Once You Achieve Success, Savor and Enjoy It to the Fullest
I have certain habits and ways of thinking about the world that are the right ways, at least for me:
I want to enjoy everyone I know, everything I buy, and every idea I come into contact with to the fullest. I feel that we need to really appreciate what we have to the absolute fullest. A few years ago, I was taking private pilot lessons and was very close to getting my pilot’s license–and then I stopped. It has been at the back of my [Read more]
You Must Have the Home Team Advantage
One of the most interesting things to me is witnessing people when they make a complete reversal in their lives and overnight become incredibly successful, happy, and fulfilled people. Perhaps the reason this is so fascinating is that it happens so rarely. When this does happen, more often than not, the major life change is related to a career, location, mate, or some other important aspect of the person’s life. This is why, I believe, that making good decisions pertaining to these different areas of your life is among the most important determinants of your happiness on earth. [Read more]
Self-Help Means Helping Others
There is a simple concept that separates those who experience great success from those who do not. I am going to tell you all about this concept in a second, but first I want to talk a little bit about self-help. I have read countless books that discuss various methods of improving one’s life and career. I have always found it interesting that these books are almost always classified as self-help. The first self-help book ever written is generally considered to be Samuel Smiles’ Self Help, originally published in 1859. The book begins with the sentence “Heaven helps those who help themselves.” The principle that self-help seems to be founded on and seems to revolve around, is that people need to take charge of themselves in order to improve their lives. Most books that fall within this classification generally offer the same prescription for improving any area of life:
- Discover what you want!
- Have a positive attitude!
- Create big goals!
- Have discipline!
Vested Interests: Ask Yourself, “Does This Really Serve Me?”
One thing you often find is that there seem to be a great number of people out in the world whose chosen business is to make your life and circumstances, whatever they may be, seem much worse than they are. In fact, in your day-to-day life, you are probably already continually surrounded by various people whose personal interests lie in making you feel bad about yourself and the world in general. Your success and ability to get on will in large part be determined by your ability to sift through all of this negative information coming at you. [Read more]
The Danger of Driving Sharp Bargains
Every time I have ever seen someone drive a sharp bargain, it has ended up coming back at the person in some negative way. People who get paid more than they are worth, or who receive more benefit than they provide, always run into problems and have difficulty achieving success. The most successful people in the world are, for the most part, the ones who give more value than they receive. They contribute so much value that people want to do business with them, to buy their products and services over and over again. When I was practicing law, I [Read more]
Change Your Thermostat
One day several years ago, I was sitting in my office in Los Angeles when two barefooted women walked in. Their feet were dirty, and I can assure you, it is not normal for women to walk around downtown Los Angeles without shoes. Both of the women had scabs on their face and were in their late 20s or early 30s. They were dressed like prostitutes and they both looked quite frightening, their eyes glassy and hair unkempt. They did not smell good. All it took was one look to see that the women had been living on the streets, [Read more]
The Dangers of Complacency
The most important thing you can do in your pursuit of success is avoid complacency. Never allow yourself to settle down and accept your results as finite. You need to surround yourself with people who will continue to challenge you to become better. Whom you choose to surround yourself with plays a major role in what you will achieve and what will happen to you in your life. Surround yourself with mediocre people and you will likely face mediocrity in your own life; surround yourself with people who accept nothing but the best from themselves and others, and you are [Read more]
Control Your Environment
Have you ever known someone whose life seems to go wrong at every turn? I have known several people like this. Here are some examples of things that have gone wrong for them:
- They sign up for a course in school, forget they are enrolled, and get an F in the class–crushing their chances of getting into a good graduate school.
- They constantly have strange health problems.
- People around them seem to constantly be dying or having accidents for no apparent reason.
- They are robbed and beaten up, even in good neighborhoods.
- The sewer pipes explode in their house and destroy their home a week after they forget to pay their home insurance.
- They get fired and dismissed from jobs after being accused of things they did not even do.
- They touch a microwave oven to heat up some food and the microwave breaks.
- Their cars keep breaking down–even new ones–and they are always late and missing out on this or that.
- They have strange auto accidents, like being directly behind a truck making bottled water deliveries, which suddenly discharges its load onto the freeway, causing them to drive into a ravine.
- They have a couple of drinks and go for a bike ride, then get arrested and thrown in prison for drunk driving.
- The companies they join go out of business.
- They lose an important sporting competition because they have a bizarre accident right before they are to compete.
- They constantly lose purses, keys, and other personal articles.
I could go on and on about various people like this whom I have seen bad things happen to over and over again. However, the most interesting thing about these people is that [Read more]
Always Ask and Observe: “How Long Have People Been Around”
There is one very easy and almost fail-safe way to evaluate companies, individuals, and various groups of people. It can save you a tremendous amount of worry in business deals and it can also ensure that you end up working in places that are likely to be good for you in the long term. In fact, the longer I have studied and implemented this method, the more impressed I have been with the results. It is as follows:
- Investigate how long people have stuck with the company, person, or organization. For example, are they surrounded by people they recently met? Or are they surrounded by people they have known for decades? In addition, how are those surrounding people doing in their careers and lives?
- When you look at companies, how long have they been around? When you look at the people in the companies, how long have they worked for the company? How do they appear to be doing in their careers and lives?
There is nothing more to it. If you do this one [Read more]
Resist the Temptation to Cut Corners in Your Career
All over Las Vegas and Los Angeles are these billboards that say “Get The Lap Band!” These lap bands are surgical procedures wherein they cut a person open and tie a band around an area of the stomach in order to constrict its size. The idea is that with a smaller stomach, a person eats less and is able to lose weight. With its high success rate, I think the lap band is a terrific idea for obese people. Every day I am reading one new study or another about the extreme dangers of obesity and how [Read more]
