Advanced Tactics
How to Go from Being Merely Good to Being Truly Great
18 The Truth About Talent (When Genes Matter and When They Don’t)
19 The Goldilocks Rule: How to Stay Motivated in Life and Work
20 The Downside of Creating Good Habits
Conclusion: The Secret to Results That Last
Appendix
What Should You Read Next?
Little Lessons from the Four Laws
How to Apply These Ideas to Business
How to Apply These Ideas to Parenting
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
About the Author
O
Introduction
My Story
N THE FINAL
day of my sophomore year of high school, I was hit
in the face with a baseball bat. As my classmate took a full
swing, the bat slipped out of his hands and came flying toward me
before striking me directly between the eyes. I have no memory of
the moment of impact.
The bat smashed into my face with such force that it crushed my
nose into a distorted U-shape. The collision sent the soft tissue of
my brain slamming into the inside of my skull. Immediately, a wave
of swelling surged throughout my head. In a fraction of a second, I
had a broken nose, multiple skull fractures, and two shattered eye
sockets.
When I opened my eyes, I saw people staring at me and running
over to help. I looked down and noticed spots of red on my clothes.
One of my classmates took the shirt off his back and handed it to
me. I used it to plug the stream of blood rushing from my broken
nose. Shocked and confused, I was unaware of how seriously I had
been injured.
My teacher looped his arm around my shoulder and we began the
long walk to the nurse’s office: across the field, down the hill, and
back into school. Random hands touched my sides, holding me
upright. We took our time and walked slowly. Nobody realized that
every minute mattered.
When we arrived at the nurse’s office, she asked me a series of
questions.
“What year is it?”
“1998,” I answered. It was actually 2002.
“Who is the president of the United States?”
“Bill Clinton,” I said. The correct answer was George W. Bush.
“What is your mom’s name?”
“Uh. Um.” I stalled. Ten seconds passed.
“Patti,” I said casually, ignoring the fact that it had taken me ten
seconds to remember my own mother’s name.
That is the last question I remember. My body was unable to
handle the rapid swelling in my brain and I lost consciousness
before the ambulance arrived. Minutes later, I was carried out of
school and taken to the local hospital.
Shortly after arriving, my body began shutting down. I struggled
with basic functions like swallowing and breathing. I had my first
seizure of the day. Then I stopped breathing entirely. As the doctors
hurried to supply me with oxygen, they also decided the local
hospital was unequipped to handle the situation and ordered a
helicopter to fly me to a larger hospital in Cincinnati.
I was rolled out of the emergency room doors and toward the
helipad across the street. The stretcher rattled on a bumpy sidewalk
as one nurse pushed me along while another pumped each breath
into me by hand. My mother, who had arrived at the hospital a few
moments before, climbed into the helicopter beside me. I remained
unconscious and unable to breathe on my own as she held my hand
during the flight.
While my mother rode with me in the helicopter, my father went
home to check on my brother and sister and break the news to
them. He choked back tears as he explained to my sister that he
would miss her eighth-grade graduation ceremony that night. After
passing my siblings off to family and friends, he drove to Cincinnati
to meet my mother.
When my mom and I landed on the roof of the hospital, a team of
nearly twenty doctors and nurses sprinted onto the helipad and
wheeled me into the trauma unit. By this time, the swelling in my
brain had become so severe that I was having repeated post-
traumatic seizures. My broken bones needed to be fixed, but I was
in no condition to undergo surgery. After yet another seizure—my
third of the day—I was put into a medically induced coma and
placed on a ventilator.
My parents were no strangers to this hospital. Ten years earlier,
they had entered the same building on the ground floor after my
sister was diagnosed with leukemia at age three. I was five at the
time. My brother was just six months old. After two and a half years
of chemotherapy treatments, spinal taps, and bone marrow
biopsies, my little sister finally walked out of the hospital happy,
healthy, and cancer free. And now, after ten years of normal life, my
parents found themselves back in the same place with a different
child.
While I slipped into a coma, the hospital sent a priest and a social
worker to comfort my parents. It was the same priest who had met
with them a decade earlier on the evening they found out my sister
had cancer.
As day faded into night, a series of machines kept me alive. My
parents slept restlessly on a hospital mattress—one moment they
would collapse from fatigue, the next they would be wide awake
with worry. My mother would tell me later, “It was one of the worst
nights I’ve ever had.”
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