For most of my life, I thought that spirituality had no place in high performance. Faith felt like a lack of ownership. A handoff of responsibility. In 2nd grade, I read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, the story of a young Japanese girl who, after developing leukemia from the Hiroshima bombing, folded 1000 paper cranes in a desperate wish to survive. As I read it over, and over and over again, I remember trying to make sense of how a higher being could allow such cata

When I worked at Bridgewater, every meeting was recorded. Every idea dissected. Every mistake reviewed. And it worked for me because it felt like sports. You watch film, you see the moment you dove in too soon or adjusted too late. And it doesn’t threaten your identity. It fuels you. The best athletes crave this. They know they’re not their mistakes. They want to see the errors because each one sharpens the next move. And the faster they adjust, the wider the gap grows betwe

I used to believe that effort was the key variable in high performance. And for most of my life, that belief served me well. Work ethic and consistency were the engines that carried me through every competitive environment I entered. And in those early stages, the relationship was linear. The more I poured in, the more I got out. BUT PERFORMANCE AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS DOESN'T BEHAVE LIKE A STRAIGHT LINE. My third ACL tear drove that lesson deeper than any leadership book eve