The Common Denominator of Success

Every successful person formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.

The successful are influenced by the desire for pleasing results.  Failures are influenced by the desire for pleasing methods and are inclined to accept results that can be obtained by doing things they like to do.

It is easier to adjust ourselves to the hardships of a poor living than to adjust ourselves to the hardships of creating a better one.

What hardships have you chosen?

Choose your beliefs

What you believe about yourself, what you can do and how, and how the world is, is a critical component of what you will accomplish in life.  

If you believe you can NOT do a thing, you will not try or give it your best effort, and give up quickly.

If you believe you are worthy, able, and see yourself doing it, you will.

The inner game shows up in the outer game.

“If no belief is objectively true all the time – then you get to choose the beliefs you accept at the time that are most useful.” – Derek Sivers

Your beliefs are your limitations.

Choose them wisely.

Do your own thinking

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” – Walter Lippman

How much of what you believe, associate with, and repeat is from the thinking and refrains of others or the group?

How much is from your own clear observation and thought?

The easy way will not make you happy

One could say that the purpose of life is to be happy.  But in a great irony, doing the easy thing and doing things that are fun all the time will not make you happy in the long run.  People who seek short-term pleasures to make them happy will always be looking for greater pleasures, and in the end, feel shallow and empty.

It turns out ceaseless leisure and short-term pleasures do not, in themselves, equate to long-term fulfillment and purpose and the deep sense of happiness that comes with them. 

“Happiness does not come from doing the easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.” – Theodore Isaac Rubin

Pleasure or purpose?  Happiness or meaning?

What we want is to matter.  The struggle makes it worthwhile and matter.

Hero – Strength for Two

Taking care of yourself is important.  If everyone did it well, we’d have a much better world because many people wouldn’t need so much help.

So the first and best thing you can do for the world is to take care of yourself.

But we are made for much more than that.  If you can take care of yourself AND someone else, or a lot of someone else’s, that is the definition of a hero.