Little nuggets of wisdom:
- If you fail, there is a lesson to learn and the same fate to avoid in the future. Failure happens in our lives, and it’s important to reflect on the lessons that we learned from that failure. Don’t see failure as bad, see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. No one ever learned to walk without falling the first time they tried.
- “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use.” — Steve Jobs. Believe you can change the world and you will. Some of the biggest changes to our human existence have been brought into being by those that are not exceptionally intelligent but by everyday people doing heroic things at the right time.
- Re-inventing yourself completely and entirely is impossible. Look for little ways to improve yourself and take on the challenge of making small changes over time. A complete reboot of you isn’t impossible. Know yourself. Change what you honestly think you can about yourself. Look to others to help you fill in your weak spots.
- Know your strengths and how to use them. Always play to the strengths you have and learn to collaborate with others that have strengths where you have weaknesses. Stop focusing on every weakness. No one is perfect.
- Create constantly. Our minds are by their very nature creative and constantly looking to create and make connections between things and ideas. Creating even the smallest of things give your greater strength when dealing with rough problems that require creative thinking. To stop creating is to stop thinking.
- Ask for more vacation time and not more money when negotiating your next job. Time is far more precious than money. Take your vacation days completely every year and spend time with just your thoughts and those important in your life. You work hard, now relax even harder.
- “Listen more than you talk. Whatever the context, people will think you’re smarter” — Esther Dyson. Learn and utilize action listening skills. Talking over people demonstrates your desire to bully the situation and not to understand it.
- See to understand first – then seek to be understood. You can’t influence someone without understanding their position and expectations. Ask open-ended questions to clarify with patience.
- Brace yourself for emotional outpouring from others and be emotionally intelligent by rising about getting angry and spiteful.
- There are no shortcuts to anything. Stop looking for the silver bullet to get everything you want. Life isn’t about taking a bunch of short cuts and never doing the work – it will eventually catch up to you. Take the time and do the work. Those that cut corners are quickly discovered as missing critical details.
- No one is ever perfectly positioned in the place he or she most wants. Try to makes things better for yourself step by step. Don’t accept defeat and quit making progress. No one is capable of what only you can do.
- Think progress, not perfection. Keep moving closer and closer to your goals and solutions. The perfection of all details may not be possible in many situations but progressing toward a better future and solution is always possible. Understand that you might not completely get your entire wish list, but you can get a lot of it.
What pieces of wisdom would you share? Tell me in the comments section.