Thrive In Chaos Quotes

If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.

You crave chaos. You're happiest when the world is in an uproar. You thrive on madness. Even when your magic is at its best when it's the catalyst to confusion. You still can't admit this?

I thrive in structure. I drown in chaos.

If you are an introvert, you are born with a temperament that craves to be alone, delights in meaningful connections, thinks before speaking and observes before approaching. If you are an introvert, you thrive in the inner sanctuary of the mind, heart and spirit, but shrink in the external world of noise, drama and chaos. As an introvert, you are sensitive, perceptive, gentle and reflective. You prefer to operate behind the scenes, preserve your precious energy and influence the world in a quiet, but powerful way.

Some thought magic came from the mind, others the soul, or the heart, or the will. But Kell knew it came from the blood. Blood was magic made manifest. There it thrived. And there it poisoned. Kell had seen what happened when power warred with the body, watched it darken in the veins of corrupted men, turning their blood from crimson to black. If red was the color of magic in balance—of harmony between power and humanity—then black was the color of magic without balance, without order, without restraint. As an Antari, Kell was made of both, balance and chaos; the blood in his veins, like the Isle of Red London, ran a shimmering, healthy crimson, while his right eye was the color of spilled ink, a glistening black.

You crave chaos, you are happiest when the world is in an uproar, you thrive on madness.

Here's to those who love the quiet, but thrive in chaos.

innovation without discipline leads to disaster.

You would not believe half of what is happening in King’s Landing, sweetling. Cersei stumbles from one idiocy to the next, helped along by her council of the deaf, the dim, and the blind. I always anticipated that she would beggar the realm and destroy herself, but I never expected she would do it quite so fast. It is quite vexing. I had hoped to have four or five quiet years to plant some seeds and allow some fruits to ripen, but now . . . it is a good thing that I thrive on chaos. What little peace and order the five kings left us will not long survive the three queens, I fear.” -Littlefinger

Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment Would you capture it? Or just let it slip?” —Marshall Bruce Mathers III, “Lose Yourself”1

Some people come to Morganville and collapse,” Michael said as he put the car in motion. “I’ve seen it a dozen times. But there are a few who come here and just—bloom. You’re one of those.” Claire didn’t feel especially bloomy. “So you’re saying I thrive on chaos.

real monsters thrived in chaos, ruled by pain.

Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence,’ wrote Tom Peters in Thriving on Chaos, ‘only in constant improvement and constant change.

We humans don’t like uncertainty, so we are attracted to those who offer clarity and simple answers, even if the answers are wrong or incomplete. Master Persuaders can thrive in chaotic environments by offering the clarity people crave. And if an environment is not chaotic already, a skilled persuader who understands both social media and the news business can easily stir the pot to create an advantage through chaos. Candidate Trump was a champion of this method.

I thrive in structure; I drown in chaos. I love rules and I love following them. Unless that rule is stupid.

greatness is first and foremost a matter of conscious choice and discipline.

I happen to love rules. I love having a plan. I love a film set that’s run like a well-oiled machine. I thrive in structure; I drown in chaos. I love rules and I love following them. Unless that rule is stupid. And yes, I have felt qualified, no matter my age, to make that determination. Scrupulous people don’t enjoy causing trouble, but they can be defiant as hell. As

Victory awaits him who has everything in order—luck people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.” —Roald Amundsen, The South Pole

You have witnessed dysfunction all your life, and when you grow up, you are going to chase after it. You won’t even know it, not on the surface at least, but you will. You’ll search for people to fix, because that’s what you know - you thrive on chaos, even if you don't know it yet….

When you marry operating excellence with innovation, you multiply the value of your creativity.

We must therefore be prepared to cope—even better, to thrive—in an environment of chaos, uncertainty, constant change, and friction.

A predisposition toward blood and chaos. How she thrives in flames and ravaging storms. How her magic can both inspire and tame pandemonium. How she finds beauty in the morbid and bizarre.

“A son,” I say, recalling every detail of the child’s perfect face. Ivory’s smile is blinding. “A most unique creature. The first child to be born to two netherlings who’ve shared a childhood. Wonderland is founded on chaos, madness, and magic. For so long, innocence and imagination have had no place there. As a result, we haven’t had children, at least by your world’s definition. And because of this, we’ve lost the ability to dream. But Morpheus experienced those things via you, each time you played together in your dreams. Through your child, Wonderland will thrive with new magic and strength. Our offspring will become true children once more; they will learn to dream again. And all will be right with our world.

The inability of a son to thrive independently is exploited by a mother bent on shielding her child from all disappointment and pain. He never leaves, and she is never lonely. It’s an evil conspiracy, forged slowly, as the pathology unfolds, by thousands of knowing winks and nods. She plays the martyr, doomed to support her son, and garners nourishing sympathy, like a vampire, from supporting friends. He broods in his basement, imagining himself oppressed. He fantasizes with delight about the havoc he might wreak on the world that rejected him for his cowardice, awkwardness and inability. And sometimes he wreaks precisely that havoc. And everyone asks, “Why?” They could know, but refuse to.

if you want to achieve consistent performance, you need both parts of a 20 Mile March: a lower bound and an upper bound, a hurdle that you jump over and a ceiling that you will not rise above, the ambition to achieve and the self-control to hold back.  

Image and dust. To be made in the image of God means that we’re rife with potential. We have the Divine’s capacity in our DNA. We’re like God. We were created to “image” his behavior, to rule like he does, to gather up the raw materials of our planet and reshape them into a world for human beings to flourish and thrive. But that’s only half the story. We’re also made from the dirt, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”: we’re the original biodegradable containers. Which means we’re born with limitations. We’re not God. We’re mortal, not immortal. Finite, not infinite. Image and dust

To treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping is, instead, to consider what would be truly good for you. This is not “what you want.” It is also not “what would make you happy.” Every time you give a child something sweet, you make that child happy. That does not mean that you should do nothing for children except feed them candy. “Happy” is by no means synonymous with “good.” You must get children to brush their teeth. They must put on their snowsuits when they go outside in the cold, even though they might object strenuously. You must help a child become a virtuous, responsible, awake being, capable of full reciprocity—able to take care of himself and others, and to thrive while doing so. Why would you think it acceptable to do anything less for yourself?

At the same time, Trump continued his personal assault on the English language. Trump’s incoherence (his twisted syntax, his reversals, his insincerity, his bad faith, and his inflammatory bombast) is both emblematic of the chaos he creates and thrives on as well as an essential instrument in his liar’s tool kit. His interviews, off-teleprompter speeches, and tweets are a startling jumble of insults, exclamations, boasts, digressions, non sequiturs, qualifications, exhortations, and innuendos—a bully’s efforts to intimidate, gaslight, polarize, and scapegoat. Precise words, like facts, mean little to Trump, as interpreters, who struggle to translate his grammatical anarchy, can attest.

Far more difficult than implementing change is figuring out what works, understanding why it works, grasping when to change, and knowing when not to.

When rapid technological change arrives, it first brings turmoil, then people adapt, and then eventually, we learn to thrive.

Adrenaline was better than any drink. Better than a stolen kiss or a cloudless sky. I thrived in its decadent chaos.

Disciplinarians thrive under chaos!

Freely chosen, discipline is absolute freedom.

Goals live on the other side of obstacles and challenges,” said Bourque. “Along

None of us can predict with certainty the twists and turns our lives will take.

As a rule, I found that each person is especially good at one of these three phases and especially bad at one. Each of us has a transition superpower, if you will, and a transition kryptonite. Our research suggests that people gravitate to the phase they’re naturally adept at and bog down in the one they’re weakest at. If you’re comfortable saying goodbye, you might knock that off quickly and move on to the next challenge; but if you’re conflict averse and don’t like to disappoint people, you might remain in a situation that’s toxic far longer than you should. The same applies to the messy middle: Some people thrive in chaos; others are paralyzed by it. As for new beginnings, some people embrace the novelty; others dread it—they like things the way they were.

I believe in aristocracy, though—if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power … but … of the sensitive, the considerate.… Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure … E. M. Forster, “What I Believe,”         in Two Cheers for Democracy             Contents   Cover   Title Page   Copyright   Dedication   Epigraph   Preface   Are You Highly Sensitive? A Self-Test   1  The Facts About Being Highly Sensitive: A (Wrong) Sense of Being Flawed   2  Digging Deeper: Understanding Your Trait for All That It Is

This was where I thrived, in the moments of haze: the dancing, the music, the collective buzz. Chaos was intimacy; distraction was intimacy. Watching a friend do blow off the dresser was intimacy. My

Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally believed to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petrie dish of melodrama and distortion. I remember well, for instance, the blind animal terror which ensued when some townie set off the civil defense sirens as a joke. Someone said it was a nuclear attack; TV and radio reception, never good there in the mountains, happened to be particularly bad that night, and in the ensuing stampede for the telephones the switchboard shorted out, plunging the school into a violent and almost unimaginable panic. Cars collided in the parking lot. People sceamed, wept, gave away t heir possessions, huddled in small groups for comfort and warmth. Some hippies barricaded themselves in the Science Building, in the lone bomb shelter, and refused to let anyone in who didn't know the world to "Sugar Magnolia." Factions formed, leaders rose from the chaos. Though the world, in fact, was not destroyed, everyone had a marvelous time and people spoke fondly of the event for years afterward.

what I want to show in my books and in my life is that you don't have to be like the miserable, angry people who hurt you. You can survive and, most of all, you can thrive. Yes, those demons will always be there, and you will hear and, worst of all, feel their cruelty long after they're gone, but you don't have to let them own your future the way they held your past. You don't have to become like them. You can pull it together, hold your head high, and be the person you want to be in spite of their vicious cruelty. They say that there's a reason to everything. I'm not sure I believe that. It's human nature to try and make order out of chaos. The "sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right" is my own search for understanding why cruelty takes place. I don't understand how anyone can intentionally hurt another person, never mind a child. But I want to help others find the rainbow through the storms. To know that tomorrow is another day and that sooner or later, life will get better. And so will we.

Our generation needs an approach for overcoming obstacles and thriving amid chaos more than ever. One that will help turn our problems on their heads, using them as canvases on which to paint master works.

Lawyers get up in front of people, and they posture. They make themselves seem big and loud so people will look at them and listen. They work daily with chaos and messes. They thrive on attention. Just like a child

Desire for goodness, Mister Reese, leads to earnestness. Earnestness in turn leads to sanctimonious self-righteousness, which breeds intolerance, upon which harsh judgment quickly follows, yielding dire punishment, inflicting general terror and paranoia, eventually culminating in revolt, leading to chaos, then dissolution, and thus, the end of civilisation.” He slowly turned, looked down upon Emancipor. “And we are creatures dependent upon civilisation. It is the only environment in which we can thrive.” Emancipor frowned. “The desire for goodness leads to the end of civilisation?” “Precisely, Mister Reese.” “But if the principal aim is to achieve good living and health among the populace, what is the harm in that?” Bauchelain sighed. “Very well, I shall try again. Good living and health, as you say, yielding well-being. But well-being is a contextual notion, a relative notion. Perceived benefits are measured by way of contrast. In any case, the result is smugness, and from that an overwhelming desire to deliver conformity among those perceived as less pure, less fortunate—the unenlightened, if you will. But conformity leads to ennui, and then indifference. From indifference, Mister Reese, dissolution follows as a natural course, and with it, once again, the end of civilisation.

The idea that leading in a “fast world” always requires “fast decisions” and “fast action”—and that we should embrace an overall ethos of “Fast! Fast! Fast!”—is a good way to get killed. 10X leaders figure out when to go fast, and when not to.

No human enterprise can succeed at the highest levels without consistency; if you bring no coherent unifying concept and disciplined methodology to your endeavors, you’ll be whipsawed by changes in your environment and cede your fate to forces outside your control.

He’s only ever wanted solace. To thrive in the crevices of existence, slip into the dark cracks of life and avoid the noise. But the noise finds him, the chaos—it’s persistent beckoning toward a path that is not his own. Can never be his own. He needs seclusion. Yet every tangible ability he has requires an audience.

WHY 20 MILE MARCHERS WIN 20 Mile Marching helps turn the odds in your favor for three reasons: 1. It builds confidence in your ability to perform well in adverse circumstances. 2. It reduces the likelihood of catastrophe when you’re hit by turbulent disruption. 3. It helps you exert self-control in an out-of-control environment.

The vital process of socialization prevents much harm and fosters much good. Children must be shaped and informed, or they cannot thrive. This fact is reflected starkly in their behavior: kids are utterly desperate for attention from both peers and adults because such attention, which renders them effective and sophisticated communal players, is vitally necessary.

I happen to love rules. I love having a plan. I love a film set that's run like a well-oiled machine. I thrive in structure; I drown in chaos. I love rules and I love following them. Unless that rule is stupid. And yes, I have felt qualified, no matter my age, to make that determination. Scrupulous people don't enjoy causing trouble, but they can be defiant as hell.

Benoit Mandelbrot can be considered the Euclid of fractal geometry. He has collected the observations of mathematicians concerned with "monsters," or objects not definable by euclidean geometry. By combining the work of these mathematicians with his own insight, he has created a geometry of nature that thrives on asymmetry and roughness. Mandelbrot has said that "mountains are not cones, and clouds are not spheres.

Project managers don’t write code, they don’t test the use cases, and they’re not designing the interface. You know what a good project manager does? They are chaos-destroying machines, and each new person you bring onto your team, each dependency you create, adds hard-to-measure entropy to your team. A good project manager thrives on measuring, controlling, and crushing entropy. You did this easily when you were a team of five, but if you’re going to succeed at 105, what was done organically now needs to be done mechanically.

The Pusher, Chapter 3, Part 13: The gunslinger had known magicians, enchanters, and alchemists in his time. Some had been clever charlatans, some stupid fakes in whom only people more stupid than they were themselves could believe (but there had never been a shortage of fools in the world, so even the stupid fakes survived; in fact most actually thrived), and a small few actually able to do those black things of which men whisper—these few could call demons and the dead, could kill with a curse or heal with strange potions. One of these men had been a creature the gunslinger believed to be a demon himself, a creature that pretended to be a man and called itself Flagg. He had seen him only briefly, and that had been near the end, as chaos and the final crash approached his land. Hot on his heels had come two young men who looked desperate and yet grim, men named Dennis and Thomas. These three had crossed only a tiny part of what had been a confused and confusing time in the gunslinger's life, but he would never forget seeing Flagg change a man who had irritated him into a howling dog. He remembered that well enough. Then there had been the man in black.

Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally believed to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion. I remember well, for instance, the blind animal terror which ensued when some townie set off the civil defense sirens as a joke. Someone said it was a nuclear attack; TV and radio reception, never good there in the mountains, happened to be particularly bad that night, and in the ensuing stampede for the telephones the switchboard shorted out, plunging the school into a violent and almost unimaginable panic. Cars collided in the parking lot. People screamed, wept, gave away their possessions, huddled in small groups for comfort and warmth. Some hippies barricaded themselves in the Science Building, in the lone bomb shelter, and refused to let anyone in who didn't know the words to 'Sugar Magnolia'. Factions formed, leaders rose from the chaos. Though the world, in fact, was not destroyed, everyone had a marvelous time and people spoke fondly of the event for years afterward.

Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally believed to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petrie dish of melodrama and distortion. I remember well, for instance, the blind animal terror which ensued when some townie set off the civil defense sirens as a joke. Someone said it was a nuclear attack; TV and radio reception, never good there in the mountains, happened to be particularly bad that night, and in the ensuing stampede for the telephones the switchboard shorted out, plunging the school into a violent and almost unimaginable panic. Cars collided in the parking lot. People screamed, wept, gave away their possessions, huddled in small groups for comfort and warmth. Some hippies barricaded themselves in the Science Building, in the lone bomb shelter, and refused to let anyone in who didn’t know the words to “Sugar Magnolia.” Factions formed, leaders rose from the chaos. Though the world, in fact, was not destroyed, everyone had a marvelous time and people spoke fondly of the event for years afterward.

When, in the year 1939, France and England declared war on Germany without any reason and thus unleashed the Second World War, they unconsciously did good by unleashing this greatest conflict in history precisely at that moment when the Reich stood at the pinnacle of its power. As we know today, this war had long been decided on by the rulers in the Kremlin. With every new year, things would have become more difficult. All other events pale in comparison with the greatness of this gigantic struggle. Should the new Central Asian rush on Europe succeed, then the present world would crack, just as the old one cracked when confronted by the Hun invasion. Mankind’s work over thousands of years would again have been in vain. Chaos would take the place of the most thriving continent on earth. Its culture would be replaced by inconceivable barbarity. What has been achieved since the year 1933 in the economic, cultural, and political realms pales, in spite of its greatness, in comparison with the task that we face today. Even if National Socialism had achieved no more than what lies behind it, it would already belong among the greatest phenomena in world history, but Europe would still be lost. Adolf Hitler – proclamation for the 10-th anniversary of the Power Taking January 30, 1943

Joint-stock companies could be similarly flexible. “The absence of close control by the British crown in the early stages of colonization,” Elliott points out, left considerable latitude for the evolution of those forms of government that seemed most appropriate to the people actively involved in the process of overseas enterprise and settlement—the financial backers of the enterprise and the colonists themselves—as long as they operated within the framework of their royal charter. In contrast to Spain’s “new world” colonies—and to the territories that France, more recently, had claimed (but barely settled) along the banks of the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers—British America “was a society whose political and administrative institutions were more likely to evolve from below than to be imposed from above.” 10 That made it a hodgepodge, but also a complex adaptive system. Such systems thrive, theorists tell us, from the need to respond frequently—but not too frequently—to the unforeseen. Controlled environments encourage complacency, making it hard to cope when controls break down, as they sooner or later must. Constant disruptions, however, prevent recuperation: nothing’s ever healthy. There’s a balance, then, between integrative and disintegrative processes in the natural world—an edge of chaos, so to speak—where adaptation, especially self-organization, tends to occur. 11 New political worlds work similarly.

Bannon thrived on the chaos he created and did everything he could to make it spread. When he finally made his way through the crowd to the back of the town house, he put on a headset to join the broadcast of the Breitbart radio show already in progress. It was his way of bringing tens of thousands of listeners into the inner sanctum of the “Breitbart Embassy,” as the town house was ironically known, and thereby conscripting them into a larger project. Bannon was inordinately proud of the movement he saw growing around him, boasting constantly of its egalitarian nature. What to an outsider could look like a cast of extras from the Island of Misfit Toys was, in Bannon’s eyes, a proudly populist and “unclubbable” plebiscite rising up in defiant protest against the “globalists” and “gatekeepers” who had taken control of both parties. Just how Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty figured into a plan to overthrow the global power structure wasn’t clear, even to many of Bannon’s friends. But, then, Bannon derived a visceral thrill anytime he could deliver a fuck-you to the establishment. The thousands of frustrated listeners calling in to his radio show, and the millions more who flocked to Breitbart News, had left him no doubt that an army of the angry and dispossessed was eager to join him in lobbing a bomb at the country’s leaders. As guests left the party, a doorman handed out a gift that Bannon had chosen for the occasion: a silver hip flask with “Breitbart” imprinted above an image of a honey badger, the Breitbart mascot. — Bannon’s cult-leader magnetism was a powerful draw for oddballs and freaks, and the attraction ran both ways. As he moved further from the cosmopolitan orbits of Goldman Sachs and Hollywood, there was no longer any need for him to suppress his right-wing impulses. Giving full vent to his views on subjects like immigration and Islam isolated him among a radical fringe that most of political Washington regarded as teeming with racist conspiracy theorists. But far from being bothered, Bannon welcomed their disdain, taking it as proof of his authentic conviction. It fed his grandiose sense of purpose to imagine that he was amassing an army of ragged, pitchfork-wielding outsiders to storm the barricades and, in Andrew Breitbart’s favorite formulation, “take back the country.” If Bannon was bothered by the incendiary views held by some of those lining up with him, he didn’t show it. His habit always was to welcome all comers. To all outward appearances, Bannon, wild-eyed and scruffy, a Falstaff in flip-flops, was someone whom the political world could safely ignore. But his appearance, and the company he kept, masked an analytic capability that was undiminished and as applicable to politics as it had been to the finances of corrupt Hollywood movie studios. Somehow, Bannon, who would happily fall into league with the most agitated conservative zealot, was able to see clearly that conservatives had failed to stop Bill Clinton in the 1990s because they had indulged this very zealotry to a point where their credibility with the media and mainstream voters was shot. Trapped in their own bubble, speaking only to one another, they had believed that they were winning, when in reality they had already lost.

Entrenched myth: Successful leaders in a turbulent world are bold, risk-seeking visionaries. Contrary finding: The best leaders we studied did not have a visionary ability to predict the future. They observed what worked, figured out why it worked, and built upon proven foundations. They were not more risk taking, more bold, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons. They were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid. Entrenched myth: Innovation distinguishes 10X companies in a fast-moving, uncertain, and chaotic world. Contrary finding: To our surprise, no. Yes, the 10X cases innovated, a lot. But the evidence does not support the premise that 10X companies will necessarily be more innovative than their less successful comparisons; and in some surprise cases, the 10X cases were less innovative. Innovation by itself turns out not to be the trump card we expected; more important is the ability to scale innovation, to blend creativity with discipline. Entrenched myth: A threat-filled world favors the speedy; you’re either the quick or the dead. Contrary finding: The idea that leading in a “fast world” always requires “fast decisions” and “fast action”—and that we should embrace an overall ethos of “Fast! Fast! Fast!”—is a good way to get killed. 10X leaders figure out when to go fast, and when not to. Entrenched myth: Radical change on the outside requires radical change on the inside. Contrary finding: The 10X cases changed less in reaction to their changing world than the comparison cases. Just because your environment is rocked by dramatic change does not mean that you should inflict radical change upon yourself. Entrenched myth: Great enterprises with 10X success have a lot more good luck. Contrary finding: The 10X companies did not generally have more luck than the comparisons. Both sets had luck—lots of luck, both good and bad—in comparable amounts. The critical question is not whether you’ll have luck, but what you do with the luck that you get.

The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder -- its DNA -- Xerox(tm) it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left-turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines. In olden times, you'd wander down to Mom's Cafe for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your hometown. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn't recognize. If you did enough traveling, you'd never feel at home anywhere. But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald's and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald's is Home, condensed into a three-ring binder and xeroxed. "No surprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles, Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bun-gee jumping. They have parallelparked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture. The only ones left in the city are street people, feeding off debris; immigrants, thrown out like shrapnel from the destruction of the Asian powers; young bohos; and the technomedia priesthood of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. Young smart people like Da5id and Hiro, who take the risk of living in the city because they like stimulation and they know they can handle it.

Self-organization is the life force of the world, thriving on the edge of chaos …

[that if] you created the right type of corporate community, the right type of autonomous congregation, genius would flower.

The darkest parts of my soul were thriving in the chaos of a world turned murderous black, and bereft of dreams. I was a downcast demigod, slayer of monsters. I bore the machete that drained their veins, stole their breath, and cut the life from their hearts.

Growth sucks cash. This is the first law of entrepreneurial gravity. And nothing ages a CEO and his or her team faster than being short of cash. In fact, Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen, in their best-selling book Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck — Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, found that successful companies held three to 10 times more cash assets than average for their industries, and they did so from the time they started. (We highly recommend that you read this book, Collins’ first that directly addresses growth firms.)

Victory awaits him who has everything in order—luck people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.” —Roald Amundsen, The South Pole1

Power is an odd thing. It's destructive, it's addictive, it's idiotic at times, but it's also strangely beautiful how the chaos just flows around it. The beat of the human heart thrives for it, but not this heart.

That’s why I cringe when I hear aging baby boomers decry the moral and political chaos that has overtaken our country. No doubt things are a mess. But I wonder if these former hippies have forgotten or simply romanticized the decadent and violent days of their youth.

10Xers distinguish themselves by an ability to recognize defining moments that call for disrupting their plans, changing the focus of their intensity, and/or rearranging their agenda, because of opportunity or peril, or both.

SMaC recipe is a set of durable operating practices that create a replicable and consistent success formula. The word “SMaC” stands for Specific, Methodical, and Consistent. You can use the term “SMaC” as a descriptor in any number of ways: as an adjective (“Let’s build a SMaC system”), as a noun (“SMaC lowers risk”), and as a verb (“Let’s SMaC this project”). A solid SMaC recipe is the operating code for turning strategic concepts into reality, a set of practices more enduring than mere tactics. Tactics change from situation to situation, whereas SMaC practices can last for decades and apply across a wide range of circumstances.

Everyone gets luck, good and bad, but 10X winners make more of the luck they get.

Accomplishing a 20 Mile March, consistently, in good times and bad, builds confidence. Tangible achievement in the face of adversity reinforces the 10X perspective: we are ultimately responsible for improving performance. We never blame circumstance; we never blame the environment.

As the influential management thinker Peter Drucker taught, the best—perhaps even the only—way to predict the future is to create it.10

Entrenched myth: Successful leaders in a turbulent world are bold, risk-seeking visionaries. Contrary finding: The best leaders we studied did not have a visionary ability to predict the future. They observed what worked, figured out why it worked, and built upon proven foundations. They were not more risk taking, more bold, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons. They were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid.

In a world richly textured by new-meaning creation on such a scale as this, the question Who is right? seems a little quirky at best. The questions that seem more apropos to our time are, Who are the morally coherent, and how do they thrive in the midst of chaos and complexity?

GIVE RISE TO FAITH Be fearless LEADER and Design your own LIFE." "You are divine creation of God. You crave creativity and intuitive life guided by the best mentors. You choose your inner happiness over external chaos. You choose to thrive in most chaotic life circumstances. God created you to be perfect version of yourself and the creation of affection. God is graceful and merciful. He guides your life path and destiny. You have a mission on this earth to fulfill. You aren't here to just survive and live each and every day as it will be your same day since the day you were born with. You are here to learn, grow, face failures, face successes, face extreme painful situations, face extremely happy situation full of love, light and delight. You are creative and mindful. You can educate yourself and be the best educator and successor. You are the best guide anyone can ever ask for. You can be the leader and counselor to the people who need your help. You can guide the path of people who wanted your guidance. We are courageous in ways we don't recognize we possess. We face the incidents, occurrences, events, affairs, encounters, adventures and circumstances throughout our life. Through knowledge, understanding, wisdom, sophistication and education we gain the experiences and moments of endurance and tolerance. We encounter different life challenges, daily teachings and life lessons as we grow through our life. We undertake the different phases of difficulty, resistance, struggle, victory and competition throughout our life’s journey. As we undertake the different phases of our life’s journey, we choose to behave, respond, acknowledge, appreciate and recognize situations and gain experiences according to our free will, self-determination, independence, liberty and freedom. We have freedom to choose our life experiences either positive or negative. Our success or failure depends on our positive life experiences, negative life experiences or positive and negative life experiences throughout our life. With 365 days daily teachings and life lessons you can sharpen your cognitive behavior, you can learn about how to balance your life experiences and you can gather daily inspirations throughout your life’s journey.

Dheeraj explained to me that when leaders don’t have the skills to lean into vulnerability, they’re not able to successfully hold the tension of the paradoxes that are inherent in entrepreneurship. His examples of the paradoxes that elicit vulnerability in leaders align with what we heard from the research participants: Optimism and paranoia Letting chaos reign (the act of building) and reining in chaos (the act of scaling) Big heart and tough decision making Humility and fierce resolve Velocity and quality when building new things Left brain and right brain Simplicity and choice Thinking global, acting local Ambition and attention to detail Thinking big but starting small Short-term and long-term Marathons and sprints, or marathon of sprints in business-building Dheeraj told me, “Leaders must learn the skills to hold these tensions and get adept at “balancing on the ‘tightrope’ of life. Ultimately, leadership is the ability to thrive in the ambiguity of paradoxes and opposites

How can we harness the wind of change for growth? How can we thrive in times of worldwide change? And more specifically, how can leaders turn a crisis into a business opportunity?

We deserve some respect. You deserve some respect. You are important to other people, as much as to yourself. You have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world. You are, therefore, morally obliged to take care of yourself. You should take care of, help and be good to yourself the same way you would take care of, help and be good to someone you loved and valued. You may therefore have to conduct yourself habitually in a manner that allows you some respect for your own Being—and fair enough. But every person is deeply flawed. Everyone falls short of the glory of God. If that stark fact meant, however, that we had no responsibility to care, for ourselves as much as others, everyone would be brutally punished all the time. That would not be good. That would make the shortcomings of the world, which can make everyone who thinks honestly question the very propriety of the world, worse in every way. That simply cannot be the proper path forward. To treat yourself as if you were someone you are responsible for helping is, instead, to consider what would be truly good for you. This is not “what you want.” It is also not “what would make you happy.” Every time you give a child something sweet, you make that child happy. That does not mean that you should do nothing for children except feed them candy. “Happy” is by no means synonymous with “good.” You must get children to brush their teeth. They must put on their snowsuits when they go outside in the cold, even though they might object strenuously. You must help a child become a virtuous, responsible, awake being, capable of full reciprocity—able to take care of himself and others, and to thrive while doing so. Why would you think it acceptable to do anything less for yourself?

Learning-agile employees constantly seek new challenges at work, take risks and self-reflect from mistakes. They’re obsessed with learning and growth rather than titles and promotions. As a result, they adapt quickly to unfamiliar situations and thrive among chaos and uncertainty, the number one most critical skill in a world changing dramatically from technology. The higher you go in an organization, the more you’ll lead and make decisions in uncertainty. While ordinary careers stutter and plateau in this uncertainty, the learner’s career accelerates. Figure 6.1: The learner’s career path

Books are a gateway. A black hole of endless possibilities. A place where soulmates meet and friendships thrive. A place where villains might prosper and heroes could fall. Here, worlds begin and reality fades. Here, lies imagination.

Some people grow from the chaos because that’s how they survive, and others thrive in it because chaos is all they know.

Sterile environments Unorganized environments Chaos Chaotic events Loud noises Sleep disruption Job stress Ending of a relationship Starting a new relationship Relationship stress Arguing Moving Starting a new career Caffeine Alcohol Drugs Poor diet Lack

The United States thrives off of feigned and factitious disorder. Have you ever wondered why that is?

Thrive in the chaos. Shine in the mess. Rock in the discomfort. Display an insanity of a beyond belief heroism.

All the experts proved what we’ve all known all along. That they are full of shit. They all got it so wrong they needed cover and when they saw something, no matter how asinine, it became gospel to cover their abject failure. Still, the left wouldn’t feel sorry for itself for long. First it picked up the Russian spy story and started pushing it to every devastated reporter who would listen. Then it did everything it had told us the Trump supporters would do if Hillary won. Think about it. For weeks leading up to the election, we had been hearing about all the horrible things Donald Trump would force his supporters to do if he lost. DJT wouldn’t accept the defeat they were all so sure was coming. The editorial boards at the New York Times and the Washington Post both ran many articles warning us about the chaos that was about to ensue. According to popular opinion, Trump supporters were going to riot in the streets, refuse to accept the results of the election, and begin some kind of underground coup against the duly elected president, Hillary Clinton. They would start a second civil war. The streets would become absolute anarchy. And when things didn’t go the way the Democrats had wanted them to go, what happened? Let’s see. They held riots in the streets. (Check.) They refused to accept the results of the election, cooking up one of the strangest spy-movie stories I’ve ever heard in order to maintain their collective delusion. (Check.) Then they formed an underground group of online keyboard warriors called “the Resistance,” dedicated to taking down my father one stupid hashtag at a time. Prominent journalists, liberal activists, and actors have all identified themselves as proud members of “the Resistance” on Twitter. When I’m attacked by an outraged mob online, their voices are usually among the loudest. (And Check.)

More generally, people who are low in conscientiousness are likely to thrive in communities that embrace a broader range of social and cultural practices; these people tend to regard that breadth of acceptable behavior and free expression as a community strength, not a threat. Whereas that might be a great virtue in their eyes, it might seem like chaos to those at the other end of the conscientiousness spectrum.

One might think that when the universe falls to pieces, chaos is inevitable: anarchy, barbarism, and madness would thrive, followed by the destruction of everything meaningful that sentience ever built. And although we know that this has been happening in certain places, something else entirely unexpected transpired as well. The surviving inhabitants of said universe adapted to the situation in a surprisingly swift manner.

[Work] is rearranging the raw material of God’s creation in such a way that it helps the world in general, and people in particular, thrive and flourish. This pattern is found in all kinds of work. Farming takes the physical material of soil and seed and produces food. Music takes the physics of sound and rearranges it into something beautiful and thrilling that brings meaning to life. When we take fabric and make a piece of clothing, when we push a broom and clean up a room, when we use technology to harness the forces of electricity, when we take an unformed, naive human mind and teach it a subject, when we teach a couple how to resolve their relational disputes, when we take simple materials and turn them into a poignant work of art—we are continuing God’s work of forming, filling, and subduing. Whenever we bring order out of chaos, whenever we draw out creative potential, whenever we elaborate and “unfold” creation beyond where it was when we found it, we are following God’s pattern of creative cultural development.

Most of the kids who thrived came from stable, nurturing families attentive to education, while, as research would suggest, those who struggled came from homes with chaos, substance abuse and an indifference to schooling. The Jernstedts farmed grass seed and planted

Rudy Giuliani is always good about making an appearance wherever the action is. He shakes hands, smiles, offers comforting words to the patients and their loved ones. He vows to make the city safer. One thing I’ll say about Rudy, he may be a loose cannon, but he’s always great in a crisis. He can pull it together better than anyone, looking calm, concerned, and strong. He’s got the kind of personality that thrives when surrounded by chaos, naturally making people feel safer.

Nations with allies thrive, those without them die.

You love your kids, after all. If their actions make you dislike them, think what an effect they will have on other people, who care much less about them than you. Those other people will punish them, severely, by omission or commission. Don’t allow that to happen. Better to let your little monsters know what is desirable and what is not, so they become sophisticated denizens of the world outside the family. A child who pays attention, instead of drifting, and can play, and does not whine, and is comical, but not annoying, and is trustworthy—that child will have friends wherever he goes. His teachers will like him, and so will his parents. If he attends politely to adults, he will be attended to, smiled at and happily instructed. He will thrive, in what can so easily be a cold, unforgiving and hostile world.

Finding mindrenders suitable for our lifestyle is near impossible. Not only are you powerful, but you were raised in the dark underbelly of Chaos. You’ve seen enough darkness to survive in our world. To thrive even.

The banker was strong because the railroads were weak, and however much Pierpont deplored railroad instability, he thrived on such chaos.

We’d built our own Temple where we worshipped all forms of chaos, and I was going to thrive in it for the rest of forever with my monsters at my side.

I will give you NOTHING! Shall I tell you what I believe, Thagus?...I believe you are likewise trapped in the storm. I believe the Warp aided your pursuit of us, then cut you adrift in our wake, leaving you becalmed and with no idea why. I believe that the malignant essences we call Gods have brought us together in the heart of this storm to play out a game of kings and pawns, just to see where their favour should fall...I believe, most of all, that you are frightened of us. You fear us because despite your raving speeches that we are betraying the Legions, and despite your petty crusades to destroy us, we not only survive, but THRIVE. We grow with every conflict. The icons of the failed Legions are sheared from ever more suits of armour, and the colours of shame are eclipsed in numbers no other warband can match. You fear that we are right and you are wrong. You fear us, more than any other reason, because you had to chase us. Because we were here first. Because we are the ones on the verge of breaking free, despite all your attempts in these last decades to hinder us. We have been working towards this fate, while you have done nothing but seek to stop us. We've fought for true unity, all brothers beneath the black banner, while you've fought against it in the guise of preserving the old, failed ways. We, Thagus, have acted. You have reacted. And here we stand at our prison's edge. Even now you have no answers to give your men. Instead, you force this meeting with us, praying you can glean insight into our plans and scavenge victory through threats. You'll lose this war, Thagus. You'll lose because you desire the Gods' favour and you fear it falling upon anyone else.

We are yet to comprehend the unexplainable buried deep into the unreachable abysses of our minds. Something—swerving inside—which deprives you of peace even when you feel content with the life you have, something which casts the stormy dark clouds over your existence, something which devours your tranquility like a black hole does to whatever inches towards it. Incessant struggle with the lurking demons makes you realise your powerlessness, coercing you to make peace with the inconspicuous, the unexplainable, the inseparable embed within you. And it gradually thrives enshrouding the purpose of your existence.

Envy knew he was no mere god, he was a Titan. The beings who birthed the gods for their amusement. But mortals had it wrong in their legends - the Titans weren’t bested by their offspring. They thrived in the chaos.

To flourish and thrive, you must truly embrace and energize the concept that your physical vehicle — the body that you occupy — is of inestimable value. You must accept your own worthiness and be willing and able to feel genuine love and appreciation for who you are — this is the essential key for opening the doors of change and attracting the very, very best experiences that life has to offer.

The power of the emperor stopped at nothing. It warped the senses, and it thrived in malevolent chaos.

Failure to make the proper sacrifices, failure to reveal yourself, failure to live and tell the truth—all that weakens you. In that weakened state, you will be unable to thrive in the world, and you will be of no benefit to yourself or to others. You will fail and suffer, stupidly. That will corrupt your soul. How could it be otherwise? Life is hard enough when it is going well. But when it’s going badly? And I have learned through painful experience that nothing is going so badly that it can’t be made worse. This is why Hell is a bottomless pit. This is why Hell is associated with that aforementioned sin. In the most awful of cases, the terrible suffering of unfortunate souls becomes attributable, by their own judgment, to mistakes they made knowingly in the past: acts of betrayal, deception, cruelty, carelessness, cowardice and, most commonly of all, willful blindness. To suffer terribly and to know yourself as the cause: that is Hell. And once in Hell it is very easy to curse Being itself. And no wonder. But it’s not justifiable. And that’s why the King of the Damned is a poor judge of Being.