“The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” “The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert–in anything,” writes neurologist David Levitin. “In study after study, of composers, of basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

I get very concerned when I think about people vacillating back and forth between various skill paths. Instead of choosing to do one thing, so many people spend their careers floating from job to job – each one different than the one before and requiring a completely different set of skills. There is nothing wrong with changing careers, of course, but the most important thing anyone can do is ensure they choose something and then focus on it completely. If you continue to change your mind, you will never develop true mastery. One of the most amazing things I have seen in my life is people who become incredibly happy, successful, and rich by seeking out and doing simple jobs to which they have committed. The universe rewards commitment. Warren Buffet has become incredibly rich committing to one form of investing. Some people make their fortunes doing simple things you would not expect. When I was an asphalt contractor, I knew a man who’d built a giant company putting hot tar in the cracks in roads all over Michigan. I know of another man who became very wealthy building pallets for the automotive industry. In college admissions, people with stand-out interests always do the best. I remember a high school teacher who talked about his students who’d gone to schools like Yale and Harvard, and how those students all had incredibly focused interests. Some were interested in bug collecting, another liked translating Japanese poetry, etc. The world rewards people with specialized interests who nurture that interest and continue to get better at those interests year after year. One of the most unusual things I’ve witnessed is that most people are flirting with life and their careers. Instead of committing to a career and something, these people continue to dissipate their energies in many different directions. As a consequence, they never achieve anything near what they are capable of achieving. What are your capabilities? How much do you think you can achieve? The sky is the limit if you focus and continue to improve at something. Why do I call focus “a law of the universe”? In the family unit, marriages, children and so forth typically only occur when two people decide to commit to one another and get married. People choose to focus on one another. This is a rule in virtually every culture in the world. It is almost as if the rule is saying life cannot begin until two people choose to focus. In your life, your career will never really begin until you choose to focus. As a legal recruiter, I very quickly get a sense after looking at an attorney’s resume of how long it is likely to take for the person to get a job, and where. The most important factor determining an attorney’s future employability is his or her focus, beyond where they went to law school, their previous employer, or specialty. If the person has had several jobs in a short period of time, then employers will stay away (they know the person is unlikely to commit). If the person has flirted with other jobs in addition to practicing law, a smart employer will stay away. Employers are looking for commitment, and they want to make sure people accepting jobs with them are going to be committed to their company. Employers want their employees to use their commitment to help the company grow. The level of commitment legal employers look for is the same as in other professions. People want to hire people who are likely to do a job long-term. Your life and career will change when you learn to commit to something over the long term. THE LESSON Rather than committing to a career, many people switch jobs and take positions that require completely different skill sets; consequently, they never truly master their primary skills. While there is nothing wrong with changing careers, you must find something and devote yourself to it; many people have succeeded in relatively simple jobs, because they have committed to and mastered their craft. Develop a specialized interest, nurture it, and continually improve at it, and you will find the universe rewarding you.

“The band thing wasn’t working. I had no money. I had had a series of jobs like oystering, landscaping, pumping gas. I was homeless. I slept in laundromats or in cars. I was crashing at friends’ houses. I’d sneak into my mom’s house and sleep there. I didn’t want to move back home; I didn’t want to admit defeat. I actually tried to commit suicide at 21. I drank furniture polish. I had no purpose in life, and I thought it was all over. I checked myself into an observation ward [in a hospital] for a while because I knew I was suicidal. I wanted to get some help, and I had an epiphany. I saw people who had profound emotional problems. These people were manic-depressives and paranoid schizophrenics. I looked around and said to myself, I don’t have any problems. I realized all I was doing was being absurdly self-absorbed and giving in to self-pity, and I wanted to just get out. So I told them what they wanted to hear. I took the medicine. I walked around with the bathrobe open in the a__, like in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. People were moaning and groaning all night, and I thought, please, just let me get out of here, and I’ll never be that stupid again. This experience was one of the best things I have ever gone through. I have never given in to any kind of self-pity for longer than two minutes since then. I realized I can solve my own problems. It showed me that what I thought was my own hell was nothing compared with the hell of others. I have taken that 21-year-old with me throughout my life. He has helped me through the deaths of friends, family matters, personal-relationship issues, minefields of the music business, writer’s block.”(Time, Jan. 21, 2002)

The most important things we have in our lives are references. What determines the quality of our lives is how we evaluate our situations. When I think about Joel, I also think of my early experience with the government. I formed beliefs about what the government was like and used this to propel myself away from it. Joel used his experience “going crazy” to propel his mind away from feeling sorry for himself and towards being grateful for what he was and the life he could have. The reference and association he made in his mind made him change the way he approached life and his place in it. Years later, of course, Joel would go on to be one of the most famous musicians in the world, become fabulously wealthy, and marry one of the most beautiful women in the world, Christie Brinkley. How can a man go from drinking furniture polish at the age of 21 to the heights of stardom and greatness that few ever experience? According to Joel, having seen people who were really suffering made him realize there was no reason why he should ever feel sorry for himself again. By having seen the other side, he very quickly realized how much his life meant and how much he had to look forward to. I have never used drugs, or even tried them. There is a reason for this. When I was growing up, I saw numerous lives practically destroyed by recreational drugs at a very young age. A drug-crazed maniac shot and killed my stepsister when I was in second grade. My school also had a program where the police came around a couple of times a year and showed people in our class pictures of drug related deaths. Speakers came to our school and talked about the dangers of drugs, how people died or had their lives otherwise destroyed by them. From the time I was seven or eight years old until now, I have always been terrified of drugs – my reference to drugs. The references you have for the way the world is will impact everything that happens to you. These references will shape your life. The people who achieve the most in the world are the people who are empowered by, and not dragged down by, references. One of the best things you can do is allow your references to empower you in a positive and not a negative way. So many people create negative references from their experiences, and their lives are paralyzed and hurt forever by these references. One of the saddest things that can happen to a person is to be sexually abused when they are young. While growing up, I knew two girls who had been sexually abused by their own fathers. Each girl reacted differently to the experience. One gained a lot of weight so she would not be attractive to men and became angry, hateful, and bitter. The other girl became incredibly attractive and also promiscuous. After years of therapy, the promiscuous one told me she had used sex as a control mechanism over men to prove she owned her body and her father did not. She viewed sex as a way to have control instead of something that was about bonding. Both of these women allowed a bad experience and reference to control the course of their lives and affect how they saw themselves in the world and interacted with it. I often think about these two women because the contrast is so remarkable. People use their experiences and what happens to them in different ways. Some people use their references for good and others for bad. People who achieve the most in the world and in their lives do so because of the references they hold in their mind. Your references do not need to be things that have happened in the past. They can also be references you set up for your future and what will happen in your future. When Sony first started marketing radios in the United States in the middle of the 1950s, Bulova offered to purchase 100,000 units, but insisted they be marketed under the Bulova brand name. This was to be the largest order Sony had ever received and would give the floundering company money to grow and prosper. At the time, Sony co-founder Akio Morita barely had any money. With some of the last money he had to his name, Morita called Sony headquarters in Japan from the United States and told them about the order. They encouraged Morita to take the order. Morita was firm he did not want to accept the order and told headquarters that he was not going to take it. Headquarters thought he was crazy. When Morita told Bulova about his decision, they stated, “Our company name is a famous brand name that has taken over fifty years to establish. Nobody has ever heard of your brand name. Why not take advantage of ours?” Morita remained steadfast in his views and refused to accept the order. His rejoinder to Bulova: “Fifty years ago, your brand name must have been just as unknown as our name is today. I am here with a new product, and I am taking the first step for the next fifty years of my company. Fifty years from now I promise you that our name will be just as famous as your company name is today.” The references you create for yourself about what you will be and what you can be control your destiny. The filters we view life and the world through have a stunning effect on what ends up happening to us and shaping our futures. Your beliefs and values come from the references you give yourself. We use references to give us certainty about the way things are. When Thomas Edison was designing the light bulb and failing again and again, he did not say “Aw, what’s the use?” Instead, he told himself he was one step closer to creating the light bulb each time he failed. He used failure as a reference to show he was getting closer to his goal. How do you interpret the world around you? You succeed in life by creating references that empower you rather than dragging you down. In my job with the government, I could have taken my early experience to mean there was something “supernatural” about me working there and that people would “come to my aid,” such as my boss who offered me a free place to live. I could have decided I was working on the most incredible projects of all time, projects that would shape national policy and what happened in the world. I could have told myself my experience was something that could lead to me being the President of the United States and to helping millions of people both in our country and around the world. I could have easily given my experience that meaning. You can do the same thing with your work and life experiences. Let your experiences empower you. Give them positive, not negative, meaning. When you look at your past in a way that empowers you, every single day is a new opportunity for growth. When you look at your past in this way, you may realize the worst days of your life were actually your very best. Link a different meaning to your experiences so you can be stronger. Billy Joel took a horrible event and linked something incredibly positive to it. The transformation of this experience made him strong and gave him a life that would empower any one of us. He also used this experience to empower the world through his music. You can rationalize any experience you have the same way Joel did. When I was growing up, I was exceptionally good at soccer. At one point I was so good I was not allowed to play on regular teams. Instead, I was on a special team for all of Detroit that traveled around playing different teams in other parts of the state. After a couple years of this, however, I rapidly lost all interest in soccer and sports in general. It was too much pressure. Too much was expected of me, and the game was no longer fun. It was so competitive and brutal I would feel badly about myself after virtually every game, unless I got a “hat trick” (three goals). Because I had great talent, I was expected to practice all the time. After a while, I intentionally stopped doing as well as I could at soccer and instead sabotaged myself. I did not play as hard as I could and started to fail at the game. My life was never the same. Although I played varsity soccer my first year of high school, I stopped playing after that and was no longer interested. I did not want the pressure. I made different kinds of friends and dropped out of the game forever. I became friends with the sorts of kids who did not play sports and got into trouble. I was escaping life as an athlete. It made no sense. I formed the wrong references and made the game represent something other than what it was. The fact is we give things the meanings we choose. Have you ever stopped doing something at which you were talented? If so, the chances are very good you stopped doing it because you allowed yourself to form a different meaning of what it was. We view things through the lenses we choose. Everyone looks at the world based on the experiences they have had in the past and what they mean. Different religions view the world in different ways. If you were to eat a steak in India, a Hindu would be horrified. If you tried to shake the hand of an Orthodox Jew of a different sex, they would pull their hand away in shock. If you tried to take a practicing Mormon to a bar and have a drink with them, they would be repulsed. We view the world based on the sorts of experiences we have had and what we tell ourselves the world and different things mean. We view the world through filters, and it is important we realize the filters we are using are not always the correct ones. We use references to create the filters we use to see the world. I want to encourage you to stand guard at the door of your mind. Do not let your past represent something negative that can hurt you now. None of us have had perfect life experiences. There is something inside of you, however, that is holding you back from reaching for the stars in your career. You are capable of so much. How different would the memories of high school been for me if I had allowed myself to be a star soccer player? How different would Billy Joel’s life have been if he’d allowed himself to stay depressed? How different would your life be today if you allowed your past to empower you? How different would your present be if you knew you were capable of greatness and accepted nothing but the best for yourself, like Morita of Sony? There is no limit to your life except the limits you impose on it. Your career and the world are wide open to you. Try to look at everything you have done in the past as a powerful lesson that is making you stronger and better today. Never allow yourself to be limited by your own mind. Allow your mind to interpret the world for your benefit, and not your detriment. THE LESSON Your life is shaped by the reference points through which you experience the world, which you establish based on your own past experiences. You must learn to take these experiences, and frame them in a way that makes you stronger. Your experiences create the filters through which you see the world, so you must avoid letting negative past experiences hurt you in the present. Instead, focus on references that empower you and interpret the world for your benefit.

COLUMBUS, Neb. — At the Columbus Family YMCA on a recent Saturday morning, the Champ punches only a time clock. The man who dethroned Muhammad Ali on a February night in 1978 in one of the greatest upsets in boxing history puts on his gloves — not the red Everlast boxing gloves, but the orange Rubbermaid cleaning gloves. He methodically gets the cart with the brooms and the cleaning chemicals and gets to work.

A similar story can be told about one of my favorite musicians when I was younger; MC Hammer did not stay on top for long, either.  An article about him relates:

“U can’t touch this”, and few could. The song topped charts in 1990 and earned an estimated $30 million. At the top of the ride Hammer had a $12 million dollar mansion in Fremont, CA, 17 luxury cars and a staff of 250. “Hammer time” was over by 1996, when $13.7 million in the red, he declared bankruptcy. After breaking his leg in 1996 and the murder of friend Tupac Shakur, Hammer experienced somewhat of an epiphany and went back to being “a man of God” (Hammer grew up in a religious environment and was no stranger to spiritual endeavors). Hammer is now an Evangelist, his shows now consist of prayer, preaching and gospel singing. He lives in a four-bedroom home in Northern California with his wife and 4 children.

The truth of the matter is, people who achieve the greatest success in any calling do not simply have the sort of “luck” that people like Spinks and MC Hammer had.  They get consistent results almost indefinitely and continue to build upon themselves over and over again.  These results come largely through incredible hard work. Over the past several years, I have had the opportunity to spend time with numerous people who have managed to accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars through various enterprises in a legal and ethical manner.  One man I am recall did this in the financial industry, another one I remember did this with property but was only able to get into property due to income he earned from being a physician. I have met and spent time with numerous people like this throughout the years. Recently, I was meeting with a man who is a developer.  Up until just a few years ago this developer was a  physician.  The man has made hundreds of millions of dollars as a developer; however, most of this wealth came about due to investments he made when he had a steady and predictable income as a physician.  Being a physician provides people with a steady paycheck that makes banks happy to lend you money for property. Over the course of several decades, this man invested in low cost property and waited a decade or more for the market to turn around in his favor.  Keep in mind, however, that none of the incredible riches this man was able to make ever would have been possible unless he had been a physician first. When I meet successful people like this I am always extremely interested in learning about how they achieved their success and I spend a great deal of time listening to how they work. In the case of this particular individual, I was very interested to learn about his life as a physician.  What was so interesting about this was that for 30 years he went into his office each day and had back-to-back appointments from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, with no lunch hour.  He would take appointments throughout the entire day with no rest whatsoever. He had his own practice and set up his life this way.  He started out investing in properties with some spare income when he was younger, and then just kept going. “I’ve never wanted a jet,” he told me as we sipped coffee together and he reflected on the incredible life he had built for himself. Think about seeing 3-4 people per hour, for 8 hours a day, for 30 years.  This is an incredible feat.  In order to do this:

• you need to stay on your feet 8 hours a day;
• you need to arrive at work at the same time each day;
• you need to be extremely dedicated to what you are doing;
• you need to stay in good health;
• you cannot go out late at night and report for the office tired the next day;
• you need to have a good staff of people supporting you;
• you need to not allow yourself to get bored and distracted;
• you need to be good at what you are doing to consistently get this many patients; and,
• you need to be honest so people keep coming to see you.

Could you do the same thing day in and day out for 30+ years, every single day, from the same office?  Could you stay on your feet every single day?  I am not sure if I could handle this task.  In reflecting on his success, this physician told me that the secret to being so good at his profession was being incredibly honest with all of his patients and never recommending more of any service than any patient needed.  However, when I think about this physician, I know that the secret to his success as both a physician and developer was his ability to be disciplined and do the same job over and over again.  If he was unable to do this then he never would have been anywhere near the success that he ultimately was. He would not have earned as much as a physician. He would not have qualified for as many mortgages. He also would not have held on to his investment properties for decades. The same success that characterizes this developer (whose discipline enabled him to amass hundreds of millions of dollars) also characterizes many of our cultural heroes, such as Warren Buffett.  A major cause of Warren Buffett’s success lies in his ability to hold investments for several decades and never sell them.  Because he never sells his investments, he never pays capital gains taxes and more and more money continues to go to work for him without being taxed. While a great deal has been written about Buffett, his discipline in executing this one simple strategy is something that is a major cause of his success. People want great things for their life. I do a lot of reading of various types of motivational books and a lot of what I read simply makes statements like “you can do and be the things you set out to do and be.”  People love believing these sorts of thoughts and they are very comforting.  However, what most people miss when studying these lines of thought is that you cannot do and be anything without discipline. The freedom to be like Warren Buffett comes at a cost.  Buffett has gone into the same office every day for decades and done his job.  He also does his work in a certain way, and according to certain principles, which he does not deviate from.  The cost of the freedom to be whatever you want in your life is being disciplined.  There are very few success stories out there of people who were able to do incredible things without discipline.  They simply do not exist. You cannot achieve anything in your life just by thinking about it.  Instead, you need to actually get out there, do the work, and continue doing the work that is going to lead to the results that you are seeking.  Max Weber, a German economist wrote a book called The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism that was first published in German in 1934. In the book, Weber came up with what is popularly known as “the Weber thesis.”  Here, Weber argues that capitalism as we know it came about when the Calvinist/Protestant ethic influenced great numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, take part in trade and create their own enterprises in order to make money.  Under the Weber Thesis, people become more involved and interested in the “physical” aspects of work in order to receive salvation from God, than the contemplative aspects of life (i.e., prayer) to receive salvation.  Weber quotes the writings of Benjamin Franklin:

Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides. … Remember, that money is the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.

The Protestant Work Ethic that developed according to Weber’s analysis, holds that only through hard work can we achieve our desires and dreams.  The idea is that there are really no short cuts, and in order to realize long-term success it almost always requires long-term discipline.  The most important thing you can do for your ultimate success is have and apply long-term discipline to your work and life.  The more discipline you have, the better long-term results you are likely to have. THE LESSON You cannot achieve anything in life by just thinking about it; you must get out there and consistently do work that brings you closer to your goals. There are no short-cuts, so you will need long-term discipline to realize and measure of success. The most important thing you can do for your success is to have and apply long-term discipline to your life and work.

1. Is how you feel determined by the economy?
2. Is how you feel determined by how others treat you?
3. Is how you feel determined by how you think others perceive you?
4. Is how you feel determined by the things you own?

The truth is how you feel is determined by how you direct your mind. The ability to direct your mind and control your emotional and psychological states is about the most important tool you can possibly have. Very few people have the ability to control their minds and their states. You need to be able to control how you feel about yourself and your emotions. I read the papers every day and most of the human interest stories I read are about people who are not able to control their minds and their states. Lately I have been reading a lot of stories about people who have been committing suicide due to dire economic circumstances. These people are not controlling their states. We also continually hear stories about stars and others who die due to drug overdoses. These people are using drugs to try and control how they feel, and it ends up killing them. When I think about people like Chris Farley and Marilyn Monroe, I am thinking about people who, despite an incredible amount of success, could not control how they felt. One of the best writers of all time, Ernest Hemingway, ended up killing himself. He, too, could not control how he felt. Despite a wonderful world around him he did not care. You really need to control the meaning you give things and the meaning you allow things to have. The meaning you give things will control the quality of your life. When my girlfriend found out I did not make the basketball team, she did not appear to care at all. She was really nonchalant about the whole thing and told me she was sorry about this. Unfortunately, the meaning I gave this was quite severe. I immediately assumed she would no longer like me at all. The next day I told her that I needed to go to school at a different time and did not ride my bike with her to school. At lunch I felt really out of place with my new friends who had all made the basketball team. That was all they talked about at lunch. In class, several of my teachers started talking about the first game. Despite some decent friendships, I started to feel like I did not belong with this athletic crowd because I hadn’t made the team. I felt like I’d failed horribly. I started blowing off my girlfriend more and more. I started sitting at other tables at lunch and associating with different sorts of kids. My girlfriend broke up with me. I did not really like her all that much so I was not too upset. I knew it was coming. I had allowed myself to get really depressed when I did not make the basketball team. The real low came about a week after the breakup when she called me one day after school and told me she’d bought me a Christmas gift when we were dating and still wanted me to have it. She showed up at my house with half the cheerleading squad who all watched me open the board game Yahtzee. “Wow Yahtzee!! I have always wanted this.” What a pathetic sight it must have been seeing me open that board game. I could not hug her. I could just stare at this board game with 6 gorgeous cheerleaders standing in my messy bedroom with my ex-girlfriend looking on smiling. In retrospect, I now realize that not much would have changed with my friends, my relationship, and more if I had not told myself my failure to make the team represented something it did not. Like people who kill themselves because they cannot control their emotions, I, too, could not control my emotions and what I was telling myself. The thought that crossed my mind was the head of the cheerleading squad would only want to be with someone who was also the captain of the basketball team. On yet another level, I thought the basketball players would only want to be friends with someone who was also a basketball player. The more I thought about all this, the less worthy I felt and the more I felt like I needed to fit in somewhere else completely. Within a short time of not making the basketball team I had made new friends who were not athletes and who were more dedicated to getting into trouble than anything. My grades plummeted and were so bad the next year my parents enrolled me in a different school. Most of this happened because of what I told myself not making the basketball team meant. I remember one public high school I attended had a small enclosed courtyard where students were allowed to smoke between classes. These kids wore jean jackets or leather jackets and grew their hair long. These were the bad kids. They also would get stoned out there, and the school must have known about it. These were all kids who at some point probably had dreams, too, but gave up somewhere along the way and looked for a way out of their presumed failure. They started smoking and using drugs and living a life of which they could never be proud. Who knows what sent them over this edge. It could have been a bad grade in an important class, it could have been the divorce of their parents, it could have been a nasty breakup. What I do know is that in the year I attended that school, I witnessed kids who were normal and clean-cut go over to the other side and join this group in the courtyard. People look for things outside themselves to help people control their states and how they feel. Many people feel like they cannot control their emotions and so they start looking for stuff outside of themselves to help them feel good. You pay a hefty price when you are not able to manage your states and how you feel about yourself. There are huge rewards when you know how to manage your states. The rewards for managing your states are happiness and the ability to control your destiny and what happens to you and your life. These rewards are something that can pay huge dividends. The problem most of us have is we tell ourselves something means something it does not.

• You may have lost a job and represented to yourself that the reason you lost the job was because you are a bad person. You may have lost the job because the company had no money to pay you.
• A relationship may end and you may represent to yourself it is your fault when, in reality, the person who broke up with you is working through some psychological roadmap that existed long before you came along.
• You cannot find a job and you represent to yourself it’s because you are not good enough instead of the fact the economy in the area of the country you are in is horrible.
• High school kids become “stoners” because they represent to themselves they are losers instead of just normal kids suffering through problems.
• I sabotaged my friendships because I represented to myself that not making the basketball team meant I would be rejected by my girlfriend and friends.

Even if something does mean the worst, it does us little good to hold on to this representation. Instead, we should represent the events in our lives to ourselves in a way that empowers us. How could I have reacted differently to not making the basketball team? I could have decided I was cool enough I did not have to play basketball every day to date the captain of the cheerleader squad. I could have told myself despite not being a good basketball player, I could continue to be good friends with the most popular kids in school. All of these interpretations would have empowered me. Instead, I represented the opposite. The meaning you give things is crucial for your career success. Whatever happens to you in your career you need to choose meanings that make you stronger and not weaker. Bad things happen to everyone and the messages we receive from the world are often not positive. The most important thing you can do is choose meanings that are going to allow you to succeed and do even better. This is what you need to be doing with your career and job right now. You need to ensure you interpret things in a way that serves you and does not hurt you. Don’t fail to reach your full potential or mistakenly classify yourself as someone who is not fit to succeed at the level at which you’re capable. This is not what you want for yourself. You need to take charge of your mind to have the career and life you are entitled to and deserve.

While many have a well-developed capacity to delay gratification, some fifteen- or sixteen-year-olds seem to have hardly developed any capacity at all; indeed, some seem even to lack the capacity entirely. These are the problem students. Despite average or better intelligence, their grades are poor simply because they do not work. They skip classes or skip school entirely on the whim of the moment. They are impulsive, and their impulsiveness spills over into their social life as well. They get into frequent fights, they become involved with drugs, they begin to get involved with the police. ‘Play now, pay later’ is their motto. So the psychologists and psychotherapists are called in, but most of the time it seems too late. These adolescents are resentful of any attempt to intervene in their lifestyle of impulsiveness. Even when this resentment can be overcome by warmth and friendliness and a nonjudgmental attitude on the part of the therapist, their impulsiveness is often so severe it precludes their participation in the process of psychotherapy in any meaningful way. They miss their appointments. They avoid all important and painful issues. So usually the attempt at intervention fails, and these children drop out of school, only to continue a pattern of failure that frequently lands them in disastrous marriages, in accidents, in psychiatric hospitals or in jail.

The difference between success and failure in many of our lives comes down to our ability to delay gratification. This is what changed my life and it’s also what can make a difference in your life and career as well. Failure is the result of not delaying gratification. Our lives change when we begin to focus on how we can create long term results by delaying gratification. People often become addicted to drugs and alcohol due to their inability to delay gratification. Faced with a decision between instant enjoyment and dealing with pain, people often choose substances. We do the same thing with our problems. If we have an issue we do not want to face we may ignore it because facing it would be too difficult for us. For example, if we do not like our jobs we may not face it because to face it would mean we need to look for a different career and give up the daily security of a paycheck, or where we live. But when we delay gratification we are setting ourselves up for better lives and careers. Not facing problems is something related to our ability to delay gratification. One of the most important things we can do is to confront a problem early. Recently I was reading about what happens to people psychologically when they start to lose money in the stock market. One of the questions I have always asked myself is how people who own a stock often hold on while the stock goes from say $1,000 to $2. This is an incredibly common occurrence and an investor often holds on for months and months while the stock slowly declines to almost nothing. Here is how an investor often thinks while this is occurring:

1. Purchases Stock at $500 “I’ll sell as soon as the stock gains or loses 10%.”
2. Stock goes to $700 “This is great. I’m going to hold on to this stock for awhile.” Does not sell.
3. Stock goes to $1000 “I’m never going to sell this one.” Does not sell.
4. Stock falls to $700 “I’ve still made money. This is still a good stock.” Does not sell
5. Stock falls to $500 “I’m still even.” Does not sell.
6. Stock falls to $300 “I’ll sell when it gets back to $500.” Does not sell.
7. Stock falls to $100. “I told myself I would sell if it lost 10%. I’ll sell when it goes to $450.” Does not sell.
8. Stock falls to $10. “I’ll sell when it gets back to $100.” Does not sell.
9. Stock falls to $5. “I’ll sell when it gets back to $10. Does not sell.
10. Stock falls to $2. “I’ll sell when it gets back to $5. Does not sell.

This may not seem like it’s related to delaying gratification, but avoiding pain until a later date is another manifestation of seeking instant gratification. This entire psychology is extremely common and illustrates how most fortunes are lost in the stock market. When the stock starts going down people do not want to face the immediate pain that they have lost money, so they hold off selling the stock under the hope it will go up in value again. Instead, this aversion to pain continually keeps the person on the edge and they refuse to confront the fact that they have lost money. By not confronting the issue the investors lose even more money. Ignoring problems is a simple expression of the inability or unwillingness to delay gratification. To confront a problem like a massive stock market loss is painful. To confront a problem early on before being forced by circumstances to confront it means to ignore something less painful for something more painful. This is the choice between suffering right now versus present gratification, with the possibility that future suffering won’t be necessary. Our problems will not disappear. The problems we need to confront are a barrier to our future growth. This is the reason so many people stay in careers and jobs they do not enjoy. One of the reasons people do not sacrifice to get higher degrees is because they want to avoid immediate suffering, despite the fact the education they would receive would likely produce long-term gains. Most of the people who are very wealthy have the power to delay gratification. Albert Einstein wrote that “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.” When we save money we are delaying the gratification we would get from spending the money. Many of the wealthiest people in the world know delaying gratification is the key to their success. I recently finished reading a book about Warren Buffett that asserted one of the main reasons for his wealth is he never sells a stock even after it has increased in value. This means he is not paying taxes on capital gains and the money he would have paid in capital gains keeps working for him. This is an example of delaying gratification. We act mostly out of a desire to avoid pain and gain pleasure. When we procrastinate we do this because we experience less pain from not acting than we do from acting. For example, if we are interested in meeting someone we may not introduce ourselves because we are worried we will be rejected. A better attitude might be to do everything we can to meet that person because he or she could become a lifetime friend or mate. This would be far more valuable to us than the pain of a short brush-off could ever be. The same can be said of dentist trips and doctor visits. We know that the short term pain of seeing the dentist can prevent a much larger problem later. Few people think this way, however, because the desire to avoid pain is so strong. The need to avoid pain is much greater than the desire to gain pleasure. Everything we do in our life is a push and a pull between long-term and short term rewards. One of the sayings I like is “You can pay now or you can pay later. If you pay later it is always going to be more expensive.” It is always better we pay now. Paying now is something that is in our best interest. When you are confronted with choosing between delaying gratification and not delaying gratification for long-term rewards you are almost always better off delaying gratification. The people who delay gratification are most often the people who experience the most success in their careers and lives.

1. Our jobs
2. Our mates
3. Where we live
4. Our friends
5. What we do with our free time
6. The number of children we have
7. How hard we work
8. How healthy we are
9. How we dress
10. What we eat

The number of things we choose is phenomenal. We choose our lives and what happens to us and shape our own destinies. Most people are more interested in blaming outside events and circumstances for what happens to them in their lives. The truth is what happens to us is almost completely the result of the decisions we make. We are in charge of our own lives and our decisions shape our entire existence. One of the most important times we are forced to choose is when we are in the position of losing a job or deciding between jobs. This is a time when a lot of people find themselves stressed out and are forced to figure out what they need to do with themselves. People react to stress in different ways. Some people start to drink a lot or use drugs. Others start exercising a lot. Others avoid people who may ask them about what they are doing. Your decision about how to deal with stress and your job search is something that can and will permanently shape your destiny and what happens to you in your life. How are you going to deal with losing a job? When some people lose a job, they decide to sue their employer. While many law suits against employers are legitimate, most I have seen are not. I make this judgment from having been an attorney who represented both employees and employers. People sue their employers because they decide someone other than them is responsible for their job and their livelihood. People make this decision to go after their employer and often spend years not working and involved in a bitter lawsuit. In the interim, they do not even look for a job. In some cases, they do not want to find a job because if they find one, they will receive fewer damages from their lawsuit. Other people who lose a job take a different approach. Instead of being angry with their employer, they may be angry with themselves. They may withdraw and stop trying. They allow this experience to have such a negative effect on them they stop trying their hardest. This is a very common reaction as well. Others who lose jobs may launch a new business, go back to school, or try to get even better jobs than the ones they lost. These are all decisions as well. You need to choose to make empowering decisions in your life and your career. In 1980, Candy Lightner’s 13-year-old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunk driver as she walked down the street. Instead of feeling sorry for her daughter and herself, Lightner chose to found Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to crusade against the problem of drunk drivers. “I promised myself on the day of Cari’s death that I would fight to make this needless homicide count for something positive in the years ahead,” Candy Lightner later wrote. Her organization rapidly rose to national prominence and Lightner appeared on major national television shows, addressed numerous groups around the country, testified before the government, and worked to promote new legislation. She chose to take action in a way which empowered the world and made a difference rather than allowing outside events to negatively influence her. A similar story exists for John Walsh. Walsh is the host of America’s Most Wanted. Walsh was a successful businessman living in Hollywood, Florida, and the partner in an important hotel management company. On July 27, 1981, Walsh’s wife left their son Adam in the toy department of Sears while she went to look for a lamp. Sixteen days later, Adam’s severed head was found in a drainage canal more than 120 miles from the mall, according to an account on the America’s Most Wanted website. Walsh’s search for justice and his determination to never let Adam’s death be in vain led him to fight back like few other Americans ever have. Although he’s never held political office, Walsh has been the driving force behind major pieces of child protection legislation. His hard work led to Walsh being honored five times by four presidents: Ronald Reagan (twice), George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. One of Walsh’s proudest moments was when he and his wife Revè stood beside President George W. Bush, as the “Adam Walsh Child Protection & Safety Act” was signed into law on the 25th anniversary of Adam’s murder.

Walsh became the host of America’s Most Wanted after much of his crusade. The story of Walsh is one of someone who made a decision about how to react to a negative event, and this decision made a huge impact on his life and the world. Think about the things that have happened in your life and the decisions you have made in response to them. What have you done with the things that have happened to you? How can you take a negative and use it to empower the world?

People have so many reasons for not succeeding. Most of them have to do with people and forces outside of ourselves over which we have no control. It is how people react to the world through the decisions they make that ultimately empowers us and changes our place in the world. This is what you need to do. You need to make decisions that will empower you and your place in the world. The greatest weakness most people have is they never make a commitment to back up their decision. Making a decision is the most powerful thing you can do, but it must be backed up with the power of commitment. You can never do anything or reach great heights if you do not commit to what you are doing. Most people never truly utilize the power of commitment. There is a huge difference between simply being interested in something and committing to it. For example, Lightner and Walsh certainly had every reason to be interested in putting drunk drivers in jail and finding child killers. They committed to something and made a decision they would fight for what they believed in. Their decisions are what made all of the difference. In 1519, Hernan Cortes anchored his 11 ships off the Yucatán Peninsula. At the time, the Aztecs, who had tens of thousands of soldiers, ruled Mexico. In contrast, Cortes had only 608 men, 16 horses, and a few cannons. Cortes was committed to win the battle despite having so few men. He made the decision he was going to go back to Spain a winner. Cortes ordered his men off the ships and to shore. In the middle of the night, people screaming “Fire!” awakened the soldiers. They rose from their sleep and saw all 11 ships burning out in the water. The men rushed to the row boats to go fight the fire. But Cortés stopped them. He told the soldiers he had ordered all of the ships burned. They had no way to retreat – that was the message Cortés sent to his soldiers. They had to win. There was no choice. Under Cortes, just 608 men, 16 horses, and a few cannons conquered the Aztecs. The power of decision, backed up by commitment, made this incredible feat possible. Cortes made sure his troops were as committed as they could possibly be and that they had no means of retreat. Most of us decide to do something but deep down we keep the possibility of retreat as an option. What I get out of the story of Cortés, and what makes it so remarkable to me, is it shows how many of us never really truly commit to anything and any decision we are making. The people who achieve the most in this life are the people like Cortés, Lightner, and Walsh who make decisions and then proceed to follow through with them. There is so much power in making decisions and making these decisions with commitment. We may have an interest in doing something or want to make a commitment to something. However, very few of us ever follow through. We must follow through and commit. This is the difference between mediocrity and greatness – commitment to a decision. Many people are tormented by their inability to make a decision and commit. Soap operas are a perfect example of this. Lives are wrecked over and over again by the inability to commit. No one ever knows who they want to be with in soap operas, and relationships are never characterized by commitment. Everyone is always crying, and entire stories are tragic and insane. The only reasons these stories are so nuts is because the characters in them simply can never commit. You need to commit to succeed. You can go back and forth in:

1. Your choice of a mate
2. Your choice of a job
3. Your choice of a profession
4. Your commitment to your job
5. Your commitment to your mate
6. Your commitment to an education
7. Your commitment to being better at what you do

When you do not commit to a decision about what you want to do, however, you will never have clarity. Instead, you will be in a state of perpetual confusion. This is how most people live their lives. Making a decision and committing to it gives you clarity. Clarity gives you power. Most people say words like “I’ll see how it works out” or “I’ll give it a try.” This is not what you should be doing. You should say “I am doing this!” and move forward by taking action. This is the only way to be empowered by your decisions. There is a huge danger if you do not make decisions about your life and stand behind them: your life will be made and shaped by someone else. This is what happens to most people. They allow their complete existence to be shaped by someone else. Is this really what you want? You should be the one shaping your life and deciding exactly what happens to you. Do not let others and the world decide what happens to you. The people who become movie stars, presidents, CEOs, and incredible people in different professions do not just suddenly end up in these positions due to a combination of luck and fate. They generally reach these heights of success because they decide this is what they want and make a commitment to it. You need to realize you have the power to be whomever you want when you decide to do this. Decide what you want for your life and take action. The hardest part of life is making a decision and following through with it. The most amazing thing about your career is it controls so much of what happens in your life. It controls where you live, the people with whom you socialize, where your kids go to school, how excited you are to go to work in the morning, the kind of car you drive, how many days a week you work, how much you work when you are working, and more. Your career is such an incredibly important thing. Where you are today in your career is due to the power of decisions you have made in your life over the past 10 years. You have the power to change the next 10 years and make them even better than the last by the decisions you make today. You need to make decisions that will empower you and create the life you are entitled to and deserve. Start making decisions based on what you want, and do not want, and commit to those decisions today.