Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter

by Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson

you might not normally read, or have you

try food you might not normally order. You must find people who are going to inject new energy into your life. Because if you keep having the same conversations with the same people year after year, your energy is going to stagnate. Your id...

Always challenge yourself to be around people who might be informed in different ways than you are, who have had different experiences, and, most important, aren’t intimidated to share

that information with you. Those are the people who are going to supercharge your evolution into your best self.

never let them think they’re doing you a favor. You must make them believe that the

favor is actually coming from you—that by being brought into your orbit, they will be setting themselves up for a win.

Even as you’re telling the world you don’t need a thing, you can never forget there are certain people who you are always going to need on your side. Don’t try to run the game on them. Always have a select few you remain honest and humble with.

But in order to push yourself to be great that way, the first thing you have to be able to do is appreciate the greatness in others. You cannot go around believing that no one is as good as you and therefore you don’t have anyone to measure up against.

I’m going to be locked in a rivalry with myself.

The key is that I remove emotion from the equation when I make my mental notes. I don’t get jealous when I see someone make a smart move, just like I don’t get excited when I see them stumble.

When you’re hustling at your hardest, you’re going to observe and engage with anything that gives you even the slightest advantage.

Whenever you write something down, it promotes a more focused way of thinking. When ideas only live in your mind, it’s easy for you to lose track of them. Even if they’re extremely powerful, they get lost in the stream of new information that’s constantly entering your head.

Once you have it down on paper, you’re setting yourself up to make something valuable happen.

Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts. —NIKKI GIOVANNI

How that person responds to their failure is going to determine the outcome of their journey.

Approach failures the same way that Honda did: as a tool that can help you get things right the next time.

Don’t look at failure as something you need to distance yourself from. Try to embrace it instead. Wrap your hands around it and examine it. Believe that you can use it to rebuild your idea and take it to an even higher level than you’d originally conceived.

you’re going to encounter resistance. Every successful person has scars from those encounters—you just can’t see most of them.

Because your Ls are where your greatest instructions will always be found.

It rarely feels like it in the moment, but experiencing setbacks, losses, and disappointments will absolutely make you stronger in the long run.

The first and most important step in learning from your Ls is identifying that you made a mistake in the first place.

I can feel that I’m on my way up again. And I’m going to rise higher than I ever have before.

But if someone keeps missing the shots you set them up for, it’s not your responsibility to keep feeding them the ball.

you should never feel like the world owes you anything.

You must accept that it’s all on you.

When you accept that it’s all on you, only then can you finally be free to focus 100 percent on being the best version of yourself.

You can never feel satisfied if you’re not applying yourself to something you’re passionate about.

In order to be a true hustler, you have to chase the gratification that can only come from making things happen yourself, when you have a vision that no one else can identify with and pour everything you have into it. You find yourself in valley after valley and can’t ever quite catch a glimpse of the mountaintop. But you keep pushing forward, until that one day when you finally

do make it to that peak.

You can only get true fulfillment and happiness from enjoying the achievement you made happen yourself.

Don’t let the thought of starting all over again make you depressed. Understand that most successful people end up chasing the same dream multiple times before it ever comes to fruition. Accept that what seemed like a disaster was really just a temporary hardship that every hustler goes through.

our hustle can lead us to whatever we want in life!