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A.I.R.RConsciousnessDataset

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At Vicksburg, Grant learned two things. First, persistence and pertinacity were incredible assets and probably his main assets as a leader.

In persistence, he'd not only broken through: In trying it all the wrong ways, Grant discovered a totally new way—the way that would eventually win the war.

And, of course, he eventually found it—proving that genius often really is just persistence in disguise.

As we butt up against obstacles, it is helpful to picture Grant and Edison. Grant with a cigar clenched in his mouth. Edison on his hands and knees in the laboratory for days straight. Both unceasing, embodying cool persistence and the spirit of the line from the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem about that other Ulysses, "to strive, to seek, to find."

The thing standing in your way isn't going anywhere. You're not going to outthink it or outcreate it with some world-changing epiphany. You've got to look at it and the people around you, who have begun their inevitable chorus of doubts and excuses, and say, as Margaret Thatcher famously did: "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning."

Once you start attacking an obstacle, quitting is not an option. It cannot enter your head. Abandoning one path for another that might be more promising? Sure, but that's a far cry from giving up. Once you can envision yourself quitting altogether, you might as well ring the bell. It's done.

Consider this mind-set. never in a hurry never worried never desperate never stopping short Remember and remind yourself of a phrase favored by Epictetus: "persist and resist." Persist in your efforts. Resist giving in to distraction, discouragement, or disorder.

Because when you play all the way to the whistle, there's no reason to worry about the clock. You know you won't stop until it's over—that every second available is yours to use. So temporary setbacks aren't discouraging. They are just bumps along a long road that you intend to travel all the way down.

It's okay to be discouraged. It's not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you've decided to lay siege to in your own life—that's persistence.

In other words: It's supposed to be hard. Your first attempts aren't going to work. It's goings to take a lot out of you—but energy is an asset we can always find more of. It's a renewable resource. Stop looking for an epiphany, and start looking for weak points. Stop looking for angels, and start looking for angles.

When people ask where we are, what we're doing, how that "situation" is coming along, the answer should be clear: We're working on it. We're getting closer. When setbacks come, we respond by working twice as hard.

But it's no joke. Failure really can be an asset if what you're trying to do is improve, learn, or do something new. It's the preceding feature of nearly all successes. There's nothing shameful about being wrong, about changing course. Each time it happens we have new options. Problems become opportunities.

In a world where we increasingly work for ourselves, are responsible for ourselves, it makes sense to view ourselves like a start-up—a start-up of one.

This is why stories of great success are often preceded by epic failure—because the people in them went back to the drawing board. They weren't ashamed to fail, but spurred on, piqued by it.

Even though we know that there are great lessons from failurelessons we've seen with our own two eyes—we repeatedly shrink from it. We do everything we can to avoid it, thinking it's embarrassing or shameful.

Be glad to pay the cost. There will be no better teacher for your career, for your book, for your new venture.

The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Finishing the smallest task you hav

Don't think about the end—think about surviving. Making it from meal to meal, break to break, checkpoint to checkpoint, paycheck to paycheck, one day at a time.

And when you really get it right, even the hardest things become manageable. Because the process is relaxing. Under its influence, we needn't panic. Even mammoth tasks become just a series of component parts.

Envision, for a second, a master practicing an exceedingly difficult craft and making it look effortless. There's no strain, no struggling. So relaxed. No exertion or worry. Just one clean movement after another. That's a result of the process.

When it comes to our actions, disorder and distraction are death. The unordered mind loses track of what's in front of it—what matters —and gets distracted by thoughts of the future.

The process is order, it keeps our perceptions in check and our actions in sync.

Being trapped is just a position, not a fate. You get out of it by addressing and eliminating each part of that position through small, deliberate actions—not by trying (and failing) to push it away with superhuman strength.

How often do we compromise or settle because we feel that the real solution is too ambitious or outside our grasp? How often do we assume that change is impossible because it's too big?

They're brilliant, sure, but they rarely execute. They rarely get where they want and need to go.

We want to have goals, yes, so everything we do can be in the service of something purposeful. When we know what we're really setting out to do, the obstacles that arise tend to seem smaller, more manageable. When we don't, each one looms larger and seems impossible. Goals help put the blips and bumps in proper proportion.

The process is the voice that demands we take responsibility and ownership. That prompts us to act even if only in a small way.

Subordinate strength to the process. Replace fear with the process. Depend on it. Lean on it. Trust in it.

The process is about doing the right things, right now. Not worrying about what might happen later, or the results, or the whole picture.

Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble.

Within just one year of starting at the school he was a professor teaching a full course load in addition to his studies. By his twenty sixth birthday he was the dean.

These men went from humble poverty to power by always doing what they were asked to do—and doing it right and with real pride. And doing it better than anyone else. In fact, doing it well because no one else wanted to do it.

Everything we do matters—whether it's making smoothies while you save up money or studying for the bar—even after you already achieved the success you sought.

Only self-absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires.

Wherever we are, whatever we're doing and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well.

An artist is given many different canvases and commissions in their lifetime, and what matters is that they treat each one as a priority.

Some are prestigious, some are onerous, none are beneath us.

How they each responded to this problem was defined by their company's organization and ethos.

This is *pragmatism* embodied. Don't worry about the "right" way, worry about the *right* way.

We spend a lot of time thinking about how things are supposed to be, or what the rules say we should do. Trying to get it all perfect. We tell ourselves that we'll get started once the conditions are right, or once we're sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it'd be better to focus on making due with what we've got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods.

You've got your mission, whatever it is. To accomplish it, like the rest of us you're in the pinch between the way you wish things were and the way they actually are (which always seem to be a disaster). How far are you willing to go? What are you willing to do about it?

Scratch the complaining. No waffling. No submitting to powerlessness or fear. You can't just run home to Mommy. How are you going to solve this problem? How are you going

Sometimes that requires ignoring some outdated regulations or asking for forgiveness from management later rather than for permission (which would be denied) right now.

But if you've got an important mission, all that matters is that you accomplish it.

With the stakes this high, you better be willing to bend the rules or do something desperate or crazy.

Pragmatism is not so much realism as flexibility.

Think progress, not perfection. Under this kind of force, obstacles break apart. They have no choice. Since you're going around them or making them irrelevant, there is nothing for them to resist.

Instead, do the best with what you've got. Not that pragmatism is inherently at odds with idealism or pushing the ball forward.

Start thinking like a radical pragmatist: still ambitious, aggressive, and rooted in ideals, but also imminently practical and guided by the possible.

In a study of some 30 conflicts comprising more than 280 campaigns from ancient to modern history, the brilliant strategist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart came to a stunning conclusion: In only 6 of the 280 campaigns was the decisive victory a result of a direct attack on the enemy's main army.

From the psychological. From drawing opponents out from their defenses. From the untraditional. From anything but . . .

When you're at your wit's end, straining and straining with all your might, when people tell you you might pop a vein . . .

If we're starting from scratch and the established players have had time to build up their defenses, there is just no way we are going to beat them on their strengths. So it's smarter to not even try, but instead focus our limited resources elsewhere.

Being outnumbered, coming from behind, being low on funds, these don't have to be disadvantages. They can be gifts. Assets that make us less likely to commit suicide with a head-to-head attack.

Kierkegaard would write under pseudonyms, where each fake personality would embody a different platform or perspectivewriting multiple times on the same subject from multiple angles to convey his point emotionally and dramatically.

He would rarely tell the reader "do this" or "think that." Instead he would *show* new ways of looking at or understanding the world.

You aren't just throwing your weight around and hoping it works. You're not wasting your energy in battles driven by ego and pride rather than tactical advantage.

Sometimes you overcome obstacles not by attacking them but by withdrawing and letting them attack you. You can use the actions of others against thems

Weak compared to the forces he hoped to change, Gandhi leaned into that weakness, exaggerated it, exposed himself.

He was provoking them—What are you going to do about it? *There* is nothing wrong with what we're *doing*—knowing that it placed authorities in an impossible dilemma: Enforce a bankrupt policy or abdicate.

Martin Luther King Jr., taking Gandhi's lead, told his followers that they would meet "physical force with soul force."

In the face of violence they would be peaceful, to hate they would answer with love—and in the process, they would expose those attributes as indefensible and evil.

It is, however, time to acknowledge that some adversity might be impossible for you to defeat—no matter how hard you try. Instead, you must find some way to use the adversity, its *energy,* to help yourself.

So instead of fighting obstacles, find a means of making **them** defeat *themselves.*

When we want things too badly we can be our own worst enemy.

In our eagerness, we strip the very screw we want to turn and make it impossible to ever get what we want.

We get so consumed with moving forward that we forget that there are other ways to get where we are heading.

When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance revert at once to yourself and don't lose the rhythm more than you can help. You'll have a better grasp of harmony if you keep going back to it.

As a tennis player, Arthur Ashe was a beautiful contradiction. To survive segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, he learned from his father to mask his emotions and feelings on the court.

All the energy and emotion he had to suppress was channeled into a bold and graceful playing form. While his face was controlled, his body was alive—fluid, brilliant, and all over the court.

And yet we feel like going to pieces when the PowerPoint projector won't work (instead of throwing it aside and delivering an exciting talk without notes). We stir up gossip with our coworkers (instead of pounding something productive out on our keyboards). We act out, instead of *act.*

But think of an athlete "in the pocket," "in the zone," "on a streak," and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that fall in the face of that effortless state. Enormous deficits collapse, every pass or shot hits its intended target, fatigue melts away. Those athletes might be stopped from carrying out this or that action, but not from their goal. External factors influence the path, but not the direction: forward.

To be physically and mentally tight? That's called anxiety. It doesn't work, either. Eventually we snap. But physical looseness combined with mental restraint? That is powerful.

It's a power that drives our opponents and competitors nuts. They think we're toying with them. It's maddening—like we aren't even trying, like we've tuned out the world.

The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged chance, conquered the chance, and made chance the servitor.

If you think it's simply enough to take advantage of the opportunities that arise in your life, you will fall short of greatness. Anyone sentient can do that. What you must do is learn how to press forward precisely when everyone around you sees disaster.

It's at the seemingly bad moments, when people least expect it, that we can act swiftly and unexpectedly to pull off a big victory. While others are arrested by discouragement, we are not. We see the moment differently, and act accordingly.

Ignore the politics and focus on the brilliant strategic advice that Obama's adviser Rahm Emanuel, once gave him. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. [A] crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

You always planned to do something. Write a screenplay. Travel. Start a business. Approach a possible mentor. Launch a movement.

Ordinary people shy away from negative situations, just as they do with failure. They do their best to avoid trouble. What great people do is the opposite. They are their best in these situations. They turn personal tragedy or misfortune—really anything, everything—to their advantage.

Life speeds on the bold and favors the brave.

At certain moments in our brief existences we are faced with great trials. Often those trials are frustrating, unfortunate, or unfair. They seem to come exactly when we think we need them the least.

If you don't *take* that, it's on you. Napoleon described war in simple terms: Two armies are two bodies that clash and attempt to frighten each other. At impact, there is a moment of panic and it is that *moment* that the superior commander turns to his advantage.

Great commanders look for decision points. For it is bursts of energy directed at decisive points that break things wide open. They press and press and press and then, exactly when the situation seems hopeless—or, more likely, hopelessly deadlocked—they press once more.

In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases.

What we can't do is control the world around us—not as much as we'd like to, anyway. We might perceive things well, then act rightly, and fail anyway.

All creativity and dedication aside, after we've tried, *some* obstacles may turn out to be impossible to overcome. Some actions are rendered impossible, some paths impassable. Some things are bigger than us.

He learned to endure all this, articulate it, and find benefit and meaning from it.

His own experience with suffering drove his compassion to allay it in others.

He found purpose and relief in a cause bigger than himself and his personal struggles.

As crafty and ambitious and smart as he was, Lincoln's real strength was his will: the way he was able to resign himself to an onerous task without giving in to hopelessness, the way he could contain both humor and deadly seriousness, the way he could use his own private turmoil to teach and help others, the way he was able to rise above the din and see politics philosophically.

"This too shall pass" was Lincoln's favorite saying, one he once said was applicable in any and every situation one could encounter.

To live with his depression, Lincoln had developed a strong inner fortress that girded him.

Over four years, the war was to become nearly incomprehensibly violent, and Lincoln, who'd attepted at first to prevent it, would fight to win justly, and finally try to end it with "malice towards none."

Clearheadedness and action are not always enough, in politics or in life. Some obstacles are beyond a snap of the fingers or novel solution. It is not always possible for one man to rid the world of a great evil or stop a country bent toward conflict. Of course, we trybecause it can happen. But we should be ready for it not to. And we need to be able to find a greater purpose in this suffering and handle it with firmness and forbearance.

This was Lincoln: always ready with a new idea or innovative approach (whether it was sending a supply boat instead of reinforcements to the troops besieged at Fort Sumter, or timing the Emancipation Proclamation with a Union victory at Antietam to back it with the appearance of strength) but equally prepared for the worst. And then prepared to make the best of the worst.

Leadership requires determination and energy. And certain situations, at times, call on leaders to marshal that determined energy simply to endure. To provide strength in terrible times. Because of what Lincoln had gone through, because of what he'd struggled with and learned to cope with in his own life, he was able to lead. To hold a nation, a cause, an effort, together.

Will is fortitude and wisdom—not just about specific obstacles but about life itself and where the obstacles we are facing fit within it. It gives us ultimate strength.

Schooled in suffering, to quote Virgil, Lincoln learned "to comfort those who suffer too."

Lincoln's words went to the people's hearts because they came from his, because he had access to a part of the human experience that many had walled themselves off from.