@CoachSBrady
The secret is there is no secret.View quoted post on X
No hacks.
No shortcuts.
No silver bullets.
Life is complex and full of nuance.
The road to excellence is long and windy.
Focus on fundamentals not fads.
Strive for progress not perfection.
Surround yourself with good people along the way.
improvisedlife.com Seinfeld and Obama "On Falling in Love with the Work" - Improvised Life During the Improvised Life's recent extended technology fail, Editor-at-Large David Saltman insisted I watch Jerry Seinfeld's interview of Barack Obama in In 1997, at the age of 27, Matt Damon won his first Academy Award for Best Screenplay ("Good Will Hunting").
After Damon won the Oscar, he went home, sat down on his sofa, & looked at the award.
As he looked at it, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a heartbreaking thought.
"Imagine chasing that, and not getting it, and getting it finally in your 80s or your 90s with all of life behind you and realizing what an unbelievable waste of your life...It can't fill you up. If that's a hole that you have, that won't fill it."
"My heart broke," Damon said. "I imagined another one of me [not getting that award until I was] an old man, and going like, 'oh my god. where did my life go? What have I done?' And then it's over."
Takeaway 1:
Many successful, rich, famous, etc. people talk about chasing success, money, fame, etc., getting it, and realizing that it didn't feel like they thought it would. That it didn't, as Damon said, fill the hole they had.
One of my favorite analogies for this pattern comes from Sam Hinkie.
Hinkie was asked about what he's learned from reading Robert Caro's books—about some very successful, rich, famous, etc. people.
"I think of it like the Pacific Salmon," Hinkie said. "They spend their whole life making this journey upstream to spawn in this one spot. And as soon as they do, they die. That's largely what Caro shows you."
Takeaway 2:
Before he was a big-time comedian, Hasan Minhaj was asked if he thought he was going to become a big-time comedian.
“I don’t like that question,” he said. “I fundamentally don’t like that question.”
Because that question implies that he is only doing comedy as a means to some end (success, money, fame, etc.).
“No, no, no,” he said, “The set I get to do tonight at 7:20 PM is the win. I get to do comedy—I won. It being predicated on doing X or being bigger than Y—no, no, no. To me, it’s always just been about the work."
"The work is the win," as Ryan Holiday once told me.
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"It's such a gift to be able to [do] something and to love it for the sake of it...I see people with talent, with all those things. But the one thing they don't have is just that love for doing it for the sake of it...So if there's anything, just find joy in what you do for the sake of it." — Rodney Mullen
Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!View quoted post on X
Your culture comes down to one word: “People”View quoted post on X
The kind of culture you get is a result of the type of character you hire.
Your people are your #culture.
“People were TERRIFIED of us.” 😤
The 2000 Ravens, dominant and endlessly entertaining, will have their story told in the @30for30 “Bullies of Baltimore.”
Sunday at 8:30 PM ET on ESPN 🍿View quoted post on X
