Study Greatness

Box­ing leg­end Mike Tyson often comes across as some­one who has had too many blows to the head. But in an inter­view on Joe Rogan’s pod­cast, I learned about that he’s been study­ing some of the world’s great­est con­querors, since he was 15 years old – not just about how they thought, but how they believed that they actu­al­ly deserved to con­quer lands, dom­i­nate peo­ple and take what other’s val­ued. He want­ed to not just under­stand their mind­set but to embody it, and to live, breathe and act accordingly.

That’s what he took into the ring: the per­mis­sion he gives him­self to destroy, and poten­tial­ly kill, his opponent.

Known as the ​“bad­dest man on the plan­et”, Tyson is one of the great­est heavy­weight box­ers of all time, claim­ing his first belt at just 20 years of age – the record for the youngest box­er to win a heavy­weight title. He won his first 19 pro fights by knock­out, 12 of them in the first round.

It was fas­ci­nat­ing. When Tyson fights, he’s con­quer­ing the soul and spir­it of anoth­er human being, feel­ing that he has not only the right, but the oblig­a­tion to do it.

His com­mit­ment to study­ing these con­querors reminds me of a con­ver­sa­tion my then 13-year old son and anoth­er CEO’s son had with Jim Collins, after a large pub­lic event with a cou­ple of thou­sand peo­ple, in Lon­don, Eng­land. Dur­ing a small, pri­vate ses­sion with a group of CEOs, they asked Jim what advice he would give to young, aspir­ing lead­ers. His response?

Read 100 biogra­phies and study greatness.

That’s essen­tial­ly what Mike Tyson did. He stud­ied the lives of great con­querors like Alexan­der the Great because he want­ed to con­quer, too.

So, when you think about your biggest goals – think terms of a BHAG (Jim Collins’ Big Hairy Auda­cious Goal) — what do you need to study to ful­ly believe, with unwa­ver­ing con­vic­tion, that you not only deserve it, but that it will hap­pen?

I’ve com­piled an list of books to inspire you to great­ness, includ­ing two of my favourites: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill about the think­ing, habits and best insights of high­ly suc­cess­ful Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ists in the ear­ly 1900s.

The Chal­lenge

• Who can you study, alive or dead, that has accom­plished what you want and can help you under­stand what it takes for you to mas­ter your vision or your leadership?
• Who are the con­querors, entre­pre­neurs, human­i­tar­i­ans, tech giants, inven­tors and adven­tur­ers that would be inspir­ing and inter­est­ing to read about, lis­ten to, watch, and learn from?

Here’s an inspi­ra­tion list to get you started:

• Shoe Dog, Phil Knight
• Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill
• Their Finest Hour, Win­ston Churchill’s sec­ond vol­ume in his Sec­ond World War series
• Endurance: Shackleton’s Incred­i­ble Voy­age by Alfred Lansing
• The Men Who Built Amer­i­ca (His­to­ry chan­nel doc­u­men­tary series)
• The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rock­e­feller, Jay Gould and JP Mor­gan Invent­ed the Amer­i­can Super­econ­o­my, Charles R. Morris
• Mozart: A Life, Peter Gay
• Antho­ny Bour­dain Remem­bered, CNN
• Stal­in: The Court of the Red Tsar, Simon Sebag Montefiore
• Alexan­der Hamil­ton, Ron Chernow
• Leonar­do da Vin­ci, Wal­ter Isaacson
• Ein­stein: His Life and Uni­verse, Wal­ter Isaacson
• The Diary of Fri­da Kahlo: An Inti­mate Self-Por­trait, Fri­da Kahlo
• Born Stand­ing Up: A Comic’s Life, Steve Martin
• The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Mar­tin Luther King, Mar­tin Luther King Jr & Clay­borne Carson
• Sure­ly, You’re Jok­ing, Mr. Feyn­man! (Adven­tures of a Curi­ous Char­ac­ter), Richard Feynman
• The Sky is Not the Lim­it: Adven­tures of an Urban Astro­physi­cist, Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Dar­win: The Life of a Tor­ment­ed Evo­lu­tion­ist, Adri­an Desmond & James Moore
• Man’s Search for Mean­ing, Vik­tor Frankl
• My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Per­son­al Jour­ney, Jill Bolte Taylor
• Naked at the Feast: A Biog­ra­phy of Josephine Bak­er, Lynn Haney
• My Inven­tions: The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Niko­la Tes­la, Niko­la Tesla
• Cather­ine de Medici: Renais­sance Queen of France, Leonie Frieda
• A Promised Land, Barack Obama
• My Own Words, Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg
• Steve Jobs, Wal­ter Isaacson
• Empire: The Life, Leg­end and Mad­ness of Howard Hugh­es, Don­ald Barlett
• Alan Tur­ing: The Enig­ma, Andrew Hodges
• Prince: A Pri­vate View, Afshin Shahidi
• Mao: The Unknown Sto­ry, Jung Chang
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
• Long Walk to Free­dom, Nel­son Mandala
• A Move­able Feast, Ernest Hemingway
• Life, Kei­th Richards
• Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank