It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” —Marcus Aurelius

“They were all good soccer players, but they knew they weren’t great. And most of them were playing for fun, they weren’t dreaming of getting on airplanes and being a professional athlete like I was. “Doesn’t matter what you say. You can’t understand,” I’d say to them. “I can see light with my running. All of you are here just chasing a ball around a field. Where’ that going to take you?” I had to be as harsh with them as they were being with me. I wanted to live in a proper city, travel the world, be known and appreciated for my talents.

“The way Boss put it, being a clean athlete was everything. He told me not to trust people. To stay humble.

“It would be better for athletics and athletes if Sebastian Coe focused on real cheaters instead of focusing on rare but completely natural biological variations in women or the transgendered athletes who are supposedly waiting to take women’s medals. It would be even better if the sporting powers focused on the things that women really need to become better athletes—they can start with equitable pay, making sure we can do our jobs without being harassed physically and mentally, creating a system where resources are distributed fairly.” (Semenya “The Race To Be Myself”, p.295)

“I think of marathoner Eliud Kipchoge’s words on his success: “Learn to say no, learn self-discipline, avoid complaining.

Part Two: Practicing The Science of Failing Well

Chapter Five: We Have Met the Enemy

“Today, Dalio credits this failure as a major cause of his subsequent extraordinary success, including his firm’s becoming the largest and most profitable hedge fund in history: “In retrospect, that failure was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It gave me the humility I needed to balance my aggressiveness and shift [my] mindset from thinking, ‘I’m right,’ to asking myself, ‘How do I know I’m right?’”

How do I know I am right?

It’s a powerful question. Failing well, perhaps even living well, requires us to become vigorously humble and curious—a state that does not come naturally to adults.