How to fail at almost everything and still win big
When it comes to any big or complicated question, humility is the only sensible point of view.
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The Six Filters for Truth:
1. Personal experience (Human perceptions are iffy.)
2. Experience of people you know (Even more unreliable.)
3. Experts (They work for money, not truth.)
4. Scientific studies (Correlation is not causation.)
5. Common sense (A good way to be mistaken with complete confidence.)
6. Pattern recognition (Patterns, coincidence, and personal bias look alike.)
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If you ask a billionaire the secret of his success, he might say it is passion, because that sounds like a sexy answer that is suitably humble. But after a few drinks I think he’d say his success was a combination of desire, luck, hard work, determination, brains, and appetite for risk.
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If success were easy, everyone would do it. It takes effort. That fact works to your advantage because it keeps lazy people out of the game.
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I asked what he did for a living and he told me he was CEO of a company that made screws. Then he offered me some career advice. He said that every time he got a new job, he immediately started looking for a better one. For him, job seeking was not something one did when necessary. It was an ongoing process. This makes perfect sense if you do the math. Chances are the best job for you won’t become available at precisely the time you declare yourself ready. Your best bet, he explained, was to always be looking for the better deal. The better deal has its own schedule. I believe the way he explained it is that your job is not your job; your job is to find a better job.
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The second thing I learned on that flight—or confirmed, really—is that appearance matters. #clothes
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If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it.
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Once you decide, you take action. Wishing starts in the mind and generally stays there.
How do you know it's a wish or decision? You look at is it making you take action or only dream?
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The most important form of selfishness involves spending time on your fitness, eating right, pursuing your career, and still spending quality time with your family and friends.
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Humans are wired to take care of their own needs first, then family, tribe, country, and the world, roughly in that order.
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Maximizing my personal energy means eating right, exercising, avoiding unnecessary stress, getting enough sleep, and all of the obvious steps.
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It’s a good idea to dedicate certain sitting positions and certain work spaces to work and other spaces to relaxation or play. That makes your physical environment a sort of user interface for your brain, and it becomes a way to manipulate your energy levels and concentration. To change how you feel, and how you think, you can simply change where you are sitting.
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Organizing your space is boring work, and you might never see it as a priority. One trick I’ve learned is that I automatically generate enthusiasm about tidying up if I know someone is stopping by. That’s why it’s a good idea to invite people over on a regular basis. It will inspire you to keep your space straightened up, and that might in turn cause your mind to have a bit more energy.
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when you know how to do something, you feel more energized to take it on.
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I would define an asshole as anyone who chooses to make the lives of others less pleasant for reasons that don’t appear productive or necessary.
Asshole behaviors:
1. Changing the subject to him/herself
2. Dominating conversation
3. Bragging
4. Cheating, lying
5. Disagreeing with any suggestion, no matter how trivial
6. Using honesty as a justification for cruelty
7. Withholding simple favors out of some warped sense of social justice
8. Abandoning the rules of civil behavior, such as saying hello or making eye contact
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Right choices can be challenging, but they usually charge you up. When you’re on the right path, it feels right, literally.
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If you could control your attitude directly, as opposed to letting the environment dictate how you feel on any given day, it would be like a minor superpower.
Tired people are grumpy, rested people are less so. Exercise, food, and sleep should be your first buttons to push if you’re trying to elevate your attitude and raise your energy.
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If you’re experiencing genuine misfortune, you probably just need time and distance to recover. The daydreaming strategy is more of an everyday practice. It won’t get you out of a deep slump. For the truly bad moods, exercise, nutrition, sleep, and time are the smart buttons to push.
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When I consider taking on a new big project, I first ask myself who I know who would be helpful and who might want to partner, invest, or just give advice.
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Smiling makes you feel better even if your smile is fake.
- acting confident makes you feel more confident.
- Feeling energetic makes you want to play a sport, but playing a sport will also make you feel energetic.
- Loving someone makes you want to have sex, but having sex also releases the bonding chemicals that make you feel love.
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A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories. Success can be habit- forming.
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The pattern I noticed was this: Things that will someday work out well start out well. Things that will never work start out bad and stay that way. What you rarely see is a stillborn failure that transmogrifies into a stellar success. Small successes can grow into big ones, but failures rarely grow into successes.
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The Success Formula: Every Skill You Acquire Doubles Your Odds of Success
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Another huge advantage of learning as much as you can in different fields is that the more concepts you understand, the easier it is to learn new ones.
- The Knowledge Formula: The More You Know, the More You Can Know
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While we all think we know the odds in life, there’s a good chance you have some blind spots. Finding those blind spots is a big deal.
The idea I’m promoting here is that it helps to see the world as math and not magic.
If you find yourself in a state of continual failure in your personal or business life, you might be blaming it on fate or karma or animal spirits or some other form of magic when the answer is simple math. There’s usually a pattern, but it might be subtle. Don’t stop looking just because you don’t see the pattern in the first seven years.
Example: The odds of slot machine is not your favor.
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Luck has a good chance of finding you if you become merely good in most of these areas. I’ll make a case for each one, but here’s the preview list.
- Public speaking
- Psychology
- Business writing
- Accounting
- Design (the basics)
- Conversation
- Overcoming shyness
- Second language
- Golf
- Proper grammar
- Persuasion
- Technology (hobby level)
- Proper voice technique
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I’ll paraphrase the Dale Carnegie question stack as best I remember it. It goes something like this:
1. What’s your name?
2. Where do you live?
3. Do you have a family?
4. What do you do for a living?
5. Do you have any hobbies/sports? 6. Do you have any travel plans?
Questions for being better at conversations.
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Everyone is interesting if you make the situation feel safe. Here’s a summary of good conversation technique.
1. Ask questions.
2. Don’t complain (much).
3. Don’t talk about boring experiences (TV show, meal, dream, etc.). 4. Don’t dominate the conversation. Let others talk.
4. Don’t get stuck on a topic. Keep moving.
5. Planning is useful but it isn’t conversation.
6. Keep the sad stories short, especially medical stories.
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Try to get in the habit of asking yourself how you can turn your interesting experiences into story form.
The basic parts of a good party story are:
- Setup
- Pattern
- Foreshadowing
- Characters
- Relatability
- The twist
#storytelling
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The single best tip for avoiding shyness involves harnessing the power of acting interested in other people.
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Try putting yourself in situations that will surely embarrass you if things go wrong, or maybe even if they don’t.
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No matter how you deliver a thank-you, make sure it includes a little detail of what makes you thankful. Was it the surprise, the thoughtfulness, or how helpful the favor or gift was? Be specific.
For example, “Thank you so much for the ride. I was worried all day about how I would get everything done while my car is in the shop. You really saved me.”
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My guess is that only 20 percent or less of the general public speaks with proper voice mechanics. And by that I mean proper breath control, tone, and mouth strategies.
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If you can’t even imagine an improved future, you won’t be happy no matter how well your life is going right now.
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No one wants to believe that the formula for happiness is as simple as daydreaming, controlling your schedule, napping, eating right, and being active every day.
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the happiness formula:
- Eat right.
- Exercise.
- Get enough sleep.
- Imagine an incredible future (even if you don’t believe it). Work toward a flexible schedule.
- Do things you can steadily improve at.
- Help others (if you’ve already helped yourself).
- Reduce daily decisions to routine.
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I can eat as much as I want of the foods on this list, which I quite enjoy, and I won’t gain a pound as long as I stay active.
Bananas
Protein bars
Peanuts
Mixed nuts
Cheese
Whole wheat pasta
Edamame (soybeans)
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Brussels sprouts
Fish
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Apples
Pears
Carrots
Radishes
Cucumbers
Quinoa
Brown rice
Berries
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When tiredness sparks your hunger but you’ve had all the calories you need for a while, try eating peanuts or mixed nuts to suppress your appetite. Cheese also works, at least for that specific purpose.
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Coffee can also make you more likely to exercise, and it contains beneficial antioxidants and other substances associated with decreased risk of stroke (especially in women), Parkinson’s disease, and dementia. Coffee is also associated with decreased risk of abnormal heart rhythms, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers
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The Healthy Eating Summary
The Simple, No-Willpower Diet System
1. Pay attention to your energy level after eating certain foods. Find your pattern.
2. Remove unhealthy, energy-draining food from your home.
3. Stock up on convenient healthy food (e.g., apples, nuts, bananas) and let laziness be your copilot in eating right.
4. Stop eating foods that create feelings of addiction: white rice, white potatoes, desserts, white bread, fried foods.
5. Eat as much healthy food as you want, whenever you want.
6. Get enough sleep, because tiredness creates the illusion of hunger.
7. If your hunger is caused by tiredness, try healthy foods with fat, such as nuts, avocados, protein
bars, and cheese, to suppress the hungry feeling.
8. If you’re eating for social reasons only, choose the healthiest options with low calories.
9. Learn how to season your healthy-yet-bland foods.
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In the long run, any system that depends on your willpower will fail.
if you follow the system of being active every day, you’ll feel more energetic, and that may help you avoid drawing down your limited supply of willpower.
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Here are a few of the exercise “musts” you hear all the time.
1. Do thirty minutes of aerobic exercise daily.
2. Stretch.
3. Hydrate.
4. Eat protein within thirty minutes of strength training.
5. Carb load the night before a big exercise day.
6. Do resistance/weight training every other day.
7. Do three sets of ten to fifteen reps.
8. Get lots of rest.
9. Vary your workout to create “muscle confusion.”
10. Use proper form for lifting.
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There are three practical ways to schedule exercise in a marriage or marriagelike situation:
1. Join an organized team.
2. Always exercise at the same time every day. 3. Exercise together (if you both really mean it).
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optimists tend to notice opportunities that pessimists miss.
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