Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

There are a few leaders whom I’ve admired for the results they brought forward. I’ve studied the words, the actions and the mindset behind their success. A former colleague introduced me to this saying, an excerpt from a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt “Citizenship in a Republic” given at the Sorbonne in Paris, France on April 23, 1910. He said to me, “Michel, this is you in a nutshell.”

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Who comes short again and again…

•Did you know that the most heralded basketball player in history to date, failed to make his high school basketball team? [Michael Jordan]

•Did you know that one of the most intelligent men in the world flunked high school math class? [Albert Einstein]

•Do you know how many failures and setbacks [Abraham Lincoln] suffered through before he became our President?
-he was defeated for Illinois state legislature
-he was defeated for nomination to US Congress
-he was defeated for Senate…twice

As Roosevelt said of him,
If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

Go out this next week and “strive to do the deeds”.

Have a blessed weekend!