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The Monday Morning Memo

Determination is a Steely-Eyed Dog

March 21, 2016

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https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/7ce1e2ac-3403-4e5b-a27b-1c4089de5734/MMM160321-DeterminationSteelyEyedDog.mp3

Beagle_Determination_Pere-Borrell-del-Caso_1874

YOUNG ONE: “Master, does success go to the clever one, or to the lucky one?”

MERLYN: “Success is sometimes discovered by the clever one, and occasionally by the lucky one, but it is most often laid hold of by the determined one.”

YOUNG ONE: “Will you teach me to be determined?”

MERLYN: “Determination is dangerous… relentless… remorseless… and inescapable. It returns to its master with treasure between its teeth.”

YOUNG ONE: “Is Determination a dog? Shall I summon it with a whistle?”

MERLYN: “The whistle is a four-note tune that comes at a high price.”

YOUNG ONE: “Teach me the notes. I will pay.”

MERLYN: “Everyone wants to be a beast, until it’s time to do what real beasts do.”

YOUNG ONE: “Teach me the notes.”

MERLYN: “As you wish.”

This is what the old wizard taught me:

NOTE ONE: Count the cost.

MERLYN: “Consider everything that might go wrong. Is your goal worth enough that you would endure all this discomfort and pain? If the answer is yes, then make peace with those possibilities and you will be bulletproof. No matter what happens, you will not panic. You will have already been there in your mind.”

NOTE TWO: Throw your cap over the wall.

MERLYN: “A group of boys walk a pathway next to a high stone wall that surrounds the estate of a nobleman. The older boys challenge each other to climb the wall, but none of them can do it. The youngest boy then takes off his cap and tosses it over the wall. Confused, the other boys watch as he quickly climbs the wall. Upon his return, he looks at them and says, ‘I was not going home without that cap.'”

NOTE THREE: Employ Exponential Little Bits.

MERLYN: “Ask yourself at every meal, ‘What difference have I made today?’ Do not let your head touch your pillow until you have taken an action that moves you a Little Bit closer to your goal, no matter how tiny that action might be. Exponential Little Bits are relentless activities that compound to make a miracle. When daily progress meets with progress, it doesn’t add, it multiplies.”

NOTE FOUR: Be an observer, a simple witness to what happens.

MERLYN: “You are responsible for your actions, not for the outcome. To be effective, you must be objective. Become a tool in the hand of the goal itself. Eliminate your ego. Do not seek recognition. It isn’t about you. It’s about the thing you’re doing. Are you willing to pay this price? Can you whistle the notes that summon the dog?”

YOUNG ONE: “You said the dog returns to its master with treasure between its teeth.”

MERLYN: “Yes.”

YOUNG ONE: “I see blood on that treasure.”

MERLYN: “Yes.”

YOUNG ONE: “And that blood is my own.”

MERLYN: “You are ready to whistle the notes.”

Roy H. Williams

Beagle_Doctor_thumb
Anthony Trollope understood Exponential Little Bits. He said, “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.” The voice of MERLYN in the audio version of this week’s Monday Morning Memo was played by Cognoscenti Mike McCurlie of MJM Media in Canada. Cool, huh! And I, Indy Beagle, will announce 10 winners of original works of art on the Terminus Page of today’s Rabbit Hole.

Fundraising for Non-profits: The Definitive 12 Techniques, April 13-14
Money is Counterintuitive: All the Stuff No One Ever Told You, April 21-22

Upendra
Employee-Owned Companies? A diehard Democrat and a prominent Republican are on a bipartisan campaign to convince private businesses to give their employees partial ownership of their companies. As Upendra Chivukula and Veny Musim see it, the only way to save capitalism is to increase the number of capitalists. Listen in as roving reporter Rotbart asks these authors of The 3rd Way to back up their claims with empirical evidence. It’s always interesting at MondayMorningRadio.com

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Random Quote:

“2 + 2 ≠ APPLE: If I ask Jessica “What’s 2+2?” and she responds “5”, that’s the wrong answer. But at least it’s a reasonable response. Jessica has responded numerically, which indicates that she understood the nature of the question. If I ask little Jimmy “What’s 2+2?” and he responds “APPLE”, that’s a much bigger problem, because his response fails to acknowledge the nature of the question.

If I ask Bob and Sophia “What’s 2+2?” and they both say “4”, you might be ready to reach for your gold star stickers. But the Socrates of The Republic would stop you. He’s not satisfied. Not yet. Like that annoying math teacher who wouldn’t give you full marks until you showed him all your work, Socrates wouldn’t give Bob and Sophia gold stars until they had demonstrated to him that they understood precisely why 2+2=4. He interrogates Sophia first, after separating them. Using four of the fingers on her left hand, she shows him that she understands what numbers are, what they represent, and how they can be added to each other. Socrates smiles, pats her on the head, and gives her a gold star.

He then turns to Bob, who’s thoroughly baffled. As it turns out, he really doesn’t know why 2+2=4. When pressed, he tells Socrates that he “knows” that the answer’s “4” because his father told him so. “And how did your father come to know that 2+2=4, Bob?” “His father (my grandfather) told him.” “And how did your grandfather come to know that 2+2=4?” “Well, um, I’m pretty sure that his father (my great grandfather) told him. It’s been, like, you know, passed down, from generation to generation.” Alas, the stony stare says it all: Bob’s not getting his gold star.

The Socrates of The Republic would say that Bob’s “4” is inferior to Jessica’s “5” and really no better than Jimmy’s “APPLE”. But the Socrates of The Laws, the Athenian Stranger, seems to have come to the conclusion that civilization depends, to a large extent, upon people like Bob: people who live by rules they don’t understand, people who’ve inherited a wealth of folk wisdom from their ancestors. Bob may not be able to explain why willow bark tea takes away your aches and pains, but he knows it works. He lives by a bunch of handy heuristics which keep him out of trouble (for the most part). Besides, expecting everyone to be like curious, philosophical Sophia is absurdly idealistic.

Most people simply aren’t interested in figuring out how things work. They’re too busy living life, raising kids, having fun, working hard, and thinking about what to have for dinner. So long as a thing works, and works well, most people really don’t care how it works. We drive cars that we don’t understand, use computers that we don’t understand, talk on cellphones that we don’t understand, pay taxes to a government that we don’t understand, obey laws that we don’t understand, and subscribe to scientific theories like evolution that we don’t understand. The way that most of us sleepwalk through life horrified the idealistic young author of The Republic. But the older, wiser Plato, who penned The Laws, is far less troubled by the Bobs of this world.”

- John Faithful Hamer

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