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successful people in the world do everything in their power to avoid bad decisions that confuse matters and drag them away from their goals. Instead, they focus on making
vision and bring them closer to achieving it. It doesn’t matter if they’re considering a small thing or a huge thing, the decision-making
an impressionable kid like me, those images were like Viagra for dreams. They should have come with a warning, too, because the visions of life in America they aroused did not go away after four hours.
could become a vision now as an adult. Those memories and the possibilities they carry have been squeezed out by the distraction of all our devices. They’ve been erased by all the things that make people feel helpless, like life has happened to them.
First, create little goals for yourself. Don’t worry about the big, broad stuff for now. Focus on making improvements and banking achievements one day at a time. They can be exercise goals, nutrition goals. They can be about networking or reading or getting your house organized. Start doing things you like to do or that make you proud of yourself for having completed them. Do those things every day with a little goal attached to them, and then notice how doing that changes what you pay attention to. All of a sudden you will find yourself looking at things differently.
to be a genius or a prodigy for walking to be useful or transformative. There is a lot of evidence for the power of taking a walk to increase creativity, inspire new ideas, and change people’s lives, whoever they
walking increased the creative thinking of 100 percent of the study participants who were asked to walk while completing a series of creative tasks. There is a ton of anecdotal evidence as well. Do a quick Google search
As uncomfortable as it can be, you have to look at yourself in the mirror every day in order to know where you stand. You have to check in with yourself if you want to be sure that you’re moving in the right direction. You have to make sure that the person looking back at you is the same one you see when you close your eyes and visualize the person you are trying to become. You need to know whether or not your vision aligns with the reality of your choices. You have to do
substitute for putting in the work. There is no shortcut or growth hack or magic pill that can
of them, and then think to themselves, This is all set, I took care of it. No. Don’t be a lazy fuck. Do the work. The only time you are allowed to use the phrase “I took care of it” is when it is done. Completely.
have to do with putting in the work to reach your vision? If it matters to you, make the time.
After all this stuff in a typical daily life is accounted for, there are still two hours left in the day to make progress toward your vision. I can already hear the question coming from a bunch of you: What about time for rest and relaxation? First of all, rest is for babies and relaxation is for retired people. Which one are you? If you want to do something special, if you have a big dream that you want to achieve, I believe you’re going to have to put relaxation aside for a while. But fine, you want some relaxation, take half of the remaining time for your little
the next governor of California . . .” Saying things this way is very powerful for two reasons: First, it presents your vision to the world as if it were real, which puts you in the position of having to work hard right now to make it true. Second, in cases where you need other people to believe in your
drastically underestimate what you’re capable of. Do not let your ego win. Don’t correct them. If you can stay focused on winning and on achieving your goals, you can use their doubts and underestimation against them to effortlessly bridge the conversation, or the interview, or the negotiation to whatever
Bridging is a communication technique that anyone can use to take control of a hostile discussion or to avoid a question you don’t want to answer by shifting it toward a topic that better serves your agenda instead of the agenda of the person on the other side of the microphone or the negotiating table. I first learned
myself in a position to sell the story of someone I don’t know. This is something you should think about. What is the value of trying to be someone you’re not? Of hiding from your true story and letting someone else tell it? Where do you think that gets
powerful people are drawn to those who ask good questions and listen well. When you’re curious and you’re humble enough to admit that you don’t know everything, people like that want to talk to you. They want to help you. Your curiosity and
to listen well is an essential ingredient of curiosity, and it’s the secret to learning. Some of history’s wisest thinkers and philosophers have been preaching to us about this for thousands of years, with lines like “We have two ears and
can make someone’s day better and your own day better with the same act of kindness and generosity. And you don’t need to be rich or flush with cash to do it.
“Yes indeed—shatter the glass. In our society that is so self-absorbed, begin to look less at yourself and more at each other. Learn more about the face of your neighbor and less about your own. When you get to be thirty, forty, fifty, or
