147enterprising when it came to money. The fortune he ac-
quired demands that we take his observations seriously.
68. Get up a game
It is said that John F. Kennedy’s father’s credo was,
“Don’t get mad, get even.”
And that credo has a certain vengeful, clever wis-
dom in it as far as it goes, but you might go even further
with this credo: “Don’t just get even—get better.”
When Michael Jordan was a sophomore in high
school he was cut from his high school basketball team.
Michael Jordan was told by his coach that he wasn’t good
enough to play high school basketball. It was a crushing
disappointment for a young boy whose heart was set on
making the team, but he used the incident—not to get
mad, not to get even, but to get better.
We all have those moments when people tell us, or
insinuate to us, that they don’t think we measure up—
that they don’t believe in us. Some of us have entire
childhoods filled with that experience. The most com-
mon reaction is anger and resentment. Sometimes it
motivates us to “get even” or to prove somebody wrong.
But there’s a better way to respond, a way that is cre-
ative rather than reactive.
“How can I use this?” is the question that puts us on
the road to creativity. It transforms the anger into opti-
mistic energy, so we can grow beyond someone else’s
negative expectations.
Johnny Bench, a Hall of Fame baseball player, knew
what it was like to not be believed in.
“In the second grade,” he said, “they asked us what
we wanted to be. I said I wanted to be a ballplayer and
they laughed. In the eighth grade they asked the same
Get up a game