Building mental fitness is akin to being an elite athlete. It's not enough for the athletes just to have great technical skills, they need to be equally mentally prepared also.
— Jody Michael“Disruption is treated as an event, and it is a constant and that is the interesting sort of fallacy. As humans we want this state of consistency but if we are taking it as a hypothesis, we are constantly being disrupted, constantly changing and the groundwork we are standing on is shifting all the time.”— Perry Klebahn
The quote archive
Leadership
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
You are unwittingly making your leadership and life harder and more painful than it needs to be. Even worse is individuals have no understanding or self-awareness that they are doing this.
— Jody MichaelUnfortunately, by my definition, many leaders are mentally unfit, because they spend most of their day in negative emotional states and they're usually not consciously aware of it, because they're externally focused.
— Jody MichaelMy actual definition to describe mental fitness is your ability to remain in a neutral to positive state for most of your day, regardless of what the day is throwing at you and that is not the state people are in nowadays.
— Jody MichaelOne of the simplest but hardest things to do is to be honest with ourselves. We are works-in-progress from the day we're born, till the day we die. You should never, ever, stop working on yourself.
— Ant MiddletonSpecial Forces: World's Toughest Test Host & Former SAS Soldier
I look at life as a game rather than as success and failure. For most people, failure is a dirty word... they avoid anything to do with failure, they won't go anywhere near it. It stops them trying – stops them committing – stops them experimenting.
— Ant MiddletonSpecial Forces: World's Toughest Test Host & Former SAS Soldier
Alibaba's vision statement includes a mention of how long it wants to last, and that is specifically 102 years. Jack Ma wanted Alibaba to be the only internet company that spanned three centuries.
— Brian A. WongJack said, 'Well, what do you know about PayPal?' – his response, 'I don't know anything about PayPal'. Jack then said, 'Okay, you're hired, we want you to be the CEO of Ali Pay!'
— Brian A. WongJack Ma encouraged the entire company to practice and learn Tai Chi in their free time, it is a practice that allows one to embrace the seeming contradictions in the world, and in business. Let me give you some examples – how do you become a profitable business while also doing good for society?
— Brian A. WongOn a personal level, the best defense against materialism and greed is to give money away. You need to be charitable, engage in philanthropy.
— Mike EvansNFL Wide Receiver for Tampa Bay Buccaneers & Super Bowl Champion
When your business becomes a unicorn and heads for the stratosphere, there's a temptation to slide into the primary activity of the business being turning capital, and so customer focus can get lost. Once you stop putting customer first, the competition will destroy you.
— Mike EvansNFL Wide Receiver for Tampa Bay Buccaneers & Super Bowl Champion
The only real competitive advantage that's durable is cost and innovation – as long as innovation happens along the trajectory that takes into account stakeholders, not just shareholders.
— Mike EvansNFL Wide Receiver for Tampa Bay Buccaneers & Super Bowl Champion
All we can control in this life is our dedication, our self-belief, our determination. I can guarantee you, I will always have that, and that's my legacy. That's what I want to leave as a gift to my kids – the message that they should never give up, never have regrets, to give everything.
— Francis NgannouFormer UFC Heavyweight Champion & Mixed Martial Arts Pioneer
If you fail many times in life, it can be frustrating, but, if you look differently at that, you can see that if you fail many times, you get up many times. If you didn't get up after the first fall, you could never have fought. Failure just means you got knocked down.
— Francis NgannouFormer UFC Heavyweight Champion & Mixed Martial Arts Pioneer
I've sat in front of the chief ideologue in the Moscow Kremlin, and I remember him saying to us in so many words, that 'you cannot govern Russia unless you have a one-party state: Our job in the Kremlin here and now, is not to recreate the communist party, but it's to recreate the one party which will be the natural choice'.
— Simon SmithYou should never place your value as a human being on results. You don't control the results of the game – people get lucky or go bankrupt. Also, what happens when you achieve your result? What long-term satisfaction does that bring you?
— Marshall GoldsmithWorld's Most Cited Executive Coach & Leadership Development Expert