The Art of Doing

Month: September 2015

3 Tactics for Taking On Big Challenges

Philippe Petit may go where no man (or woman!) dares to go. But what he returns with is a set of principles we can all use when we take on big challenges of our own.

Petit

Philippe Petit offers us a glimpse of what’s possible

It’s 1974. A man has decided he’s going to walk across a wire stretched a quarter of a mile in the air between the Twin Towers of New York City’s World Trade Center. As he does it, pedestrians below gawk in awe. An entire city swoons. Wire-walker Philippe Petit becomes an international celebrity for performing what many called the artistic crime of the century.

Forty-one years later, Petit’s feat is the subject of director Robert Zemeckis’s 3-D spectacular, “The Walk,” starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit. The film, which hits theaters this weekend, puts audiences right there on the wire with Petit, and is a powerful reminder that even the most perilous feats can be accomplished one careful step at a time.

And indeed, when we interviewed Philippe Petit for our book The Art of Doing, he told us there was a method to his madness. Having gone on to perform dozens of other high-profile wire-walks, authored several books, and become an adept equestrian, fencer, carpenter, rock-climber, and even bullfighter, Petit would bristle at the idea that his work could be reduced to a system. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons that any entrepreneur, artist, or aspirer to big deeds can’t learn as they gear up for their next big challenge. Our story HERE.

Yogi Berra’s Mantra For the Masses

Baseball legend Yogi Berra (1925 – 2015) on “How to Be a Major Leaguer” from in The Art of Doing.

Yogi Berra 1925 – 2015

Baseball legend Yogi Berra died at 90 this week. But his advice to aspiring athletes—or to anyone engaged in the struggle to succeed whatever their endeavor—was as practical as what he told himself when he was struggling to earn a place in the Major Leagues.

Now considered one of baseball’s greatest catchers of all time who holds the record of being on the team of the most World Series wins (10) and on the team of 15 consecutive All-Star Games, Yogi Berra was the linchpin of the New York Yankees dynasties from 1946 to 1960. He is the so-called fifth face of the Yankees’ Mount Rushmore (after Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio). Continue reading “Yogi Berra’s Mantra For the Masses”