Most of these students are so conditioned to success that they become afraid to take risks. They have been taught from a young age by zealous parents, schools, and institutional authorities what constitutes failure and success. They are socialized to obey. They obsess over grades and seek to please professors, even if what professors teach is fatuous. The point is to get ahead, and getting ahead means deference to authority. Challenging authority is never a career advancer.
Your leadership skill-set might be what we have been waiting for, to bring order and finality to major challenges that affect the global village. The vast hydroelectric generation capacity in Africa, particularly the Great Lakes region and along the Nile River, still remains unutilized potential not benefiting the people of Africa most of whom continue to live in darkness and depleting the forests looking for wood fuel and more fertile farming land.
“No more mundane stagnant living! Do things that challenge you, that make you think, that raise your awareness, that inspire your heart, that make you laugh, that snap you out of the zombie mindset and WAKE UP every cell in your body. It’s doing those things that sculpt us into the greatest versions of ourselves. Our BEST life… the unbullshitafied life… is experienced when we live accordingly.”
“We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go.”
“Our guys are playing well right now. Having said that, I think we are coming up on the toughest part of our schedule. We have three matches in a row on the road and we need to be playing our best tennis of the year. It's going to be a major challenge, but I think we have a good deal of momentum and confidence going into it. Hopefully we can come out and play to the best of our abilities.”
“To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen, who play with their boats at sea - "cruising," it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.”
“This scene originally looked very different. The actress was standing on a wooden platform, surrounded by a railing to keep tourists from falling down the mountain, hardly as dramatic as the finished product. It was amazingly challenging, due to the fact that the camera was constantly moving around her, and the sheer amount of work required to perfect the shot. Trees and bushes had to be added, a village in the background required removal, and clothing was even added to the actress. It was a complete and all encompassing transformation.”
“Thirty years after drafting the US Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson warned of the dangers posed by the corporation, writing of the need to "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Today, instead, the aristocracy of the corporation has grown to full maturity, wielding power over the state and its laws in the service of corporate aims.”
“Big Media does not know how to innovate, ... What capacity for product development do news organizations show? Zip. How are they on nurturing innovation? Terrible. Is there an entrepreneurial spirit in newsrooms? No. Do smart young people ever come in and overturn everything? Never. Do these firms attract designers and geeks who are gifted with technology? They don't, because they don't do anything challenging enough. They don't innovate, or pay well. So they can't compete.”
“I found that I was not effective at holding myself accountable. When you're in business you know what needs to be done. You have your goals in front of you and 99 percent of the time you know how to do it. Accountability is usually the missing piece. It's so easy to get caught up in the minutia of your day and the mundane things that have to be done. Holding yourself accountable for the things that need to be done is a challenge.”