preparation

Preparation, I have often said, is rightly two-thirds of any venture.

Amelia Earhart

Last Flight

The World's Foremost Woman Aviator Recounts, in Her Own Words, Her Last, Fateful Flight. Crown Publisher. 2009. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World. 

prepare my mind for life itself

The sole reason I work out like I do isn't to prepare for and win ultra races. I don't have an athletic motive at all. It's to prepare my mind for life itself. Life will always be the most grueling endurance sport, and when you train hard, get uncomfortable, and callous your mind, you will become a more versatile competitor, trained to find a way forward no matter what. Because there will be times when life comes at you like a sledgehammer. Sometimes life hits you dead in the heart.

David Goggins

Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds - Clean Edition. Lioncrest. 2020. p.256

WD > WS

Monty Williams is a man of many sayings. Some of them, like, “Well done is better than well said,” have made it onto hats. Others sneak into his answers in press conferences (“Reps remove doubt”), and still more have been relayed to Suns players so often over the past two seasons that they show up in those players’ own responses (“Preparation meets opportunity”). But there are also some staples of Williams’s lexicon that don’t count as sayings, yet may be even more indicative of how he approaches both basketball and life.

If you watched Williams’s media appearances throughout the playoffs, you found that he has no problem saying “I don’t know” in response to a difficult question; he said it 17 times during the Finals alone. You also saw that when Williams is asked something that requires perspective, he will make sure to mention how “grateful” he is or how much “gratitude” he has to be in this position—he used those words in answers 18 times during the series, including when talking about how he still gets excited when he gets fresh gear.

Six of those 18 mentions came on Tuesday night, mere minutes after Williams’s Suns had lost Game 6 of the Finals—and an NBA championship—to the Milwaukee Bucks.

“It’s a blur for me right now,” Williams said, talking about the game’s fourth quarter. “I’m just thankful that God allowed me to be in this position to be the head coach in the Finals. It hurts badly, but I’m also grateful that we had this chance to play for a championship. I’m just grateful for that part.”

Paolo Uggetti

"The Suns’ Future Is Bright, As Long As They Have Monty Williams" The Ringer. July 22, 2021

people who are unprepared

Everyone approaches a danger with more courage if he has prepared in advance how to confront it. Anyone can endure difficulties better if he has previously practiced how to deal with them. People who are unprepared can be unhinged by even the smallest of things.

Seneca

The naive mind imagines effortless success. The cowardly mind imagines hardship and freezes. The resilient mind imagines hardship and prepares.

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.181

those torrential rivers

I think it may be true that fortune determines one half of our actions, but that, even so, she leaves us to control the other half, or thereabouts.

And I compare her to one of those torrential rivers that, when they get angry, break their banks, knock down trees and buildings, strip the soil from one place and deposit it somewhere else. Everyone flees before them, everyone gives way in the face of their onrush, nobody can resist them at any point. But although they are so powerful, this does not mean men, when the waters recede, cannot make repairs and build banks and barriers so that, if the waters rise again, either they will be safely kept within the sluices or at least their onrush will not be so unregulated and destructive. 

The same thing happens with fortune: She demonstrates her power where precautions have not been taken to resist her; she directs her attacks where she knows banks and barriers have not been built to hold her.

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.160

faith in the future

For every worry under the sun,

There is a remedy, or there is none;

If there be one, hurry and find it,

If there be none, never mind it.

–LeGrand Richards, CN 31 March 1979,4

We must have faith in the future regardless of the ultimate eventualities. There could be no greater calamity in this world than the calamity of sitting down and waiting for calamity. We must not let the things which we can’t do keep us from doing the things we can do…. The future will always be better for those who are best prepared.


Richard L. Evans, Church News, June 25, 1988, p.2 as found in Prophetic Statements on Food Storage for Latter-day Saints by Neil H. Leash. Cedar Fort. 1999. p.184

I’m getting ready for next year

The morning after Boston’s celebration [having just won the 1984 NBA Championship], Bird finally went home for a little shuteye. Around mid-afternoon, Buckner, who was experiencing his first-ever NBA title, drove to Bird’s Brookline home with the hope of celebrating all over again. Dinah informed Buckner that Larry wasn’t there.

“He was out running,” Buckner said, “When he got back, I said to him, ‘Man, what are you doing?;”

Bird looked at him quizzically before he answered.

“I’m getting ready for next year,” he said.

Larry Bird, Earvin “Magic” Johnson & Jackie MacMullan

When the Game Was Ours. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009