Monday, January 25, 2016

What I've learned since moving to D.C. (some of which should be obvious): 0081

4001.  Our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds;
4002.  Success often boils down to whether or not you believe your intelligence level is fixed or if it is something that can be improved upon;
4003.  You need to stop making excuses in every aspect of your life.  That means actually doing what you say you’re going to do.  Be an action taker not an excuse maker;
4004.  Excuses are preventers; they prevent you from accomplishing anything in life.  When you push away a spark of motivation with one of your well-rehearsed excuses, you are preventing yourself from taking action every single time.  For the rest of your life, you’re going to be faced with problems and goals.  You might as well tackle them the right way; starting with eliminating excuses from your lexicon;
4005.  Happiness is the most important thing in life.  Now what exactly happens in your life when you justify your inaction with an excuse?  You postpone your own happiness;
4006.  If you really want anything to change, comfort is the last thing you should be seeking;
4007.  When you get to the point where all you want to do is to be as successful as badly as you want to breathe, then you will be successful;
4008.  If you want to succeed in life, you have to do so much more than just be yourself.  You need to be the best version of yourself;
4009.  Motivation is a fickle thing.  It’s no different from any other emotion – valid, but utterly fleeting and wholly undependable.  Habits are reliable.  Motivation is not;
4010.  Don’t be yourself, better yourself;
4011.  The only way to improve is to try, but we’re taught to fear rejection more than we desire to succeed;
4012.  When you choose failure, you’re guaranteed to get it.  But when you choose to take action, you’re guaranteed a chance at success.  Isn’t having a chance at achieving your goals better than a guarantee that you won’t?  So stop choosing failure.  Instead, choose a chance at success;
4013.  The moment you stop, the moment you hesitate, the moment you let up and decide to just do it tomorrow, you’ve lost.  At that point, you’ve chosen failure;
4014.  Being a hard worker is important, but working hard alone will never make you wealthy;
4015.  In order to succeed, you have to be willing to fail many times;
4016.  People are very good at misleading themselves and others around them by claiming to be preparing for an opportunity.  In their minds, they are getting ready.  Unfortunately, what they are really doing is procrastinating because they are scared of what could happen if they fail.  As a result, the opportunity that presented itself usually goes away;
4017.  Self-doubt, fear and worry are the greatest obstacles to success;
4018.  Watch out for the Dermalactives saleswomen at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City.  They’re (really) good. . . . You’ll end up buying stuff you didn’t want;
4019.  Fear is the mind-killer;
4020.  Net worth is only potential value.  It is worthless until realized, just as a person’s potential is worthless until it is realized through serving and creating value for others;
4021.  The way to bridge the gap between the potential of net worth and the productivity of cash flow is through creating value – finding ways to meet the perceived needs and wants of other people;
4022.  The myth that prosperity can be reduced to and quantified by math destroys our human life value because it is focused on the effect, rather than the cause of prosperity.  It causes people to work for money and to pursue a number on their bank balance or a calculation of net worth instead of creating value, and it leads us to make unwise decisions regarding money;
4023.  In a world of cause and effect, money is an effect while creating value for people is the cause;
4024.  Numbers on paper can’t help you understand the opportunity costs of the financial and life decisions you make;
4025.  Opportunity costs are the paths not taken, the opportunities we lose when we choose a particular course of action – what our money could have been or the experiences we could have had or the jobs we might hold had we made different choices.  When we place too much value on the numbers on our balance sheets and in our retirement accounts, we run the risk of staying in miserable and limiting situations because the numbers dangle in front of us like the proverbial carrot.  We make decisions based on how much money we can make, rather than focusing on how much value we can create for others and for ourselves.  Can you quantify the burnout that eventually hits people doing things that make them miserable, even if they make good money?  Furthermore, can you quantify the lost production that comes from people working for money instead of working to create value?
4026.  A number on a balance sheet that says $1 million is nothing but a quantity and it says nothing about the quality of life of the individual millionaire;
4027.  If our sense of happiness is based primarily on our amount of money, it is an illusory and transitory happiness at best;
4028.  Quality and quantity are fundamentally different from each other and one cannot be substituted for the other.  If we can learn to focus more on quality and less on quantity, we will be more able to utilize and maximize the productivity of any amount of money that flows to us;
4029.  Nobody wants money; they want what money can buy;
4030.  Everyone wants to be happy and it’s that desire for happiness that drives all human behavior.  Many people seem to think that happiness is a function of the amount of money that we have.  But it’s self-evident that money cannot bring us happiness.  It can certainly facilitate the purchase of items that contribute to our joy in life, but money in and of itself has no intrinsic value;
4031.  Prosperity means to be truly happy and to be free of worries and stress about money;
4032.  One of the most destructive lies that we can fall prey to is thinking that having more money will change us.  Many people fear wealth because they think it will change them for the worse and still others invite wealth because they think that it will make them happy.  The amount of currency available to you does nothing, but make you more of what you already are.  If you are naturally generous, increased wealth will simply give you greater opportunity to be generous.  If you are greedy, wealth will do nothing but manifest your greed even more clearly;
4033.  A bank balance does not have the power to change people; only people can change their understanding of and relationship with their bank balance.  If you’re not happy without money, you’ll never be happy with it.  Money is important and useful, but if you think that money will fix your problems, that thought is the problem;
4034.  Nobody is responsible for you, but you.  You are the one with the responsibility and the power to change anything about your life that you don’t like;
4035.  Great wealth can come to you only as a result of doing things you don’t want to do;
4036.  Successful people share five characteristics: 1.  They are persistent; 2.  They are patient; 3.  They are willing to handle both the “nobler and the pettier” aspects of their job; 4.  They have an increasingly noncompetitive attitude towards the people with whom they work with; and 5.  Their investment activities – aside from their main careers – consumed a minimum of their time and attention;
4037.  Investing in yourself, what you do and with whom you do it are the most important determining factors of wealth;
4038.  Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.  Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.  Life is either a daring adventure or nothing;
4039.  People are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they, therefore, remain bound;
4040.  What we know and do not act on cannot help us;
4041.  Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts;
4042.  Consumers focus on what they get instead of what they can give, they avoid responsibility, they depend on others for their happiness and they rarely create real value.  Consumers operate in scarcity, so they view the world through eyes that see poverty and limitations.  They think there isn't enough to go around, so they should get what they can before it all runs out.  They take and leave nothing in place of what they take.  They often feel victimized by other people and external circumstances when they don't get what they think they should.  They believe that material things, not people, have intrinsic value.  Because they feel entitled to everything that is given to them, they are poor stewards and allow their human life value to degenerate;
4043.  Producers know that people, not material things, have intrinsic value.  They love people and use material things to serve others.  They operate in abundance and they view the world through eyes that see limitless possibilities for value creation.  They are wise stewards over everything that they have been blessed with;
4044.  People quickly answer two questions when they first meet you: Can I trust this person?  Can I respect this person?  Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence respectively, and ideally you want to be perceived as having both;
4045.  Most people, especially in a professional context, believe that competence is the more important factor.  After all, they want to prove that they are smart and talented enough to handle your business.  But in fact warmth or trustworthiness is the most important factor in how people evaluate you;
4046.  While competence is highly valued, it is evaluated only after trust is established;
4047.  If someone you’re trying to influence doesn’t trust you, you’re not going to get very far; in fact, you might even elicit suspicion because you come across as manipulative;
4048.  A warm, trustworthy person, who is also strong, elicits admiration, but only after you’ve established trust does your strength become a gift rather than a threat;
4049.  When you’re in a parking garage, you’re trying to turn and there’s another car blocking your way, back up and let the other car pass. . . . Your paint job (and insurance company) will thank you;
4050.  The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances – to choose one’s own way;

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