The top experts in the world are ardent students. The day you stop learning, you're definitely not an expert.
We all have a life story and a message that can inspire others to live a better life or run a better business. Why not use that story and message to serve others and grow a real business doing it?
Remember: when you knock on the door of Opportunity, it is Work who answers!
At the end of our lives we all ask, 'Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?'
The first thing successful people do is view failure as a positive signal to success.
If you create incredible value and information for others that can change their lives - and you always stay focused on that service - the financial success will follow.
Challenge is the pathway to engagement and progress in our lives. But not all challenges are created equal. Some challenges make us feel alive, engaged, connected, and fulfilled. Others simply overwhelm us. Knowing the difference as you set bigger and bolder challenges for yourself is critical to your sanity, success, and satisfaction.
We should not seek to tune out the realists' whines or taunts, as they may provide good instruction.
People think, 'If I could only get motivated, then I'll act.' Nope. In actuality, it's the opposite.
For an entrepreneur, motivation is the core of all things.
Figure out what questions you'd ask to see if you were happy with your life. Then wake up every day and live intentionally, so you're happy with the answers at the end.
Let us not alter our course simply because it leads into a dark thicket of work.
Your ambitions - don't limit them. Where do you want to go, and what would be required of you to grow into that? Put yourself together a plan, and develop the skills to get there.
Everybody says, 'I want to change,' but they're not willing to pay the price of it. That was the metaphor of 'Life's Golden Ticket'... Life is some kind of a ride, and if you want that ride to be exhilarating and amazing, you've got to pay to get in. And the price is a willingness to change above and beyond what most people will do.
I've seen that phenomenally successful people believe they can learn something from everybody. I call them 'mavericks with mentors.' Richard Branson, for instance, is a total maverick but he surrounds himself with incredibly successful, smart people and he listens to them.
Inexperienced personal development teachers always tell you to visualize, but often in a tragically limited way. They tell you to visualize nothing but victory. But high-achievers know that it's even more important to visualize themselves at the point where they want to quit, and then see themselves working through the struggle.
My best mentor is a mechanic - and he never left the sixth grade. By any competency measure, he doesn't have it. But the perspective he brings to me and my life is, bar none, the most helpful.
At 19, you're not really thinking about the habits you have. I wasn't. Maybe your study habits? But not your life habits.
My dad lived a good life. He was a simple guy. His family had been poor, and he joined the Marines to be able to send money home to his mom and dad and brothers and sisters. He genuinely had the intention to live a good life and to respect other people.
To inspire a singularity of focus, a challenge must be important to you and it must be something you feel you should do now in this moment. If it's trivial or not time-bound, you won't engage. So in selecting your next challenge in life, choose one that is meaningful and will demand your complete concentration.
