As we celebrated my 37th birthday today, I thought about three questions that Aaron and I have used in managing our lives that help us live better, avoid mistakes, and improve our outcomes. I wanted to share them so they might help you in your own journey.
It is not an exaggeration to say that most of my life and career has been spent reading, writing, and thinking. In many cases, I turned around and taught others a synthesized version of what I absorbed, putting my own spin on it. My favorite place in the world during childhood was the public library and even now, I am typing this post surrounded by enormous bookcases overflowing with volumes on everything from trust fund structures to biographies of oil and banking titans. Reading allows me to satisfy a nearly insatiable curiosity about the world. More than any other behavior, it has been responsible for my success.
One of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal in life and business is reflecting on your intention in taking a given action. Yet, despite its enormous benefits, few people stop to reflect on why they are behaving in a certain way.
Epiphany moments are powerful things that can change the way you manage your life, the direction of your career, or how you look at the world.
In life and in business, you have to know who you are, what you stand for, what you believe, and how you will proceed. Trying to be all things to all people is a recipe for disaster that leaves no one happy and sabotages your success.
Shortly after Blue Fairy gives life to the eponymous wooden puppet in the 1940 classic animated film Pinocchio, she instructs him that he must, “Always let [his] conscience be [his] guide”. Were she a rationalist, she might have added an important addendum: “And make decisions based upon objective, high-quality, third-party-recorded data to remove your own bias as much as possible…
Words and phrases are interesting things. Each represents a package of ideas and associations, instantly unwrapped the moment we encounter them. If I say, “She stood in a cold, dark, damp basement on a winter day, with only a bit of gray, overcast sky visible through small windows around the perimeter; the rhythm of ice rain hitting…
One of the most important lessons I learned very early in life came from a series of psychology studies that I read for entertainment. It talked about how the big troubles we face – the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, the foreclosure of a home – are often overcome because our natural defense systems activate, causing our behavior to moderate with time so that we accept what has happened, rebuild, and put it behind us. The things that cause unhappiness that is both severe and chronic are not these major shocks; they are the small irritations that build up and wear away at you like Chinese water torture.
