Being useful, having a satisfying life and making a contribution is entirely within your control.


Pride is a hard thing to swallow and at the root of all pettiness is a sense of pride. Pettiness finds a way to “one up” someone. By being a person that is above all that, it just proves you’re an emotionally mature person that doesn’t stoop to other people’s pettiness.

Trust me, I know how satisfying pettiness can be, especially when someone is being rude to you first. At the end of the day, holding your head up high and not lowering yourself to other petty peoples’ level will give you a sense of self confidence, assurance and petty-free pride.


It took 10 years to establish kanban at the Toyota Motor Company. Although it sounds like a long time, I think it was natural because we were breaking in totally new concepts. It was, nonetheless, a valuable experience.

To make kanban understood throughout the company, we had to involve everyone. If the manager of the production department understood it while the workers did not, kanban would not have worked. At the foreman level, people seemed quite lost because they were learning something totally different from conventional practice.


Maslow described an insecure person as a person who “perceives the world as a threatening jungle and most human beings as dangerous and selfish; feels a rejected and isolated person, anxious and hostile; is generally pessimistic and unhappy; show signs of tension and conflict, tens to turn inward; is troubled by guilt-feelings, has one or another disturbance of self-esteem; tends to be neurotic; and is generally selfish and egocentric. He viewed in every insecure person a continual, never dying, longing for security.

A person who is insecure lacks confidence in his or her own value, and one or more of his or her capabilities, lacks in trust in himself or herself or others, or has fears that a present positive state is temporary, and will let him or her down and cause him or her loss or distress by “going wrong” in the future. This is a common trait, which only differs in degree between people.

Insecurity may contribute to the development of shyness, paranoia or social withdrawal, or alternatively it may encourage compensatory behaviors such as arrogance, aggression, or bullying, in some cases.

The fact that the majority of human beings are emotionally vulnerable, and have the capacity to be hurt, implies that emotional insecurity could merely be a difference in awareness.

Insecurity has many effects in a person’s life. There are several levels of it. It nearly always causes some degree of isolation as a typically insecure person withdraws from people to some extent. The greater the insecurity, the higher the degree of isolation becomes. Insecurity is often rooted in a person’s childhood years. Like offense and bitterness, it grows in layered fashion, often becoming an immobilizing force that sets a limiting factor in the person’s life. Insecurity robs by degrees; the degree to which it is entrenched equals the degree of power it has in the person’s life.


Imagine being German in the 30s like “I don’t hate Jews, not one bit! Nothing against them. How dare you imply that, I’m a nice person! But that Hitler is doing great things for this economy, you can’t deny that, so he’s getting my vote”.


There were moments of gold
And there were flashes of light
There were things we’d never do again
But then they’d always seemed right


Một ngôi nhà nhỏ đầy ắp tiếng cười có giá trị hơn một cung điện đầy nước mắt.


I would not call Mel Laird devious, but there are not many men in the White House in comparison with whom Richard Nixon look like a Boy Scout.


Harold Brown was a wunderkind. He got his PhD in physics from Colombia at age 21 and then went on to become a research scientist in radiation at Berkeley, and then became president of CalTech. Brown worked for Robert McNamara as the director for research and engineering at DoD (traditionally a job for the smartest of the smart).


A few of Brown’s conclusions simplified for DoD: Don’t air your dirty laundry, do deflate the leadership bloat, do long-term and concentrated strategic programming, and don’t manage the Department like a company — because it’s not.


Lots of people are terrific at what they do, but they hit a plateau mid-career. It isn’t a question of competence at their job; it’s often to do with “Gravitas”, and their lack of it.

The literal meaning of the Latin word is “weight, heaviness”. This suggests that people who display Gravitas are grounded, possess sound judgment and are able to deal with significant issues — in other words, “grace under fire.”


It’s no good fiddling anxiously with your hair, tapping your pen or slouching in your chair. To convey Gravitas successfully, your body language needs to match with the message you want to convey, so walk tall, sit up straight and don’t forget the all-important handshake.

Wait for the right moment to make your point and learn how to use your silence successfully. When you do speak, keep it clear and concise. Don’t cut people off — wait for your turn.