Stretches Motivational Quotes

Always believe in yourself and always stretch yourself beyond your limits. Your life is worth a lot more than you think because you are capable of accomplishing more than you know. You have more potential than you think, but you will never know your full potential unless you keep challenging yourself and pushing beyond your own self imposed limits.

Align yourself with people that you can learn from, people who want more out of life, people who are stretching and searching and seeking some higher ground in life.

Today stretches ahead of you waiting to be shaped. You are the sculptor who gets to do the shaping. What today will be like is up to you.

Its substance was known to me. The crawling infinity of colours, the chaos of textures that went into each strand of that eternally complex tapestry…each one resonated under the step of the dancing mad god, vibrating and sending little echoes of bravery, or hunger, or architecture, or argument, or cabbage or murder or concrete across the aether. The weft of starlings’ motivations connected to the thick, sticky strand of a young thief’s laugh. The fibres stretched taut and glued themselves solidly to a third line, its silk made from the angles of seven flying buttresses to a cathedral roof. The plait disappeared into the enormity of possible spaces. Every intention, interaction, motivation, every colour, every body, every action and reaction, every piece of physical reality and the thoughts that it engendered, every connection made, every nuanced moment of history and potentiality, every toothache and flagstone, every emotion and birth and banknote, every possible thing ever is woven into that limitless, sprawling web. It is without beginning or end. It is complex to a degree that humbles the mind. It is a work of such beauty that my soul wept... ..I have danced with the spider. I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.

Practice makes comfort. Expand your experiences regularly so every stretch won’t feel like your first.

The whole world's a canvas for our sketches Horizons as far as the mind stretches A work of art with soft edges Waiting to come alive Now's the time

Great people faced obstacles in the pursuit of their dreams.The struggles was a motivation to stretch their limits. Be inspired by the story of great people. Know that you are not alone in your struggle.

Love and hate when stretched to their extremes blind reasoning.

I move onward, through the colors and cheers and music, floating into my future, and it is a clear, open space that stretches wider that the sky and higher than the Andes.

But when you're concerned that the miserable, boring wasteland in front of you might stretch all the way into forever, not knowing feels strangely hope-like.

Stretch your mind to expand your soul.

I want to assure you with all earnestness, that no writing is a waste of time, – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good. It has stretched your understanding.

You'd corner me in your conformity but even in dormancy i'm sleeping with enormity, stretching the belly of the earth & everything i was born to be.

Stretch your mind and you will reach beyond your current reality.

Whenever you feel overwhelmed, distracted and out of sorts. Turn your attention to your breath, inhale, exhale, and listen to the sound and movement of your everyday breath flowing softly in and out through your nose. You will reclaim your calm and refocus on what matters.

The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga.

The happiest people on earth worked hard for their fulfillment. They didn’t just have the most peak experiences, they had devoted their lives to having these experiences, often, as Csikszentmihalyi explained in his 1996 book Creativity, going to extreme lengths to seek them out: It was clear from talking to them, that what kept them motivated was the quality of the experience they felt when they were involved with the activity. The feeling didn’t come when they were relaxing, when they were taking drugs or alcohol, or when they were consuming the expensive privileges of wealth. Rather, it often involved painful, risky, difficult activities that stretched the person’s capacity and involved an element of novelty and discovery.

We stretch ourselves when the impact we want to make and the life we want to create is bigger than the fear and challenges.

All around us is a nothing that stretches on for infinity. We humans can barely comprehend that. If we comprehend it we are rarely pleased.

Get outside your comfort zone. Stretch beyond your norm and try new things.

Turbulence stretches a tree.

stretching yourself brings you maximum effort with effortless flow, aligning with spirit and purpose.

That's it! Stretch way beyond your perceived limitations..Go for yours like you own it already, because you truly do.

Rest isn’t just downtime; it’s an upgrade. Simple rituals like journaling or stretching can keep you sharp and energized.

It was clear from talking to them, that what kept them motivated was the quality of the experience they felt when they were involved with the activity. The feeling didn’t come when they were relaxing, when they were taking drugs or alcohol, or when they were consuming the expensive privileges of wealth. Rather, it often involved painful, risky, difficult activities that stretched the person’s capacity and involved an element of novelty and discovery.

That inescapable animal walks with me, Has followed me since the black womb held, Moves where I move, distorting my gesture, A caricature, a swollen shadow, A stupid clown of the spirit’s motive, Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness, The secret life of belly and bone, Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown, Stretches to embrace the very dear With whom I would walk without him near, Touches her grossly, although a word Would bare my heart and make me clear, Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed Dragging me with him in his mouthing care, Amid the hundred million of his kind, The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

Push yourself to the brink of exhaustion into the crossroads of excitement and anxiety. Embrace the risks taken, and never acknowledge the shadows of doubt that stretch across your path. It is only there where you will discover a personal success that exceeds the pictures painted in your dreams

Believe in the value of others. Carlisle said, “A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats the little man.” The value you place on people determines whether you are a motivator or a manipulator of men.

The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. The best moments usually occur if a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

I don’t think of you as a typical beauty. I never once did. To me your hair mimics asphalt more than the lustrous feathers of ravens. Comparing your eyes to heavenly lights seems a stretch when they are the common color of dirt. I can’t imagine you as a tall, pole-slender image; your God-given shape is right bulky. But I never cared about such pointless things anyway. What good have trivial attributes ever done the world? When I look at you, I see you—or in other words, all of you that really matters. I see a kind heart and compassionate arms. I see a patient, gentle spirit abounding with love towards all of God’s creatures. I see the perfect blend of humility and strength of character. I see a wise intellect as well as an endearing sense of humor. I see all the qualities that make you the person I love, regardless of the bodily package you’re bound in. So forgive me if I don’t think you’re beautiful, because I find you to be far superior to that worthless and pointless nonsense the world calls beauty.

Embrace risk-taking: Challenge yourself to take calculated risks, whether it’s trying a new approach at work or taking on a new hobby that stretches your abilities.

Stretch yourself a bit to know the difference between humans and heroes.

Dare to stretch hard and make it a point to do the hard thing others are afraid to try.

When setting goals, create ‘stretch’ goals. They will assist you in developing your potential to its fullest!

Your self-imposed prison. That think called your COMFORT ZONE. Challenge it, stretch it. You will thank yourself.

You have to stretch your soul to find your potential strength.

When everything looks unbearable, And nothing really seems to fit, You've got to work at full stretch, But you should never ever quit!

The past fades into shadow, offering lessons to heed; the future stretches before us, a promise yet to be fulfilled; the present unfolds as a gift, asking only to be embraced.

Do not shrink your dreams to fit reality; stretch your faith to meet destiny.

After years of loss and reflection, your old deluded decisions click together like the works of a watch packed tight within its case--many tiny, turning, interlocking wheels....the force of every decision transferring gear to gear, wheel to wheel, each one motivating a larger energy going in no direction but steep downward to darkness at an increasing pitch. And then one morning the world resembles Noah's flood, stretching unrecognizable to the horizon and you wonder how you go there. One thing for sure, it wasn't from a bad throw of dice or runes or an unfavorable turn of cards. Blame falls hard and can't be dodged by the guilty.

Anything that interferes with such attainment (little old ladies with canes) will be experienced as threatening and/or punishing; anything that signifies increased likelihood of success (open stretches of sidewalk) will be experienced as promising or satisfying. It is for this reason that the Buddhists believe that everything is Maya, or illusion: the motivational significance of ongoing events is clearly determined by the nature of the goal toward which behavior is devoted

From a yogic perspective, good health starts within. All yogic practices help to keep your skin healthy and radiant. The beauty industry spends a lot of money projecting a certain image of beauty that causes you to feel inadequate if you do not match up to this ideal. From a yogic view you foster your inner beauty through the natural care of your body. The yogi sees their physical body as a temple that houses your soul. True beauty is the reflection of your inner self radiating and touching others

Words allowed our ancestors to communicate their needs and agree on shared rules and goals. But when it came to building emotional rapport and motivating people to prioritize the needs of the group over personal desires, language was woefully inadequate. Song and dance instilled a sense of community on a visceral level. By being united in the same rhythm, people didn’t just think of themselves as part of a group; they saw, heard, and felt a harmony that stretched beyond the boundaries of their own bodies.

The trees reminded me of unity, all lined up peacefully. I thought about who we all are as people, how we come together in moments we need hope. I thought about how we draw inspiration from each other, how we long to be in love with another. I wondered how many of us have someone else to rely on, what happens when we don’t. The nightmares that play over and over again when the days seem like they are running out of hope. And I wanted to stretch my arms out wide, welcome the hopes and dreams of others, nurture them, support them, remind you that things keep moving no matter how strange and difficult the world seems. The trees will continue to line the roads; the sun will shine through the clouds; and despite a very real feeling of doubt, just know that of you, I’ll always be proud.

That ends up really working for them. It’s the heartbeat of their connection, being drawn to each other’s differences, stretching themselves to narrow that distance between each other without losing themselves. They…grow. Together. And more deeply into their true selves.

I'm so proud of myself for all the battles I've secretly overcome. I'm grateful for all the people that left to make room for genuine connections. I'm grateful for all the opportunities that ended so I could stretch into new roles. I'm grateful that I've learned to clap for my success without an audience. Most importantly I'm grateful for the opportunity to experience God as Love. I'm just grateful. #devinepressure

I have learned this for certain: if discontent is your disease, travel is medicine. It resensitizes. It open you up to see outside the patterns you follow. Because new places require new learning. It forces your childlike self back into action. When you are a kid, everything is new. You don't know what's under each rock, or up the creek. So, you look. You notice because you need to. The world is new. This, I believe, is why time moves so slowly as a child - why school days creep by and summer breaks stretch on. Your brain is paying attention to every second. It must as it learns that patters of living. Ever second has value. But as you get older, and the patterns become more obvious, time speeds up. Especially once you find your groove in the working world. The layout of your days becomes predictable, a routine, and once your brain reliably knows what's next, it reclines and closes its eyes. Time pours through your hands like sand. But travel has a way of shaking the brain awake. When I'm in a new place, I don't know what's next, even if I've read all the guidebooks and followed the instructions of my friends. I can't know a smell until I've smelled it. I can't know the feeling of a New York street until I've walked it. I can't feel the hot exhaust of the bus by reading about it. I can't smell the food stands and the cologne and the spilled coffee. Not until I go and know it in its wholeness. But once I do, that awakened brain I had as a kid, with wide eyes and hands touching everything, comes right back. This brain absorbs the new world with gusto. And on top of that, it observes itself. It watches the self and parses out old reasons and motives. The observation is wide. Healing is mixed in.

love reflecting on what I’ve done and on how it will help me in the future. And in that afterglow, I’m motivated to do other positive things for my long-term health. I want to stretch. I want to do my core workout. I want to eat well. A whole healthy lifestyle springs from just getting out the door. Going for even a short run makes me appreciate how fortunate I am to be able to do this amazing activity—and have fun while I’m doing it.

Mingle • Be the connector—introduce people to each other who may not otherwise connect. • Be a conversation fire starter; point out what people have in common as you are introducing them. • Seek out the folks who may appear to be shy, or awkward, or wallflowers. Find ways to build trust and comfort. Engage them with a kind word to pull them out of their shell. • Arrive early and stay late; connect with people before and after your event. • Stretch beyond your comfort zone to speak with, sit with, and start conversations with people whom you do not know. • Offer to refill someone’s drink or clear their plate. • Encourage introductions: “There is someone whom I would love for you to meet . . .

Jesus has a way of stretching us. Over and over again in the gospels, the message he has for those who would emulate him in the world, is, in essence, “I want to show you something new. Whatever standard you once used for how to live and treat people and find meaning, I’m asking you for more—(or rather, for less).” Regarding anger or motive or religion or revenge or comfort, he continually invites us to the low places: to a greater humility, to a deeper forgiveness, to a shrinking ego, to a bigger generosity. We almost always resist such things because initially they feel like loss, like we’re giving up too much, like we’re letting someone else get away with something. But we always find a better version of ourselves in the low places and that is why we need to keep going there.

He spent the morning at the beach. He had no idea which one, just some open stretch of coastline reaching out to the sea. An unbroken mantle of soft grey clouds was sitting low over the water. Only on the horizon was there a glimmer of light, a faint blue band of promise. The beach was deserted, not another soul on the vast, wide expanse of sand that stretched out in front of him. Having come from the city, it never ceased to amaze Jejeune that you could be that alone in the world. He walked along the beach, feeling the satisfying softness as the sand gave way beneath his slow deliberate strides. He ventured as close to the tide line as he dared, the white noise of the waves breaking on the shingles. A set of paw prints ran along the sand, with an unbroken line in between. A small dog, dragging a stick in its mouth. Always the detective, even if, these days, he wasn’t a very good one. Jejeune’s path became blocked by a narrow tidal creek carrying its silty cargo out to the sea. On each side of it were shallow lagoons and rock pools. When the tide washed in they would teem with new life, but at the moment they looked barren and empty. Jejeune looked inland, back to where the dark smudge of Corsican pines marked the edge of the coast road. He traced the creek’s sinuous course back to where it emerged from a tidal salt flat, and watched the water for a long time as it eddied and churned, meeting the incoming tide in an erotic swirl of water, the fresh intermingling with the salty in a turbulent, roiling dance, until it was no longer possible to tell one from the other. He looked out at the sea, at the motion, the color, the light. A Black-headed Gull swooped in and settled on a piece of driftwood a few feet away. Picture complete, thought Jejeune. For him, a landscape by itself, no matter how beautiful, seemed an empty thing. It needed a flicker of life, a tiny quiver of existence, to validate it, to confirm that other living things found a home here, too. Side by side, they looked out over the sea, the man and the bird, two beating hearts in this otherwise empty landscape, with no connection beyond their desire to be here, at this time. Was it the birds that attracted him to places like this, he wondered, or the solitude, the absence of demands, of expectations? But if Jejeune was unsure of his own motives, he knew this bird would have a purpose in being here. Nature always had her reasons. He chanced a sidelong glance at the bird, now settled to his presence. It had already completed its summer molt, crisp clean feathers having replaced the ones abraded by the harsh demands of eking out a living on this wild, windswept coastline. The gull stayed for a long moment, allowing Jejeune to rest his eyes softly, unthreateningly, upon it. And then, as if deciding it had allowed him enough time to appreciate its beauty, the bird spread its wings and effortlessly lifted off, wheeling on the invisible air currents, drifting away over the sea toward the horizon. p. 282-3

The greatest enemy of enlightenment is “common sense”. In day-today life, common sense “works”, which is why ordinary people revere it. Most managers in the workplace are good at common sense i.e. knowing how to play the system, to obey the rules, to pander to higher managers, to avoid radical ideas, to highlight their modest successes and blame others for their failures, and to stick firmly within the domain of the conventional, acceptable and uncontroversial. Unfortunately, they’re hopeless at everything else. All geniuses, on the other hand, can “see” far beyond the realm of common sense. They use imagination, intuition and visionary ideas as their guides, not the trivialities of common sense. What would you rather be – a middle manager with a comfortable common sense life, or a genius who has unlocked the door to the mysteries of existence? Tragically for humanity, most people aspire to be middle managers. That’s the extent of their ambition, that’s as far as their horizons stretch. These are the sort of people that Nietzsche scornfully branded as “Last Men.

The modern world had lost the thing which informs every act and gesture of Hatfield, of the King James Bible, and of that incomparable age: a sense of encompassing richness which stretches unbroken from the divine to the sculptural, from theology to cushions, from a sense of the beauty of the created world to the extraordinary capabilities of language to embody it. This is about more than mere sonority or the beeswaxed heritage-appeal of antique vocabulary and grammar. The flattening of language is a flattening of meaning. Language which is not taut with a sense of its own significance, which is apologetic in its desire to be acceptable to a modern consciousness, language in other words which submits to its audience, rather than instructing, informing, moving, challenging and even entertaining them, is no longer a language which can carry the freight the Bible requires. It has, in short, lost all authority. The language of the King James Bible is the language of Hatfield, of patriarchy, of an instructed order, of richness as a form of beauty, of authority as a form of good; the New English Bible is motivated by the opposite, an anxiety not to bore or intimidate. It is driven, in other words, by the desire to please and, in that way, is a form of language which has died.

By June the revival began to wane. But Roberts’s vision had been realized. An estimated 100,000 confessed Christ. The Congregationalists added 26,500 members. Another 24,000 Welsh joined the Calvinist Methodist Church. About 4,000 opted for the Wesleyan Church. The remainder were split between the Anglicans and several Baptist groups.13 The effect on Welsh society was undeniable. Output from the coal mines famously slowed because the horses wouldn’t move. Miners converted in the revival no longer kicked or swore at the horses, so the horses didn’t know what to do.14 Judges closed their courtrooms with nothing to judge. Christians wielded the revival as apologetic against the growing number of skeptics who derided religion. Stead argued: The most thoroughgoing materialist who resolutely and forever rejects as inconceivable the existence of the soul in man, and to whom “the universe is but the infinite empty eye-socket of a dead God,” could not fail to be impressed by the pathetic sincerity of these men; nor, if he were just, could he refuse to recognize that out of their faith in the creed which he has rejected they have drawn, and are drawing, a motive power that makes for righteousness, and not only for righteousness, but for the joy of living, that he would be powerless to give them.15

Self-defense is a universal exception to the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence. State failure drives the self-defense doctrine through the imminence requirement. Private violence is justified where one faces an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm to which the government cannot respond. The imminence requirement defines that space where the state, regardless of its motives and ambitions, simply cannot help. State failure within the window of imminence is a reality for everyone. But one might expect blacks to be particularly sensitive to it. The window of imminence is often larger in black neighborhoods where various challenges stretch public resources. Certainly state failure is less galling today. Under slavery, Black Codes, and Jim Crow, the state was often just another layer of threat, and reliance on the state for personal security was more obviously an absurd proposition. Today, the malevolent state is thankfully an anachronism. That makes it easier for those ensconced in government bureaucracies to urge reliance on the state and to ignore the continuing failure of government within the window of imminence. But it is sheer hubris for public officials to ignore the inherent limits on state power and claim that they can protect people within a space where that is impossible as a matter of simple physics.

Jesus goes while blessing, and he remains in that gesture of blessing. His hands remained stretched out over this world. The blessing hands of Christ are like a roof that protects us. . . . In faith we know that Jesus holds his hands stretched out in blessing over us. That is the lasting motive of Christian joy.[3] The blessing hands of Christ are over us. Whenever we look up at the sky, we can imagine the ascending Christ with his arms outstretched. Wherever we go, we go under the sky above us, so wherever we go, we go under the blessing protection and the blessing mission of the Lord Jesus. As Benedict wrote elsewhere of the disciples, “They knew that they were forever blessed and stood under blessing hands wherever they went.”[4] The implications for daily life are stirring. How hard are circumstances pressing you? Can you yet look up and see sky? That sky represents the blessing hands of Jesus keeping you even through these days. Have your powers been curtailed by illness or age? Can you at least still imagine sky? Let it remind you of the one who claims you and loves you. He went up to heaven still in the body. He is still wedded to our humanity. He has promised that he will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body (Philippians 3:21)—we too will live in rippling, embodied resurrection life. How hopeless does the future of the world seem? How far does the arm of evil reach? Look at the sky and remember Jesus’ blessing hands. Evil cannot ever go where Christ is and pull him down into our mire. Nor can it ever prevent his return to set all things right. He is still over us like the sky, his blessing hands like a great shell of protection all of our days on this earth.

Having done with the cares of business, Oblomov liked to withdraw into himself and live in the world of his own creation. He was not unacquainted with the joys of lofty thoughts; he was not unfamiliar with human sorrows. Sometimes he wept bitterly in his heart of hearts over the calamities of mankind and experienced secret and nameless sufferings and anguish and a yearning for something far away, for the world, perhaps, where Stolz used to carry him away. ... Sweet tears flowed from his eyes. It would also happen that sometimes he would be filled with contempt for human vice, lies, and slanders, for the evil that was rife in the world, and he was consumed by a desire to point out to man his sores, and suddenly thoughts were kindled in him, sweeping through his head like waves of the sea, growing into intentions, setting his blood on fire, flexing his muscles, and swelling his veins; then his intentions turned to strivings; moved by a spiritual force, he would change his position two or three times in one minute, and half-rising on his couch with blazing eyes, stretch forth his hand and look around him like one inspired. ... In another moment the striving would turn into a heroic act – and then, heavens! What wonders, what beneficent results might one not expect from such a lofty effort! But the morning passed, the day was drawing to its close, and with it Oblomov's exhausted energies were crying out for a rest: the storms and emotions died down, his head recovered from the spell of his reverie, and his blood flowed more slowly in his veins. Oblomov turned on his back quietly and wistfully and, fixing a sorrowful gaze at the window and the sky, mournfully watched the sun setting gorgeously behind a four-storied house. How many times had he watched the sun set like that!

At Ardennes she conceived a desire to strangle the young woman who prepped and held down garde manger. The woman, Becky Hemerling, was a culinary-institute grad with wavy blond hair and a petite flat body and fair skin that turned scarlet in the kitchen heat. Everything about Becky Hemerling sickened Denise—her C.I.A. education (Denise was an autodidact snob), her overfamiliarity with more senior cooks (especially with Denise), her vocal adoration of Jodie Foster, the stupid fish-and-bicycle texts on her T-shirts, her overuse of the word “fucking” as an intensifier, her self-conscious lesbian “solidarity” with the “latinos” and “Asians” in the kitchen, her generalizations about “right-wingers” and “Kansas” and “Peoria,” her facility with phrases like “men and women of color,” the whole bright aura of entitlement that came of basking in the approval of educators who wished that they could be as marginalized and victimized and free of guilt as she was. What is this person doing in my kitchen? Denise wondered. Cooks were not supposed to be political. Cooks were the mitochondria of humanity; they had their own separate DNA, they floated in a cell and powered it but were not really of it. Denise suspected that Becky Hemerling had chosen the cooking life to make a political point: to be one tough chick, to hold her own with the guys. Denise loathed this motivation all the more for harboring a speck of it herself. Hemerling had a way of looking at her that suggested that she (Hemerling) knew her better than she knew herself—an insinuation at once infuriating and impossible to refute. Lying awake beside Emile at night, Denise imagined squeezing Hemerling’s neck until her blue, blue eyes bugged out. She imagined pressing her thumbs into Hemerling’s windpipe until it cracked.    Then one night she fell asleep and dreamed that she was strangling Becky and that Becky didn’t mind. Becky’s blue eyes, in fact, invited further liberties. The strangler’s hands relaxed and traveled up along Becky’s jawline and past her ears to the soft skin of her temples. Becky’s lips parted and her eyes fell shut, as if in bliss, as the strangler stretched her legs out on her legs and her arms out on her arms…    Denise couldn’t remember being sorrier to wake from a dream.    “If you can have this feeling in a dream,” she said to herself, “it must be possible to have it in reality.

Less is more. “A few extremely well-chosen objectives,” Grove wrote, “impart a clear message about what we say ‘yes’ to and what we say ‘no’ to.” A limit of three to five OKRs per cycle leads companies, teams, and individuals to choose what matters most. In general, each objective should be tied to five or fewer key results. (See chapter 4, “Superpower #1: Focus and Commit to Priorities.”) Set goals from the bottom up. To promote engagement, teams and individuals should be encouraged to create roughly half of their own OKRs, in consultation with managers. When all goals are set top-down, motivation is corroded. (See chapter 7, “Superpower #2: Align and Connect for Teamwork.”) No dictating. OKRs are a cooperative social contract to establish priorities and define how progress will be measured. Even after company objectives are closed to debate, their key results continue to be negotiated. Collective agreement is essential to maximum goal achievement. (See chapter 7, “Superpower #2: Align and Connect for Teamwork.”) Stay flexible. If the climate has changed and an objective no longer seems practical or relevant as written, key results can be modified or even discarded mid-cycle. (See chapter 10, “Superpower #3: Track for Accountability.”) Dare to fail. “Output will tend to be greater,” Grove wrote, “when everybody strives for a level of achievement beyond [their] immediate grasp. . . . Such goal-setting is extremely important if what you want is peak performance from yourself and your subordinates.” While certain operational objectives must be met in full, aspirational OKRs should be uncomfortable and possibly unattainable. “Stretched goals,” as Grove called them, push organizations to new heights. (See chapter 12, “Superpower #4: Stretch for Amazing.”) A tool, not a weapon. The OKR system, Grove wrote, “is meant to pace a person—to put a stopwatch in his own hand so he can gauge his own performance. It is not a legal document upon which to base a performance review.” To encourage risk taking and prevent sandbagging, OKRs and bonuses are best kept separate. (See chapter 15, “Continuous Performance Management: OKRs and CFRs.”) Be patient; be resolute. Every process requires trial and error. As Grove told his iOPEC students, Intel “stumbled a lot of times” after adopting OKRs: “We didn’t fully understand the principal purpose of it. And we are kind of doing better with it as time goes on.” An organization may need up to four or five quarterly cycles to fully embrace the system, and even more than that to build mature goal muscle.

A fierce battle was taking place at Tobruk, and nothing thrilled him more than spirited warfare and the prospect of military glory. He stayed up until three-thirty, in high spirits, “laughing, chaffing and alternating business with conversation,” wrote Colville. One by one his official guests, including Anthony Eden, gave up and went to bed. Churchill, however, continued to hold forth, his audience reduced to only Colville and Mary’s potential suitor, Eric Duncannon. Mary by this point had retired to the Prison Room, aware that the next day held the potential to change her life forever. — IN BERLIN, MEANWHILE, HITLER and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels joked about a newly published English biography of Churchill that revealed many of his idiosyncrasies, including his penchant for wearing pink silk underwear, working in the bathtub, and drinking throughout the day. “He dictates messages in the bath or in his underpants; a startling image which the Führer finds hugely amusing,” Goebbels wrote in his diary on Saturday. “He sees the English Empire as slowly disintegrating. Not much will be salvageable.” — ON SUNDAY MORNING, a low-grade anxiety colored the Cromwellian reaches of Chequers. Today, it seemed, would be the day Eric Duncannon proposed to Mary, and no one other than Mary was happy about it. Even she, however, was not wholly at ease with the idea. She was eighteen years old and had never had a romantic relationship, let alone been seriously courted. The prospect of betrothal left her feeling emotionally roiled, though it did add a certain piquancy to the day. New guests arrived: Sarah Churchill, the Prof, and Churchill’s twenty-year-old niece, Clarissa Spencer-Churchill—“looking quite beautiful,” Colville noted. She was accompanied by Captain Alan Hillgarth, a raffishly handsome novelist and self-styled adventurer now serving as naval attaché in Madrid, where he ran intelligence operations; some of these were engineered with the help of a lieutenant on his staff, Ian Fleming, who later credited Captain Hillgarth as being one of the inspirations for James Bond. “It was obvious,” Colville wrote, “that Eric was expected to make advances to Mary and that the prospect was viewed with nervous pleasure by Mary, with approbation by Moyra, with dislike by Mrs. C. and with amusement by Clarissa.” Churchill expressed little interest. After lunch, Mary and the others walked into the rose garden, while Colville showed Churchill telegrams about the situation in Iraq. The day was sunny and warm, a nice change from the recent stretch of cold. Soon, to Colville’s mystification, Eric and Clarissa set off on a long walk over the grounds by themselves, leaving Mary behind. “His motives,” Colville wrote, “were either Clarissa’s attraction, which she did not attempt to keep in the background, or else the belief that it was good policy to arouse Mary’s jealousy.” After the walk, and after Clarissa and Captain Hillgarth had left, Eric took a nap, with the apparent intention (as Colville

Live in the stretch. Extending your limbs out, In a burn, in a hollow trespass, Tremoring, a second away from a shout, And keep going after it hurts-- the animal won't. Live in the stretch. It is the only way to know anything in the dark. It is the only way to feel on fire. The animals eat well, but we can pass the mark. And if beavers land on the moon, this poem has expired.

I met with Chad Logan a few days after our first get-together. I told him that I would explain my point of view and then let him decide whether he wanted to work with me on strategy. I said: I think you have a lot of ambition, but you don’t have a strategy. I don’t think it would be useful, right now, to work with your managers on strategies for meeting the 20/20 goal. What I would advise is that you first work to discover the very most promising opportunities for the business. Those opportunities may be internal, fixing bottlenecks and constraints in the way people work, or external. To do this, you should probably pull together a small team of people and take a month to do a review of who your buyers are, who you compete with, and what opportunities exist. It’s normally a good idea to look very closely at what is changing in your business, where you might get a jump on the competition. You should open things up so there are as many useful bits of information on the table as possible. If you want, I can help you structure some of this process and, maybe, help you ask some of the right questions. The end result will be a strategy that is aimed at channeling energy into what seem to be one or two of the most attractive opportunities, where it looks like you can make major inroads or breakthroughs. I can’t tell you in advance how large such opportunities are, or where they may be. I can’t tell you in advance how fast revenues will grow. Perhaps you will want to add new services, or cut back on doing certain things that don’t make a profit. Perhaps you will find it more promising to focus on grabbing the graphics work that currently goes in-house, rather than to competitors. But, in the end, you should have a very short list of the most important things for the company to do. Then you will have a basis for moving forward. That is what I would do were I in your shoes. If you continue down the road you are on you will be counting on motivation to move the company forward. I cannot honestly recommend that as a way forward because business competition is not just a battle of strength and wills; it is also a competition over insights and competencies. My judgment is that motivation, by itself, will not give this company enough of an edge to achieve your goals. Chad Logan thanked me and, a week later, retained someone else to help him. The new consultant took Logan and his department managers through an exercise he called “Visioning.” The gist of it was the question “How big do you think this company can be?” In the morning they stretched their aspirations from “bigger” to “very much bigger.” Then, in the afternoon, the facilitator challenged them to an even grander vision: “Think twice as big as that,” he pressed. Logan

How you interpret challenges, setbacks, and criticism is your choice. You can interpret them in a fixed mindset as signs that your fixed talents or abilities are lacking. Or you can interpret them in a growth mindset as signs that you need to ramp up your strategies and effort, stretch yourself, and expand your abilities. It’s up to you.” A growth mindset is all about being motivated to persist at figuring things out and it leads to better critical thinking.

Victor’s attitude It was a narrow passage, But it led people into a new age, Where everything was wide and filled with grandeur, Kissed by the hope, enabling them to strive and endure, As life stretched its checkerboard of new moves, And chance and fate filled its groves, Those who had reached there via this narrow passage, Received for his/her effort a due wage, Because it led them all into the world of deeds, Where only actions matter, nothing else, no castes and no creeds, As they reached there hope greeted them all, And she whispered to them, “no matter what happens rise every time you fall, Because everything may be working against you, Do not forget I am always on your side, because I was born just for you!” Then all get pitched against life and its main actor “the chance,” And based on its wishes all play the game of life and to its tunes they begin to dance, Many lose after few blows, a few after many blows, but some rise after every fall, And it is then life makes them experience the might of fate, and thus ensues the grand brawl, Where life, chance and fate form the formidable side, While men and women on the other end reside, And life offers them blows of chance and fate, Most of them are sent sooner than expected behind the graveyard's always open gate, But few rise from their graves too because they never lose hope, They remember her whispers and it becomes their renewed courage’s most befitting trope, And as life begins to feel weary, because it runs short of its reserves of chances, And fate too appears to have exhausted all its probabilities and likelihoods of adding new steps to life’s dances, The victor is born, who never rests until he/she is dead, Because a true victor is not by life, but by his/her attitude fed!

Hand that stretched - continued...... Trying to understand who acts how, what happens to human emotions now, casting them in the crucible of endless strifes, Forcing them to walk on the edges of sharp knives, and making them battle against their own lives, Whereas in reality it plays this out at its own will, creating situations that save and many that kill, For life is like a river endlessly trying to perfect the human desires and human will, Without knowing one true aspect of human life, that life which represents everything, Will never understand, because human mind and heart are unlike anything; like it there is nothing, So the man may keep stretching his hand and people may offer him different glances, But I know just like few others, that it is life perfecting what it calls “chances!” For it does not like to be blamed for human pain or misery, Then it would evolve into a guilt becoming the graveyard of its acts so unsavory, So it has invented a perfect cliche called chance and fate, To evade cosmic prosecution of its actually diabolic actions and its rotten state, But the pain of the stretched hand will one day become its cause of doom, I can already see the clouds of change, and clouds of grotesque gloom that over it already loom!

Hand that stretched I had never seen him there before, On the street where I tread every day to settle life’s daily score, There on the edges of pavement at its most conspicuous location, He knelt there with no sense of self promotion, With one hand held out from his thinning and tattered blanket, And he held it there in this position from the sunrise to the sunset, And everyone who passed by flung something towards him, Few tossed money, few tossed a thing or two, but most of them offered him looks grim, It was at these moments his hand retreated a bit, But then it reclaimed its stance that the man had for many years now deemed fit, And people looked at him, a few looked at the hand, Many, just like me, paused for a moment and thought of the causes for his life being so bland, Who could tell, no one, none of us, for only the hand knew of the strain, Of being stretched forever on the pillars of disdain and a lot of pain, Beside the man, next to the pavement, flowed a river, That stretched endlessly like his hand as if trying to reach out to its discreet lover, Because it flowed slowly, with no visible waves, no movement at all, But in reality it flowed deep into the veins of journey encompassing seasons all, The journey called life that just like kneeling man’s hand stretches endlessly, Through which we seek life, that evades us all tirelessly, Because finding it will be like the river meeting its lover, And then both the river and the hand would sink to a point lower, From where nothing can be retrieved once lost, Because there everything is a creation of the past, To be continued........

Hand that stretched - Continued....... The river that flows no more, the hand that is tired of stretching forever, And then life would experience nothing exciting and nothing newer, Since the river would end its journey, as the hand would stretch no more, It is then everything may appear to be like before, but then there will be no one left to settle life’s daily score, So, I have not tossed anything into the stretched hand of this man, Because I know he is neither a beggar nor a destitute, he is life dressed as a man, Trying to understand who acts how, what happens to human emotions now, casting them in the crucible of endless strifes, Forcing them to walk on the edges of sharp knives, and making them battle against their own lives, Whereas in reality it plays this out at its own will, creating situations that save and many that kill, For life is like a river endlessly trying to perfect the human desires and human will, Without knowing one true aspect of human life, that life which represents everything, Will never understand, because human mind and heart are unlike anything; like it there is nothing, So the man may keep stretching his hand and people may offer him different glances, But I know just like few others, that it is life perfecting what it calls “chances!” For it does not like to be blamed for human pain or misery, Then it would evolve into its guilt, becoming the graveyard of its acts so unsavory, So it has invented a perfect cliche called chance and fate, To evade cosmic prosecution of its actually diabolic actions and its rotten state, But the pain of the stretched hand will one day become its cause of doom, I can already see the clouds of change, and clouds of grotesque gloom that over it already loom!

Your purpose will challenge you, stretch you, and grow you. Pursue yours, and you will feel good.

No one taught me how to analyse a book, how to read from a safe distance, how not to lose sight of context, how to grasp the things left unsaid. No one taught me about schools of thought or even the ideologies meant to give depth to a mundane story. No one taught me aesthetics, language... All these, I discovered in high school while studying the classics, and broadened this knowledge at the Higher Teachers' Training College in Yaounde, from which I graduated as a French teacher. But I had already developed a habit. All my life, I would read the same way l had started off—intensely, passionately, instinctively—and sentence fragments would stick with me […] Books soothed my soul, made me angry, made me strong. They made me laugh and cry. They pushed me to examine existence with my own mind, to trust my intuition, to stretch my mind to perceive—against the backdrop of characters, nature, and plot—the intricate symphony of time that beams our being to the world. As a child, reading made me feel less lonely, less insignificant, less vulnerable. As an adult, I developed enough discernment to understand that, while reading had not made me a better person, it had made me more levelheaded towards my own motivations, and freer.