Shoe Dog - Phil Knight
“Life is growth. You grow or you die.” - the best bits from the iconic Nike founder
Key takeaways
Don't Just Climb the Ladder, Build Your Own
Aspire to discover work that is aligned to a purpose and keeps you occupied because you enjoy doing it.This pursuit goes beyond financial gain; it seeks to align your daily efforts with your interests. When your work resonates with your personal mission, it not only enhances resilience but also transforms the everyday work into something you can look forward to. Start by identifying what energises you and consider potential paths that align with these passions, even if they appear unconventional or risky at first.
Dance to Your Own Rhythm, Even When Others Can't Hear the Music
Embrace your unique ideas, even when they diverge from mainstream expectations. The courage to persist in the face of doubt often defines transformative ventures. Focus less on achieving a specific endpoint and more on progressing steadfastly towards your vision. Let your journey be flexible, adapting as you learn and grow, but always rooted in the commitment to your original vision. This approach not only fosters innovation but also builds resilience as you navigate the inevitable challenges of pioneering new paths.
Embrace the Stadium of Life
Sports offer profound lessons in handling life’s vicissitudes—teaching resilience through others' triumphs and tribulations. Engage with sports as a metaphor for life, where you learn to celebrate victories humbly and accept defeats gracefully. This broader perspective can provide solace during personal challenges and enhance your capacity for empathy and solidarity. Aligning with sports narratives also offers communal joy and a collective sense of achievement, reinforcing your connections to broader, shared experiences.
Money: A Good Servant, But a Bad Master
Money is a necessary component of modern life, it should not dictate your identity or happiness. Strive to master money's influence so it doesn't weave itself into the fabric of your identity. Like a tool in a craftsman's hand, it can construct magnificent structures—or dismantle them. Build a life where your worth isn't measured by your wealth, but by the richness of your experiences and the depth of your relationships. Strive to create an equilibrium where financial decisions support your values rather than undermine them. It should serve your dreams, not dictate them.
Forget to Compete, Compete to Forget
The art of competing is much like a magician's act of misdirection—focus not on the distractions but on the magic of the moment. In sports, as in life, the secret is to forget the crowd, the competition, and the pressure. Focus instead on the strength and poise within. This selective amnesia allows you to channel your energy into your performance, turning potential anxieties into stepping stones toward mastery.
When to Hold 'Em, When to Fold 'Em
Success often requires knowing when to persevere and when to pivot. Recognize that stopping one approach can be the step that leads to greater opportunities. This wisdom in pivoting is as valuable as the grit to persevere. Maintain agility in your strategies, and stay open to new directions, particularly when faced with repeated obstacles. The blend of persistence, flexibility, and astute judgment often dictates long-term success
Fail Fast, Learn Faster
Adopting a 'fail fast' mentality encourages innovation and swift learning. This approach minimises wastage of time and resources on ineffective strategies, allowing for quicker iterations and adaptations. Embrace failure as a vital informant in the learning process, enabling you to refine and improve continuously. Cultivate resilience by viewing each setback as an opportunity to pivot intelligently, thereby enhancing your strategic agility and readiness for future challenges.
Sell with Soul
Your belief in your product or service transforms ordinary sales into compelling narratives that customers feel drawn to. When you sell something you are passionate about, it transcends traditional transactions and becomes about sharing a vision. Communicate with authenticity and enthusiasm, letting your genuine conviction persuade and engage others. This approach not only makes your interactions more meaningful but also ensures that your professional endeavours are fulfilling and impactful.
Notable passages
“Driving back to Portland I’d puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I’d been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I’d despised it to boot. I’d been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I’d felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.
“I thought back on my running career at Oregon. I’d competed with, and against, men far better, faster, more physically gifted. Many were future Olympians. And yet I’d trained myself to forget this unhappy fact. People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that’s only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I’d learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past.”
“And those who urge entrepreneurs to never give up? Charlatans. Sometimes you have to give up. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. Don’t ever stop. Luck plays a big role. Yes, I’d like to publicly acknowledge the power of luck. Athletes get lucky, poets get lucky, businesses get lucky. Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome. Some people might not call it luck. They might call it Tao, or Logos, or Jñāna, or Dharma. Or Spirit. Or God.”
“I went to Cairo, to the Giza plateau, and stood beside desert nomads and their silk-draped camels at the foot of the Great Sphinx, all of us squinting up into its eternally open eyes. The sun hammered down on my head, the same sun that hammered down on the thousands of men who built these pyramids, and the millions of visitors who came after. Not one of them was remembered, I thought. All is vanity, says the Bible. All is now, says Zen. All is dust, says the desert.”
“Every runner knows this. You run and run, mile after mile, and you never quite know why. You tell yourself that you’re running toward some goal, chasing some rush, but really you run because the alternative, stopping, scares you to death.”
“I read in my guidebook that Michelangelo was miserable while painting his masterpiece. His back and neck ached. Paint fell constantly into his hair and eyes. He couldn’t wait to be finished, he told friends. If even Michelangelo didn’t like his work, I thought, what hope is there for the rest of us?”
“When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.”
Quotable Quotes:
“You are remembered, he said, prophetically, for the rules you break”
“How can I leave my mark on the world, I thought, unless I get out there first and see it?”
“When you see only problems, you’re not seeing clearly.”
“The best way to reinforce your knowledge of a subject is to share it.”
“As ever, the accountant in me saw the risk, the entrepreneur saw the possibility.”
“But everyone’s an athlete, he said. If you have a body, you’re an athlete.”
“Confidence. More than equity, more than liquidity, that’s what a man needs.”
“I wanted what everyone wants. To be me, full-time.”
“If my life was to be all work no play, I wanted my work to be play.”
“Somebody may beat me—but they’re going to have to bleed to do it.”
“Instead of cherishing how far we'd come, I saw only how far we had to go”
“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”
“Beating the competition is relatively easy. Beating yourself is a never-ending commitment.”
“I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.”
“Have faith in yourself, but also have faith in faith. Not faith as others define it. Faith as you define it. Faith as faith defines itself in your heart.”
“I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.”
“There were many ways down Mount Fuji, according to my guidebook, but only one way up. Life lesson in that, I thought. Signs”
“Hard work is critical, a good team is essential, brains and determination are invaluable, but luck may decide the outcome.”
“Confidence was cash. You had to have some to get some. And people were loath to give it to you.”
“I didn’t consider myself an optimist by nature. Not that I was a pessimist. I generally tried to hover between the two, committing to neither.”
About me:
I write to learn. More about me here. Follow @hackrlife on X