Successful People Learn From Mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes. The main difference is that successful people learn from them and unsuccessful people don’t. By creating an environment in which it's okay to safely make mistakes so that people can learn from them, you’ll see rapid progress and fewer significant mistakes.

What Does A Successful Life Look Like?

People who achieve success and drive progress deeply understand the cause-effect relationships that govern reality and have principles for using them to get what they want. The converse is also true: Idealists who are not well grounded in reality create problems, not progress.

What does a successful life look like? We all have our own deep-seated needs, so we each have to decide for ourselves what success is... Each of us needs to decide what we value most and choose the paths we take to achieve it.

 

How To Focus On A Goal

If you're focused on the goal, excited about achieving it, and recognize that doing some undesirable tasks to achieve the goal is required, you will have the right perspective and will be appropriately motivated.

If you're not excited about the goal that you're working for, stop working for it. Personally, I like visualizing exciting new and beautiful things that I want to make into realities.

The excitement of visualizing these ideas and my desire to build them out is what pulls me through the thorny realities of life to make my dreams happen.

Peace & Prosperity

In the new chapter of my series, The Changing World Order, I explore the timeless and universal principles that drive the big cycle of order and disorder within nations, especially as they relate to what’s happening in the US now.

Principles: People, Culture and Transparency

Being Radically Transparent

Understanding what is true is essential for success, and being radically transparent about everything, including mistakes and weaknesses, helps create the understanding that leads to improvements.

A Great Organization Has Both Great People And A Great Culture

Companies that get progressively better over time have both. Nothing is more important or more difficult than to get the culture and the people right.

Reforming The System

If we cannot agree on a path that both increases the size of the pie by maximizing human productivity and divides the pie well so there is something approaching equal opportunity, we will fight each other and not be productive which will hurt most everyone. There is no system that has proven better than capitalism in providing incentives, ideas and products. And it can easily be reformed to work better for most people. What’s the better choice?

Following Principles

Following principles is for me simply like following good recipes that get me what I want. However, when operating in a principled way one can see things from a higher level so that one wants to operate with a high standard of behavior. 

Principle Of The Day: Fail Well

Everyone fails. Anyone you see succeeding is only succeeding at the things you’re paying attention to—I guarantee they are also failing at lots of other things. The people I respect most are those who fail well. I respect them even more than those who succeed. 

That is because failing is a painful experience while succeeding is a joyous one, so it requires much more character to fail, change, and then succeed than to just succeed. People who are just succeeding must not be pushing their limits. Of course the worst are those who fail and don’t recognize it and don’t change.

You Must Stretch Yourself

It’s a basic law of nature: You must stretch yourself if you want to get strong. You and your people must act with each other like trainers in gyms in order to keep each other fit. Force yourself and the people who work for you to do difficult things.

Principle of the Day: Meaningful Work & Relationships

I asked if people were finding Principles useful in guiding them through this time and I was so glad that a large number of folks said they were. Over the next few weeks, I’d like to pass along some of the principles that people said they were finding most helpful.

Principle of the Day:

Meaningful relationships are invaluable for building and sustaining a culture of excellence, because they create the trust and support that people need to push each other to do great things.