Exploring Healthy Revenge and Quiet Greatness in Success

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Healthy revenge involves using the energy from feeling wronged to motivate yourself to excel and be better than those who have wronged you, without allowing revenge to consume your thoughts and actions. It is about enhancing yourself rather than letting revenge overshadow your decisions. Quiet greatness, exemplified by David Rogers, a Wall Street Journal reporter, emphasizes the importance of mastering your craft, doing extensive research, and truly understanding your subject matter to achieve excellence. Rogers, despite being low-key, was a legendary congressional reporter due to his deep knowledge, encyclopedic understanding, and unparalleled mastery of his field. He mentored others by teaching them to put in the hard work required to excel and become experts in their domain, inspiring them to reach their full potential and transforming their lives in significant ways.

Jim VandeHei didn’t have an auspicious start in life. His high school guidance counselor told him he wasn’t cut out for college, and he went on to confirm her assessment, getting a 1.4 GPA at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and spending more time drinking beer than planning his career.

Eventually, though, Jim turned things around for himself, going on to co-found two of the biggest modern media outlets, Politico and Axios.

Jim shares how he started moving up the rungs of success and building a better life for himself in his new book Just the Good Stuff: No-BS Secrets to Success (No Matter What Life Throws at You). Today on the show, Jim shares the real-world lessons he’s learned in his career. We discuss the importance of matching passion to opportunity, making your own luck, surrounding yourself with the right people, keeping the buckets of your happiness matrix filled, understanding the difference between wartime and peacetime leadership, harnessing the energy of healthy revenge, and more.