I got this list from entrepreneur and business author Harvey Mackay’s book “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty.” (If you click on the name of the book, you can see a portion of the book from Amazon) In the book, he gives credit to Armond Bouchie for using this list in his job application portfolio.
If we had to live with 99% effort, we would have:
One hour of unsafe drinking water every month,
Two unsafe plane landings per day at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport,
16,000 pieces of lost mail every hour,
22 checks deducted from the wrong bank account every week,
500 incorrect surgical operations every week,
12 babies given to the wrong parents every day,
20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions each year, and
800,000 credit cards with incorrect information.
A 100% effort makes sense.
This next portion of the post contains some of my takeaways from Texas A&M Women’s Assistant Bob Starkey’s Coaching Blog Hoop Thoughts Blog
Mitch Cole
Some educational researchers have defined GRIT as “passion and perseverance to achieve long term goals”. When struggles come, do you get more DEJECTED or more DETERMINED?
Studies have shown that the attribute of GRIT, is one of the most powerful indicators of success. The most GRITTY people usually succeed on and off the playing field or court.
Teams can become selfish during good times and turn on each other during tough times. Teams that stay together can resist the temptation to be selfish, can withstand tough times, and even conquer insurmountable odds.
Most people can appreciate a team or athletes that refuse to give up no matter what the circumstance. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from difficulty and in some cases, be better than before. This can happen when the other team goes on a run and things look most bleak, or even within a season. Teams that “Fight” and show tremendous Resilience over and over again have the best chance for sustained success.
When winners get knocked down, they get up, champions get up a little faster.
“Being relentless means constantly working for that result, not just when drama is on the line. Clutch is about the last minute. Relentless is about every minute.” -Tim Grover From “Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable”
U of Penn Duckworth Lab study found that “grit” (passion & perseverance for long-term goals) is best predictor of success. “Grit is unrelated w/ talent.”
The Duckworth Lab focuses on two traits that predict success in life: grit and self-control. Grit is the tendency to sustain interest in and effort toward very long-term goals. Self-control is the voluntary regulation of behavioral, emotional, and attentional impulses in the presence of momentarily gratifying temptations or diversions. On average, individuals who are gritty are more self-controlled, but the correlation between these two traits is not perfect: some individuals are paragons of grit but not self-control, and some exceptionally well-regulated individuals are not especially gritty. While we haven’t fully worked out how these two traits are related, it seems that an important distinction has to do with timescale: As Galton suggested, the inclination to pursue especially challenging aims over months, years, and even decades is distinct from the capacity to resist “the hourly temptations,” pursuits which bring momentary pleasure but are immediately regretted.
In terms of Big Five personality, grit and self-control both load on the conscientiousness factor, which also encompasses dependability, punctuality, and orderliness, among other facets.
Some educators typically prefer the umbrella term “social and emotional learning,” whereas many other educators, as well as philosophers and positive psychologists, embrace the moral connotations of “character” and “virtue.” So, grit and self-control are facets of Big Five conscientiousness, but are also conceptualized as dimensions of human character, social and emotional competency, and non-cognitive human capital.
For another angle on the importance of a 100% effort, click on the image below for a very inspirational video:
think you are really going to like this video that shows us that there is not a lot of physical difference between top performers and also rans. The big difference is in their mental strength and persistence! Click on the icon to see the video.
Plato said that all philosophy begins with wonder. Wonder, to Plato, was that impulse that probed, investigated, and sought out explanations. Give a toy to a little boy and in moments it is broken because he has opened it up to see what makes it whir or tick or chime or speak. It is our hidden Narnia, into which we long to step and explore. It is the rotating musical merry-go-round that entrances the child. It is the sight of a jet plane or a rocket surging into the skies and the marvel, if only for a moment, at such design and power and beauty. It is also the touch of a hand that makes you wish that time would stand still, the musical score that grips the soul.
Yet it was Francis Bacon who ruefully observed that though it may be true that all philosophy begins with wonder, it is also true that wonder dies with knowledge. Explanation is the termination point of mystery, analysis the death-knell of curiosity. The parts are greater than the whole when you are in pursuit, but they become lesser than the whole when it is no longer a mystery and the toy no longer enchants.
Indeed, most of us can go back to a time in our lives when dreams of a life filled with wonder throbbed within our souls. In fact, that very stage of dreaming finds its own fulfillment in a marvelous disposition we call hope. But time has led us also to believe that Bacon does have a point. Is it not because of the delight of anticipation that all children love Christmas Eve even more than they love Christmas Day? Is it not because the fulfillment of his longings is just moments away that a youngster, though thoroughly fatigued, will deny sleep and fight to keep his eyes open? But then comes the day after Christmas and reality strikes. The longing is now gone and everything that spelled wonder is being packed up in a box. Does unwrapping the gift take away from the gift? Why is the exhausting pursuit of the human heart for contentment so convoluted? Why does the enchantment that we long for seem so elusive and almost scandalously complex?
I believe G.K Chesterton was absolutely right when he astutely observed that the older one gets, the more it takes to fill the heart with wonder—and only God is big enough for that.
Perhaps President Theodore Roosevelt understood this, for he had an interesting routine habit, almost a ritual. Every now and then, along with the naturalist William Beebe, he would step outside at dark, look into the night sky, find the faint spot of light at the lower left-hand corner of Pegasus, and one of them would recite: “That is the Spiral Galaxy of Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It is seven hundred and fifty thousand light years away. It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our own sun.” There would be a pause and then Roosevelt would grin and say, “Now I think we feel small enough! Let’s go to bed.”
Is this not the point of Psalm 8, when the psalmist utters: “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens…. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers … what is man that you are mindful of him? …You made him ruler over the works of your hands.”
When I ponder the wonder that is around us and see the vastness of its splendor, I also remember what the poet John Donne said: “There is nothing that God hath established in the constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once.” Donne is making the same point that God made in the Book of Job, when He asks Job if he knows the mystery of how a bird homes in on its flight. It is what Jesus was saying in Matthew 6:26–30: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? See how the lilies of the field grow…. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field … will he not much more clothe you?” Will not this God of wonder, who has arrayed the creatures of this world with such inspiring traits, fill us with his own sustenance and inspiration?
What is wonder? Wonder is that possession of the mind that enchants the emotions while never surrendering reason. It is a grasp on reality that does not need constant high points in order to be maintained, nor is it made vulnerable by the low points of life’s struggle. It sees in the ordinary the extraordinary, and it finds in the extraordinary the reaffirmations for what it already knows. Wonder interprets life through the eyes of eternity while enjoying the moment, but never lets the momentary vision exhaust the eternal. Wonder knows how to read the shadows because it knows the nature of light. Wonder knows that while you cannot look at the light you cannot look at anything else without it. It is a journey like a walk through the woods, over the usual obstacles and around the common distractions while the voice of direction leads, saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it” (Isaiah 30:21). It is not at all surprising that of the seventy usages of the word “wonder” in the Old Testament nearly half of them are by David, the sweet singer of Israel. Wonder and music go hand in hand. Wonder cannot help but sing. Even nature recognizes that.
There is wonder all around us, and it is God’s desire to fill us with that wonder that makes life enchanting and sacred. We cannot help but sing when that happens. Maybe that is why of all the religions in the world, there is none with the wealth of music that the Christian faith offers. We sing because His name is “Wonderful.”
God is like the light. Wonder is like the shadow. If you chase the shadow you will never catch up to it. It might even disappear. If you walk toward the light, the shadow will always pursue you. That is when the heart sings with gladness, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:6).
Hwin said it looked to her as if the safest thing was to go right through the city itself from gate to gate because one was less likely to be noticed in the crowd. But she approved of the idea of disguise as well. She said, “Both the humans will have to dress in rags and look like peasants or slaves. And all Aravis’s armor and our saddles and things must be made into bundles and put on our backs, and the children must pretend to drive us and people will think we’re only pack-horses.”
“My dear Hwin!” said Aravis rather scornfully. “As if anyone could mistake Bree for anything but a war horse however you disguised him!”
“I should think not, indeed,” said Bree, snorting and letting his ears go ever so little back.
“I know it’s not a very good plan,” said Hwin. “But I think it’s our only chance. And we haven’t been groomed for ages and we’re not looking quite ourselves (at least, I’m sure I’m not). I do think if we get well plastered with mud and go along with our heads down as if we’re tired and lazy— and don’t lift our hoofs hardly at all—we might not be noticed. And our tails ought to be cut shorter: not neatly, you know, but all ragged.”
“My dear Madam,” said Bree. “Have you pictured to yourself how very disagreeable it would be to arrive in Narnia in that condition?”
“Well,” said Hwin humbly (she was a very sensible mare), “the main thing is to get there.”
From The Horse and His Boy
Compiled in A Year with Aslan
The Horse and His Boy. Copyright © 1954 by C. S. Lewis Pte., Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1982 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With Aslan: Daily Reflections from The Chronicles of Narnia. Copyright © 2010 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Extracts taken from The Chronicles of Narnia. Copyright © C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. 1950-1956. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
On goodness
There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It’s not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels. The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.
From The Great Divorce
Traditional doctrine points to a sin against God, an act of disobedience, not a sin against the neighbour. And certainly, if we are to hold the doctrine of the Fall in any real sense, we must look for the great sin on a deeper and more timeless level than that of social morality.
It's easier to look at society's ills and avoid introspection into our own hearts. Sin is personal and public; our sin contributes to the "ills of society"
This sin has been described by Saint Augustine as the result of Pride, of the movement whereby a creature (that is, an essentially dependent being whose principle of existence lies not in itself but in another) tries to set up on its own, to exist for itself.
Without introspection, we begin to believe we exist for ourselves and our pleasure alone.
Such a sin requires no complex social conditions, no extended experience, no great intellectual development.
Sinning takes no talent. Only tremendous lack of willpower.
From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the centre is opened to it.
The crisis of belief.
This sin is committed daily by young children and ignorant peasants as well as by sophisticated persons, by solitaries no less than by those who live in society: it is the fall in every individual life, and in each day of each individual life, the basic sin behind all particular sins: at this very moment you and I are either committing it, or about to commit it, or repenting it.
From The Problem of Pain
"What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?"The Judean society believed in a messianic Son of David, so this question cut right to the heart of a belief deeply and passionately held by the scribes. The Psalms were considered highly prophetic and Jesus uses Psalm 110:1 to further deepen the chasm between himself and the religious leaders.
"Hurrah! Hurrah!” said Corin. “I shan’t have to be King. I shan’t have to be King. I’ll always be a prince. It’s princes have all the fun.”
“And that’s truer than thy brother knows, Cor,” said King Lune. “For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there’s hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.”
I love the simplicity of the line, "to be the first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat".
Many want the adulation and power which comes with positions of rank. With that rank comes the responsibility I'm afraid many in those very positions have forgotten. Serving, Protecting, and taking the hit when things go wrong, giving credit beyond ones own domain.
A single plastic lawn chair sits small and unbefitting in the jungle of massive concrete pillars Atlantans know as Spaghetti Junction. A tangled intersection of two major interstates and its deluge of exits, onramps, over- and underpasses, Spaghetti Junction is a colossal picture of ordered chaos, the arteries and veins of a massive, active organism. To say the least, the small chair positioned to sit and watch from the side of the road, its matching side table suggesting space for a cup of tea, is incongruous of the congested, noxious web of concrete and frustrated motorists. Spaghetti Junction is far from relaxing, and people who sit still on Atlanta highways sit with enormous risk.
As I drove, I was immediately struck by the ridiculousness of the chair from the perspective of a driver. Who would sit in the middle of a knotted mess of highways? But as I sat in my car, barely inching forward, with a scowl on my face as I watched the car in front of me trying to cut off the merging motorist in front of him, it occurred to me how ridiculous I must have looked from the perspective of the chair. Taking in the soaring overpasses and congested ramps of an anxious world always on the move is perhaps to see some of the absurdity in our distracted lives.
One could say that King Solomon spoke as if a man sitting in a chair under Spaghetti Junction: “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity”(1) It was from such a perspective that Solomon concluded wisely, “I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. God has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end”(2)
Every so often in our busy lives there comes a moment of heightened perspective. Life is grasped in a way that usually goes unnoticed. What is usually unseen becomes jarringly visible. Such moments, if helpful, even beautiful, are disruptive when they come, and we often seem to position our lives so that they will not come. I had never looked at Spaghetti Junction through the eyes of a still and silent observer; I had never considered the absurdity of my own frantic scurrying to get nowhere on that tangled patch of highway. But I have seen it habitually as an impatient motorist inching along without seeing much at all. “Look at the birds,” theologian Miroslav Volf writes, quoting the invocation of Jesus, “our lives are more like the frantic scurrying of rats and disciplined marching of ants than the joyous singing of birds.”(3)
Along the daily roadways of life and labor, the workings of a creative Spirit, a storytelling Father, or a sorrowing Son are easy to overlook. It is with good reason that Karl Barth refers to this God as “wholly Other.” And it is no wonder that we have been given the command to be still and know who God is. How else would we learn to see?
Other times, we are something more like bystanders in God’s decision to jarringly appear. When Jacob fell asleep at Bethel, he had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. Above the ladder stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac… I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.”(4) Waking from his sleep, Jacob exclaimed, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it. How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven”(5)
Each time I imagine this story, I am struck by the image of a world where there are windows and gates to heaven. There are places where heaven and earth meet at great crossroads, moments when we are given opportunities to see things both beyond and in front of us, to see things as they really are. Perhaps the intersection between heaven and earth is a far busier place than we usually know. Like Spaghetti Junction, it is full of activity we must stop and strain to see lest we speed past unknowingly or inch along without a care. Sometimes, like Jacob stirred to reality, we discover that God was there all along, though we were not aware of it. Other reminders of the Wholly Other come less boldly and with greater responsibility: a conviction in the heart, an answer to prayer, the gift of the suffering Son in the midst of pain. What if the LORD is in this place? This very place is none other than the house of God, the day filled with the windows of heaven.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) Ecclesiastes 2:22-23.
(2) Ecclesiastes 3:10-11).
(3) Miroslav Volf, (MiroslavVolf). 14 Mar. 2016, 2:46 p.m. Tweet.
(4) Genesis 28:13-15.
(5) Genesis 28:16-17.
The cross may seem an extreme and offensive measure to the problem of sin and death and sickness—but what if it is the very cure that is needed? McGrath describes our options at the cross of Christ. “Either God is not present at all in this situation, or else God is present in a remarkable and paradoxical way. To affirm that God is indeed present in this situation is to close the door to one way of thinking about God and to open the way to another—for the cross marks the end of a particular way of thinking about God.” Shockingly, thoroughly, scandalously, the cross depicts a God who throws himself upon sin and sickness to bring the hope of rescue miraculously near.
Some find it shocking, some overwhelming, some almost too good to be true. It is, however, for all.
Screwtape examines the virtue of Humility:
Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, ‘By jove! I’m being humble’, and almost immediately pride—pride at his own humility—will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages as you please. But don’t try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.
But there are other profitable ways of fixing his attention on the virtue of Humility. By this virtue, as by all the others, our Enemy wants to turn the man’s attention away from self to Him, and to the man’s neighbours. All the abjection and self-hatred are designed, in the long run, solely for this end; unless they attain this end they do us little harm; and they may even do us good if they keep the man concerned with himself, and, above all, if self-contempt can be made the starting point for contempt of other selves, and thus for gloom, cynicism, and cruelty.
