The Greatness Guide: One of the World's Most Successful Coaches Shares His Secrets for Personal and Business Mastery

by Robin Sharma

“Life is pure adventure and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.” Maya Angelou

I wasn’t looking for grace. But luckily grace was looking for me.”

Do anything long enough and you’ll get some depth of insight and understanding about it. Then they’ll call you a guru.

Each day, life will send you little windows of opportunity. Your destiny will ultimately be defined by how you respond to these windows of opportunity. Shrink from them and your life will be small. Feel the fear and run to them anyway, and your life will be big.

You, as well as your organization, are most vulnerable when you are most successful. Success actually breeds complacency, inefficiency and—worst of all—arrogance.

It got me thinking about the importance of showing up fully at work—giving the fullness of your brilliance and playing full out. Being wildly passionate about your To Do’s. Being breathtakingly committed to your big projects and best opportunities. Being a rock star in whatever you do each day to put bread on your table.

How do you feel when you reached for your greatest goals and grabbed them? It feels pretty good, doesn’t it? And you don’t need to have the biggest title to do the best job.

The best among us are not more gifted than the rest. They just take little steps each day as they march toward their biggest life. And the days slip into weeks, the weeks into months and before they know it, they arrive at a place called Extraordinary.

reading a book by someone you respect allows some of their brilliance to rub off on you.

all it takes is one idea discovered in a single book to lift you to a whole new level and revolutionize the way you see the world.

if you—like me—have the habit of buying more books than you can ever possibly read, don’t feel guilty—you’re building your library. And that’s a beautiful thing.

Failure is the price of greatness. Failure is an essential ingredient for a high achievement. As innovation guru David Kelley wrote: “Fail faster. Succeed sooner.” You can’t win without leaving your safety zone and taking some calculated risks. No risk, no reward. And the more risks you take in the pursuit of your dreams, the more you are going to fail.

The best companies on the planet have failed more than the average ones. The most successful people on the planet have failed more than ordinary ones. To me, the only failure is the failure to try and dream and dare. The real risk lies in riskless living. Mark Twain made the point perfectly when he observed: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.”

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

It’s easy to forget that people do business with people they like—and who make them feel good.

Too many among us are afraid to be ourselves. So we give up our dreams to follow the crowd. Tragic. “To thine own self be true,” wrote Shakespeare. Have the courage to be your true—and greatest—you.

If you want to be happier, do more of the things that make you happy.

When you get back to doing those things that lifted your spirit and sent you soaring, you reconnect with that state of happiness that you may have lost.

I believe that good things happen to those willing to put in the effort, exercise discipline and make the sacrifices that personal and professional greatness requires—no, demands.

Not one of the über-successful people I’ve worked with as a leadership coach got there without outworking everyone around them.

Be spectacularly great at what you do. Wear your passion on your sleeve and hold your heart in the palm of your hand. And work hard. Really hard. Hard work opens doors and shows the world that you are serious about being one of those rare—and special—human beings that uses the fullness of their talents for the highest and the very best.

You can’t be all things to all people. The best among us get that.

“There is no such thing as an average human being; if you have a normal brain, you are superior.”

being a leader (at work or at home or in your community) is a lonely act. The very definition of being a leader means you are out in front—with no one else.

You can’t hit a target you can’t even see.

Do the right thing rather than doing the popular thing. The best thing to do is generally the hardest thing to do. Please remember that.

You are here to find that cause, that main aim, that vital destiny that will move you at the most visceral level and get you up at the crack of dawn with fire in your belly. You are meant to find something that your life will stand for that will consume you, something so beautiful and meaningful that you’d be willing to take a bullet for it.

There can be no authentic success and lasting happiness if your daily schedule is misaligned with your deepest values.

“The price of discipline is always less than the pain of regret.”

The best among us make it all look so easy.

A primary sign of maturity is the ability to give up instant gratification for a much more spectacular pleasure down the road.

the right thing to do is generally the hardest thing to do.

Don’t complicate things. Getting to your best life is simple. Not easy but simple. It just takes focus and effort.

Every dream starts small. But you need to start. Today.

In my mind, the only failure in life is the failure to try.

One idea discovered in one book can change the way you see the world. One idea read in one book could transform the way you communicate with people. One idea found in one book could help you live longer or be happier or drive your business to remarkable success. Never leave home without a book in your hand.

1. Be the most positive person you know. 2. Be candid and speak truthfully. 3. Be on time. 4. Say please and thank you. 5. Under-promise and over-deliver. 6. Leave people better than you found them. 7. Be friendly and caring. 8. Be a world-class listener. 9. Become passionately interested in other people. 10. Smile a lot.

Pleasure comes from something on the outside. Happiness comes from within. It’s a state you create by choice. It’s a decision. It’s an act of will.

Success doesn’t just occur. It’s a project that is worked on each day.

Perhaps the deepest longing of the human heart is to live for something greater than itself.

If you don’t know where you are going, then how will you know when you get there? And how can you hit a target you can’t even see?

there’s no point in being busy if you’re busy doing the wrong things.

“To find a cause that’s larger than yourself and then to give your life to it.”

People spend more time planning their summer vacations than they do designing their lives.

“If everyone was satisfied with themselves there would be no heroes.”

Being good is being wise. It’s a smart business strategy.

Keep perspective. Most of the problems we think are disasters turn out to be blessings, in hindsight.

while almost every one of us wishes for more time, we misuse the time we have.

The person who tries to do everything accomplishes nothing. Most people try to be all things to everyone. And so they end up nothing to anyone.

To live on in the minds and hearts of the generations who will follow you is to cheat death.