Monday, December 8, 2014

Single-mindedness, faith, and failure

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/sto0bio-1
"This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."

-Jim Stockdale, quoted by Jim Collins in Good to Great

That kind of perseverance and faith is tough sometimes, when every step seems like you're trudging through knee-deep mud. But I know that's where dogged determination comes in--that indifference to myself, and that single-minded focus on a goal that I'm shooting for. That's the level 5 leadership I'm after.

After all, I'm not after "success" in terms of approval, or ego boosts, or credit (at least I don't want to be). I'm after something much bigger. Harry Truman said, "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." And we could expand on that: It's amazing what you can accomplish if you're not focusing on yourself. & It's amazing what you get when you're not focused on yourself.

Of course there will be resistance. Of course there will be setbacks... and failures. But as Michael Jordan said in his awesome commercial:

"I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
 So let's keep going.

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