Summary
- Interviews of 500 most successful people in 1937 to find common behaviors and traits.
Secrets to success
- DETERMINATION is key to success.
- Persist when it gets tough.
- Get good at making split-second decisions & firmly standing behind them.
- Have unwavering faith in yourself. Place less importance on critical opinions.
- Plan your goals, prioritize them, decide how much you’re willing to sacrifice, outline each step of the path.
- Build a team of smart and diverse people. Delegate knowledge, sum is greater than the parts.
Other Tips
- Avoid negative emotions like rage, hate, revenge, pessimism. People will always offer their cheap opinions. Positive emotions are key to a successful life.
- Regularly persuade yourself subconsciously that you can do it, to boost determination. This is called auto-suggestion.
- Be willing to continue learning throughout your life.
Interesting ideas
- Creative imagination is coming up with completely new things. It’s how ingenious composers, visual artists, and writers create works unlike anything before.
- Synthetic imagination is rearranging old ideas into new combinations. See the big picture, and imagine how different or related ideas may combine to form something new.
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Additional Notes:
Why are determination and unwavering faith in yourself important?
- Setbacks and failures are inevitable for achieving great success. Thomas Edison failed 10,000 experiments before succeeding. Writer Fannie Hurst suffered 36 rejections before a single one of her short stories was published. In order to succeed, you must have a burning desire to realize your dreams.
- Our own faith in ourselves has enormous influence on our self-image and way of life. It can help move mountains.
Why are positive emotions important?
- Our subconscious constantly receives and stores both positive and negative sensory stimuli, feelings, and thoughts.
- “Feeding” more positive emotions helps you stay motivated & confident.
How do I properly continue learning?
- Develop ability to know where you can find knowledge. You should surround yourself with network of experts who share specialized knowledge.
- Focus on learning the right things. Leverage your own strengths to fully exploit your potential.
- Examples: take classes & acquire practical experiences.