Tackle Challenges Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Tackle Challenges. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Never run from the enemy, tackle them
Victoria Addino
When the mind remains the ally of our heart, and the gut is the brain's brother-at-arms, we can tackle the challenging situations, be inspirational appeasers, and stay honest to a fault. If we want to satisfy our quest for the 'real moment,' we must be honest with ourselves and honest to the others and ready to reconcile all intricate contentions. ("Quest for the real moment")
Erik Pevernagie
Every problem has a solution. But after every solution, there's a new problem to tackle, some new challenge to take on.
Marie Lu (Wildcard (Warcross, #2))
Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your roadmap through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.
John Taylor Gatto (Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling)
Every problem has a solution. But after every solution, there's a new problem to tackle, some new challenge to take on. You don't stop after you solve one thing You keep going, you find a new way and a new path, try to do better and create better. tearing something down isn't the end; doing something great, or better, something right, is. Or maybe there isn't such a thing as an end goal at all. You accomplish something, and then you shift, ready to accomplish the next. You keep solving one problem after another until you change the world.
Marie Lu (Wildcard (Warcross, #2))
as it may be—matters. How you feel about your abilities—your academic “self-concept”—in the context of your classroom shapes your willingness to tackle challenges and finish difficult tasks. It’s a crucial element in your motivation and confidence.
Malcolm Gladwell (David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants)
Principle 4: Tackle your toughest challenge today. Burnout doesn’t occur because we’re solving problems; it occurs because we’ve been trying to solve the same problem over and over. The problem named is the problem solved. Identify and then confront the real obstacles in your path. Stay current with the people important to your success and happiness. Travel light, agenda-free.
Susan Scott (Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time)
-We need more love, to supersede hatred, -We need more strength, to resist our weaknesses, -We need more inspiration, to lighten up our innermind. -We need more learning, to erase our ignorance, -We need more wisdom, to live longer and happier, -We need more truths, to suppress deceptions, -We need more health, to enjoy our wealth, -We need more peace, to stay in harmony with our brethren -We need more smiles, to brighten up our day, -We need more hero's, and not zero's, -We need more change of ourselves, to change the lives of others, -We need more understanding, to tackle our misunderstanding, -We need more sympathy, not apathy, -We need more forgiveness, not vengeance, -We need more humility to be lifted up, -We need more patience and not undue eagerness, -We need more focus, to avoid distraction, -We need more optimism, not pessimism -We need more justice, not injustice, -We need more facts, not fiction, -We need more education, to curb illiteracy, -We need more skills, not incompetence, -We need more challenges, to make attempts, -We need more talents, to create the extraordinary, -We need more helping hands, not stingy folks, -We need more efforts, not laziness, -We need more jokes, to forget our worries, -We need more spirituality, not mean religion, -We need more freedom, not enslavement, -We need more peacemakers, not revolutionaries...with these, we create an heaven on earth.
Michael Bassey Johnson
How you feel about your abilities—your academic “self-concept”—in the context of your classroom shapes your willingness to tackle challenges and finish difficult tasks. It’s a crucial element in your motivation and confidence.
Malcolm Gladwell (David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants)
Maybe this was what growing up meant--tackling the huge challenges, whether you were ready for them or not. And trusting that you'd figure out a way to get through it.
Shannon Messenger (Legacy (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #8))
You tackled down your challenges and made them your prey. You didn’t bow down to your weakness—if you had, you wouldn’t be here today.
Charlena E. Jackson (Dying on The Inside and Suffocating on The Outside)
No, what's troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics--the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working concensus to tackle any big problem.
Barack Obama (The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream)
Museum education has the power and the responsibility to do the challenging inner work of tackling tough topics and turning them into teachable moments.
Monica O. Montgomery
So here I am, my affections torn between a postal service that never feeds me but can tackle a challenge and one that gives me free tape and prompt service but won't help me out when I can't remember a street name. The lesson to draw from this, of course, is that when you move from one country to another you have to accept that there are some things that are better and some things worse, and there is nothing you can do about it. That may not be the profoundest of insights to take away from a morning's outing, but I did get a free doughnut as well, so on balance I guess I'm happy.
Bill Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away)
The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame. True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge.
H.L. Mencken
Tom hated to admit defeat, even in matters far less important than this. He believed that all problems could be solved if they were tackled in the right way, with the right equipment. This was a challenge to his scientific ingenuity; the fact that there were many lives involved was immaterial. Dr. Tom Lawson had no great use for human beings, but he did respect the Universe. This was a private fight between him and It.
Arthur C. Clarke (A Fall of Moondust)
Great teams are not created with incentives, procedures, and perks. They are created by hiring talented people who are adults and want nothing more than to tackle a challenge, and then communicating to them, clearly and continuously, about what the challenge is.
Patty McCord (Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility)
They said that you would never make it, but you did. They said that you would quit, but you persevered and fought through every obstacle that came your way. They said that you didn’t have what it takes, but you proved them ALL wrong. Not only do you have success, but you have peace and joy within. You never compromised your character and you tackled everything with dignity. You didn’t allow any challenges to discourage you, because you knew all along that there was a winner in you. You doubted yourself at times, but you didn’t allow anything or anybody to keep you down. You made it! Be proud of your accomplishments! Enjoy all of the benefits from your hard work and dedication!
Stephanie Lahart
Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lost the courts and wait for a White House scandal. And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics. The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists these days goes like this: The Republican Party has been able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifying Democrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, and disciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get back into power, then they will have to take up the same approach. ...Ultimately, though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine". It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics.
Barack Obama (The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream)
We have three final challenges for you to tackle.
Victoria Scott (Salt & Stone (Fire & Flood, #2))
Imagine if organized religion organized billions of people and trillions of dollars to tackle the challenges that our economic and political systems are afraid or unwilling to tackle—a planet ravaged by unsustainable human behavior and an out-of-control consumptive economy, the growing gap between the rich minority and the poor majority, and the proliferation of weapons of all kinds—including weapons of mass destruction. “Wow,” people frequently say when I propose these possibilities. “If they did that, I might become religious again.” Some quickly add, “But I won’t hold my breath. It’ll never happen.
Brian D. McLaren (Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World)
The phenomenon of relative deprivation applied to education is called—appropriately enough—the “Big Fish–Little Pond Effect.” The more elite an educational institution is, the worse students feel about their own academic abilities. Students who would be at the top of their class at a good school can easily fall to the bottom of a really good school. Students who would feel that they have mastered a subject at a good school can have the feeling that they are falling farther and farther behind in a really good school. And that feeling—as subjective and ridiculous and irrational as it may be—matters. How you feel about your abilities—your academic “self-concept”—in the context of your classroom shapes your willingness to tackle challenges and finish difficult tasks. It’s a crucial element in your motivation and confidence.
Malcolm Gladwell (David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants)
Deconstructing the man box and the harm it causes every body, male, female, and otherwise, begins with challenging that idea and offering, in its place, the reality of our actual bodies. To build equitable relationships and societies, to create a world free of unwanted violence, to tackle the masculinity crisis—we must first acknowledge how we each are failing, right now, to see the full spectrum of humanity in ourselves and in others.
Thomas Page McBee (Amateur: A Reckoning with Gender, Identity, and Masculinity)
As her mom had always told her whenever a new surgery was imminent, though, the only way to secure a better future was to tackle the hard stuff in the present. That was true on an interpersonal level as it had been for her physical challenges through the years.
Irene Hannon (Starfish Pier (Hope Harbor, #6))
Incremental theory’ people are different. Because they think of abilities as emerging through tackling challenges, the experience of failure has a completely different meaning for them: it’s evidence that they are stretching themselves to their current limit. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t fail. The relevant analogy here is with weight training; muscles grow by being pushed to the limits of their current capacity, where fibres tear and reheal. Among weightlifters, ‘training to failure’ isn’t an admission of defeat – it’s a strategy.
Oliver Burkeman (The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking)
The benefits of maintaining an active lifestyle are not only physical, but also mental. Physical exercise helps us to clear our minds, to detach from the inherent challenges that we face, both professionally and personally, and to find solutions for tackling those challenges.
Andrei Cristian (Calendarul zâmbetelor realiste)
INTJs aren’t just smart, they know they are. While this can make some cocky, but it is a benefit for many. As they are confident in their knowledge, they don’t shy away from tackling the hard problems and the big questions. They retain information well and can access it at will. And they don’t question their mental capacities or the depth of their knowledge. INTJs are sharp minds with quick intellect and they relish mental challenges.
Truity (The True INTJ (The True Guides to the Personality Types))
We are not the masters of our own destinies. We are called to plan and strategize, to work and live active lives, to attempt things that are beyond us and tackle challenges that stretch us to the limit. Yet the outcome of our efforts, even our ability to exert ourselves, is always in God’s hands.
Carolyn Custis James (The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules)
Observe the patterns of mistakes to see if they are products of weaknesses. Everyone has weaknesses and they are generally revealed in the patterns of mistakes they make. The fastest path to success starts with knowing what your weaknesses are and staring hard at them. Start by writing down your mistakes and connecting the dots between them. Then write down your “one big challenge,” the weakness that stands the most in the way of your getting what you want. Everyone has at least one big challenge. You may in fact have several, but don’t go beyond your “big three.” The first step to tackling these impediments is getting them out into the open.
Ray Dalio (Principles: Life and Work)
Lick was unique in bringing to the field a deep appreciation for human beings: our capacity to perceive, to adapt, to make choices, and to devise completely new ways of tackling apparently intractable problems. As an experimental psychologist, he found these abilities every bit as subtle and as worthy of respect as a computer’s ability to execute an algorithm. And that was why to him, the real challenge would always lie in adapting computers to the humans who used them, thereby exploiting the strengths of each.
M. Mitchell Waldrop (The Dream Machine)
Take responsibility for the problems in the world. Try to fix them. See life’s challenges as opportunities to be tackled with gratitude.
Alpha Four (Earth on Fire Ocean of Blood (Far Forest Scrolls, #4))
Maybe this was what growing up meant—tackling the huge challenges, whether you were ready for them or not. And trusting that you’d figure out a way to get through it.
Shannon Messenger (Legacy (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #8))
The greatest tool we have for tackling our grand challenges is the passionate and dedicated human mind.
Peter H. Diamandis
I talk about the purposes of fierce conversations. Interrogate reality. Provoke learning. Tackle tough challenges. Enrich relationships.
Susan Scott (Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time)
Transform your mindset with tenacity, tackle challenges head-on, and triumph over obstacles. Today, let's tap into our inner strength, tenacity, and unstoppable spirit. Together, we'll turn every trial into a testimony and every setback into a setup for success. Trust in your abilities, stay true to your dreams and embrace the journey with unwavering determination. You're capable, tenacious, and destined for greatness!
Donald Pillai
But my story is as much one of perseverance and drive as it is of talent and luck. I willed it to happen. I took my life in my hands, learned from anyone I could, grabbed what opportunity I could, and molded my success step by step. Fear of failure drove me at first, but as I tackled each challenge, my anxiety was replaced by a growing sense of optimism. Once you overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, other hurdles become less daunting.
Howard Schultz (Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time)
When life hands you questions, answer them. When life hands you mysteries, unravel them. When life hands you enigmas, decipher them. When life hands you tasks, accomplish them. When life hands you problems, tackle them. When life hands you skills, develop them. When life hands you talents, sharpen them. When life hands you friends, cherish them. When life hands you family, value them. When life hands you acquaintances, treasure them. When life hands you opponents, confront them. When life hands you acquaintances, celebrate them. When life hands you allies, support them. When life hands you riches, multiply them. When life hands you possessions, protect them. When life hands you pleasures, ration them. When life hands you experiences, relish them. When life hands you students, instruct them. When life hands you mentors, study them. When life hands you teachers, esteem them. When life hands you disciples, inspire them. When life hands you gurus, honor them. When life hands you lessons, remember them. When life hands you teachings, impart them. When life hands you demands, tackle them. When life hands you obstacles, challenge them. When life hands you troubles, overcome them. When life hands you burdens, conquer them. When life hands you titles, cherish them. When life hands you degrees, employ them. When life hands you medals, welcome them. When life hands you awards, appreciate them. When life hands you blessings, count them.
Matshona Dhliwayo
However, at 17 years old, I was ready to face any challenge and tackle any obstacles blocking the road to my dreams. I was ready to take on the world. I was unstoppable. Bygones were bygones. The future, however uncertain it might be, awaited me.
Teodor Flonta (A Luminous Future)
Perhaps one day we will be able to live on the moon or on other planets, perhaps we will be able to harness energy from space and make our planet even better. There are so many challenges that seem impossible at one time, but become a reality if we study them and figure out how to tackle them.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (My Life: An Illustrated Biography: An Illustrated Autobiography)
We are committed to involving as many people as possible, as young as possible, as soon as possible. Sometimes too young and too soon! But we intentionally err on the side of too fast rather than too slow. We don’t wait until people feel “prepared” or “fully equipped.” Seriously, when is anyone ever completely prepared for ministry? Ministry makes people’s faith bigger. If you want to increase someone’s confidence in God, put him in a ministry position before he feels fully equipped. The messages your environments communicate have the potential to trump your primary message. If you don’t see a mess, if you aren’t bothered by clutter, you need to make sure there is someone around you who does see it and is bothered by it. An uncomfortable or distracting setting can derail ministry before it begins. The sermon begins in the parking lot. Assign responsibility, not tasks. At the end of the day, it’s application that makes all the difference. Truth isn’t helpful if no one understands or remembers it. If you want a church full of biblically educated believers, just teach what the Bible says. If you want to make a difference in your community and possibly the world, give people handles, next steps, and specific applications. Challenge them to do something. As we’ve all seen, it’s not safe to assume that people automatically know what to do with what they’ve been taught. They need specific direction. This is hard. This requires an extra step in preparation. But this is how you grow people. Your current template is perfectly designed to produce the results you are currently getting. We must remove every possible obstacle from the path of the disinterested, suspicious, here-against-my-will, would-rather-be-somewhere-else, unchurched guests. The parking lot, hallways, auditorium, and stage must be obstacle-free zones. As a preacher, it’s my responsibility to offend people with the gospel. That’s one reason we work so hard not to offend them in the parking lot, the hallway, at check-in, or in the early portions of our service. We want people to come back the following week for another round of offending! Present the gospel in uncompromising terms, preach hard against sin, and tackle the most emotionally charged topics in culture, while providing an environment where unchurched people feel comfortable. The approach a church chooses trumps its purpose every time. Nothing says hypocrite faster than Christians expecting non-Christians to behave like Christians when half the Christians don’t act like it half the time. When you give non-Christians an out, they respond by leaning in. Especially if you invite them rather than expect them. There’s a big difference between being expected to do something and being invited to try something. There is an inexorable link between an organization’s vision and its appetite for improvement. Vision exposes what has yet to be accomplished. In this way, vision has the power to create a healthy sense of organizational discontent. A leader who continually keeps the vision out in front of his or her staff creates a thirst for improvement. Vision-centric churches expect change. Change is a means to an end. Change is critical to making what could and should be a reality. Write your vision in ink; everything else should be penciled in. Plans change. Vision remains the same. It is natural to assume that what worked in the past will always work. But, of course, that way of thinking is lethal. And the longer it goes unchallenged, the more difficult it is to identify and eradicate. Every innovation has an expiration date. The primary reason churches cling to outdated models and programs is that they lack leadership.
Andy Stanley (Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend)
The other response is less obvious at first. They do the opposite. They become hyperactive. They accept every opportunity presented. They throw themselves into every assignment. They tackle every challenge with gusto. They try to do it all. This behaviour does not necessarily look like learned helplessness at first glance. After all, isn’t working hard evidence of one’s belief in one’s importance and value? Yet on closer examination we can see this compulsion to do more is a smokescreen. These people don’t believe they have a choice in what opportunity, assignment, or challenge to take on. They believe they “have to do it all.
Greg McKeown (Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less)
The great works of art and literature have a lot to say on how to tackle the concrete challenges of living, like how to escape the chains of public opinion, how to cope with grief or how to build loving friendships. Instead of organizing classes around academic concepts — 19th-century French literature — more could be organized around the concrete challenges students will face in the first decade after graduation.
David Brooks
At this point, you have two choices: you can either remain stagnant, using the same methods and skills to tackle the work that’s in front of you and continuing on your present course, or you can intentionally return to Discovery phase and challenge yourself to develop a new skill or means of expression. If you do the former, you are likely to begin a slow decline into mediocrity and misery. If you do the latter, you will be uncomfortable for a while, but you will continue growing.
Todd Henry (Louder than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice)
Cultures are defensive constructions against chaos, designed to reduce the impact of randomness on experience. They are adaptive responses, just as feathers are for birds and fur is for mammals. Cultures prescribe norms, evolve goals, build beliefs that help us tackle the challenges of existence. In so doing they must rule out many alternative goals and beliefs, and thereby limit possibilities; but this channeling of attention to a limited set of goals and means is what allows effortless action within self-created boundaries.
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience)
I’ve tackled many challenges in my lifetime. The most satisfying ones were food related. Like the 2-pound burger at Fuddruckers that I had to devour in 15 minutes. Shattered it in 5 minutes and 46 seconds! Or the Blazing Challenge at Buffalo Wild Wings: eat 12 blazing wings in 5 minutes. Killed it in 57 seconds! Quaker Steak and Lube’s all-you-can- eat wings in one sitting? I may still hold the record in Madison, Wisconsin, for scarfing down 78. I’ll never forget when 6 linemen and I went to a sushi restaurant during the time of the 2011 Rose Bowl in Pasadena. We didn’t exactly take on an eating challenge, but we did get kicked out of the place when the owner ordered, “Go home now. You’ve eaten eight hundred dollars’ worth of sushi.
Jake Byrne (First and Goal: What Football Taught Me About Never Giving Up)
Discuss top priorities: What are the one, two, or three most critical outcomes for your report and how can you help her tackle these challenges? Calibrate what “great” looks like: Do you have a shared vision of what you’re working toward? Are you in sync about goals or expectations? Share feedback: What feedback can you give that will help your report, and what can your report tell you that will make you more effective as a manager? Reflect on how things are going: Once in a while, it’s useful to zoom out and talk about your report’s general state of mind—how is he feeling on the whole? What’s making him satisfied or dissatisfied? Have any of his goals changed? What has he learned recently and what does he want to learn going forward?
Julie Zhuo (The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You)
They were flying back from a big show in London, the whole roster on the plane. The story goes that much alcohol was consumed and things quickly got uncomfortable: Hennig and Scott Hall went wild with some shaving cream; Dustin Rhodes awkwardly serenaded his ex-wife, Terri; the legendary wrestler turned booker Michael “P.S.” Hayes got punched out by JBL and later, after he had fallen asleep, had his ponytail chopped off by Sean Waltman; Ric Flair paraded in front of a flight attendant in nothing but his sequined ring robe; and, to top it all off, Hennig challenged collegiate wrestling star (and WWE golden boy) Brock Lesnar to a Greco-Roman wrestling match that ended when Lesnar tackled Hennig into the exit door, and they were pulled apart just before they jeopardized the flight.
David Shoemaker (The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling)
During an individual's immersion in a domain, the locus of flow experiences shifts: what was once too challenging becomes attainable and even pleasurable, while what has long since become attainable no longer proves engaging. Thus, the journeyman musical performer gains flow from the accurate performance of familiar pieces in the repertoire; the youthful master wishes to tackle the most challenging pieces, ones most difficult to execute in a technical sense; the seasoned master may develop highly personal interpretations of familiar pieces, or, alternatively, return to those deceptively simple pieces that may actually prove difficult to execute convincingly and powerfully. Such an analysis helps explain why creative individuals continue to engage in the area of their expertise despite its frustrations, and why so many of them continue to raise the ante, posing ever-greater challenges for themselves, even at the risk of sacrificing the customary rewards.
Howard Gardner (Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi)
It is vital to acknowledge the new reality before taking any steps to change the existing policies. The world is not the same anymore. Tackling religion-based terrorism is perhaps one, if not the most serious threat the world face in the 21st century. Unfortunately, more terror attacks like the ones in San Bernardino, Brussels and Paris are expected to occur. While those attacks were a reminder of the challenges that lay ahead, they exposed the need to have an improved early warning system that may ultimately save civilian lives. Such a system should take into account the shortcomings of the current warning frameworks and evaluate the usefulness of warnings generated by improved models that would cover a broad range of attacks, larger geographic areas within the country in question and a wide range of potential attack scenarios. The system is likely to facilitate well informed decisions on the assessment of information gathered from different sources. In this vein, finding a balance between protecting human rights and ensuring national security is key.
Widad Akreyi
In Downhill All the Way, Leonard remembers them returning from an evening spent with Vanessa in her studio in Fitzroy Street. (This was in 1930.)A drunk woman was being abused by two passers-by and was then accosted by a policeman who seemed to Leonard to be ‘deliberately trying to goad her into doing something which would justify an arrest’. He lost his temper, challenged the policeman in front of a small crowd, and made him let the woman go. What Leonard omitted to mention in his reminiscence was that he and Virginia had been to a fancy-dress party for Angelica’s eleventh birthday. Virginia was dressed as a (‘mad’) March Hare, with a pair of hare’s ears and paws. Roger Fry, at the party, had been a wonderfully characterful White Knight. And Leonard was ‘wearing a green baize apron and a pair of chisels as the Carpenter’. But as he tackled the policeman (‘Why dont you go for the men who began it? My name’s Woolf, and I can take my oath the woman’s not to blame’), ‘holding his apron and chisel in one hand’,114 he forgot all about his comical fancy-dress in his anger and his determination to see justice done.
Hermione Lee (Virginia Woolf)
supposed weakness on national security. Ours was a brief exchange, filled with unspoken irony—the elderly Southerner on his way out, the young black Northerner on his way in, the contrast that the press had noted in our respective convention speeches. Senator Miller was very gracious and wished me luck with my new job. Later, I would happen upon an excerpt from his book, A Deficit of Decency, in which he called my speech at the convention one of the best he’d ever heard, before noting—with what I imagined to be a sly smile—that it may not have been the most effective speech in terms of helping to win an election. In other words: My guy had lost. Zell Miller’s guy had won. That was the hard, cold political reality. Everything else was just sentiment. MY WIFE WILL tell you that by nature I’m not somebody who gets real worked up about things. When I see Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity baying across the television screen, I find it hard to take them seriously; I assume that they must be saying what they do primarily to boost book sales or ratings, although I do wonder who would spend their precious evenings with such sourpusses. When Democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath. When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal. Still, I am not immune to distress. And like most Americans, I find it hard to shake the feeling these days that our democracy has gone seriously awry. It’s not simply that a gap exists between our professed ideals as a nation and the reality we witness every day. In one form or another, that gap has existed since America’s birth. Wars have been fought, laws passed, systems reformed, unions organized, and protests staged to bring promise and practice into closer alignment. No, what’s troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics—the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem. We know that global competition—not to mention any genuine commitment to the values
Barack Obama (The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream)
Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitive P.S. 334, the Anderson School on West 84th in New York City. Slim as they get, Thomas recently had his long sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the new James Bond (he took a photo of Daniel Craig to the barber). Unlike Bond, he prefers a uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of one of his heroes: Frank Zappa. Thomas hangs out with five friends from the Anderson School. They are “the smart kids.” Thomas is one of them, and he likes belonging. Since Thomas could walk, he has constantly heard that he’s smart. Not just from his parents but from any adult who has come in contact with this precocious child. When he applied to Anderson for kindergarten, his intelligence was statistically confirmed. The school is reserved for the top 1 percent of all applicants, and an IQ test is required. Thomas didn’t just score in the top 1 percent. He scored in the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent. But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.’ ” With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t. For instance, in the early grades, Thomas wasn’t very good at spelling, so he simply demurred from spelling out loud. When Thomas took his first look at fractions, he balked. The biggest hurdle came in third grade. He was supposed to learn cursive penmanship, but he wouldn’t even try for weeks. By then, his teacher was demanding homework be completed in cursive. Rather than play catch-up on his penmanship, Thomas refused outright. Thomas’s father tried to reason with him. “Look, just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you don’t have to put out some effort.” (Eventually, Thomas mastered cursive, but not without a lot of cajoling from his father.) Why does this child, who is measurably at the very top of the charts, lack confidence about his ability to tackle routine school challenges? Thomas is not alone. For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.
Po Bronson (NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children)
The city that acknowledges and celebrates our common fate, that opens doors to empathy and cooperation, will help us tackle the great challenges of this century.
Charles Montgomery (Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design)
Tackling Old Testament ethics is a challenge. Besides a lot of territory to cover, the ancient Near East seems so strange and even otherworldly! We need a good bit of background discussion to help make better sense of this world and of certain Old Testament texts.
Paul Copan (Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God)
A purely technocentric view of innovation is less sustainable now than ever, and a management philosophy based only on selecting from existing strategies is likely to be overwhelmed by new developments at home or abroad. What we need are new choices—new products that balance the needs of individuals and of society as a whole; new ideas that tackle the global challenges of health, poverty, and education; new strategies that result in differences that matter and a sense of purpose that engages everyone affected by them.
Anonymous
I didn’t realize it at the time, but suppressing my emotions wasn’t a sign of strength, it was a sign of weakness.  I feared my own emotions, and I blocked them out, how tough could that really be?  To tackle them head on, that was the real challenge.  Once I understood that I didn’t need to resist my emotions, that’s when things changed; once I understood that resisting them wasn’t controlling them, no matter how hard I tried.
Jeffrey Sands (Letting Go: A Marine's Journey Through War and His Search for Meaning)
The big challenge with Aimee was her emotional attachment to much of her stuff. Her "keep” items consisted mostly of things that had belonged to her late mother, who had been her closest friend and a major source of support during a difficult divorce from an abusive man. Aimee came to realize that the trauma of losing her mother had, in fact, triggered her hoarding.
Matt Paxton (The Secret Lives of Hoarders: True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter)
On the road to success there are determination, real hard work, perseverance and challenges to tackle.
Ahmet Adam Asar
Ambedkar was a fearless and dedicated soldier who fought to uproot casteism from the contaminated soil of India's social and religious culture. Combating religious wrongs is more challenging than tackling other social, economic and political issues. Ambedkar was one of those rare personalities in the history of humankind who consciously ruffled with religious sensitivities.
-Promod Puri
When learners commit errors and are given corrective feedback, the errors are not learned. Even strategies that are highly likely to result in errors, like asking someone to try to solve a problem before being shown how to do it, produce stronger learning and retention of the correct information than more passive learning strategies, provided there is corrective feedback. Moreover, people who are taught that learning is a struggle that often involves making errors will go on to exhibit a greater propensity to tackle tough challenges and will tend to see mistakes not as failures but as lessons and turning points along the path to mastery.
Peter C. Brown (Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning)
Can you find, hire, and manage good people, then transfer work over to them so you can tackle the challenges you’re uniquely suited to tackle? Many founders are so talented that they have a hard time letting go of tasks once they start performing them. They often think things like “Will someone else be able to do this as well as I can?” The answer is almost certainly “No, especially not at first, but they’ll probably figure it out over time, just like you did.
Reid Hoffman (Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies)
What if a job interview tested one’s ability to ask questions, as well as answer them? The logical way to achieve that would be to ask interviewees to generate questions. While job interviews often end with the interviewee being asked, Do you have any questions?, that’s treated more as a rote throwaway line, and if anything it invites only closed, practical questions (When would I start? How much travel will there be?) as opposed to thoughtful, creative questions. As an alternative approach, tell every person coming in for an interview to bring a few questions with them. Make it clear those questions should be ambitious and open-ended—Why, What If, and How questions are recommended. These should also be relevant to your company or industry. The questions might inquire about ways the company or its offerings could be expanded or improved; a customer or societal challenge that could be tackled by the company; an untapped opportunity to be explored. The questions this person brings will reveal a lot about him or her. Are the questions audacious and imaginative, or more modest and practical? Do the questions indicate that the candidate did some research before forming them (if so, good sign: it indicates the candidate knows how to do contextual inquiry). To test whether the person can question on the fly, you might ask, during the interview, that the candidate build upon one or more of the prepared questions with additional questions (using the Right Question Institute practice of follow-up questioning to improve and advance existing questions). For example, if she has suggested a What If scenario, ask her to now challenge her own assumptions with Why questions, or get her to take her idea to a more practical level by generating How questions. This will show if a person knows how to “think in questions.” If the candidate has come up with at least one interesting question and then improved on that question during the interview, that person is clearly a gifted questioner and is likely a welcome addition to a company’s culture of inquiry.
Warren Berger (A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas)
The greatest love, such as the troubadours proclaimed, also requires supremely challenging obstacles. It is by overcoming obstacles that we transform ourselves into higher beings, that we find the deepest love and discover our inner hero. So, don’t flee from obstacles, don’t bemoan your fate. If you are faced with difficulties, smile! If you can beat the odds, you have a chance to become something astounding. Don’t run away. Tackle them head on.
Adam Weishaupt (Sin for Salvation)
What makes the difference between the Cowards and Champions is their mentality and attitude of tackling challenges in tough times.
Anufa Freeborn
before you tackle the bruising challenge of talking to “crazy,” make sure you have a good reason to go there.
Mark Goulston (Talking to 'Crazy': How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your Life)
The lack of a functioning, trustful community also heightened the refugees’ fears of being abducted by the extremist organization Islamic State. Many initially refused to move to Azraq camp, and although the numbers have increased more recently, Azraq is still far below the 130,000 capacity for which it was built. It’s fitting then that this pop-up city, in real need of some functioning social capital, is now the scene of a radical experiment in new models of community governance, institution-building, and the management of resources. At the heart of that effort is blockchain technology, the decentralized ledger-keeping system that underpins the digital currency bitcoin and promises a more reliable, immediate way to trace transactions. The World Food Program (WFP), a UN agency that feeds 80 million people worldwide, is putting 10,000 Azraq refugees through a pilot that uses this system to better coordinate food distribution. In doing so, the WFP is tackling a giant administrative challenge: how to ensure, in an environment where theft is rampant and few people carry personal identifying documents, that everyone gets their fair share of food. Among those participating in this project was forty-three-year-old Najah Saleh Al-Mheimed, one of the more than 5 million Syrians forced to flee their homes as the brutal, ongoing civil war has all but destroyed their country. In early June 2015, with mounting food shortages and reports of girls being kidnapped by militias in nearby villages, Najah and her husband made the drastic decision to leave her hometown of Hasaka, where their families had lived for generations. “It was an ordeal that I pray to God no human will ever witness,” she said in an interview conducted on our behalf by WFP staffers working in the Azraq camp.
Michael J. Casey (The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything)
Maybe because he proved to his little girl that not only does Daddy never give up, he’s strong enough to come back and achieve the unthinkable.
Gianluca Vialli (Goals: Inspirational Stories to Help Tackle Life’s Challenges)
If you never fail to do what you set out to do, you're not learning and you're not growing. Mistakes are a sign that you are pushing yourself to your limits by tackling meaningful challenges
Chase Jarvis (Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life)
America has a great philanthropic tradition. Since Warren Buffett and Bill and Belinda Gates created the Giving Pledge, hundreds of the world's wealthiest individuals have pledged to donate at least half of their wealth to charitable causes, adding up to hundreds of billions of dollars. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Annual charitable donations from all Americans reached 410 billion dollars in 2017 - and that doesn't count the time and energy Americans volunteered to countless causes tackling a wide array of social challenges. But as substantial and heartwarming as philanthropy is, it's a pittance compared with federal and state government spending. Together they spent nearly the same amount - roughly $405 billion - every 4 weeks during the 2017 fiscal year. Philanthropy is no substitute for effective government.
Katherine M. Gehl (The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy)
Discuss top priorities: What are the one, two, or three most critical outcomes for your report and how can you help her tackle these challenges?
Julie Zhuo (The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You)
The toughest situations in life are not the ones where you face the most difficult challenges, it is when you lose the hope to tackle them.
Sukant Ratnakar (Quantraz)
supported by someone who has experience, expertise, and perspective that you need, who is invested enough in your success and growth to gently direct your attention to the most significant things in your situation—the small changes that can make a big difference as you tackle those choices and challenges.
Melinda Cohan (The Confident Coach: Build a Business You Love, Attract Ideal Clients & Make a Lasting Impact)
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.
Gianluca Vialli (Goals: Inspirational Stories to Help Tackle Life’s Challenges)
Our struggles in life develop our strengths. Without struggles, we never grow and never get stronger, so it’s important for us to tackle challenges on our own, and not be relying on help from others.
Dembe Michael
How to Build a Mobile App with React Native With the continuous evolution of web applications, real-time apps, and hybrid apps, the companies want faster development and easy maintenance for their app. Due to high-end technologies, the React Native app development has earned its significance in bringing all of these together within the limited budget of the companies. Overview of React Native As the React Native is based on the React framework, it is good for React Native app development to follow the same. In addition to that, React Native has separate APIs for both the platforms, it allows development for both Android and iOS in the single app, and most importantly, it is free and open-source. Facebook’s React Native Developing apps that run on the different operating systems with one tool, especially mobile devices, would be a great advantage to the developers. Therefore, the React Native development by Facebook is one of the best ways to build apps that are scalable and flexible. The Android App Development with React Native With the number of active Android users, it has created more value to the companies in developing the apps for android mobile devices. Working with React Native In React Native, the developers have a lot of responsibilities. They do not need to write the code manually, as React Native automatically generates the code for the mobile app development. This is the reason why the developers need to focus more on the UX of the app. There are several UX aspects that are required for a development, such as the native code, the visual aesthetics, the technical and back-end aspects. All these aspects would be added together to design the user interface. This is why the React Native app development becomes quite important. The creation of the native code, design, and other technical aspects make React Native a valuable tool for developers and non-developers. Benefits of React Native React Native helps in building a complete native mobile app without any coding skills. The beautiful library creates responsive and interactive web apps from all the simple mobile web components and thus increases the creation of high-quality applications. React Native is a part of web development in its new form with its development of new concepts in application. It uses the native functionality of an operating system so that all of the advanced concepts of web development can be applied to mobile apps. This makes React Native a preferred platform for apps which are made specifically for Android and iOS. With React Native, the companies can develop a beautiful and efficient app in less time without having to spend too much time. Conclusion As stated in the above results of mobile app development, the UI remains the most important part of a mobile app. All developers are in love with different UI frameworks and libraries. As for this topic, given below are some of the great reasons to select React Native as a UI framework: It’s the only full-stack UI framework from Facebook. More than 20 frameworks have appeared, and React Native is the only one that was born out of Facebook. Features like rendering into the DOM, XHR, Native Embedding, data persistence, offline support and more. Although React Native is more than capable of tackling many challenges, it still falls short of some modern technologies like HOCs and Server-side Rendering (SSR).
Peter Lee (Nuneaton (Images of England))
The Official Soviet Weightlifting Textbook Girevoy Sport Competition Training Guidelines (Falameyev, 1986) Train three times a week on non-consecutive days, preferably at the same time of the day. In the beginning limit your sessions to 30 min and your load to 3 sets per exercise in two arm exercises and 3 sets per arm in one arm drills. Select a weight that enables you to do 5-16 repetitions in a given exercise. Perform your exercises through the full range of motion. Breathe deep and smooth without excessive straining and breath holding. Rest for 2 min between sets. Calmly walk around. Train the one arm snatches, presses, and C&Js in 3-5 sets. Complete all the sets for the weaker arm first. Once a week work both arms back to back without setting the kettlebell down on the platform. Perform 2-3 such competition style sets. Do extra snatches with the weaker arm. Pay a lot of attention to the development of your wrist strength. Before tackling the competition-level, two arm/two kettlebell C&Js, master one arm/one KB C&Js, with a special emphasis on the weaker arm. Train the two arm/two kettlebell C&J in 6-8 sets. Include two different kettlebell exercises in a training session and follow them up with 2-3 barbell exercises. As the competition approaches, the number of barbell exercises in a session is decreased, so is their volume.
Pavel Tsatsouline (The Russian Kettlebell Challenge: Xtreme Fitness for Hard Living Comrades)
We all must make a similar pivot from “I” to “we” if we want any hope of recovering from setbacks, disappointments, and trauma. I had to be willing to look beyond my personal pride in tackling every obstacle that came my way and understand that some challenges are just too big to take on alone. Accepting help does not make you a burden; it makes you part of a village, a web, a network, a family of people whose lives are interconnected, come good or bad. There are going to be moments and circumstances that disrupt your life in ways you could have never imagined, but you can’t shut yourself off from the rest of the world. Self-reliance is a beautiful trait, but only in moderation. Your journey is your own, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other people who want to make the way easier for you.
Mallory Weggemann (Limitless: The Power of Hope and Resilience to Overcome Circumstance)
Saipem, an Italian-based company founded in 1957, has built some of the world's largest energy and infrastructure projects. It is organized into five business divisions that focus on onshore and offshore drilling, engineering and construction, and conceptual design services. Given its connection to oil and gas contracts, which effectively collapsed in 2014 with a plunge in oil prices, it has had to set a course beyond fossil fuels and rethink everything about its business. This "change or die" scenario sets the tone for its reporting and disclosure. Its 2019 sustainability report acknowledges the scenario it is facing and tackles the issue of the low-carbon transition head-on. At its core is the organziations rallying call, or "the four challenges," which describe the context and frame the opportunities it must capture to remain competitive.
Paul Pierroz (The Purpose-Driven Marketing Handbook: How to Discover Your Impact and Communicate Your Business Sustainability Story to Grow Sales, Retain Talent, and Attract Investors)
Figure it out. Work through it. You’ll find your answer. What’s my plan? I don’t have one, except to do what I do every day. Keep moving forward. “Get through today? Get through practice, and our games this week, and then I’m going to get through HockeyFest. Probably spend a little extra time on the lake. It’s kind of my happy place.” She nods. “One day at a time, one game at a time. I like that plan. My happy place has always been the weight room. I figure, if I can tackle that, I can tackle anything. You want to know my personal motto? ‘I can do hard things.’ I’ve proven that I can get through a challenge, so I can do it again. I’d say the same for you.
Sara Biren (Cold Day in the Sun)
implies that one must get up when down and never give up, no matter how many times you fail. The number one reason we are afraid to try new things or tackle challenges is the fear of failure.
Joseph Milano (How to Learn Faster and Be More Productive: Improve your Memory, Focus your Mind and Achieve Powerful Goals (Accelerated Learning: Think Fast & Remember More))
This isn’t an algorithm for fun, but it’s a useful tool for checking for the absence of fun, because designers can identify systems that fail to meet all the criteria. It may also prove useful in terms of game critique. Simply check each system against this list: Do you have to prepare before taking on the challenge? Can you prepare in different ways and still succeed? Does the environment in which the challenge takes place affect the challenge? Are there solid rules defined for the challenge you undertake? Can the core mechanic support multiple types of challenges? Can the player bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? At high levels of difficulty, does the player have to bring multiple abilities to bear on the challenge? Is there skill involved in using an ability? (If not, is this a fundamental “move” in the game, like moving one checker piece?) Are there multiple success states to overcoming the challenge? (In other words, success should not have a single guaranteed result.) Do advanced players get no benefit from tackling easy challenges? Does failing at the challenge at the very least make you have to try again? If your answer to any of the above questions is “no,” then the game system is probably worth readdressing.
Raph Koster (Theory of Fun for Game Design)
Discuss top priorities: What are the one, two, or three most critical outcomes for your report and how can you help her tackle these challenges? Calibrate what “great” looks like: Do you have a shared vision of what you’re working toward? Are you in sync about goals or expectations? Share feedback: What feedback can you give that will help your report, and what can your report tell you that will make you more effective as a manager? Reflect on how things are going: Once in a while, it’s useful to zoom out and talk about your report’s general state of mind—how is he feeling on the whole? What’s making him satisfied or dissatisfied? Have any
Julie Zhuo (The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You)
Sometimes, stress can be useful and inspire us to tackle challenges. But stress can also feel overwhelming, making us constantly worry about how things will turn out.
Jessica Speer (Middle School - Safety Goggles Advised: Exploring the WEIRD Stuff from Gossip to Grades, Cliques to Crushes and Popularity to Peer Pressure)
What teammates are we choosing to help us navigate the challenges life throws at us? Do we have a lead-off hitter who gives us a spark? Do we have an offensive tackle who can protect us? Do we have a rebounding power forward who can help us bounce back when we miss?
Trevor Moawad (Getting to Neutral)
I believe we should recognize and transform, not avoid, the triggers of our anxiety. I believe we should admire the wonders of Mother Nature by engaging all our senses to experience the nature-mind-body connection. I believe we should identify our emotional strengths and weaknesses and harmonize them with those of others. To take proper care of ourselves as living organisms, we should also have a basic understanding of the body’s complex biology. These attributes will become our superpowers to tackle anxiety and everyday challenges!
Oscar Segurado (Mindful Framing: Transform your Anxiety into Vital Energy)
We understand how to soften our voice, use a warm tone, and relax our bodies. We can skillfully use touch to convey the fact that we care, perhaps giving the person a hug or holding their hand. We’re also familiar with taking fierce action for our loved ones when needed. We’ve felt that Momma Bear energy arise within us when someone we care about is threatened and needs protection, or when they need a little kick in the butt to tackle a challenge. We’ve earned the wisdom needed to understand what steps are called for in the moment.
Kristin Neff (Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive)
Here are some ideas to get started: Discuss top priorities: What are the one, two, or three most critical outcomes for your report and how can you help her tackle these challenges? Calibrate what “great” looks like: Do you have a shared vision of what you’re working toward? Are you in sync about goals or expectations? Share feedback: What feedback can you give that will help your report, and what can your report tell you that will make you more effective as a manager? Reflect on how things are going: Once in a while, it’s useful to zoom out and talk about your report’s general state of mind—how is he feeling on the whole? What’s making him satisfied or dissatisfied? Have any of his goals changed? What has he learned recently and what does he want to learn going forward?
Julie Zhuo (The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You)
The world needs competent and committed leaders to tackle challenges comprehensively until those challenges are conquered.
Gift Gugu Mona (The Effective Leadership Prototype for a Modern Day Leader)
One of the most powerful aspects of momentum is that it creates a positive feedback loop. As we make progress towards our goals, we build confidence, motivation and a sense of momentum that helps us to tackle even bigger challenges. This positive cycle of growth and success can be incredibly energising and rewarding and can help us to achieve things we never thought possible by changing our paradigm.
Itayi Garande (Paradigm Shift: Change Your Mindset and Live the Life of Your Dreams)
Dweck’s work shows that people who believe that their intellectual ability is fixed from birth, wired in their genes, tend to avoid challenges at which they may not succeed, because failure would appear to be an indication of lesser native ability. By contrast, people who are helped to understand that effort and learning change the brain, and that their intellectual abilities lie to a large degree within their own control, are more likely to tackle difficult challenges and persist at them. They view failure as a sign of effort and as a turn in the road rather than as a measure of inability and the end of the road.
Peter C. Brown (Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning)
In addition to challenging our sense of ourselves as individuals, tackling group identity also challenges our belief in objectivity. If group membership is relevant, then we don’t see the world from the universal human perspective but from the perspective of a particular kind of human. In this way, both ideologies are disrupted. Thus, reflecting on our racial frames is particularly challenging for many white people, because we are taught that to have a racial viewpoint is to be biased. Unfortunately, this belief protects our biases, because denying that we have them ensures that we won’t examine or change them.
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
In addition to challenging our sense of ourselves as individuals, tackling group identity also challenges our belief in objectivity. If group membership is relevant, then we don’t see the world from the universal human perspective but from the perspective of a particular kind of human. In this way, both ideologies are disrupted.
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
Dear Surrender, What is the bigger picture? Is it life or death? In my life, it can’t be both. Is it happiness or sadness? Once again, in my life, it can’t be both. Can you show me? Which one is it? Am I missing something here? I was told when I was younger that life didn’t give a shit about me. Yeah, clearly, I know that and have no doubt my mother was right about that. That was by far the only thing she was right about. Other than that, my mother is an epic failure. However, they say life is what you make it. Is that true? All my life, I’ve been trying to ‘make it,’ but the only thing I’ve done is—fail. I’ve been trying to ‘make it,’ but when I reach the top, I am kicked back down. I’ve been trying to ‘make it,’ but when I feel like hope has crossed my path, it has been tackled down once again by one too many challenges. I am ‘making it’ the best way I can, but life beats me down when I try my hardest to get up. What am I supposed to do? Surrender? If so, what am I surrendering to? Love, hope, peace, joy, happiness, Kace? Myself? Who or what? Tell me what to do! Show me, please! Lead the way. I promise I will follow. Right here, right now, I surrender.
Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
They say life is what you make it. Is that true? All my life, I’ve been trying to ‘make it,’ but the only thing I’ve done is—fail. I’ve been trying to ‘make it,’ but when I reach the top, I am kicked back down. I’ve been trying to ‘make it,’ but when I feel like hope has crossed my path, it has been tackled down once again by one too many challenges. I am ‘making it’ the best way I can, but life beats me down when I try my hardest to get up. What am I supposed to do?
Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
If you never fail to do what you set out to do, you’re not learning and you’re not growing. Mistakes are a sign that you’re pushing yourself to your limits by tackling meaningful challenges.
Chase Jarvis (Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life)
Where you’ll work and for how long. Your ritual needs to specify a location for your deep work efforts. This location can be as simple as your normal office with the door shut and desk cleaned off (a colleague of mine likes to put a hotel-style “do not disturb” sign on his office door when he’s tackling something difficult). If it’s possible to identify a location used only for depth—for instance, a conference room or quiet library—the positive effect can be even greater. (If you work in an open office plan, this need to find a deep work retreat becomes particularly important.) Regardless of where you work, be sure to also give yourself a specific time frame to keep the session a discrete challenge and not an open-ended slog.
Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
pressures and intense learning curve It takes time to get up to speed on the content of your new position, and yet business and markets cannot slow down and wait for you to catch up. Decisions still need to be taken and, consequently, the pressure can build up and will need to be managed in order to stay operating effectively. Being overwhelmed with immediate fire-fighting and task-driven priorities It would be tempting to get busy and dive into the immediate business tasks and issues. But you need to have the strength of character to step back and take time out to look at the big picture: what tasks should you continue, what should you stop, and what should you start? Need to invest energy in building new networks and forging new stakeholder relationships There is no point in having the right vision and strategy in isolation of bringing people with you. The culture may be dense and slow-moving – people may be resistant to the changes you bring. Invest early in the influencer and stakeholder network. Dealing with legacy issues from the predecessor Depending on the quality of your predecessor, your unit may or may not have a good reputation, and your team may have developed poor habits, behaviours and disciplines that will take time to address. Or you may have to endure the scenario of filling the shoes of a much-loved predecessor, and being initially resented as the new guy whose mandate is to change how things have always been done before. Challenges on inheriting or building a team and having to make tough personnel decisions Don’t expect underperformers to have been weeded out prior to your arrival. A key task in your first 100 days will be to assess the quality of your team: who stays, who goes and what fresh talent is needed on board. Unfortunately, your best talent is possibly now de-motivated and resentful – and consequently underperforming – because they applied unsuccessfully for your job. For external appointments, a lack of experience of the new company culture may lead to inadvertent gaffes and early political blunders – all of which can take time to recover From the innocuous to the significant, everything you do is being judged as indicative of your character. Checking your smart device during a meeting may deeply offend your new role stakeholders who may judge that action as an indication that you are brash, uninterested and arrogant. You will need to be on ‘hyper alert’ to consciously pick up clues on the acceptable norms and behaviours in your new culture. Getting the balance right between moving too fast and moving too slowly Newly appointed people sometimes panic and this can result in either doing too much (scattergun approach, but not tackling the core issues) or doing too little (‘I’ll just listen and learn for the first three months, and then decide what to do’). Neither extreme cuts it. Find the right balance.
Niamh O'Keeffe (Your First 100 Days: Make maximum impact in your new role (Financial Times Series))
The dream of Strong Artificial Intelligence—and more specifically the growing interest in the idea that a computer can become conscious and have first-person subjective experiences—has led to a cultural shift. Prophets like Kurzweil believe that we are much closer to cyberconsciousness and superintelligence than most observers acknowledge, while skeptics argue that current AI systems are still extremely primitive and that hopes of conscious machines are pipedreams. Who is right? This book does not attempt to address this question, but points out some philosophical problems and asks some philosophical questions about machine consciousness. One fundamental problem is that we do not understand human consciousness. Many in science and artificial intelligence assume that human consciousness is based on information or computations. Several writers have tried to tackle this assumption, most notably the British physicist Roger Penrose, whose controversial theory suggests that consciousness is based upon noncomputable quantum states in some of the tiniest structures in the brain, called microtubules. Other, perhaps less esoteric thinkers, like Duke’s Miguel Nicolelis and Harvard’s Leonid Perlovsky, are beginning to challenge the idea that the brain is computable. These scientists lead their fields in man-machine interfacing and computer science. The assumption of a computable brain allows artificial intelligence researchers to believe they will create artificial minds. However, despite assuming that the brain is a computational system—what philosopher Riccardo Manzotti calls “the computational stance”—neuroscience is still discovering that human consciousness is nothing like we think it is. For me this is where LSD enters the picture. It turns out that human consciousness is likely itself a form of hallucination. As I have said, it is a very useful hallucination, but a hallucination nonetheless. LSD and psychedelics may help reveal our normal everyday experience for the hallucination that it is. This insight has been argued about for centuries in philosophy in various forms. Immanuel Kant may have been first to articulate it in modern form when he called our perception of the world “synthetic.” The fundamental idea is that we do not have direct knowledge of the external world. This idea will be repeated often in this book, and you will have to get used to it. We only have knowledge of our brain’s creation of that world for us. In other words, what we see, hear, and subsequently think are like movies that our brain plays for us after the fact. These movies are based on perceptions that come into our senses from the external world, but they are still fictions of our brain’s creation. In fact, you might put the disclaimer “based on a true story” in front of each experience you have. I do not wish to imply that I believe in the homunculus argument—what philosopher Daniel Dennett describes as the “Cartesian Theater”—the hypothetical place in the mind where the self becomes aware of the world. I only wish to employ the metaphor to illustrate the idea that there is no direct relationship between the external world and your perception of it.
Andrew Smart (Beyond Zero and One: Machines, Psychedelics, and Consciousness)
Long-term planning has its dangers, especially when imposed from above in a linear, dictatorial fashion that is insensitive to human needs and fragile ecosystems. Yet tackling the ecological, technological, and social crises of our age cannot be done on an ad hoc, improvised basis devoid of any planning. So how can we learn to plan wisely for the challenges of the future?
Roman Krznaric (The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking)
When "never again" seems too overwhelming a willpower challenge to tackle, use the ten-minute delay rule to start strengthening your self-control.
Kelly McGonigal (The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It)