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Success, Your Way: Do What You're Meant to Do
BOOKS
320 pages, Paperback
First published July 31, 2014
About the author
G. Richard Shell
16 books78 followersG. Richard Shell is the Thomas Gerrity Professor of Legal Studies, Business Ethics, and Management at the Wharton School of Business. His latest book, The Conscience Code: Lead with Your Values. Advance Your Career, is the essential guide to creating and maintaining ethical, speak-up cultures at work. His Springboard: Launching Your Personal Search for Success (Penguin/Portfolio 2013), was named Business Book of Year for 2013 by the largest business bookseller in the United States. Shell is the Director of Wharton’s Executive Negotiation Workshop and its Strategic Persuasion Workshop and has taught everyone from Navy SEALs, UN diplomats, and Fortune 500 CEOs to FBI hostage negotiators, emergency room nurses, and front-line public school teachers. His earlier works include the award-winning Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People (2nd Edition, Penguin 2006)and (with co-author Mario Moussa) The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas (Portfolio/Penguin 2007). His books have sold over 500,000 copies and are available in over seventeen languages.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 8, 2025
A detailed examination of what success means- evidence based but told through stories. A thoroughly interesting read which got me thinking about my own perceptions of success.
January 8, 2025
It's a really good book. I think everyone should read it. Here are my notes as usual:
1. Odyssey years are between 20-35 yrs old where you discover your values and that you want to do in the future.
2. Four powers of the mind are imagination, passion, reason, intuition.
3. Balance between inner and outer success dimensions.
4. There might be false signals in opportunities that you think will bring you success. Be flexible in adapting to them.
5. You define success by who you look toward as successful.
6. Let's look at the inner dimensions of success. Happiness is not just a fleeting emotion, or a way to describe your life as a whole.
7. "The experience of the soul that comes when you are doing what you should be doing." Flow, flourishing, meaning.
8. Obsessive desires for any single aspect of life to bring happiness often backfire, becoming a 'psychological burden' to everyone concerned.
9. People who say they are 10/10 happy all the time achieve less.
10. When it comes to gaining wisdom, negative emotions have a place of honor right next to positive ones.
11. Claim your right to be unhappy.
12. Happiness is measured not by the number of days you live, but rather by the number of days you remember.
13. Regonition respect and Informed Respect are two different things. The prior, you get respected by random people because you are well-known, the latter, you get respected by a small community who really knows what you have contributed and can add value to your achievements.
14. Do you have a job, career or a calling?
15. There is no priority list that compares how meaningful one type of work is to others. It's your attitude towards your job. Deep meaningful experiences can turn any profession into a calling.
16. The right question is, 'what are the memories, experiences, aspirations, values or stories that connect you to what you do every day and give it purpose?' instead of 'what is the work?'
17. 'Passion is not something you follow. It is something that will follow you as you put in hard work to become valuable to the world.' - Cal Newport
18. Make use of your
- interests and passions
- aptitudes and skills
- past experience
- personality strengths
19. Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire. Fred Shero
20. Satisfaction-based/intrinsic motivation is critically important to sustaining any interest or activity for a long period of time. But without reward-based/external motivation, you may lack the intensity needed to do your best work. There is power in competition. You need both.
21. Use competition to turbo charge your interests but not until you burn out.
22.
- Make yourself accountable
- Connect with role models
- Create motivational rituals
- Compete with yourself
- Prove someone wrong
- Channel your strongest emotions
23. It's not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest. - Alfred Binet, inventor of the IQ test
24. Suffering induced transformative experiences (Sites)
25. Passion, intuition, imagination, reason.
26. Clarity of purpose, hard work, focus and persistence.
27. You will have friends of pleasure, utility and virtue.
28. What is credibility?
- your formal and informal authority
- your knowledge
- your reputation for getting things done
- your trustworthiness
29. What happens during the 'moment of persuasion' is not overcoming the other in a brilliant argument. Instead, it's other people 'persuading themselves' that your ideas are worth accepting. They:
- hear and consider your reasons
- assess the power of your emotional commitment to those reasons
- reframe your ideas into reasons they themselves can accept
1. Odyssey years are between 20-35 yrs old where you discover your values and that you want to do in the future.
2. Four powers of the mind are imagination, passion, reason, intuition.
3. Balance between inner and outer success dimensions.
4. There might be false signals in opportunities that you think will bring you success. Be flexible in adapting to them.
5. You define success by who you look toward as successful.
6. Let's look at the inner dimensions of success. Happiness is not just a fleeting emotion, or a way to describe your life as a whole.
7. "The experience of the soul that comes when you are doing what you should be doing." Flow, flourishing, meaning.
8. Obsessive desires for any single aspect of life to bring happiness often backfire, becoming a 'psychological burden' to everyone concerned.
9. People who say they are 10/10 happy all the time achieve less.
10. When it comes to gaining wisdom, negative emotions have a place of honor right next to positive ones.
11. Claim your right to be unhappy.
12. Happiness is measured not by the number of days you live, but rather by the number of days you remember.
13. Regonition respect and Informed Respect are two different things. The prior, you get respected by random people because you are well-known, the latter, you get respected by a small community who really knows what you have contributed and can add value to your achievements.
14. Do you have a job, career or a calling?
15. There is no priority list that compares how meaningful one type of work is to others. It's your attitude towards your job. Deep meaningful experiences can turn any profession into a calling.
16. The right question is, 'what are the memories, experiences, aspirations, values or stories that connect you to what you do every day and give it purpose?' instead of 'what is the work?'
17. 'Passion is not something you follow. It is something that will follow you as you put in hard work to become valuable to the world.' - Cal Newport
18. Make use of your
- interests and passions
- aptitudes and skills
- past experience
- personality strengths
19. Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire. Fred Shero
20. Satisfaction-based/intrinsic motivation is critically important to sustaining any interest or activity for a long period of time. But without reward-based/external motivation, you may lack the intensity needed to do your best work. There is power in competition. You need both.
21. Use competition to turbo charge your interests but not until you burn out.
22.
- Make yourself accountable
- Connect with role models
- Create motivational rituals
- Compete with yourself
- Prove someone wrong
- Channel your strongest emotions
23. It's not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest. - Alfred Binet, inventor of the IQ test
24. Suffering induced transformative experiences (Sites)
25. Passion, intuition, imagination, reason.
26. Clarity of purpose, hard work, focus and persistence.
27. You will have friends of pleasure, utility and virtue.
28. What is credibility?
- your formal and informal authority
- your knowledge
- your reputation for getting things done
- your trustworthiness
29. What happens during the 'moment of persuasion' is not overcoming the other in a brilliant argument. Instead, it's other people 'persuading themselves' that your ideas are worth accepting. They:
- hear and consider your reasons
- assess the power of your emotional commitment to those reasons
- reframe your ideas into reasons they themselves can accept
October 2, 2020
One of the best books to get inspired and try to achieve your personal goals and not only.
May 24, 2023
My third time reading this book. I will probably pick it up again! Five stars!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews