the Ripening: Mind

Showing posts with label Mind. Show all posts

Notes & Quotes: Gambler by Billy Walters

The following are my favorite quotes from Billy Walters's Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk:

My philosophy on life is simple: You come into this world with nothing, and you leave with nothing. So seize every opportunity to leave a legacy that might inspire others to make the most of their time on earth. At the end of the day, there are two people you can't bullshit--yourself and your maker. You will be judged by the way you've lived and by whether you've followed your servant's heart.
I had no battle plan, other than a determination to prove my worth to anyone who figured me a failure based on my clothes or country accent. My answer to the doubters and bullies was to get up every morning, throw the blinders on, and charge like Billy the bull. Head down, horns up, taking on the world, willing to go as hard and as far as needed to defend my dignity.
Gambling was simply a way of life in Kentucky. My friends bet on a daily basis as naturally as they ate supper. We played cards, shot pool, pitched pennies, shot dice, and wagered on racehorses and sports. Basically, we'd bet on anything that moved. We never gave a thought to gambling being immoral or illegal.
I learned early on that the auto business was different from factory work because of all the downtime. The secret to success in car sales was to stay busy 100 percent of the time. If there weren't potential buyers milling around, the other salesmen would goof off in the office by chewing the fat, playing cards, or reading magazines. I also learned something that would become a hallmark of my business career--the more information you accumulate, the more opportunities you create.
When matching up, my game plan was simple: one way or another I needed to get my opponent to agree to higher stakes than he was comfortable playing for. I wanted their ass puckered so tight you couldn't pound a flax seed up it. The tighter they were wound, I figured, the worse they would play.
Gamblers do win, and some can win for a period of time. Almost every one of them, however, eventually will lose.
You have to hold people accountable in this game. If beards got a sense that you were not atop your game, they would steal from you every chance they could.
From a pure financial standpoint, Desert Pines was one of my worst-performing investments. But it still stands as one of my proudest accomplishments.
I want to say up front: I'm sharing details about my system. Your model can be what you want it to be. But there are bedrock principles of sports wagering that are important to know regardless of the specific system you use or the size of your wagers.
You generally must pay an additional 10 percent to make the bet. So a $100 wager will cost you $110. This is called the "juice" or the "vig", from the Russian/Yiddish word vigorish. Because you have to pay that extra $10, it means you'll need to win 52.38 percent of the time to break even.
Being a good handicapper is, of course, essential to being a winning sports bettor.
Handicapping alone won't guarantee maximum success. It's only a part of my three-pronged plan; betting strategy and money management also are essential.
Ideally, you should not risk any more than 1 to 3 percent of your bankroll on any single bet.
Just being one of the guys came naturally to me. That's the way Grandmother raised me. It was "Yes sir" and "No sir" to guards and officials alike. Whatever street cred I earned on the inside was due to keeping my eyes open and my mouth shut. I waited my turn and didn't stand out. At the same time, I never backed down. In the end, I was just another con.
Bootstrappers share common traits, among them discipline, focus, and the ability to bounce back from failure.
Prison makes that course correction in your life. It puts everything in perspective, reminding you of the many things you otherwise took for granted and the things that actually matter.
As it stands today, prisons are breeding grounds for generations of criminals. Fathers and mothers who come out of prison with no hope cannot offer hope to their children. But those who learn trades and support their families are far more likely to raise children who have a greater vision for their lives.

Notes & Quotes: Citizen Outlaw by Charles Barber

The following are my favorite quotes from Charles Barber's Citizen Outlaw: One Man's Journey from Gangleader to Peacekeeper:

At age seven, [William] Outlaw so much admired one of the officers, a strapping man who would go on to become New Haven's first African-American police commissioner, that he wanted to become a policeman. But by age ten, Outlaw had seen the behavior of other officers, who took bribes and slept with the single moms, and he grew to hate everything about the New Haven police department.
At the heart of his story is an unrelenting paradox. It is a story of doing unremitting damage and then trying to undo that damage, which of course is not actually possible. But these days Outlaw relentlessly spends his hours undertaking the insurmountable task of trying to overturn what has already been done.
Even at his young age, Outlaw sensed that his father's rage was somehow misplaced. Sure, Outlaw had done something wrong; sometimes Outlaw himself believed he deserved punishment. But he could feel in his heart that there was no love behind his father's so-called discipline.
The framers of the public housing movement made a critical error as they conceived of their master plan: they prohibited tenants from owning their apartments, and therefore residents had little personal investment in the properties in which they lived. The buildings were owned by city authorities and often poorly maintained. The projects were frequently opened with great optimism and fanfare, but then quickly fell apart. And just as often, in creating the new projects, entire neighborhoods--many of them containing handsome historical structures alongside the squalid tenements--were razed. These processes created deep-seated feelings of dislocation and alienation among long-standing residents. In New Haven alone, 20 percent of the population was forced to move out of their homes between 1956 and 1974, all in the name of purported urban renewal and progress.
Research shows that gangs thrive in areas of wide income disparity, and Connecticut had among the highest income disparity in the United States.
Outlaw perfected this style of business in the gang's first two years, all before his sixteenth birthday. It powered the Jungle Boys into becoming the largest gang in New Haven, and made Outlaw a local celebrity wherever he went.
Just as he arrived, an explosive element came along that changed the New Haven--and American--drug scene forever. Cocaine.
A few weeks after [Len Bias's] death, both Republicans and Democrats forged the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which fundamentally transformed the law enforcement community's response to drug abuse from a rehabilitative approach to a punitive one. Soon afterward came further legislation, which called for new prisons and mandatory minimum sentences for drug violations. The new laws made punishments related to crack up to a hundredfold higher than for cocaine. Nancy Reagan, who led an anti-drug campaign from the White House, deemed the legislation a personal victory.
By the 1960s and 1070s, amid rising crime and high rates of criminal recidivism (nationally, about half of inmates released from prison were incarcerated again within three years), the Bureau of Prisons largely abandoned any interest in rehabilitation, replacing that ideal with the liberal use of solitary confinement and lockdowns.
The "Cure Violence" health model, originally developed by Dr. Gary Slutkin of the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, identifies three principles employed to combat epidemics of disease and applies them to youth violence: 1. interrupt transmission of the disease; 2. reduce the risk of the highest-risk cases and; 3. change community norms.
In 2016, when a New Haven dealer was sent back to prison, he sold his cell phone to another dealer for $30,000. The contacts on his phone amounted to an instant book of business.
There was one thing that had not much changed upon Outlaw's return: the homicide rate. Twenty-two murders were perpetrated in New Haven in 2008; 12 in 2009; 23 in 2010, and an astonishing 34 in 2011, numbers that had not been seen since the 1980s. In 2010, not one of the murder victims in New Haven was white. 22 were black, and one was Hispanic. Twenty two of the 23 people killed were male. Between 2003 and 2015, among the 1225 victims of gunshot wounds treated at Yale New Haven Hospital, 84 percent were either black or Hispanic, and 93 percent were male. The statistics mirrored national numbers: black men comprise 6 percent of the United States population but half of all homicide victims. Five thousand black men perish in gunfire annually.

Notes & Quotes: Setting the Table by Danny Meyer

The following are my favorite notes from Danny Meyer's Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business.

Within moments of being born, most babies find themselves receiving the first four gifts of life: eye contact, a smile, a hug, and some food. We receive many other gifts in a lifetime, but few can ever surpass those first four.
I've learned how crucially important it is to put hospitality to work, first for the people who work for me and subsequently for all the other people and stakeholders who are in any way affected by our business--in descending order, our guests, community, suppliers, and investors. I call this way of setting priorities "enlightened hospitality."
You may think, as I once did, that I'm primarily in the business of serving good food. Actually, though, food is secondary to something that matters even more. In the end, what's most meaningful is creating positive, uplifting outcomes for human experiences and human relationships. Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel. It's that simple, and it's that hard.
My discoveries have also convinced me that there's always someone out there who has figured out how to make something taste just a little bit better. And I am inspired by both the search and the discovery.
Hospitality is the foundation of my business philosophy. Virtually nothing else is as important as how one is made to feel in any business transaction. Hospitality exists when you believe the other person is on your side. The converse is just as true. Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. Those two simple prepositions--for and to--express it all.
I was judged not just for the food, but by how well I cleaned the pans and plates, put out the fire, refilled the pit, and--most important--by whether I would be able to "leave the campsite neater than I had found it." (That concept remains, for me, one of the most significant measures of success in business, and in life.)
Learning to manage volunteers--to whom, absent a paycheck, ideas and ideals were the only currency--taught me to view all employees essentially as volunteers. Today, even with compensation as a motivator, I know that anyone who works for my company chooses to do so because of what we stand for. I believe that anyone who is qualified for a job in our company is also qualified for many other jobs at the same pay scale. It's up to us to provide solid reasons for our employees to want to work for us, over and beyond their compensation.
The beautiful choreography of service is, at its best, an art form, a ballet. I appreciate the grace with which a table can be properly cleared. I admire the elegance with which a bottle of wine can be appropriately opened, decanted, and poured. There's aesthetic value in doing things the right way. But I respond best when the person doing those things realizes that the purpose of all this beauty at the table is to create pleasure for me. To go through the motions in a perfunctory or self-absorbed manner, no matter how expertly rendered, diminishes the beauty. It's about soul--and service without soul, no matter how elegant, is quickly forgotten by the guest.
To this day, Union Square Cafe remains the purest expression of me and most clearly represents the mission of all my restaurants: to express excellence in the most inclusive, accessible, genuine, and hospitable way possible.
It's human nature for people to take precisely as much interest in you as they believe you're taking in them. There is no stronger way to build relationships than taking a genuine interest in other human beings and allowing them to share their stories. When we take an active interest in the guests at our restaurants, we create a sense of community and a feeling of "shared ownership."
I urge our managers to ABCD--always be collecting dots. Dots are information. The more information you collect, the more frequently you can make meaningful connections that can make other people feel good and give you an edge in business.
I realize that I don't have to do this kind of thing, but there is simply no point for me--or anyone on my staff--to work hard every day for the purpose of offering guests an average experience.
Our job is not to impose our own needs on our guests: it's to be aware of their needs and to deliver the goods accordingly. In hospitality, one size fits one!
I will throw myself into a new venture only when certain criteria are met: I am passionate about the subject matter (i.e., early American folk antiques, modern art, jazz, barbecue). I know I will derive some combination of challenge, satisfaction, and pleasure from the venture. It presents meaningful opportunities for professional growth for my colleagues and me. The new business will add something to the dialogue in a specific context, such a luxury dining (Gramercy Tavern), museum dining (The Modern, Cafe 2, and Terrace 5 at the Museum of Modern Art), Indian dining (Tabla), barbecue (Blue Smoke), or burgers and frozen custard (Shake Shack). Financial projections indicate the possibility of sufficient profit and returns on our investment to warrant the risk we're undertaking.
Know Thyself: Before you go to market, know what you are selling and to whom. It's a very rare business that can (or should) be all things to all people. Be the best you can be within a reasonably tight product focus. That will help you to improve yourself and help your customers to know how and when to buy your product.
The company learned to superimpose its blueprint onto thousands of locations north, south, east, and west, while also conveying the sense that each Starbucks belonged to its particular community. It was brilliant entrepreneurship to grasp that selling excellent coffee is secondary to creating a sense of community. Coffee sells (and is habit-forming), but performing a daily ritual with a self-selected group of life-minded human beings also sells. A business that doesn't understand it's raison d'etre as fostering community will inevitably underperform.
The only way a company can grow, stay true to its soul, and remain consistently successful is to attract, hire, and keep great people. It's that simple, and it's that hard.
We searched high and low for the rare employees who love teaching, know how to set priorities, work with a sense of urgency, and--most important--are comfortable with holding people accountable to high standards while letting them hold onto their own dignity.
We don't believe in pursuing the so-called 110 percent employee. That's about as realistic as working achieve the twenty-six-hour day. We are hoping to develop 100 percent employees whose skills are divided 51-49 between emotional hospitality and technical excellence. We refer to these employees as 51 percenters.
To me, a 51 percenter has five core emotional skills. I've learned that we need to hire employees with these skills if we're to be champions at the team sport of hospitality. They are: Optimistic warmth (genuine kindness, thoughtfulness, and a sense that the glass is always at least half full). Intelligence (not just "smarts" but rather an insatiable curiosity to learn for the sake of learning). Work ethic (a natural tendency to do something as well as it can possibly be done). Empathy (an awareness of, care for, and connection to how others feel and how your actions make others feel). Self-awareness and integrity (an understanding of what makes you tick and a natural inclination to be accountable for doing the right thing with honesty and superb judgment).
When an employee does not work out, the problem more often stems from an attitude of "I won't" rather than "I can't".
It's pretty easy to spot an overwhelmingly strong candidate or even an underwhelmingly weak candidate. It's the "whelming" candidate you must avoid at all costs, because that's the one who can and will do your organization the most long-lasting harm. Overwhelmers earn you raves. Underwhelmers either leave on their own or are terminated. Whelmers, sadly, are like a stubborn stain you can't get out of the carpet. They infuse an organization and its staff with mediocrity; they're comortable, and so they never leave; and, frustratingly, they never do anything that rises to the level of getting them promoted or sinks to the level of getting them fired. And because you either can't or don't fire them, you and they conspire to send a dangerous message to your staff and guests that "average" is acceptable.
It's critical to be a champion at retaining top staff members. A business owner can too easily squander the winning edge that comes from fielding a great team by not treating its members with respect and trust, teaching them new skills, and offering clear challenges.
I learned how critical it is to manage expectations--and to plan for success, not just for failure. Too often, we've made mistakes by not anticipating what the consequences would be if we were to win.
Previous success in any field invites high expectations and scrutiny the next time around. People are less forgiving when a winner falters than they are when an up-and-comer stumbles. But a mark of a champion is to welcome scrutiny, persevere, perform beyond expectations, and provide an exceptional product--for which forgiveness is not necessary.
I ended the memo by quoting something my late grandfather, Irving Harris, always used to remind me. "People will say a lot of great things about your business, and a lot of nasty things as well. Just remember: you're never as good as the best things they'll say, and never as bad as the negative ones. Just keep centered, know what you stand for, strive for new goals, and always be decent."
Three hallmarks of effective leadership are to provide a clear vision for your business so that your employees know where you're taking them; to hold people accountable for consistent standards of excellence; and to communicate a well-defined set of cultural priorities and nonnegotiable values. Perhaps most important, true leaders hold themselves accountable for conducting business in the same manner in which they've asked their team to perform.
Wherever your center lies, know it, name it, stick to it, and believe in it. Everyone who works with you will know what matters to you and will respect and appreciate your unwavering values. Your inner beliefs about business will guide you through the tough times. It's good to be open to fresh approaches to solving problems. But, when you cede your core values to someone else, it's time to quit.
Ultimately, the most successful business is not the one that eliminates the most problems. It's the one that becomes most expert at finding imaginative solutions to address those problems.
Poor communication is generally not a matter of miscommunication. More often, it involves taking away people's feeling of control. Change works only when people believe it is happening for them, not to them. And there's not much in between. Good communication is always a factor of good hospitality.
The biggest mistake managers can make is neglecting to set high standards and hold others accountable. This denies employees the chance to learn and excel. Employees do not want to be told, "Let me make your life easier by enabling you not to learn and not to achieve anything new."
You can get the best productivity from your employees when they believe that their leadership is open-minded, is accessible, and welcomes input.
You cannot be a great leader unless a critical mass of people are attracted to following your lead.
A great leader must repeatedly ask himself or herself this tough question: "Why would anyone want to be led by me?" And there had better be a good number of compelling reasons.
For some reason, when certain people gain more authority and power, they tend to demand respect from those who work for them. But what got them their promotion in the first place was their natural ability to command respect. Demanding respect creates tension that can make it very tough to lead, and very uncomfortable to follow.
Stanley [Marcus] set his martini down, looked me in the eye, and said, "So you made a mistake. You need to understand something important. And listen to me carefully: The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled."
The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively.
I like to think of our staff members not at servers, but surfers. Surfing is an arduous sport, and no one pursues it involuntarily. No one forces you to become a surfer, but if you choose to do it, there's no point in wasting energy trying to tame the ocean of its waves. Waves are like mistakes. You can count on the fact that there will always be another wave, so your choice is to get back on the surfboard and anticipate it. The degree to which you ride it with better form than the next guy is how you improve and distinguish yourself.
The Five A's for Effectively Addressing Mistakes:

Awareness
Acknowledgement
Apology
Action
Additional generosity

There are five primary stakeholders to whom we express our most caring hospitality, and in whom we take the greatest interest. Prioritizing those people in the following order is the guiding principle for practically every decision we make, and it has made the single greatest contribution to the ongoing success of our company. Our employees. Our guests. Our community. Our suppliers. Our investors.
Mutual respect and trust are the most powerful tools for building an energetic, motivated, winning team in any field.
Hospitality starts with the genuine enjoyment of doing something well for the purpose of bringing pleasure to other people.
I have always believed that you can tell as much about a company by the deals it does not make as by those it does. Much of the success we have had has resulted from saying "no, thank you" to opportunities that, while initially compelling, would not have been wise to pursue.
The "Yes" Criteria for New Ventures:

The opportunity fits and enhances our company's overall strategic goals and objectives.
The opportunity represents a chance to create a business venture that is perceived as groundbreaking, trailblazing, and fresh.
The timing is right for our company's capacity to grow with excellence, especially in terms of our having enough key employees who are themselves interested and ready to grow.
We believe we have the capacity to be category leaders within whatever niche we are pursuing.
We believe our existing businesses will benefit and improve by virtue of or notwithstanding our pursuing this new opportunity.
We feel excited and passionate about this idea. Pursuing it will be an opportunity to learn, grow, and have fun!
We are excited about doing business in this community.
The context is the right fit. Our restaurant and our style of doing business will be in harmony with its location.
An in-depth pro forma analysis convinces us that it a wise and safe investment.

As my company's leader, I have certainly learned to be decisive with an appropriate sense of urgency, but I always prefer to make my decisions after first building consensus among various colleagues, whose unique vantage points give me further confidence to move forward. This process can be lengthy, but so long as the spirit of any decision is consistent with what I'd want, bringing others' views to the table allows us to move forward with a more fully realized plan supported by those who are responsible for its execution. Our decision-making about whether or not to pursue new deals is always sharpest when I call on members of my advisory board to advocate on behalf of their primary role in our company.
At about this time, my assistant, Jenny Dirksen (now our director of community investment), shared a priceless expression her grandmother had taught her: One tuchas can't dance at two weddings. It's nice to be invited to a lot of parties. But as much as you may want to attend them all, it's important to acknowledge that you can be in only one place at a time, and do one thing well. My grandfather used to express similar wisdom: Doing two things like a half-wit never equals one thing like a whole wit.

Notes & Quotes: One Blade of Grass by Henry Shukman

The following are my favorite quotes from Henry Shukman's One Blade of Grass: Finding the Old Road of the Heart, a Zen Memoir.

My gaze fixed on the wall in front of me--a wall of adobe, glowing in the light of a lamp. An intense love for the wall welled up, almost as if I were falling in love with it, and it with me. All of a sudden, with what felt like a seismic jolt, the room seemed to blow wide open, the whole scene became an infinitely broad expanse, and it was as if I was sucked into that expanse myself and became part of it, so that the desert hills outside, which reached down to Gallup, in the valley two miles away, and on beyond, were my very own body.
It was true, as the Buddhists said: I was one with the world. I was one with everything. The whole world was my body, my mind. And because of that, I was beloved, I belonged, I was healed in all possible ways. All had been well, secretly well, all along.
Speedy didn't have a home, or a kitchen, or a bedroom. He basically just had himself, that was all. That and the land. He was at home anywhere. He was his home.
I had thought I wanted to go out and see the world. Instead it was the other way around: the world opened its arms and pulled me in.
This is a story not only of awakening but of healing. Perhaps the two can't, or shouldn't, be separated. No healing without a wound.
Help is always at hand. We just may not know where to look for it.
The change of location, the new job, the therapy, the publishers, quitting the PhD: they had all happened once I took up meditation. Was it possible that just sitting still twice a day could bring order to a disordered psychophysiology, and regulate a dysregulated life?
I had a diagnosis now: dysthymia. Persistent, low-grade, shame-based depression. It was tricky, because one of the symptoms was a denial of symptoms prompted by shame at they symptoms--the shame itself being one of the symptoms. Cleverly circular.
I began to do zazen daily. Over the weeks I grew to love it: a sense of clarity, a watery quality to everything, would come on.
How could it be that zazen--just sitting and watching one's breath--allowed all these old feelings to come up and work themselves out? Was it possible that all the human heart really needed was time? Give it time and it would sort itself out? You just had to be patient, allow it its period of grace each day.
He told me about the discipline of living as an artist, the need to practice your art every day without fail, how you should get up early each morning to work before you did anything else. You needed to trust your instincts and cultivate wonder.
Death unites us, love unites us, and grief unites us.
It was suddenly clear that all my life I had been assuming these many stimuli happened to a being called me. They were connected to one another by virtue of happening to me. But there was no thread connecting them. Each arose independently. They were free.
Without me, there was no past or future. Every phenomenon that arose was happening for the first and only time, and filled all awareness entirely. That made it an absolute treasure.
After any retreat, there was always a sense of having been cleansed, absolved even, and of returning to the world with new eyes.
I began to learn from other writers at the college. I had been so much my own man, I hadn't realized there were people willing to help. Perhaps the wisdom of Zen was creeping in bit by bit, touching the way I lived, not guarded but ready to give and receive help. One could feel goodwill toward just about everybody if one wanted.
This is part of Zen training. There is the sudden side--the unbidden revelation of the nature of self and world--and the gradual: the soil prepared through long cultivation.
I saw that meditation was not just meditation. It was a means, a vessel, a vehicle. Through daily sitting, through going on periodic sesshins at Cold Ash, a retreat center on the Berkshire Downs where three dozen of us would sit with John for a week, it was possible to undergo much more than a calming of the nervous system. In meditation we could pursue the fundamental investigation of a lifetime: the search for our identity.
I was slowly beginning to understand that Zen wasn't just about meditative absorption and insight, nor was it something done alone. It was about activity, about how you lived and interacted, how you treated others. It wasn't enough to "be enlightened," whatever that might mean; what counted was living it.
If Zen training is a kind of parenting, we are being stripped down more than built up, shown how little we need, not how much.
Could anything matter more than the present moment? Somehow that was where life itself was always waiting to meet me, if only I could remember.
My existence was a gift, and its unspeakable generosity had been hidden from me, by nothing but a mirage of grasping and aversion, by a basic ignorance that consisted in taking a mirage as real.
Zen may undermine false assumptions, but its goal is to help us live more helpfully--not in servitude to an imaginary tyrant called "me," but in the service of others.
Nothing matters more than finding that our "real self" is absolutely inclusive. And learning how to live it is the journey of a lifetime.
This was what Zen existed for: to bring a human being to a condition that, impossibly, resolved everything. And to pass it on.
The further you go in Zen the less you understand. That's how it is. You end up feeling a bit like Socrates, who said he knew only one thing, namely that he knew nothing. Although in Zen you don't even know that.
Zen: the only way to keep it is to give it away.
In the end it's all a fairy tale. In the end, all Zen saves us from is ourselves. It may be a little inaccurate but not unreasonable to say that in the end, all Zen is is love.
To bow to circumstance, not to set oneself up in any way, is crucial if we are to have any chance of receiving the liberative beauty of the teaching and passing it on.
Zen is soteriological. It therefore must be conceded to have an agenda of sorts. It seeks in some ways to "save" us, if only by relieving us of the baggage of our assumptions and preconceptions. But it saves us not from malign superhuman forces, nor into the arms of a heavenly being, but simply from ourselves. Its tagline might be: "How to get saved from yourself." It seeks to free us rom a mistaken perspective generated by a misunderstanding about our sense of self: namely, that it's a thing, that me is a fixed entity. On the other hand, it doesn't seek to replace wrong views with right ones. Rather, it seeks to free us of all views.

Notes & Quotes: A Bold Return to Giving a Damn by Will Harris

The following are my favorite quotes from Will Harris's A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food.

Reasonable people can probably agree that the way our food system has evolved--into one based on mass-produced industrial inputs; monocultures of foods that nobody, not even animals, should gorge on, unspeakable conditions for animals and undignified conditions for animals and undignified conditions for humans, and corporate monopolies controlling almost every link the chain--ain't working too good.
At White Oak Pastures, what fuels us is an attitude we call "a bold return to giving a damn."
I made myself a set of commandments about what I will do. I will treat the animals that I husband with respect and dignity, providing them with an environment that allows them to express their instinctive behavior. I will study the cycles of nature and learn how to not obstruct them. I will implement practices that leave the soil, water, and air better than I found it. I will heal the damage that my family's previous farming practices have inflicted on the land that I tend. I will provide a comfortable and wholesome life for my family. (This includes my biological family and the many at White Oak Pastures that I have come to accept as family.) I will provide the abundance that our land and herds produce to nourish those who need and appreciate it. I will nurture the village that we live in. I will get off my ass, seven days a week, and work as hard as I can, and invest all that I have to make all of this happen. I will openly teach what I have learned about these things to those who want to know.
I rethought things and now have a farm that's a living system that follows nature's principles. This system, based on holistic land management and owning every step of the supply chain from field to fork, retains the value of everything it creates and regenerates rather than degenerates the land it occupies, and it has helped my farm become one of the largest pasture-raised livestock operations in the country. We've evolved backward in a way, going all-in on the des: de-industrializing, de-commoditizing, and de-centralizing agriculture.
Though anybody that is worth a damn has a church, in my opinion, it's not necessarily in the form of a chapel, or synagogue, or mosque. Oftentimes, it's very different from that--it's a passion that they are fiercely devoted to, that is freely given for the benefit of others.
Everything I was spending so much time and money on was actually just a symptom of deeper problems I was inadvertently creating by my farming practices. And you seldom solve problems by attacking the surface while ignoring the root causes.
If you just sit still and shut up and pay attention, nature will tell you everything you need to know. She will provide you with everything you need to make your farm work. Nature knows everything, forgets nothing, and bats last.
I zoned in on what was really going on with my cattle and my pastures as I never had before. When I looked more closely, with a little less of the bravado and bluster that had driven me until then, I saw that all the things I'd been doing to pull more productivity and more success from my farm were destroying the basic operating principles of nature.
Cultivating food using the modern industrial system is like pissing your pants to stay warm. It's okay in the very short term but a terrible strategy for the long term.
At some point, you figure out what actions you are taking that are doing your land and animals harm, so you quit doing them. You suffer the withdrawal pains of giving them up for a while, then you start using the tools available to you to try to make the conditions around you a little better. And when what you do the first time doesn't work, you make a new plan and try that one instead. One step at a time, by planning, implementing, failing, and replanning and reimplementing over again, you start to figure out how to fix your farm.
We are truly the most destructive species that has ever resided on this magnificent planet.
Presented with the same systemic problem, the soil biologist will diagnose that the bacteria-to-fungi ratio is off; the plant geneticist says the genetics are awry; the livestock specialist says I should purchase the seed stock they've got on offer; and give different people give five different solutions based on their discipline. None of them are thinking of the farm as a complex organism in which every part is interconnected and influencing the next. They're watching the whole ball game through a sliver of missing plank in the fence. I get why that is--our land grant agricultural colleges have been teaching this approach for decades. But I think when you get focused on your silo of knowledge, you learn more and more about less and less until you know all there is to know about almost nothing.
Instead of scanning for what's wrong out there on my farm and in my fields, I'm looking for what's right. I'm looking for the biological activity that I can support and will maximize production, instead of killing biological competition to try and reach the same goal.
Somehow, my craziest ideas have had a way of actually working out. My dad used to say, "Will, I do believe you could shit in a swinging bucket." I have done the business equivalent of that a number of times.
These folks had never been told that what they thought they were buying when they picked up "USDA-inspected" supermarket beef--an all-American, small-town product steeped in feel-good special sauce--was no such thing. No wonder they were confused. The beef industry doesn't exactly label its product as "confinement-raised, pesticide-laden, soy-bean-finished beef." It had never occurred to them that there were hidden costs to the cheap meat they enjoyed, and that the cruelest of these costs were heaped onto the animals themselves.
Authenticity is the deal. Folks recognize it when they see it. So they listened.
When you see a living creature as a product, when you produce meat instead of raise meat, and when your holy grail is efficiency, you can rationalize a lot of sins.
As a consumer, you rub right up against this when you shop for food in your local store. A budget-cost pork loin or bargain-priced skirt steak, wrapped and ready to toss in your shopping cart for dinner, can make even the most miserable meat appear pretty good. I have compassion for that--when you don't know where that meat came from, why wouldn't the price tag be the main thing you consider? But I can't help but think, if you could taste the suffering in that underpriced meat, you might not want to eat it at all.
It's pretty simple: cows were born to roam and graze; chickens were born to scratch and peck; hogs were born to wallow and root. Deny them that right, and you have poor animal welfare.
Think about it: through confining animals and restricting their natural movement and exploration and socialization, we've inflicted on them the level of punishment that in human society we would inflict only on those who had committed terrible crimes. But somehow it's a perfectly accepted way of raising livestock.
I believe that if I want to take full responsibility for the welfare of my animals, I must also be responsible for where and how they die.
Nothing that dies stays dead. It goes on to provide nutrition for another living thing. From death springs decay. From decay springs new birth, and then growth, and then death again. This is how nature works. I feel better about my own death when I think about it this way.
I think the animals that we dispatch suffer less than almost any animal raised for food today. I've seen a lot of animals die in nature, too, and I think the animals we dispatch suffer less than the animals killed by predators. The fish grabbed by the spike-taloned ospreys from my pond, the rabbit mauled by a coyote--those creatures suffer, too.
Improving the welfare of farm animals falls on a different group of people: the consumer. You. Do you care enough about the animals that provide you with nourishment to go out of your way to look deeper? If you don't, then carry on buying the cheap, factory-farmed meat. But if it does matter to you, even just a little bit, then you've got to find and support a different kind of farm.
I stopped paying for pesticides, chemical fertilizers, hormone implants, subtherapeutic antibiotics, and the like, and instead I started paying for local labor. The labor builds the community. Instead of my money going to Wall Street and Silicon Valley and wherever else the entities behind industrial ag may be today, the money stays right here in the poorest county in America.
Our employees make nearly twice the county average, and they get benefits and health insurance. I believe you have to pay people fairly, because one thing I've learned is that a dog that is so hungry he's hunting food for himself is not going to hunt for you. I also believe in compensating people fairly for their skill sets, which is why some of my employees make more than me. I think when the founder or owner works shoulder to shoulder with the skill set provider, he or she appreciates those contributions a helluva lot more than when they're worlds away from those providers, trying to run the operation from a stock company boardroom. Another reason I hate big companies.
If you seek out nutritious food to build up your kids' health and your own, but if what you're buying leaves a trail of degradation on the people and towns that work so hard to produce it, or even wipes out the towns entirely, can you really call it "healthy"? That opens a can of worms.
If you're not willing to take risks in your farming operation, then you're gonna follow the path laid out before you by someone else with their agenda--and that's never gonna be the best path for you. It's gonna be what's best for them.
I have always taught my children that the God that I worship is generous, but relentless. He--or she--gives us opportunities, but when he does, he expects us to make them work. God wants to see you push the ball as far down the field as you can before he gives you the next one. So I've learned to milk the shit out of every opportunity I've been given. My God makes you prove you are worth it, every step of the way.
Closing loops means meeting your farm's needs by using the resources already available to you instead of depending on outside providers to supply them. It also means keeping as much as you can inside your system, like using waste materials to support the life cycle on the farm--not tossing them out for other entities to deal with--just as my ancestors did two, three, and four generations ago.
Any time a part of your business is out of your full control, you've got a vulnerability.
The entities making the most money are not interested in letting the truth about the harms they are well aware of, nor the benefits of alternatives like us, be known. They have big platforms and loud voices and myriad ways to ensure they dominate the conversation. But if we don't try to remedy this, we'll be stuck with a system that rewards and incentivizes the wrong things in the ceaseless quest to make ever more abhorrently cheap food.
When you put yourself in a position in which there ain't but one way out, you are free to quit worrying about future decision-making. You also change your idea of what winning even is.
I've come to understand that meaningful change will result not from tidal waves but from bubbles--individual examples of independent and resilient food systems dotting the rural fabric of our country.
Natural systems evolved to have redundancies built in so if one part of the system gets compromised, another part catches the slack. We need to be thinking about how to set up our small food systems to run the same way.
Are you willing to rip the curtain back and see the impact of your food choices? Can you look at it and still continue to empower these destructive forces?
If you want to make a difference, see a difference, or feel a difference, does it make any sense that you can continue to operate in the same way you always have? Do it different. Get out of the armchair, get out on the land. Touch the dirt. Connect.

Notes & Quotes: Lucky Me by Rich Paul

The following are my favorite quotes from Rich Paul's Lucky Me: A Memoir of Changing the Odds.

Smart gamblers know how to manage the risks, move with intention and integrity, control what they control--and in the end, they have the heart to let the dice fall where they may.
Crack was so powerful it decimated my mother's love and expedited my adolescence. I had to grow from a cub to a young wolf right away.
From my post behind the counter, I observed that selling lots of food, beer, and cigarettes was just the surface level of my father's success. The bedrock of the business was the way he treated all the people he interacted with and their exchange of respect, no matter their station in life or status. A lot of people in the neighborhood called him "The Godfather."
I define a hustler as someone who is never complacent, always thinking two steps ahead of everyone else. Someone who can manage the transitions. If things turn upside down, a hustler adapts to being upside down without missing a step. They never get stuck in a situation, and always understand what move to make in order to accomplish their goals.
As time went on, I realized that Dad did everything consciously. Nothing was accidental, impulsive, or emotional. He always moved with intention. He was a gambler who left nothing to chance.
It was a weird juxtaposition of being broke and, in my mind, thinking I was wealthy because I had fly clothes. That happens in the ghetto because we're cut off from the wider world, so we think we've reached the top when we're barely above water.
Attention to detail defines my life. When you practice doing little things the right way, it helps the big things fall into place.
Having a disciplined and thoughtful approach to your work day in and day out, especially when the work is difficult and risky, will determine your level of success.
Don't let anybody fool you into thinking Black neighborhoods are jacked up because we're irresponsible or criminally inclined or too lazy to work. We were systematically confined to certain areas that were then drained of wealth, jobs, and resources. In a lot of places, we still are.
My policy is: Don't feed the ego. The relationship I have with my guys is simple. You can call me anytime, I can call you anytime, and we can talk about whatever. But when you call me and it's a real situation, I will always give you what you need: the honest truth.
As much as you can try to help a drug user, as much as you think you can save them, addiction can be stronger than love.
This is one of the ways that Black people have survived in America. When the dangers unleashed by the system threaten to spin through our lives like a tornado, we do things a certain way--consciously, purposefully--to avoid being swept away. Ain't no stumbling your way through life. Black folks don't have enough margin of error for that. Most of us have no margin of error at all.
One reason a lot of people aren't successful is they're trying to control everything but what they can control. Putting energy into what somebody else said, spending all day on Instagram worried about what somebody else has, where they are, what they're doing, who they're doing it with. You don't control any of that, and meanwhile your life is as messy as they come. If you put that energy into what you control, it creates a better outcome.
"The hell you looking all crusty for?" Dad said. "This don't even look like you." "Aww, Mr. Paul, I'm just going through something right now," Duck said. "I don't care what you're going through. You always got to keep yourself presentable, because you never know when an opportunity will arrive. Now go clean yourself up."
You're not going to make me react to anything. If I could control myself when some kid called my mother a crack fiend, then I have no problem dealing with slander from haters and competitors trying to bring me down in business. And the best way to deal with it is to stay calm and think for a moment, so you have the distance to consider whether the slander is a real threat or should just be ignored. If you decide it is a threat: Counterattack on your own terms, in your own way, in your own time. Never respond on someone else's terms and timetable. Never react with your own first reflex in a moment of rage or embarrassment.
When you see your mother walk away holding tighter to some bills than she ever held on to you, it's hard to trust anyone after that.
When I'm winning, I have to bear down. That's the discipline I brought to it. If I beat you out of twenty-five hundred and you ain't got but a hundred left, bearing down to get that last hundred is a must. That's the difference between a gambler and a hustler.
I was affiliated with 117th and 125th, but when they had beef with other blocks and neighborhoods, I was carved out of the disputes because I treated everyone with respect. My principles didn't change based on where you were from, so I stayed solid across the town.
I always had an affinity for people who did things in a certain way, who moved with precision, integrity, and confidence. That was Jay[Z].
I wasn't going to leave the streets, but I was going to be as smart as I could be on them, so I strategized and observed. I thought about who to stay away from and who I could trust. I always try to see beyond the surface, to discern the character of people, judge their reliability. I honed that skill as much as I could because it was the only thing that could separate me from everyone else in the game, no matter how street-smart they were. I needed to be smarter. I wasn't going to quit, so I had to maximize my wits and intuition to survive. And just like Dad said, I needed to know where to draw the line.
The only business transactions that came even close to the level of business I'm at today were illegal--and working with them was a fast track to jail or the morgue. Working in high-stakes business like that as a kid prepared me to work with some of the people I encounter in legal business today, who will metaphorically cut your throat in a second. The other difference: On the block, you knew when the danger was coming. In the business world, it's harder to see who's trying to kill you.
I'm pretty sure there were several times that something hostile was coming my way on different blocks and some guys would intervene like, "Nah, Rich is my people." I could feel that energy as I moved around. A few guys probably didn't like me because of the things I had, but I didn't have any real enemies because I treated everyone with respect. It was almost like I was one of those young athletes who the hood protects because he has a future. If something was about to jump off, guys would say, "Yo, leave Rich alone. Go on, Kid, get up outta here."
For me, street life had become about gamesmanship and chasing the thrill of high-stakes competition. Winning felt addictive. But the thrill of victory could quickly be followed by an Uzi in your face. I started to wonder if that kind of winning was winning at all.
The time between Dad's death and his burial was a blur. Two thousand people showed up for the funeral at Greater Friendship. That's when the full impact and magnitude of his life hit me. Two thousand people, not for a politician or an athlete, but for a corner store owner who tried to help everyone he could.
The agent playbook says the more credentials you have, the better position you're in. I knew how much disrespect there was amongst agents and executives in the NBA for someone with my background, but I saw a huge opportunity in the fact that nobody else had my experiences. Experiences are just as important as credentials and whatever money you might have been born into. My experiences placed me in a great position to help others. This is what they don't teach in the traditional institutions, whether that's college or sports agencies--that academic training means nothing if you can't use it to distinguish yourself from your competition.
"Out the trunk" is a mentality that still fuels me to this day, and it comes from more than just selling jerseys. It's about chasing down every little opportunity, putting in extra effort, and doing whatever it takes to improve your position.
Let me say something about the concept of the underworld: It's very real, in an almost literal sense. My everyday activities took place in a world that most people never see. You and I might both be having a breakfast sandwich in a restaurant, but I'm there for a reason that has nothing to do with food. As you're eating, all you see is a young man enjoying his sandwich. You may notice that on the other side of the diner is another guy eating a sandwich. You may or may not notice that moments after I get up to go to the bathroom, he gets up and goes to the bathroom. You definitely don't see that in that bathroom, a transaction takes place. Both of us come out, finish our sandwiches, and leave. That's the underworld, invisible and right in front of your face.
The Black American experience resonates with so many people, so many lives. In an elevated way, the story of our struggles is the basic essence of the human struggle. Every person on this planet needs love, dignity, and purpose.
You can't rely on luck to make it. Rely on yourself, your effort, your talent, and the knowledge that the journey itself provides what you need to succeed.

Rich Paul's Rules:

Take Care of Your People.
Other People Are Your Business.
Leave Nothing to Chance.
Iron Your Clothes.
Discipline Your Approach.
Build an Ecosystem of Empathy.
Study Your Craft.
Move with Intention; Be Ready to Improvise.
Understand the Whole Show.
Focus Is Everything.
Never Submit to Your Surroundings.
Don't Sleep In.
Choose the Best of Everything.
Find Your Purpose.
Neutralize Your Anger.
Learn the Art of Bearing Down and Letting Up.
Cheating Will Get You Killed.
Transitions Require Decisions.
Your Worst Experience Can Be Your Best Credential.
Hang On Until You're Dealt a Winning Hand.
Be a Star in Your Role.
Have Faith--You're Built for More than You Can See.

Notes & Quotes: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

The following are my favorite quotes from Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running:

Somerset Maugham once wrote that in each shave lies a philosophy. I couldn't agree more. No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.
One runner told of a mantra his older brother, also a runner, had taught him which he's pondered ever since he began running. Here it is: Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
Sometimes I run fast when I feel like it, but if I increase the pace I shorten the amount of time I run, the point being to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day. This is the same sort of tack I find necessary when writing a novel. I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next day's work goes surprisingly smoothly.
The thoughts that occur to me while I'm running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky. The sky both exists and doesn't exist. It has substance and at the same time it doesn't. And we merely accept the vast expanse and drink it in.
Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.
I'm struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.
The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can't be learned at school.
No matter what, I keep up my running. Running every day is a kind of lifeline for me, so I'm not going to lay off or quit just because I'm busy. If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I'd never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.
As you age you learn even to be happy with what you have. That's one of the few good points of growing older.
One of the privileges given to those who've avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old. The honor of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.
Sixteen is an intensely troublesome age. You worry about little things, can't pinpoint where you are in any objective way, become really proficient at strange, pointless skills, and are held in thrall by inexplicable complexes. As you get older, though, through trial and error you learn to get what you need, and throw out what should be discarded. And you start to recognize (or be resigned to the fact) that since your faults and deficiencies are well nigh infinite, you'd best figure out your good points and learn to get by with what you have.

Notes & Quotes: Surf When You Can by Brett Crozier

The following are my favorite quotes from Brett Crozier's Surf When You Can: Lessons in Life, Loyalty, and Leadership from a Maverick Navy Captain.

I think we're better people when we open our hearts and minds to others. Whether it's a neighbor, a stranger on the street, or perhaps even a mildly annoying colonel who seems infatuated with your call sign, relationships can be unexpected gifts, but ones that can change our lives in profound ways.
It's okay to fail and to be less than perfect, as long as you don't give up and you continue to push your own limits. What's more important is that we are honest with ourselves to recognize our deficiencies, and be willing to address them.
The only person on earth who dictates how you will react in any given situation is you. Being a jerk is easy. It takes zero strength of character to shoot someone down, belittle them, or make them feel small. Kindness, understanding, compassion, patience...those are the hallmarks of true strength.
One of the key aspects of leadership, no matter what the circumstance or scenario, boils down to this: understand the importance of each and every person to the team, make sure they know it, then delegate to them the power to perform to their fullest potential.
Master the fundamentals, and you'll find it much easier to navigate the path to success. Because in the end, we practice not until we get it right, but so we never get it wrong.
Empowering people to communicate freely is vital to the success of any organization. But giving people the freedom to communicate fearlessly--even when others may not necessarily be expecting or wanting their opinion--is what distinguishes a good organization from a great one.
That's the great lesson from my time in the Navy. We can move through life on the path of least resistance, hoping others will take the lead when tough decisions need to be made. But by standing up for what you believe in, standing up for the well-being of others regardless of the personal consequence...that's where true character can be forged.

Notes & Quotes: Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter

The following are my favorite quotes from Michael Easter's Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough.

It doesn't matter how much gas we give good new habits; if we don't resolve our bad ones, we still have our foot on the brake.
Aren't addiction, obesity, anxiety, chronic diseases, debt, environmental destruction, political dispute, war, and more all driven by our craving for...more?
The [slot] machines make more than $30 billion each year in the United States alone, or about $100 per American per year. It's more than we spend on movies, books, and music combined. And the figure rises about 10 percent every year.
The behaviors we do in rapid succession--from gambling to overeating to overbuying to binge-watching to binge drinking and so much more--are powered by a "scarcity loop." It has three parts. Opportunity -- Unpredictable Rewards -- Quick Repeatability.
[William] James captured something profound about this brief stint of consciousness we all have and call life. In the end, he said, our life is ultimately a collection of what we pay attention to.
In 1928, the propaganda genius and father of public relations Edward Bernays wrote, "In almost every act of our daily lives...we are dominated by the relatively small numbers of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses...We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by [people] we have never heard of...It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
In the human brain less equals bad, worse, unproductive. More equals good, better, productive. Our scarcity brain defaults to more and rarely considers less.
We're experiencing what researchers call "time scarcity." It's a feeling that we don't have enough time. The truth is that we have more time than ever, thanks to advances in human longevity and the changing nature of work. Still, we cram our lives with so much compulsive activity, things "to do," that we feel pressed.
Brainpower we could have used to plan ahead and solve real problems or just be satisfied and enjoy our present condition gets sucked into a vortex of craving. "This deprivation," wrote the scientists, "can lead to a life absorbed by preoccupations that improve ongoing cognitive deficits and reinforce self-defeating actions." That's scientist-speak for "we obsess over and do dumb stuff and that hurts us."
Scientists at the University of New Mexico analyzed alcoholics in recovery for more than a year. The top reason for relapse was believing addiction is a disease. The relapsers said they didn't see the point in struggling against a disease without a medical cure. This viewpoint can also lead would-be lifelines to give up hope. Other research found that the more a drug user's family members believe addiction is an insurmountable disease, the more likely the are to distance themselves from the user.
"How do you help patients who come to you with addictions or even compulsions around other habits?" "My main advice is to make a big change," said Dr Adbul-Razaq. "Change your circle. Go to school. Educate yourself. Get a job or change your job. Take courses to improve your skills. Learn to read and pour yourself into books. Actively go out and make friends or change your friend group. Make big changes." Embrace short-term discomfort to find a long-term benefit.
When we start to feel as if we have an opportunity to gain status and influence, we start valuing it even more and doing more things to get it. Whether posting on social media or behaving a certain way around others, we'll see the opportunity, act, wait for unpredictable rewards, then repeat. The scarcity loop.
"Status ponds" are more important than we realize. How we feel at any given moment is surprisingly linked to the pond we're in. For example, research shows that people in the top one percentile of wealth--one percenters who make at least $600,000 a year--frequently complain of feeling poor and stretched. This is because they usually live around other one percenters. So they focus on what they don't have compared to their peers. It leads these objectively rich people to believe that they are subjectively poor.
Authentic pride comes from doing awesome things. Hubristic pride comes from falsely advertising ourselves.
The "false uniqueness bias," which is our tendency to see ourselves and our work as more unique than it is. It often leads us to focus on the differences we have with people rather than our similarities. Which explains the concept of schismogenesis, the idea that cultures and people define themselves against their neighbors.
"Do you want to be right or happy?" This question has since saved me a lot of headaches my ego-driven brain manufactures and seems intent on worsening by defending its position. And it highlights something important about our scarcity brain and its desire for influence.
When we ask ourselves, "Do I want to be right or happy?" we take the long view and insert perspective into the equation. But we can also bend the question. It could be "do I want to look good or be happy?" Or "do I want to one-up this person or be happy?" Or "do I want to be right or be a good friend, co-worker, or significant other?" And on and on. Play with it.
Pair our scarcity brain with the modern news cycle, the rat race of life, abundant ultra-processed food, and the limited-time release of the McRib. Congrats, you have an elegant formula for folks who waddle.
In the modern world, if we push back against our tendency to add--forcing ourselves to solve a problem with what we have--we'll likely solve it better, more creatively and efficiently. Creativity and efficiency bloom under scarcity.
The experience led me to a rule to guide my future purchases. I landed on "gear, not stuff." Stuff is a possession for the sake of it. Stuff adds to a collection of items we already have. We often use stuff to fill an emotional impulse or advertise to society that we're a certain type of person. Or it solves a perceived problem we could have solved better with a bit of creativity. Gear, on the other hand, has a clear purpose of helping us achieve a higher purpose.
We might be surprised to learn that still today the world is mostly vast and unpopulated spaces. Our urban areas take up just a sliver of Earth. Cities, towns, and villages make up only 1 percent of our habitable land. Most of habitable land, 50 percent of it, goes to agriculture.
Psychologists have a good rule of thumb for making decisions in a sea of information. It's similar to the rule we can use to determine if we should keep or discard an item. Make everyday decisions within sixty seconds. After that, analyzing more and more information only wastes time and doesn't steer us into significantly better outcomes.
When a child looks longingly through a pet shop window at a puppy, she's seeking the dog because she's seeking happiness. When a miner toils in a coal mine, even though the work is a harsh drudgery, he's seeking coal because he believes his pay will lead him to happiness. When a sales executive strives to make the next big deal, she's seeking a commission because she believes the commission will ultimately bring her happiness. When we take that second serving of food, troll someone online, click buy on Amazon again, or do anything at all, we're taking that action because we think it will make us happy. When we fall into a scarcity loop, it's for happiness. Even our worst ideas are a search for happiness.
The same cycle that helped us survive in the past--happiness followed by dissatisfaction repeated for life--now blinds us to how astonishing modern life is and leads us to chase happiness in all the wrong places.
[Saint] Benedict's philosophy on life can be summed up by the phrase "ora et labora." That's Latin for "pray and work." It's the motto of Benedictines.
Improving our lives requires enduring short-term discomfort for long-term achievement.

Notes & Quotes: The 32 Principles by Rener Gracie

The following are my favorite quotes from Rener Gracie's The 32 Principles: Harnessing the Power of Jui-Jitsu to Succeed in Business, Relationships, and Life.

On more than one occasion, I have been asked if, in retrospect, I view my back injury as a type of blessing in disguise. My answer to that question has always been consistent, I believe that life doesn't happen to you. Life happens for you. So whether that injury was a cosmic gift or not, I made it into a gift for myself.
In jiu-jitsu, our connectedness to an opponent is used to supply us with a trio of important outcomes: to prevent motion, to promote motion, or to predict motion.
Sometimes the people closest to us don't need the type of help we want to give. They need a different type of help from us. They need for us to realize it's all right to let go.
We should aim to develop the foundational emotional and communicative tools that help us to navigate a myriad of potential social obstacles while remaining balanced. Among these tools and traits are a healthy self-esteem, humility, personal reliability, confidence, respect for others, the ability to deal with pressure, a strong will, and the possession of a moral compass. If you can bring any three of these tools to a given situation, the chances of you controlling the situation, rather than the reverse, will increase substantially.
"Once you give [others] the power to tell you you're great, you've also given them the power to tell you you're unworthy. Once you start caring about people's opinions of you, you give up control." Ronda Rousey
My grandfather once noted, "Jiu-jitsu is a mousetrap. The trap does not chase the mouse. But when the mouse grabs the cheese, the trap plays its role."
We like to say: Be first and third. What that literally means is that those in control of a situation make the first move, knowing what the opponent's response (the second move) will be. Then we capitalize on that opening through the third move, the move we set up for ourselves.
If you are the first to accept the inevitability of an action performed against you, then you also have the opportunity to be the first one prepared for the outcome of that action. And that acceptance can be extremely valuable in determining what happens next.
"My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations." Michael J. Fox
"Intelligence is like a river: the deeper it is, the less noise it makes." Unknown
Water doesn't focus on where the rock is. Instead, water focuses on where the rock is not. It takes the path of least resistance, never losing sight of its primary goal of reaching the sea.
For someone taking a fall, be it physical or figurative, the two questions they should immediately ask themselves are: How did that happen? and At which point did their balance begin to become compromised?
I'm partial to saying, "The Gracies used to teach jiu-jitsu to police officers. Now we teach jiu-jitsu for police officers. I'm just the messenger." That's the type of improved vision the Reconnaissance Principle can produce when you're receptive to the power of new information.
Coauthor and journalist Paul Volpani, "When you can call someone by their name, there's less anonymity. Hence, people are less likely to do the wrong thing in front of you. That can insulate you and those in your immediate area from their problems."
Above all else, the tension surrounding UFC 1, both inside and outside the octagon, revealed one unequivocal truth: when it comes to a no-rules fight between two people, Brazilian jiu-jitsu is the superior art form.
Imagine studying for a final exam in a class you're doing well in or preparing to be interviewed for a job promotion perfectly suiting your talents. Eustress pushes you to study and prepare, and that little bit of nervousness you feel helps prove that the outcome is important to you. It is the optimal amount of stress for the average person. In a sense, eustress is the opposite of distress, and its presence in our lives is vital to our overall mental health and well-being.
Don't defend the submission. Defend the position.
"Purposeful giving is not apt to deplete one's resources." Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Leading by example isn't simply the best way to teach. It's the only way to teach.
Like my grandfather always said: There is no such thing as a bad student, only bad teachers. If a person who is small, weak, or unathletic has the courage to give jiu-jitsu a try, it is our responsibility, as their teacher, to exceed all their expectations when it comes to fostering a fun, safe, and positive learning experience on the mat. If someone tries a class and doesn't come back, it's not because they're weak, it's because we didn't do our job. This was my grandfather's belief, this is my belief, and this is the belief of the thousands of instructors my brother and I have personally certified to teach our programs.
"The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts." Charles Darwin

Notes & Quotes: Breathe by Rickson Gracie

The following are my favorite quotes from Rickson Gracie's Breathe: A Life in Flow.

My dad believed that if you mind and will are not strong, you'll spend your entire life getting carried away by your desires and weaknesses. You'll spend your whole life paying for things you don't want.
From a very young age, it was drilled into us that there was no shame in losing but there was shame in quitting or not fighting.
This experience taught me an important lesson about Jiu Jitsu: sometimes it's not about escaping but about finding whatever comfort you can in hell. Something as small as turning my rib cage slightly so I can breathe a little easier can be the difference between victory and defeat. This was less a technical revelation to me than it was a mental one.
I was beginning to understand that money and social position defined some people, but I wanted to be defined by my merit.
If I were to be the greatest Gracie, I had to take risks. Even though I experimented with different drugs and potentially dangerous lifestyles, I valued my freedom above all. I never wanted to be controlled by anything, especially a drug.
I eventually learned that the capacity to accept anything, especially death, was the key to my physical, mental, and spiritual growth. All three of these elements must be balanced, because sometimes you don't break physically but emotionally. Sometimes you have the physicality and the emotional control but are spiritually unprepared. Without a spiritual connection to both life and death, you can't reach the next level of performance. Soon I would realize that if I were to dance on the razor's edge, I might fall off it and die. That was the price of admission.
One of the most important muscles for high-performance athletes to develop in order to breathe more efficiently is the diaphragm.
Once I could accept death and walk comfortably toward it, what was there to be afraid of? My biggest personal breakthrough came after realizing that my life was less important than my mission.
Renzo [Gracie] was a born fighter who, rather than getting scared in dangerous situations, got focused.
As Gracies, we were taught that there was no shame in being nervous or afraid; what mattered was what you did in the face of fear.
While some people are impressive natural athletes, some have a never-say-die attitude that cannot be taught. The latter often go further in Jiu Jitsu and in life.
I felt confident that if Royce [Gracie] stuck to the Gracie game plan of avoiding punches and taking the fight to the ground, he could win. During the week prior to the fight, I started to get his mind ready. I told him that winning was OK, losing was OK, and dying was OK. He should be happy to be in America representing the family.
By pitting "villain" characters, like Kimo and Tank Abbott, against "hero" characters, like Royce and Ken Shamrock, the UFC was becoming more like professional wrestling--a stage on which to introduce heroes and heels. It is no coincidence that I only fought professionally in Japan, the home of the samurai and the Bushido code. Like the European knights' concept of chivalry, the Bushido code governed the conduct of Japan's samurai warriors. To them, being a warrior was not just an occupation but a way of life. The tenets of the code changed slightly over time, but they can generally be described as righteousness, courage, compassion, respect, honesty, honor, and loyalty.
A couple of time a week, I would take a snorkel and submerge my entire body in a frozen river. First came the shock of the cold, following by searing pain and anxiety, but I got to a point where I was ready to surrender and die. If you can control your breathing, you can get past this point to where the cold disappears and the pain turns into pleasure. In order to go into water that cold, I had to control myself mentally and physically.
On my last day in the mountains, I lit the big pile of wood and leaves that I collected during my stay. The flames spread upward quickly until the entire pile was engulfed. I didn't feed the fire but instead kept my eyes on it the entire time. I offered my thanks for the opportunity to be there and to represent Jiu Jitsu. In the thirty minutes it took for the fire to start and then burn itself out, I saw my entire life play out in front of me. By the time it went out, I had prayed, rid myself of any doubts or regrets, and accepted the cycle of life and death.
On the morning of the Japan Vale Tudo Open, I got to the stadium early and took a nap in the locker room. When I woke up, I thanked God for life and then acknowledged that it was a perfect day to die because my life's mission was complete. I was representing my art and my family in the ring. My opponent would have to knock me out or kill me to win, for I was never going to tap. This was not a sport to me; it was my sacred honor.
In three short bouts, I had won the Japan Open. I bowed to the crowd on the four sides of the ring but did not smile. The samurai did not celebrate victories, and neither would I. Why celebrate a victory? Your next fight might be your last. Battles are not parties. Win or lose, fights are sacred to me.
After I learned to empty my mind, I had the confidence to be humble, and humility played a big role in my progress.
The more time I spent in Japan, the more I liked it. I was amazed by the attention the Japanese paid to the tiniest details of the simplest things: the way the built a fence, the way they planted a garden, the way they turned buckwheat into soba noodles. There is beauty even in their approach to war. Not only do they uphold the values of honor, dignity, and respect, but their weapons, armor, and masks are all beautifully and meticulously constructed. Samurai swords from hundreds of years ago are still some of the finest knives ever made.
I do not believe in luck or coincidence, to me, everything is a sign that it either positive or negative. I accept the fact that forces larger than me are in charge, and I look for spiritual clues in life. For example, if I find a hawk feather in my garden, I consider it a blessing and a good sign.
I respected the Japanese relationship with food. It was not just the food; it was also the reverence they showed for their seasonal ingredients. The Japanese term washoku, which means "Japanese harmony of food," is based around Japan's four seasons and their harvests. For example, you might eat green peas and clams in the spring, shishito peppers and certain types of fish in the summer, mushrooms and eels in the fall, and greens and other types of fish in the winter. Even rice has a season: rice harvested in the early fall is considered the best. There are special plates and bowls for each season. The diner's senses and the overall experience are as important as the food. Every aspect of the meal is a celebration of both sustenance and the season. This attention to detail really humbled me.
With kids, you have to respect the fact that you are not in control of their outcomes. You plant the seeds and nurture them as best you can, but at a certain point, you have to let go. No matter how much knowledge, love, money, or advice you give them, they will fly once their own wings are strong enough. Then they will chart their own courses through life. A father must accept his children for who they are, not who he would like them to be.
I understood that there is no tomorrow, because life can change forever in the blink of an eye. I needed to do my best every day because it might be my last. I no longer had the luxury of wasted time!
Happiness is not a static thing. You have to work at it by confronting and overcoming challenges.
When money becomes more important than happiness, your life passes you by, because you can't lower your guard and enjoy yourself. Money is a tricky thing: it can bring you freedom and happiness, but it can also bring pain and anxiety.
The overwhelming majority of my students are incredibly gracious and grateful for the opportunity to learn. Those with humility and innocent curiosity are the easiest to teach, because their minds are open to new things. It is difficult to teach people to relearn things they have been doing wrong for decades. But if the spirit is willing, the mind and body will follow.
Big egos and closed minds usually come hand in hand. Occasionally, a student's shell will be so hard that I have to crack it first in order to teach them. To do this, I have to show them--not tell them--what I am teaching them works.
While I respected the top Jiu Jitsu competitors as remarkable athletes, I did not consider them complete martial artists, because they ignored the self-defense aspect of the practice. Fights in real life are unpredictable, and often your only goal is survival.
I don't care if a student is only interested in the sport of Jiu Jitsu; every blue belt needs to know how to block a punch, clinch, take someone to the ground and control them. Even more important, they need to know how to use the guard to defend against punches and head butts in the event of a real-life assault.
I wanted everything in life--a conversation with a stranger, a new project, or a Jiu Jitsu seminar--to have meaning. I refused to waste time on things that I did not value, and I left other people's expectations behind.
My cat reinforced my belief that the deeper my connections are, the more fulfilling life becomes. The Japanese have an expression, ichi-go ichi-e, which roughly translates to "once in a lifetime." It could refer to a gathering of friends, a special meal, an epic day of surf, but the idea is to savor the occasion, because it will never come again. I share this view and believe that if you see every moment in life as a unique opportunity, you live with much more intensity and precision because you are using 100 percent of your energy, your voice, and your senses. It is always important to remember that.
Helping my students try to become better people, not just smashing-machines, is what motivates me. Jiu Jitsu is my philosophy, my sacred honor, and my family tradition. It has made me strong enough to forgive and confident enough to fight for my beliefs.