The Win Within: Capturing Your Victorious Spirit [Book]
Book Overview: As an orthopedic surgeon, a finish-line physician, and a USA team doctor at the World Cup and the Olympics, Dr. Bert Mandelbaum has witnessed the trials and triumphs of elite athletes from a vantage point few of us get. And over his twenty-plus years of experience, he’s identified a common character trait that every elite athlete relies upon for success: it’s what he calls the ”victorious spirit.” In The Win Within, Mandelbaum reveals that any of us–no matter our age or physical condition–can capture that same spirit in our own lives. This inner drive to win resides in all of us, he argues, hardwired into our DNA by ancestry dating back millions of years. You’ll learn how to view life the way a top-performing athlete does: relentlessly, tenaciously, positively, and focusing less on the finish line of the marathon and more on the 26.2 miles that precede it. With narrative support ranging from the lessons of our early ancestors to Mandelbaum’s stories of our modern-day gladiators (both household name and lesser known), The Win Within will give you a greater understanding of how and why we’re all hardwired to win–and you’ll come away with no shortage of tactics and motivation to capture your own victorious spirit.
“There’s a phrase out there that says, ‘Sometimes you win. Sometimes you learn.’ I can’t stand that phrase. And the reason I can’t stand that phrase is because it implies two things. It implies that you can’t learn from winning. Like you win or you learn? No, you can learn a lot from winning. Success leaves clues. What it also implies, losing is some word that no one says of, ‘Oh, I didn’t lose. I learned.’ No, you lost. Own it. You lost, you got beat today, and that’s life you’re going to lose sometimes. And instead of flowering it up and saying, “No, no, I didn’t lose. I just ran out of time. I didn’t lose.” No, you lost.”
Justin Su’a, via Farnam Street Blog
“What’s the point of winning at sports but losing in the effort to be a good husband, wife, father, mother, son, or daughter? Let’s not confuse getting better at stuff with being a better person. One is a much bigger priority than the other.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 315)
“Competition is for losers.”
Peter Thiel, Medium
“The agony of defeat is as low as the joy of winning is high. However, they’re the exact same to me. I’m at the gym at the same time after losing 50 games as I am after winning a championship. It doesn’t change for me.”
Kobe Bryant, Mamba Mentality (Page 195)
Seth Godin Quote on Facing Failure So That You Can Keep Playing (and Win)
“If I fail more than you do, I win. Built into this notion is the ability to keep playing. If you get to keep playing, sooner or later you’re gonna make it succeed. The people who lose are the ones who don’t fail at all, or the ones who fail so big they don’t get to play again.”
Seth Godin
Beyond the Quote (121/365)
If you try and you fail—and you quit—you lose. If you try and you fail—and you adjust and try again—you win. The ultimate failure in life isn’t the failures we inevitably stumble upon from our trials, it’s the failure to not try (or to stop trying) at all. Without trial in life, you defer to passivity. You choose to watch rather than play. And while it’s fun to watch sometimes, playing is where all of the magic happens. Playing is the active process of interacting with your surroundings in a way that allows you to learn. When you try, your whole being makes an incalculable number of adjustments and improvements so that you can better play moving forward. You just can’t do that from the sideline.
Read More »Seth Godin Quote on Facing Failure So That You Can Keep Playing (and Win)Vince Lombardi Quote on How Winners Never Quit—And Why I Disagree
“Winners never quit and quitters never win.” ~ Vince Lombardi
Beyond the Quote (70/365)
I disagree. In fact, I believe that winners actually quit more than those who lose. The difference is that they know what to quit, when to quit, how to quit, and have the courage and discipline to do so. Of course, Lombardi is likely referring to the idea that winners never quit in pursuit of their primary goal(s) in life and those who do quit in pursuit of their primary goal(s) will never win at them—this might be obvious.
Read More »Vince Lombardi Quote on How Winners Never Quit—And Why I Disagree“Every Olympian wants to win a gold medal. Every candidate wants to get the job. And if successful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers. It wasn’t the goal of winning the Tour de France that propelled the British cyclists to the top of the sport. Presumably, they had wanted to win the race every year before—just like every other professional team. The goal had always been there. It was only when they implemented a system of continuous small improvements that they achieved a different outcome.” ~ James Clear, Atomic Habits
“Anticipation is the ultimate power. Losers react; leaders anticipate.” ~ Tony Robbins, Money: Master the Game
“For me the joy of athletics has never resided in winning. I derive just as much happiness from the process as from the results. I don’t mind losing as long as I see improvement or I feel I’ve done as well as I possibly could. If I lose, I just go back to the track and work some more.” ~ Jackie Joyner-Kersee
“John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, says you aren’t a failure until you start to blame. What he means is that you can still be in the process of learning from your mistakes until you deny them.” ~ Carol Dweck, Mindset
The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery [Book]
Book Overview: It is one of the enduring enigmas of the human experience: many of our most iconic, creative endeavors from Nobel Prize winning discoveries to entrepreneurial inventions and works in the arts are not achievements but conversions, corrections after failed attempts. The Rise explores the inestimable value of often ignored ideas the power of surrender for fortitude, the criticality of play for innovation, the propulsion of the near win on the road to mastery, and the importance of grit and creative practice. From an uncommonly insightful writer, The Rise is a true masterwork.
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“Failure inspires winners. And failure defeats losers. It is the biggest secret of winners. It’s the secret that loser do not know. The greatest secret of winners is that failure inspires winning; thus, they’re not afraid of losing.”
Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad (Page 182)