Category: The Hero Mindset

Pain is Inescapable Suffering is Optional

Posted: July 13, 2026

Most people handle adversity exactly backwards. They generalize the negative (“I lost this sale, I must be terrible at marketing”) and isolate the positive (“I won that deal, but I probably got lucky”). That’s a perfect recipe for a permanent crisis of confidence. Try this instead: Generalize the positives. When you make a sale, treat it as evidence that […]

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Lean in to Your Weaknesses

Posted: July 6, 2026

We were recently shopping for a new leather sofa. The salesperson explained to me that the highest quality and most durable is “full grain.”

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Simulations and Rollplaying

Posted: June 16, 2026

Airlines have been using simulators to train pilots. Simulations allow them to train and assess their pilots’ ability to perform under disruptive and volatile conditions.

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What is the Hero Mindset™

Posted: June 8, 2026

General of the Army and later President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, is the epitome of the HERO Mindset™. He was a staff officer who never commanded troops until the North African Campaign (Operation Torch), when he served as a three-star general. That campaign was successful but not perfect. There were failures, and if Ike had done like most today and made himself into a victim and ceded total control to external factors, perhaps we would be living in the German or Japanese-occupied United States.

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The Reality Distortion Field

Posted: June 1, 2026

When colleagues at Apple Inc. talked about Steve Jobs, they often used a strange phrase: the Reality Distortion Field. It wasn’t about deception. It described Jobs’s uncanny ability to make people believe that what looked impossible might actually be achievable. As Walter Isaacson notes in his biography, engineers frequently found themselves accomplishing things they had previously dismissed as unrealistic.

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Churchill: Conviction Can Change Outcome

Posted: April 20, 2026

In 1940, Churchill became Britain’s leader amid a crisis. France was collapsing, Nazi Germany ruled much of Europe, and invasion seemed likely. Churchill did not promise an easy victory but showed conviction that endurance could change the outcome.

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