*Typing*

It's very difficult to compete with someone who is obsessed. Michael Jordan was obsessed. Serena Williams was obsessed. Steve Jobs was obsessed. Coco Chanel was obsessed. The obsessed are willing to make sacrifices the un-obsessed aren't. They will rise earlier. They will work harder, longer. They will risk more. They will consume knowledge with the unquenchable hunger of a jungle cat. They will annihilate you. You should never compete with the obsessed. Instead, you should find another vocation where you are the obsessed, where you are the rare few.

Philosopher Joseph Campbell tells the story of a samurai who chose not to kill while he was angry. It was the Japanese warrior's duty to avenge the death of his overlord. He tracked down the murderer. He cornered him. He was moments away from cutting him down, when the murderer spat in his face.

Feeling himself overwhelmed with rage, the samurai sheathed his sword, turned around and walked away. If the samurai would have killed the murderer while he was angry, he would have acted out of hatred rather than honor.

But, instead he followed the Samurai credo of non-reaction. He suspended action until he could respond rather than react.

Prior to farming and animal domestication, people did not specialize. They couldn't. To survive, they had to hunt, gather and forage for themselves and their family. This required both generalized knowledge and an extraordinary amount of time and energy.

It wasn't until humans began farming and domesticating animals that a single person was able to produce food for hundreds of other people. This allowed those who weren't doing the farming to focus their attention elsewhere. With time, this led to specialization in subjects like medicine, war, art, construction and so on.

The farmer allows the doctor to doctor. The doctor allows the accountant to account. The accountant allows the builder to build. If you want to create tremendous value within an organization, specialize. Specialization spawns specialization.

It's better to like yourself than to be liked by others.

No. They aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. However, the need to be liked by others can often lead to us making short-term decisions that are rarely in our long-term best interest. We might say things we don't mean. We might bite our tongues when we'd normally speak up. We might behave in ways that don't align with who we are. We might compromise in areas we normally wouldn't compromise in.

With time, these short-term decisions may lead to others liking who we are. But, rarely do they leave us liking who we are. External validation is a form of immediate gratification, which is to say it is a form of pleasure. Pleasure, unchecked, compounds into self-loathing. The reckless pursuit of pleasure is a trait that makes for bad partners and weak leaders.

If you want to like yourself, you must resist the pleasure of being liked by others.

When opportunities feel scarce, we place an unhealthy expectation on each one that comes our way. This not only takes us out of the present moment. It actually pushes the opportunities away. The Buddhists call this grasping or clinging. They believe it's the root of all suffering. I prefer to call it white knuckling. Think of it like attempting to catch a butterfly. If you chase a butterfly, you will not catch it. You will frighten it away. However, if you sit still and be patient, the butterfly might just land on you. It's easy to be patient in a butterfly garden where there are dozens and dozens fluttering around you. It's harder when you look around and see just one. When there is just one, behave as if there are many. You can't white knuckle a butterfly.