“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.” — Epictetus

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✍️ Articles

Ray Dalio: The Reflections that Came to Me on Christmas Day: Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, wrote about some reflections he had on Christmas day.

“it is especially important that we don’t lose sight of what the most important timeless and universal principles and actions we can take are—and that we understand that our well-being hinges more on how we are with each other than anything else.”

Resilience is overrated: Unlock the real secret to business longevity: This is a written Q&A with Andrew Markell, who’s trained some of the world’s most accomplished investors, entrepreneurs, special forces veterans, and CEOs in the same practice — how to find clarity and composure amid uncertainty.

“The most enduring systems — biological, social, or economic — don’t revert. They evolve. Resilience is static. It’s about homeostasis. Evolution is dynamic. It’s driven by dissonance, by collapse, by moments of rupture that force entirely new structures of being to emerge.”

💭 Miscellaneous

Optimism matters (source):

Our results further suggest that optimism is specifically related to 11 to 15% longer life span, on average, and to greater odds of achieving “exceptional longevity,” that is, living to the age of 85 or beyond. These relations were independent of socioeconomic status, health conditions, depression, social integration, and health behaviors (e.g., smoking, diet, and alcohol use).

Nick Saban on Psychological Disposition

“Everybody who goes to medical school is smart, but not everyone makes it through, and some who make it through don’t make good doctors. It’s the same with athletes.

Some of them have great talent, but they don’t have the right psychological disposition. They don’t have the right focus on paying attention to detail, and when people are process-oriented, they need to find this is what I want and this is what I need to do to do it, and then they have the discipline to execute. That’s when you get a talented player who becomes a great player.”

📺 Video

Tom Izzo: Discipline is the greatest form of love (9 minutes)

Coach Izzo explains his coaching philosophies pertaining to accountability, confrontation, discipline, the transfer portal and even his own self evaluations. He explains the value of time spent and the intricacies of determining when and how to call a player out, when necessary.

“We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think.” — Antonio Damasio

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✍️ Articles

What NFL head coaches learn from the tough lessons of their top assistants: Jordan Rodrigue looks at how a new wave of NFL head coaches — often young, offensive-minded leaders — are leaning on former head coaches like Brandon Staley, Matt Eberflus, and Robert Saleh to bring wisdom, humility, and balance to their staffs.

“There’s that saying, ‘you don’t need to be old to be wise, but you can’t have wisdom without experience,’ and I think that really applies to me.”

Navy SEALs use this mindfulness technique to combat everyday stress: Andrea Rogers explains how deliberate breathing techniques can override fight-or-flight responses and support mental resilience.

💭 Miscellaneous

Jeff Bezos - Regret Minimization Framework

Before he decided to start Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos had a secure and well-paid position at an investment company in New York. Starting an online bookstore in Seattle was going to be a big leap — something that his boss (that’s D. E. Shaw) advised him to think about carefully.

Says Bezos: “The framework I found, which made the decision incredibly easy, was what I called — which only a nerd would call — a “regret minimization framework.” So I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.” I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision.”

Naval on Happiness (source):

“Happiness is a choice you make and a skill you develop. The mind is just as malleable as the body. We spend so much time and effort trying to change the external world, other people, and our own bodies, all the while accepting ourselves the way we were programmed in our youths. We accept the voice that talks to us in our head all the time as the source of all truth. But all of it is malleable, every day is new, and memory and identity are burdens from the past that prevent us from living freely in the present.”

Ex-NBA Player John Amaechi (source):

COWEN: Of NBA players as a whole, what percentage do you think truly love the game?

AMAECHI: It’s a hard question to answer. Well, let me give a number first, otherwise, it’s just frustrating. 40%. And a further 30% like the game, and 20% of them are really good at the game and they have other things they want to do with the opportunities that playing well in the NBA grants them.

But make no mistake, even that 30% that likes the game and the 40% that love the game, they also know that they like what the game can give them and the opportunities that can grow for them, their families and generation, they can make a generational change in their family’s life and opportunities. It’s not just about love. Love doesn’t make you good at something. And this is a mistake that people make all the time. Loving something doesn’t make you better, it just makes the hard stuff easier.

“Circumstances don’t make the man, they only reveal him to himself.” — Epictetus

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✍️ Articles

Scottie Scheffler raised questions about happiness and fulfillment. This professor has answers: Rustin Dodd explores Scottie Scheffler’s honest admission that success hasn’t delivered lasting fulfillment, unpacking the “arrival fallacy” with Harvard’s Arthur Brooks — why high achievers often feel empty after reaching their goals, how to transition from striving to meaning, and what actually leads to happiness beyond performance or wealth.

“There’s a lot of people that make it to what they thought was going to fulfill them in life, and you get there, you get to No. 1 in the world, and they’re like, what’s the point?” Scheffler said. “I really do believe that. Because what is the point? Why do I want to win this tournament so bad? That’s something that I wrestle with on a daily basis. (Golf) is one of the greatest joys of my life, but does it fill the deepest wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not.”

Mike Shildt left Padres, ‘made a decision to go home’ in part due to ‘inability to please everyone’: Kevin Acee details Mike Shildt’s burnout, leadership style, and the complicated truth behind his decision to step down as Padres manager.

“I acknowledge and won’t apologize for having high standards,” Shildt said. “I own that. I had to have hard conversations with players and staff. And of 80 people in a clubhouse, a high percentage of those, I was able to partner with and work toward a common goal. And clearly that was effective, as reflected by our record on the field. There are going to be people who are going to push back and you’re not going to please. And after trying to partner with people, I had to hold people accountable. I understand people don’t like that. … That standard is very high for me, and I take it very seriously. To the point of burnout.”

🎙️ Podcast

The Daily Stoic Podcast: Every Great Leader Has THIS Secret Weapon | Les Snead (Los Angeles Rams GM): Les Snead talks about leadership longevity, decision-making under pressure, and the patience required to build — and rebuild — a championship team. [8/7/2025 – 40 minutes] Apple | Spotify | YouTube

“At the end of your career, you’re not going to be thinking of Super Bowls. You’re probably going to be thinking about the impact that you had on other.”

💭 Miscellaneous

Peer Effects and Worker Visibility in Team Production: Evidence from NBA Rookies

Abstract: This paper examines how peer quality impacts early-career visibility, productivity, and longterm earnings in team-based settings. While high-ability peers can generate positive spillovers, they may limit opportunities for less-experienced individuals to showcase their skills, limiting visibility and career progression. Using National Basketball Association (NBA) data, where rookies are quasi-randomly assigned to teams, we find that stronger teams provide less playing time, especially for lower-ranked picks or those competing with star players in the same position. This reduces experience, performance, and future earnings. A theoretical model identifies reduced exposure as the key mechanism, with broader implications for team-based industries where early exposure shapes career paths.

“You are a grain of sand in a washing machine. When you ask to be a guest within a wave, the water makes the rules and you either adapt and respond or get thrown out in a very powerful and dangerous way.” — Garrett McNamara (in photo below)

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” — Abraham Lincoln

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✍️ Articles

Kevin Kelly - The Virtues of Negative Results: Kevin Kelly explores failure, experimentation, and how embracing negative outcomes can lead to breakthrough learning.

“Failure is not something to be avoided but rather something to be cultivated.”

“The habit of embracing negative results is one of the most essential tricks to gaining success.”

“Often the only way to improve a complex system is to probe its limits by forcing it to fail in various ways.”

🎙️ Podcast

Game Changers with Molly Fletcher: Sean McVay On Why He Almost Walked Away After Winning It All: Sean McVay talks about rediscovering his purpose in coaching, leading with humility, and learning to balance success with personal fulfillment. [8/7/2025 – 55 minutes] Apple | Spotify | YouTube

“You can impress people with your strengths, but you connect with them through your weaknesses.”

“You can hide behind the results for a while, but eventually the truth reveals itself.”

“The lies you tell yourself are, once we win one, then I’ll be happy.”

“It’s not cool to work 18 hours a day. That’s not cool — that’s called stupid.”

💭 Miscellaneous

2 Passages from The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life

1. Champions Are Good Losers

Athletes tend to be more resilient in the face of failure than the rest of us because they grasp an essential fact: you can’t improve something until you’ve stressed it.

In 2009 two researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Jonah Berger and Devin G. Pope, asked the question: Can losing during a competitive task motivate teams and individuals to perform better overall? They analyzed more than forty-five thousand college basketball games and eighteen thousand NBA contests and found that trailing slightly at halftime actually led to an increase in winning percentage. NBA teams that trailed by small margins won at about a 6 percent higher rate. Why would this be?

Losers respond to reversals with intelligent adjustments. Simply put, champions are good losers.

2. Winners Aren’t Born

Show me a championship team and I’ll show you a roster full of desperadoes. In January of 2021 it was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ turn to win the Super Bowl. Of their fifty-three-man roster, they carried twenty-two members who had been rated as just two-stars or less in high school by talent evaluators. In other words, almost half of the members their championship squad once looked like every other skinny reject on a field.

New York Giants head coach Brian Daboll has a novel way to vividly illustrate the value of failure, according to ESPN. Once, as an assistant coach with the Buffalo Bills, Daboll opened a team meeting by asking every player and coach in the room to stand up.

Then he said:
“Any coach who has ever been fired, sit down.”
Every coach in the room sat.
“Any player who has ever been cut or traded, sit down.”
Three-quarters of the men in the room took a seat. Now just a few men were still standing.
“If you weren’t picked in the first round of the draft, sit down,” Daboll said.
The rest of the players sat. All but one. The only man left on his feet was their quarterback, Josh Allen.
Daboll then said to Allen, “Josh, how many college scholarship offers did you get out of high school?”
“None,” Allen replied.
“Sit down,” Daboll said.

Now the whole room was seated. And everyone knew that winners aren’t born; they are made—and they are made out of people who have been losers at one time or another.

“A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.” Leo Tolstoy

Hey Coaches,

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✍️ Articles

The Key to Understanding Luck May Be Redefining It: Ed Smith redefines luck by exploring preparation, perspective, and personal agency.

“Successful people, by being open to opportunity and exposing themselves to chance, take new directions that prove more fruitful than anyone could have predicted. We change in many ways as we grow. A missed opportunity represents the failure to evolve into a different, better person.”

Costco’s Jim Sinegal on Building a Company That Will Endure: HBR looks at how Jim Sinegal’s founding principles for Costco still resonate to this day.

“I feel pretty damn lucky. Anybody who is successful in business and doesn’t understand that they had some good fortune somewhere along the way—if they don’t get that, they’re a fool.”

🎙️ Podcast

My First Million Podcast: The Hospitality Principles That Build Billion-Dollar Startups: Will Guidara shares how to operationalize excellence, give team members ownership, and create unforgettable emotional experiences through hospitality. [7/10/2023 – 59 minutes] Apple | Spotify | YouTube

“Too many leaders focus on wanting to be liked. The people that work for us don’t need another friend. They need actually someone who’s willing to step up and lead them.”

“If praise is affirmation, criticism is investment.”

“Criticize in private. You can praise in public, but criticize in private... Criticize the behavior, not the person... Never use sarcasm in criticism.”

Served: Federer’s Agent on Leaving Nike, Building a Tournament, & More w/ Tony Godsick: Tony Godsick talks about managing Roger Federer’s career, building the Laver Cup, and the business of athlete partnerships. Note: start at 11:40. [10/9/2024 – 75 minutes] Apple | Spotify | YouTube

“Success isn’t just profit; it’s filling every seat, creating memorable experiences, and reinvesting to make the next event better.”

💭 Miscellaneous

Business Philosopher Jim Rohn on Failure (source):

“Failure is rarely the result of some isolated event. Rather, it is a consequence of a long list of accumulated little failures which happen as a result of too little discipline. Failure occurs each time we fail to think … today, act … today, care, strive, climb, learn, or just keep going … today. If your goal requires that today you write ten letters and you write only three, you are behind by seven letters … today. If you commit yourself to making five phone calls and you make only one, you are behind by four phone calls … today. If your financial plan requires that you save ten dollars and you save none, you are behind ten dollars … today. The danger comes when we look at a day squandered and conclude that no harm has been done. After all, it was just one day. But add up these days to make a year and then add up these years to make a lifetime and perhaps you can now see how repeating today’s small failures can easily turn your life into a major disaster.”