid them. (...) Given her felt incompetence, it's not surprising that the little girl would hotfoot it to the nearest Other and cling for dear life. (...) As we can see, the problems of excessive dependence follow female children right into adulthood.

Mrs. Plinth was almost as proud of her obligations as she was of her picture-gallery; she was in fact fond of implying that the one possession implied the other, and that only a woman of her wealth could afford to live up to a standard as high as that which she had set herself.

Every vision, every corporate strategy, every grand plan must identify benchmarks set by the leader to drive the organization to excellence. The rank and file want to be challenged. They want to be on an exceptional team with high standards, lofty expectations, and stretch goals. Everyone wants to be a winner.

There is tremendous stress these days on liking people, helping people, getting along with people, as qualifications for a manager. These alone are never enough. In every successful organization there is one boss who does not like people, who does not help them, and who does not get along with them. Cold, unpleasant, demanding, he often teaches and develops more men than anyone else. He commands more respect than the most likable man ever could. He demands exacting workmanship of himself as well as of his men. He sets high standards and expects that they will be lived up to. He considers only what is right and never who is right. And though often himself a man of brilliance, he never rates intellectual brilliance above integrity in others. The manager who lacks these qualities of character—no matter how likable, helpful, or amiable, no matter even how competent or brilliant—is a menace and should be adjudged “unfit to be a manager and a gentleman.

It was to set very high standards. It was to help everyone else believe they could do things that they didn't think they were capable of. It was to chart a course that had not been pursued before. It was to make everyone understand that the impossible was possible. That's the difference between leadership and management.

It’s Simple: Establish a winning culture by setting high standards. Your employees want to be challenged. Hold people accountable when they fail to meet the standards. Accountability is the only thing separating the high performers from the pack. Acknowledge those who meet or exceed the standard. It will reinforce the winning culture.

watching kevin going at it in the middle of the night, fierce and merciless, was almost enough that neil forgave him. kevin was more demanding of himself than he was of anyone around him. he set his standards impossibly high and tried for them with everything he had, and he didn’t understand why others wouldn’t do the same. - narrator

What distinguishes love-driven leaders from tyrants? "Great affection" coupled with the passion to see others "run at full speed towards perfection." Love-driven leadership is not urging others forward without concern for their aspirations, well-being, or personal needs. Nor is it being the nice-guy manager who overlooks underperformance that could damage a subordinate's long-term prospects. Instead, love-driven leaders hunger to see latent potential blossom and to help it happen. In more prosaic terms, when do children, students, athletes, or employees achieve their full potential? When they're parented, taught, coached, or managed by those who engender trust, provide support and encouragement, uncover potential, and set high standards.

My attitude is that whatever happens, I know God’s behind me. He’s got my back, and He is taking care of me. I know there are situations and groups of people in being a Christian is not popular, and I realize there will be times I will not be accepted into cool things because of my beliefs. I’m okay with that. As long as I am true to God and true to myself, whether or not something is cool is really not important. I have set high standards for my life, and I hope you will do the same.

The possibility of any nuclear explosion occurring as a result of an accident involving either impact or fire is virtually non-existent,” Secretary of Defense Wilson assured the public. His press release about the Genie didn’t mention the risk of plutonium contamination. It did note, however, that someone standing on the ground directly beneath the high-altitude detonation of a Genie would be exposed to less radiation than “a hundredth of a dose received in a standard (medical) X-ray.” To prove the point, a Genie was set off 18,000 feet above the heads of five Air Force officers and a photographer at the Nevada test site. The officers wore summer uniforms and no protective gear. A photograph, taken at the moment of detonation, shows that two of the men instinctively ducked, two shielded their eyes, and one stared upward, looking straight at the blast. “It glowed for an instant like a newborn sun,” Time magazine reported, “then faded into a rosy, doughnut-shaped cloud.

Developments in high technology reflect an ancient model for craftsmanship, but the reality on the ground is that people who aspire to be good craftsmen are depressed, ignored, or misunderstood by social institutions. These ills are complicated because few institutions set out to produce unhappy workers. People seek refuge in inwardness when material engagement proves empty; mental anticipation is privileged above concrete encounter; standards of quality in work separate design from execution.

As a leader, you must find the right balance between too much oversight and too little scrutiny. Left unattended, most organizations will get sloppy and undisciplined. It is human nature. Your employees must understand that their work will be judged, reviewed, inspected, and graded. It is the only way to ensure compliance with the high standards you set. While the troops will always complain about too much oversight and too many inspections, they will also appreciate knowing what’s expected of them.

First, if you participate in Movember, fuck you. Second, if you want to raise money for prostate cancer (a noble cause), do it the old-fashioned way, by either begging for it or exerting yourself physically for donations. Sitting on your ass and letting nature take its course above your upper lip is not the same thing as running a 10K at a local high school or breaking out the set of power tools your dad gave you as a housewarming present collecting dust in your garage and using them to go out and build a habitat for humanity. Maybe I can raise money for rectal cancer by getting people to pledge a dollar every time I take a shit. And third no one wants to see that horrific seventies pornstache growing like a caterpillar with cerebral palsy zigzagging across your face; you look like you're about to go door to door informing people that you're a registered sex offender who's just moved in next door and would their kids like to come out and was your windowless van for a dollar? Fuck Movember. And November.

What you learn about high standards is how important they are to any organization. No one looks around and says, “Where is that mediocre team? That’s what I want to be part of—a mediocre team.” I don’t care whether you are flipping hamburgers, washing cars, playing sports, or in the military. Everyone wants to be part of something special. Everyone wants to be a valued member of a great organization. And the only way to be a great organization is to set high standards and expect people to live up to those standards.

...We hold ourselves to a high standard. Our country sets it even higher. They always want more... You can always give more. It doesn't mean what you're giving is enough. Take it from me, every time you defy expectations, they set the bar higher. That isn't failure. It's faith." Sophie takes some time to digest that. It's nothing new to her. Hockey has always been about reaching one milestone and looking toward the next. Settling leads to complacency, her dad tells her. And complacency leads to stagnation. He was always there to push her if she grew too comfortable resting on her accomplishments.

Instead of defining independence as “self-sufficiency,” the standard for independence in the clinical settings where they’d been treated as patients, they claimed that their independence would be understood instead as “self-determination.” The difference separated the dignity of authority and choice from the action itself. Asking for and receiving help with self-care tasks like buttoning a shirt, for example, was understood as a high degree of dependence in a rehabilitation paradigm. But if a person needed fifteen minutes of assistance with the shirt and with getting out the door to the bus, that person would be less dependent than a person who took two hours to dress on their own and could not leave the house. Uncoupling assistance from dependence—or perhaps bundling assistance together with a richer idea of independence—changed everything for these activists, because now they could press for a whole array of products and services that would support a desirable life. Judith Heumann, one of the instrumental voices for independent living, said in 1978 that “to us, independence does not mean doing things physically alone. It means being able to make independent decisions. It is a mind process not contingent on a normal body.

Dichotomous or black-and-white thinking can be dangerous and is often based on the premise of achieving perfection. It gives you only two alternatives, one of which is usually neither attainable or maintainable. The other then tends to be the black hole in which you inevitably fall after failing to get to the first. You set your sights so high, constantly chasing an ideal that you can grasp only moments at a time. When the standard for being okay is this lofty, you’re destined to feel lousy most of the time. And we know that when you feel lousy, you’re bound to end up going off the deep end in your eating behavior.

When Benjamin Bloom studied his 120 world-class concert pianists, sculptors, swimmers, tennis players, mathematicians, and research neurologists, he found something fascinating. For most of them, their first teachers were incredibly warm and accepting. Not that they set low standards. Not at all, but they created an atmosphere of trust, not judgment. It was, “I’m going to teach you,” not “I’m going to judge your talent.” As you look at what Collins and Esquith demanded of their students—all their students—it’s almost shocking. When Collins expanded her school to include young children, she required that every four-year-old who started in September be reading by Christmas. And they all were. The three- and four-year-olds used a vocabulary book titled Vocabulary for the High School Student. The seven-year-olds were reading The Wall Street Journal. For older children, a discussion of Plato’s Republic led to discussions of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Orwell’s Animal Farm, Machiavelli, and the Chicago city council. Her reading list for the late-grade-school children included The Complete Plays of Anton Chekhov, Physics Through Experiment, and The Canterbury Tales. Oh, and always Shakespeare. Even the boys who picked their teeth with switchblades, she says, loved Shakespeare and always begged for more. Yet Collins maintained an extremely nurturing atmosphere. A very strict and disciplined one, but a loving one. Realizing that her students were coming from teachers who made a career of telling them what was wrong with them, she quickly made known her complete commitment to them as her students and as people. Esquith bemoans the lowering of standards. Recently, he tells us, his school celebrated reading scores that were twenty points below the national average. Why? Because they were a point or two higher than the year before. “Maybe it’s important to look for the good and be optimistic,” he says, “but delusion is not the answer. Those who celebrate failure will not be around to help today’s students celebrate their jobs flipping burgers.… Someone has to tell children if they are behind, and lay out a plan of attack to help them catch up.” All of his fifth graders master a reading list that includes Of Mice and Men, Native Son, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, The Joy Luck Club, The Diary of Anne Frank, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Separate Peace. Every one of his sixth graders passes an algebra final that would reduce most eighth and ninth graders to tears. But again, all is achieved in an atmosphere of affection and deep personal commitment to every student. “Challenge and nurture” describes DeLay’s approach, too. One of her former students expresses it this way: “That is part of Miss DeLay’s genius—to put people in the frame of mind where they can do their best.… Very few teachers can actually get you to your ultimate potential. Miss DeLay has that gift. She challenges you at the same time that you feel you are being nurtured.

For myself I hold to the opinion that the qualities of the leading statesmen in a state, whatever they be, are reproduced in the character of the constitution itself. As, however, it has been maintained by certain leading statesmen in Athens that the recognised standard of right and wrong is as high at Athens as elsewhere, but that, owing to the pressure of poverty on the masses, a certain measure of injustice in their dealing with the allied states could not be avoided; I set myself to discover whether by any manner of means it were possible for the citizens of Athens to be supported solely from the soil of Attica itself, which was obviously the most equitable solution. For if so, herein lay, as I believed, the antidote at once to their own poverty and to the feeling of suspicion with which they are regarded by the rest of Hellas.

Rewriting the baseball record book must be very fulfilling. Or maybe not. Yankees outfielder Roger Maris knew firsthand the fickle nature of success. After an MVP season in 1960—when he hit 39 homers and drove in a league-high 112 runs—Maris began a historic assault on one of baseball’s most imposing records: Babe Ruth’s single-season home run mark of 60. In the thirty-three seasons since the Bambino had set the standard, only a handful of players had come close when Jimmie Foxx in 1932 and Hank Greenberg in 1938 each hit 58. Hack Wilson, in 1930, slammed 56. But in 1961, Maris—playing in “The House That Ruth Built”—launched 61 home runs to surpass baseball’s most legendary slugger. Surprisingly, the achievement angered fans who seemed to feel Maris lacked the appropriate credentials to unseat Ruth. Some record books reminded readers that the native Minnesotan had accomplished his feat in a season eight games longer than Ruth’s. Major League Baseball, due to expansion, changed the traditional 154-game season to 162 games with the 1961 season. Of the new home run record, Maris said, “All it ever brought me was trouble.” Human achievements can be that way. Apart from God, the things we most desire can become empty and unfulfilling—even frustrating—as the writer of Ecclesiastes noted. “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income,” he wrote (5:10). “Everyone’s toil is for their mouth,” he added, “yet their appetite is never satisfied” (6:7). But the Bible also shows where real satisfaction is found, in what Ecclesiastes calls “the conclusion of the matter.” Fulfillment comes to those who “fear God and keep his commandments” (12:13).

We noted in Section II that an increasing reliance on textbooks or their equivalent was an invariable concomitant of the emergence of a first paradigm in any field of science. The concluding section of this essay will argue that the domination of a mature science by such texts significantly differentiates its developmental pattern from that of other fields. For the moment let us simply take it for granted that, to an extent unprecedented in other fields, both the layman’s and the practitioner’s knowledge of science is based on textbooks and a few other types of literature derived from them. Textbooks, however, being pedagogic vehicles for the perpetuation of normal science, have to be rewritten in whole or in part whenever the language, problem-structure, or standards of normal science change. In short, they have to be rewritten in the aftermath of each scientific revolution, and, once rewritten, they inevitably disguise not only the role but the very existence of the revolutions that produced them. Unless he has personally experienced a revolution in his own lifetime, the historical sense either of the working scientist or of the lay reader of textbook literature extends only to the outcome of the most recent revolutions in the field. Textbooks thus begin by truncating the scientist’s sense of his discipline’s history and then proceed to supply a substitute for what they have eliminated. Characteristically, textbooks of science contain just a bit of history, either in an introductory chapter or, more often, in scattered references to the great heroes of an earlier age. From such references both students and professionals come to feel like participants in a long-standing historical tradition. Yet the textbook-derived tradition in which scientists come to sense their participation is one that, in fact, never existed. For reasons that are both obvious and highly functional, science textbooks (and too many of the older histories of science) refer only to that part of the work of past scientists that can easily be viewed as contributions to the statement and solution of the texts’ paradigm problems. Partly by selection and partly by distortion, the scientists of earlier ages are implicitly represented as having worked upon the same set of fixed problems and in accordance with the same set of fixed canons that the most recent revolution in scientific theory and method has made seem scientific. No wonder that textbooks and the historical tradition they imply have to be rewritten after each scientific revolution. And no wonder that, as they are rewritten, science once again comes to seem largely cumulative.

While it is popular to ask, "What would Jesus do?" the better question was always "What is Jesus doing?" The first question assumes that the Savior is on the sidelines and that the burden of life and work is on our shoulders. But in that case the Savior is not really saving but is setting impossibly high standards that we attempt to imitate by doing what we assume he would do if he were in our situation. On the other hand, the question "What is Jesus doing?" is built on the conviction that he is alive, reigning, and at work in our lives. In other words, he is in our situation, and that changes everything about our mission. Rather than believing that the work of Christ is completed and that now it is our turn to try to imitate his life and work, we take on the identity of being witnesses who watch and testify to his continued work of salvation that is unfolding before our eyes.

Sometimes my clients are unclear about whether they are striving toward their potential or are on a search for glory, but a search for glory is pretty easy to spot. Any search for glory is propelled by what Horney called the tyranny of the should. Listening to Talia talk, it was difficult not to notice the “shoulds” and “supposed to’s” that littered her sentences: Work should be Wow! She should be in graduate school. Her life should look better than it did. Shoulds can masquerade as high standards or lofty goals, but they are not the same. Goals direct us from the inside, but shoulds are paralyzing judgments from the outside. Goals feel like authentic dreams while shoulds feel like oppressive obligations. Shoulds set up a false dichotomy between either meeting an ideal or being a failure, between perfection or settling. The tyranny of the should even pits us against our own best interests.

Some people think that I have “unrealistic expectations” when it comes to relationships and life. No, I don’t. My sensuality is what sets my standards. If people knew how much devotion goes into being in sensual alignment they would refrain from using the expression “You are a perfectionist.” Not that it bothers me when they say it, I just think it’s very shortsighted. My standards have got nothing to do with perfectionism but everything to do with ALIGNMENT... DEVOTION... SURRENDER... SEEKING GOD. They also involve breaking boundaries, honing daring, overcoming fear, cultivating divinely-inspired outrageousness and nurturing courage. Showing up here might seem glamorous (at times), but behind the scenes there’s a lot of mind-body-heart-soul “tuning up” happening. So, instead of saying “Lebo has unrealistic expectations” or “his standards are too high”, rather say “I wonder how much devotion goes into his private life for him to see life like this.

After arriving at Burning Man, Musk, a regular at the event, and his family went through their standard routines. They set up camp and prepped their art car for a drive. This year, they had cut the roof off a small car, elevated the steering wheel, shifted it to the right so that it was placed near the middle of the vehicle, and replaced the seats with a couch. Musk took a lot of pleasure in driving the funky creation.“ Elon likes to see the rawness of people there,” said Bill Lee, his longtime friend. “It’s his version of camping. He wants to go and drive the art cars and see installations and the great light shows. He dances a lot.” Musk put on a display of strength and determination at the event as well. There was a wooden pole perhaps thirty feet high with a dancing platform at the top. Dozens of people tried and failed to climb it, and then Musk gave it a go. “His technique was very awkward, and he should not have succeeded,” said Lyndon. “But he hugged it and just inched up and inched up until he reached the top.

In real life, the political and strategic games used by politicians and statesmen are in fact social games - requiring social intelligence as well as technical mastery of information. The skills of the orator, cultivated by ancient statesmen like Cicero and Demosthenes, or by modern statesmen like Benjamin Disraeli and Abraham Lincoln, require emotional maturity and the talent of seeing events through the eyes of others. A great statesman sets aside his own egoism. He takes a more objective view. In this way, he avoids the errors that attend a purely egoistic standpoint. The explanation which Kierkegaard offered, which is none too flattering, is that people no longer desire a great king, a heroic liberator or an authoritative religion. They don’t want strict rules or high standards. That is because they want an easy time of it. They want a soft existence which can only be guaranteed by eschewing the great and heroic, the true and the noble. This is the moral perspective of high politics and of true statesmanship. Only those who reach this fifth stage can transform world calamity into world regeneration.

The ordering ef good things and morality. —The rank ordering of good things that was once assumed according to whether a low, or higher, or highest egoism wants one thing or another, now decides what is moral and what is immoral. To prefer a lowly good (for example, sensual pleasure) to a more highly esteemed one (for example, health) is considered immoral, just like preferring a comfortable life to freedom. But the rank ordering of good things is not something settled and identical for all time; if someone prefers revenge to justice, he is moral according to the standard of an earlier culture, immoral according to the present one. "Immoral" therefore signifies that someone does not yet feel or does not yet feel strongly enough the higher, more refined, more spiritual motives that the new culture of a given time has brought with it: it designates someone who is backward, but always only to a certain degree. —The rank ordering of good things is not itself set up and adjusted according to the point of view of morality; though to be sure, its prevailing arrangement will determine whether an action is moral or immoral.

The ordering ef good things and morality. —The rank ordering of good things that was once assumed according to whether a low, or higher, or highest egoism wants one thing or another, now decides what is moral and what is immoral. To prefer a lowly good (for example, sensual pleasure) to a more highly esteemed one (for example, health) is considered immoral, just like preferring a comfortable life to freedom. But the rank ordering of good things is not something settled and identical for all time; if someone prefers revenge to justice, he is moral accord- ing to the standard of an earlier culture, immoral according to the present one. "Immoral" therefore signifies that someone does not yet feel or does not yet feel strongly enough the higher, more refined, more spiritual motives that the new cul- ture of a given time has brought with it: it designates someone who is backward, but always only to a certain degree. —The rank ordering of good things is not itself set up and adjusted according to the point of view of morality; though to be sure, its prevailing arrangement will determine whether an action is moral or immoral.

In the early thirties IBM built a high-speed calculating machine to do calculations for the astronomers at New York’s Columbia University. A few years later it built a machine that was already designed as a computer—again, to do astronomical calculations, this time at Harvard. And by the end of World War II, IBM had built a real computer—the first one, by the way, that had the features of the true computer: a “memory” and the capacity to be “programmed.” And yet there are good reasons why the history books pay scant attention to IBM as a computer innovator. For as soon as it had finished its advanced 1945 computer—the first computer to be shown to a lay public in its showroom in midtown New York, where it drew immense crowds—IBM abandoned its own design and switched to the design of its rival, the ENIAC developed at the University of Pennsylvania. The ENIAC was far better suited to business applications such as payroll, only its designers did not see this. IBM structured the ENIAC so that it could be manufactured and serviced and could do mundane “numbers crunching.” When IBM’s version of the ENIAC came out in 1953, it at once set the standard for commercial, multipurpose, mainframe computers. This is the strategy of “creative imitation.

Know What You Believe What are your values today with regard to your work and your career? Do you believe in the values of integrity, hard work, dependability, creativity, cooperation, initiative, ambition, and getting along well with people? People who live these values in their work are vastly more successful and more highly esteemed than people who do not. What are your values with regard to your family? Do you believe in the importance of unconditional love, continuous encouragement and reinforcement, patience, forgiveness, generosity, warmth, and attentiveness? People who practice these values consistently with the important people in their lives are much happier than people who do not. What are your values with regard to money and financial success? Do you believe in the importance of honesty, industry, thrift, frugality, education, excellent performance, quality, and persistence? People who practice these values are far more successful in their financial lives than those who do not, and they achieve their financial goals far faster as well. What about your health? Do you believe in the importance of self-discipline, self-mastery, and self-control with regard to diet, exercise, and rest? Do you set high standards for health and fitness and then work every day to live up to those standards? People who practice these values live longer, healthier lives than people who do not.

I wonder what kind of men we might encounter in Scotland.Perhaps the reason we have not found our anyone in England is because they have been waiting for us up north." Bryonwyn gave in to the compulsion to roll her eyes.Leave it to Lily to twist a situation into something positive-and related to love. "You will find admirers wherever you go.And you,too, Edythe, will be adored by many." Bronwyn added with confidence as she rose and went to the door, indicating that tonight's chat was over. Edythe shook her head. "Lily desires not a man, but an impossibility. A person just cannot be responsible and spontaneous at the same time." "Well,you drive all your men away with your seriousness," Lily countered, looking to Bronwyn for support as she strolled up to the door. Sighing,Bronwyn leaned against the jamb and picked up a lock of Lily's dark hair. "You,Lily,need to find a way to mature without losing your optimism,and Edythe,you set a standard so high and can be so critical of those who do not meet it." Edythe opened her mouth and then closed it as she joined Lily at the door. "And what about you?" she demanded. "And don't say you are alone because you lack beauty,for you could be quite pretty if you tried wearing something other than dreary colors and keeping your hair in a net all the time." "Unfair,because you know that I could do as you ask,change my clothes and hair,but it wouldn't matter.The kind of man I want doesn't want me," Bronwyn uttered matter-of-factly, making shooing motions to get them to leave.

I want to say something here, a lot of times, each of us may have been guilty of labeling someone materialistic because they have a high standard or expectation from those they want to relate with or deal with. In our minds, we are pissed off. How can they elevate the standards so high, so high that we are excluded, it must be selfish of them and in fact wicked. They are saying that we are not fit to be their friends, etc, etc. We spend so much energy trying to analyse and sometimes even dare to dictate to others what standards they should keep and maintain so we can fit in, I think with respect, it is a flawed way of thinking about the situation. It is a manner of thinking about the situation that may never solve of problems, our inadequacy. The government may set standards and regulations about how we ought t conduct our affairs in the public, but it will hardly, rarely and barely concern itself with the regulation of personal and private life, except those private actions that have or bring about public consequences. As such, each one of us has the power to make Rules and Regulations for the Admission of Persons into our lives, it is not in your capacity to cry when someone chooses to set his as high as the Eiffel tower Finally, instead of dying of envy, jealousy or resulting in character assassination, what you may do is spend time climbing the ladder of life, that you may become relevant to those you wish to dine and wine with. This is the hard part and most of us will rather squirm and cry-fowl. The rules of the game was set by nature, quitting, is a choice too.

But this isn't standard Japanese picnic fare: not a grain of rice or a pickled plum in sight. Instead, they fill the varnished wooden tables with thick slices of crusty bread, wedges of weeping cheese, batons of hard salamis, and slices of cured ham. To drink, bottles of local white wine, covered in condensation, and high-alcohol microbews rich in hops and local iconography. From the coastline we begin our slow, dramatic ascent into the mountains of Hokkaido. The colors bleed from broccoli to banana to butternut to beet as we climb, inching ever closer to the heart of autumn. My neighbors, an increasingly jovial group of thirtysomethings with a few words of English to spare, pass me a glass of wine and a plate of cheese, and I begin to feel the fog dissipate. We stop at a small train station in the foothills outside of Ginzan, and my entire car suddenly empties. A husband-and-wife team has set up a small stand on the train platform, selling warm apple hand pies made with layers of flaky pastry and apples from their orchard just outside of town. I buy one, take a bite, then immediately buy there more. Back on the train, young uniformed women flood the cars with samples of Hokkaido ice cream. The group behind me breaks out in song, a ballad, I'm later told, dedicated to the beauty of the season. Everywhere we go, from the golden fields of empty cornstalks to the dense forest thickets to the rushing rivers that carve up this land like the fat of a Wagyu steak, groups of camouflaged photographers lie in wait, tripods and shutter releases ready, hoping to capture the perfect photo of the SL Niseko steaming its way through the hills of Hokkaido.

Just as calories differ according to how they affect the body, so too do carbohydrates. All carbohydrates break down into sugar, but the rate at which this occurs in the digestive tract varies tremendously from food to food. This difference forms the basis for the glycemic index (GI). The GI ranks carbohydrate-containing foods according to how they affect blood glucose, from 0 (no affect at all) to 100 (equal to glucose). Gram for gram, most starchy foods raise blood glucose to very high levels and therefore have high GI values. In fact, highly processed grain products – like white bread, white rice, and prepared breakfast cereals – and the modern white potato digest so quickly that their GI ratings are even greater than table sugar (sucrose). So for breakfast, you could have a bowl of cornflakes with no added sugar, or a bowl of sugar with no added cornflakes. They would taste different but, below the neck, act more or less the same. A related concept is the glycemic load (GL), which accounts for the different carbohydrate content of foods typically consumed. Watermelon has a high GI, but relatively little carbohydrate in a standard serving, producing a moderate GL. In contrast, white potato has a high GI and lots of carbohydrate in a serving, producing a high GL. If this sounds a bit complicated, think of GI as describing how foods rank in a laboratory setting, whereas GL as applying more directly to a real-life setting. Research has shown that the GL reliably predicts, to within about 90 percent, how blood glucose will change after an actual meal – much better than simply counting carbohydrates as people with diabetes have been taught to do.

Generalized Social Anxiety In contrast to people with specific social anxieties, you may be afraid in a wide variety of situations. You might feel that people are judging everything you do and you might set unreasonable standards of perfection for yourself. This condition is called generalized (or discrete) social anxiety. Generalized social anxiety accounts for 80 percent of all cases of social anxiety. Often, people with generalized social anxiety get caught in a vicious cycle. Because they are overly anxious in many situations, they act in clumsy and awkward ways, which in turn makes them feel even more discouraged and anxious. This cycle often results in depression and chronic stress. Generalized social anxiety can affect almost every aspect of your life. This has been the case for Toni, a college senior. In high school, I hardly had any friends. I didn’t participate in any extracurricular activities and managed to get by with average grades. Because I attend a large state university, I am even more invisible. So far, I have avoided any class that has any interaction with my peers, such as discussion groups or labs. As graduation approaches, I need to decide what type of career I want. The thought of job interviews terrifies me. I am considering grad school but would need recommendations to apply. I haven’t even spoken to most of my professors, and the ones who know me probably can’t say anything good about me. As a result, I’m really depressed. When I imagine the future, I can’t see myself being happy. I’ll probably move back to my parents’ house after graduation. I know they are disappointed in me, and that makes me feel like a complete failure.

I was dumbfounded to witness this specimen of male beauty in such a compromising position. I had never imagined finding the famous Rick Samuels in a dungeon, let alone in such a vulnerable and decubitus posture. He was my visiting lecturer, who had advised me to be selective in posing pornographically and for high art. He specifically told me that he was careful not to associate himself in the porn industry. Here he was, lying bare among men whom he did not know or have the vision to see. They were using him as a sex object, gratifying themselves regardless of how he felt. The men took turns pumping their swollen instruments into both his orifices until they could stave off their cravings no longer before they released their loads into Rick’s welcoming openings. He was the ‘power bottom,’ otherwise known to the gay underground community as a ‘cum pig’ or a ‘pig bottom.’ That evening was an eye-opener and a reformation. It reaffirmed men’s double standards in their words and actions for me. They were just like seasoned politicians, who promise a world of positive reforms before election. When elected to office, their promises are thrown to the wind. A set of new rules for personal gains then take effect. Thus is the nature of mankind. That evening, Andy, I learned an important lesson that humankind has its strengths and foibles. It is therefore worth the effort to take a closer look at a person’s character instead of embracing the superficiality that could often cloud a sound judgment. My beloved ex-’big brother,’ I am positive in my heart of hearts that you are an honorable gentleman of your word. From the first time I met you to our recent reconnection, you will always be the man I respect, honor, cherish, and, most importantly, LOVE. Young.

I got a servant, a nice clean German girl from the Volga. Her village had been devastated—no other word can convey my meaning—by the liquidation of the Kulaks. In the German Volga Republic the peasants, who had been settled there two hundred years before to set an example to the Russians, had been better farmers and so enjoyed a higher standard of life than most peasants in Russia. Consequently, the greater part of them were classified as Kulaks and liquidated. *** The girls came to the towns to work as servants, and were highly prized, since they were more competent, cleaner, more honest and self-respecting than the Russian peasants. Curiously, they were the most purely Teutonic Germans I had ever seen, Germans like the pictures in Hans Andersen fairy tales, blue-eyed, with long golden plaits and lovely, fair skins. Being Protestants, and regarding the Russians around them as no better than barbarians, they had intermarried little and retained a racial purity which would no doubt have delighted Hitler. *** My Hilda seemed a treasure. She could cook, she could read and write, she kept herself and the rooms clean and looked like a pink and flaxen doll. I could treat her as an equal without finding that this led to her stealing my clothes and doing no work. The servant problem in Moscow for Jane and me lay in our inability to bully and curse and drive, which was the only treatment the Russian servant understood. It was quite natural that this should be so, since Soviet society, like Tsarist society but to a far higher degree, was based on force and cheating. *** I was amazed at the outspoken way in which Hilda and Sophie (another German girl who worked for Jane) voiced their hatred and contempt of the Soviet Government. Sophie, one of thirteen children of a bedniak (poor peasant) would shake her fist and say: “Kulaks! The Kulaks are up there in the Kremlin, not in the village.” Since the word “Kulak” originally signified an exploiter and usurer, her meaning was quite plain.

What is certain is that the immutable classes, the nobility, the clergy, the bourgeoisie, the people, had loftier souls at that time. You can prove it: society has done nothing but deteriorate in the four centuries separating us from the Middle Ages. "True, a baron then was usually a formidable brute. He was a drunken and lecherous bandit, a sanguinary and boisterous tyrant, but he was a child in mind and spirit. The Church bullied him, and to deliver the Holy Sepulchre he sacrificed his wealth, abandoned home, wife, and children, and accepted unconscionable fatigues, extraordinary sufferings, unheard-of dangers. "By pious heroism he redeemed the baseness of his morals. The race has since become moderate. It has reduced, sometimes even done away with, its instincts of carnage and rape, but it has replaced them by the monomania of business, the passion for lucre. It has done worse. It has sunk to such a state of abjectness as to be attracted by the doings of the lowest of the low. ...cupidity was repressed by the confessor, and the tradesman, just like the labourer, was maintained by the corporations, which denounced overcharging and fraud, saw that decried merchandise was destroyed, and fixed a fair price and a high standard of excellence for commodities. Trades and professions were handed down from father to son. The corporations assured work and pay. People were not, as now, subject to the fluctuations of the market and the merciless capitalistic exploitation. Great fortunes did not exist and everybody had enough to live on. Sure of the future, unhurried, they created marvels of art, whose secret remains for ever lost. "All the artisans who passed the three degrees of apprentice, journeyman, and master, developed subtlety and became veritable artists. They ennobled the simplest of iron work, the commonest faience, the most ordinary chests and coffers. Those corporations, putting themselves under the patronage of Saints—whose images, frequently besought, figured on their banners—preserved through the centuries the honest existence of the humble and notably raised the spiritual level of the people whom they protected. ...The bourgeoise has taken the place forfeited by a wastrel nobility which now subsists only to set ignoble fashions and whose sole contribution to our 'civilization' is the establishment of gluttonous dining clubs, so-called gymnastic societies, and pari-mutuel associations. Today the business man has but these aims, to exploit the working man, manufacture shoddy, lie about the quality of merchandise, and give short weight. ...There is one word in the mouths of all. Progress. Progress of whom? Progress of what? For this miserable century hasn't invented anything great. "It has constructed nothing and destroyed everything...

As I near the end of all of that and think back on what I’ve learned, these are the ten principles that strike me as necessary to true leadership. I hope they’ll serve you as well as they’ve served me. Optimism. One of the most important qualities of a good leader is optimism, a pragmatic enthusiasm for what can be achieved. Even in the face of difficult choices and less than ideal outcomes, an optimistic leader does not yield to pessimism. Simply put, people are not motivated or energized by pessimists. Courage. The foundation of risk-taking is courage, and in ever-changing, disrupted businesses, risk-taking is essential, innovation is vital, and true innovation occurs only when people have courage. This is true of acquisitions, investments, and capital allocations, and it particularly applies to creative decisions. Fear of failure destroys creativity. Focus. Allocating time, energy, and resources to the strategies, problems, and projects that are of highest importance and value is extremely important, and it’s imperative to communicate your priorities clearly and often. Decisiveness. All decisions, no matter how difficult, can and should be made in a timely way. Leaders must encourage a diversity of opinion balanced with the need to make and implement decisions. Chronic indecision is not only inefficient and counterproductive, but it is deeply corrosive to morale. Curiosity. A deep and abiding curiosity enables the discovery of new people, places, and ideas, as well as an awareness and an understanding of the marketplace and its changing dynamics. The path to innovation begins with curiosity. Fairness. Strong leadership embodies the fair and decent treatment of people. Empathy is essential, as is accessibility. People committing honest mistakes deserve second chances, and judging people too harshly generates fear and anxiety, which discourage communication and innovation. Nothing is worse to an organization than a culture of fear. Thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness is one of the most underrated elements of good leadership. It is the process of gaining knowledge, so an opinion rendered or decision made is more credible and more likely to be correct. It’s simply about taking the time to develop informed opinions. Authenticity. Be genuine. Be honest. Don’t fake anything. Truth and authenticity breed respect and trust. The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection. This doesn’t mean perfectionism at all costs, but it does mean a refusal to accept mediocrity or make excuses for something being “good enough.” If you believe that something can be made better, put in the effort to do it. If you’re in the business of making things, be in the business of making things great. Integrity. Nothing is more important than the quality and integrity of an organization’s people and its product. A company’s success depends on setting high ethical standards for all things, big and small. Another way of saying this is: The way you do anything is the way you do everything.

The Global Financial Crisis of 2007–08 represented the greatest financial downswing of my lifetime, and consequently it presents the best opportunity to observe, reflect and learn. The scene was set for its occurrence by a number of developments. Here’s a partial list: Government policies supported an expansion of home ownership—which by definition meant the inclusion of people who historically couldn’t afford to buy homes—at a time when home prices were soaring; The Fed pushed interest rates down, causing the demand for higher-yielding instruments such as structured/levered mortgage securities to increase; There was a rising trend among banks to make mortgage loans, package them and sell them onward (as opposed to retaining them); Decisions to lend, structure, assign credit ratings and invest were made on the basis of unquestioning extrapolation of low historic mortgage default rates; The above four points resulted in an increased eagerness to extend mortgage loans, with an accompanying decline in lending standards; Novel and untested mortgage backed securities were developed that promised high returns with low risk, something that has great appeal in non-skeptical times; Protective laws and regulations were relaxed, such as the Glass-Steagall Act (which prohibited the creation of financial conglomerates), the uptick rule (which prevented traders who had bet against stocks from forcing them down through non-stop short selling), and the rules that limited banks’ leverage, permitting it to nearly triple; Finally, the media ran articles stating that risk had been eliminated by the combination of: the adroit Fed, which could be counted on to inject stimulus whenever economic sluggishness developed, confidence that the excess liquidity flowing to China for its exports and to oil producers would never fail to be recycled back into our markets, buoying asset prices, and the new Wall Street innovations, which “sliced and diced” risk so finely, spread it so widely and placed it with those best suited to bear it.

by setting unrealistically high standards for ourselves and getting so upset when we fail to meet them, we can subtly reinforce feelings of supremacy associated with having such high standards in the first place.

Marilynne Robinson defends the Puritans from what she regards as a caricature of their positions. Say what you will about their rigid morality: these Puritan thinkers were highly learned, with sophisticated prose styles, and we are fortunate in having them set so high an intellectual standard for later American essayists to follow.

Driver Behavior & Safety Proper driving behavior is vital for the safety of drivers, passengers, pedestrians and is a means to achieve fewer road accidents, injuries and damage to vehicles. It plays a role in the cost of managing a fleet as it impacts fuel consumption, insurance rates, car maintenance and fines. It is also important for protecting a firm’s brand and reputation as most company- owned vehicles carry the company’s logo. Ituran’s solution for driver behavior and safety improves organizational driving culture and standards by encouraging safer and more responsible driving. The system which tracks and monitors driver behavior using an innovative multidimensional accelerometer sensor, produces (for each driver) an individual score based on their performance – sudden braking and acceleration, sharp turns, high-speed driving over speed bumps, erratic overtaking, speeding and more. The score allows fleet managers to compare driver performance, set safety benchmarks and hold each driver accountable for their action. Real-time monitoring identifies abnormal behavior mode—aggressive or dangerous—and alerts the driver using buzzer or human voice indication, and detects accidents in real time. When incidents or accidents occurs, a notification sent to a predefined recipient alerts management, and data collected both before and after accidents is automatically saved for future analysis. • Monitoring is provided through a dedicated application which is available to both fleet manager and driver (with different permission levels), allowing both to learn and improve • Improves organizational driving culture and standards and increases safety of drivers and passengers • Web-based reporting gives a birds-eye view of real-time driver data, especially in case of an accident • Detailed reports per individual driver include map references to where incidents have occurred • Comparative evaluation ranks driving according to several factors; the system automatically generates scores and a periodic assessment certificate for each driver and/or department Highlights 1. Measures and scores driver performance and allows to give personal motivational incentives 2. Improves driving culture by encouraging safer and more responsible driving throughout the organization 3. Minimizes the occurrence of accidents and protects the fleet from unnecessary wear & tear 4. Reduces expenses related to unsafe and unlawful driving: insurance, traffic tickets and fines See how it works: