The British Army’s Special Air Service—one of the original special operations organizations—has a motto that encapsulates everything about the mindset required to be truly elite: “Who dares, wins.” While this may seem somewhat cryptic from a civilian perspective, it makes all the sense in the world to those people who have gone to the edge of performance and pushed it just a little further.
To paraphrase former President Robert F. Kennedy, one of the distinguishing characteristics of those who achieve greatness is a willingness to fail greatly. Along those same lines, Thomas Edison once said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
