I ask myself this every day. Today, my answer is “I was able to help 2 clients.” I love helping others. It’s not just about making money…

When I work hard at something and fail, I have a choice.

Be in despair, cry, and give up.

Change the word “failure” to “experiment”. Study the experiment from every angle. Learn from it.

Learning equals improvement.

1% improvement a day means you improve 38 times in a year.

1% more despair a day means in a year you become 1/30 of the person you once were.

That’s your choice.

Thanks for Your Wisdom James Altucher

This man changed my life, not only my Business but my Attitude.

Think of yourself as dead.

You may think this is weird advice, but it’s not coming from me. It actually comes from Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.

In his book “Meditations,” Aurelius says,

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”

I like this idea a lot. So much so that I’m convinced that if you apply it, it will completely change your life.

Why? Because oftentimes we give too much of our time and attention to the things that don’t matter. As a result, we completely ignore the things that do.

And we do this because we think we’re going to live forever.

We never stop to think that we’re going to die one day. When in fact, we could die tomorrow.

At any moment, you could get hit by a car, choke on your food, or trip on a step and hit your head.

Because of this, you need to stop focusing on all the little things that bother you and start making the best use of your time.

This doesn’t mean you should sell everything you own and gamble all the money away at the casino.

This isn’t the best use of your time.

Instead, the best use of your time is working on being a good person, doing your best, constantly improving yourself, and living a life of reason and virtue.

Imagine you died last night and you have now been given a second chance. Then make two lists:

1) What are the most important things in your life?

2) What do you actually spend your time with?

Compare the lists and choose one thing you’ll work on being better at in the next few days.
Doing this will help you focus on what’s truly important so that you don’t waste time on what’s not.

Thanks for your Wisdom Vincent Carlos

According to a report from the World Health Organization, the average life expectancy in the United States is 79 years old. Most people in wealthy nations are hovering around the 80–year mark. Women in Japan are the highest, with an average life expectancy of 86 years.

If we use these average life expectancy numbers and assume that your adult life starts at 18 years old, then you’ve got about 68 years as an adult. (86 – 18 = 68) Perhaps a little less on average. A little more if you’re lucky.

(68 years as an adult) x (365 days each year) = 24,820 days.

25,000 mornings.

That’s what you get in your adult life. 25,000 times you get to open your eyes, face the day, and decide what to do next. I don’t know about you, but I’ve let a lot of those mornings slip by.

Once I realized this, I started thinking about how I could develop a better morning routine. I still have a lot to learn, but here are some strategies that you can use to get the most out of your 25,000 mornings.

5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Morning

Here are the strategies that I’ve found to be most effective for getting the most out of my morning.

1. Manage your energy, not your time. If you take a moment to think about it, you’ll probably realize that you are better at doing certain tasks at certain times. For example, my creative energy is highest in the morning, so that’s when I do my writing each day.

By comparison, I block out my afternoons for interviews, phone calls, and emails. I don’t need my creative energy to be high for those tasks, so that’s the best time for me to get them done. And I tend to have my best workouts in the late afternoon or early evening, so that’s when I head to the gym.

Respecting your internal, ultradian rhythm for whichever task is at hand is one of the most powerful things you can do.

What type of energy do you have in the morning? What task is that energy best suited for?

2. Prepare the night before. I don’t do this nearly as often as I should, but if you only do one thing each day then spend a few minutes each night organizing your to–do list for tomorrow. When I do it right, I’ll outline the article I’m going to write the next day and develop a short list of the most important items for me to accomplish. It takes 10 minutes that night and saves 3 hours the next day.

3. Don’t open email until noon. Sounds simple. Nobody does it. It took me awhile to get over the urge to open my inbox, but eventually I realized that everything can wait a few hours. Nobody is going to email you about a true emergency (a death in the family, etc.), so leave your email alone for the first few hours of each day. Use the morning to do what’s important rather than responding to what is “urgent.”

4. Turn your phone off and leave it in another room. Or on your colleague’s desk. Or at the very least, put it somewhere that is out of sight. This eliminates the urge to check text messages, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. This simple strategy eliminates the likelihood of slipping into half–work where you waste time dividing your attention among meaningless tasks.

The power of receiving zero notifications, especially at night can boost your sleep time and make your morning that much more productive.

5. Work in a cool place. Have you ever noticed how you feel groggy and sluggish in a hot room? Turning the temperature down or moving to a cooler place is an easy way to focus your mind and body. (Hat tip to Michael Hyatt for this one.)

3 Ways to Improve Your Morning Routine

The science behind temperature and lighting in your workplace has shown that adjusting both can have a significant impact on your productivity, day in day out. It’s worth to spend a few minutes adjusting it.

6. Sit up or stand up. Your mind needs oxygen to work properly. Your lungs need to be able to expand and contract to fill your body with oxygen. That sounds simple enough, but here’s the problem: most people sit hunched over while staring at a screen and typing.

When you sit hunched over, your chest is in a collapsed position and your diaphragm is pressing against the bottom of your lungs, which hinders your ability to breathe easily and deeply. Sit up straight or stand up and you’ll find that you can breathe easier and more fully. As a result, your brain will get more oxygen and you’ll be able to concentrate better.

(Small tip: When sitting, I usually place a pillow in the small of my back. This prevents my lower back from rounding, which keeps me more upright.)

7. Eat as a reward for working hard. I practice intermittent fasting, which means that I eat my first meal around noon each day. I’ve been doing this for almost two years. There are plenty of health benefits, which I explained in great detail here, here, and here.

But health is just one piece of the puzzle. I also fast because it allows me to get more out of my day. Take a moment to think about how much time people spend each day thinking, planning, and consuming food. By adopting intermittent fasting, I don’t waste an hour each morning figuring out what to eat for breakfast, cooking it, and cleaning up. Instead, I use my morning to work on things that are important to me. Then, I eat good food and big meals as a reward for working hard.

8. Develop a “pre–game routine” to start your day. My morning routine starts by pouring a cold glass of water. Some people kick off their day with ten minutes of meditation. Similarly, you should have a sequence that starts your morning ritual. This tiny routine signals to your brain that it’s time to get into work mode or exercise mode or whatever mode you need to be in to accomplish your task. Additionally, a pre–game routine helps you overcome a lack of motivation and get things done even when you don’t feel like it.

25,000 Mornings: The Power of a Morning Routine

Just as it’s rare for anyone to experience overnight success, it’s also rare for our lives crumble to pieces in an instant. Most unproductive or unhealthy behaviors are the result of slow, gradual choices that add up to bad habits. A wasted morning here. An unproductive morning there.

The good news is that exceptional results are also the result of consistent daily choices. Nowhere is this more true than with your morning routine. The way you start your day is often the way that you finish it.

Take, for example, Jack LaLanne. He woke up each day at 4am and spent the first 90 minutes lifting weights. Then, he went for a swim or a run for the next 30 minutes. For more than 60 years, he spent each morning doing this routine. In addition to being one of the most influential people in fitness in the last 100 years, LaLanne also lived to the ripe old age of 96.

This is no coincidence. What you do each morning is an indicator of how you approach your entire day. It’s the choices that we repeatedly make that determine the life we live, the health we enjoy, and the work we create.

You’ve got 25,000 mornings. What will you do with each one?

Thanks James Clear

It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

Failure is not the opposite of winning; it is part of the learning process.

You’ve probably experienced that moment of gratitude for an event in your life that you originally perceived as negative — failing that exam, losing your job, ending a long-term relationship. And when you’re able to appreciate and own your failures, you’re able to learn and grow from them.

That’s when the magic happens. Because no longer will you fear your failures; you’ll be able to use them as stones and guides that pave your way to success.

Many quotes by Denis Waitley have to do with being dealing with failure and putting yourself in a winner’s mindset; there is great reason for this.

Denis Waitley, the man who’s coached Olympians, Astronauts, and Fortune 500 executives.

Thanks for your Wisdom Denis Waitley

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was known for his ability to communicate with a crowd of people. His keynotes set the standard for how companies talk about their products. He was known for being charismatic, sometimes funny, and sometimes even feisty.

In the list of his top performances is another moment worth mentioning. This one wasn’t a presentation, but rather it came during a question and answer session in 1997, shortly after he had returned to Apple. Jobs was taking questions when he was asked a rather insulting question by a man in the audience.

“Mr. Jobs, you’re a bright and influential man,” the questioner began. “It’s sad and clear that on several accounts you’ve discussed, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The man went on to ask a specific question about Java and Opendoc, the latter of which was a software framework Jobs had announced would be discontinued. He then challenged Apple’s founder on what he’d been doing during the seven years since he’d been fired from the company.

Jobs had only months before returned to Apple when it acquired his new company, NEXT. There were plenty of people already mad at him (including, apparently, this questioner). He had made a lot of changes, even though he hadn’t yet been named CEO. Technically, he was just a consultant.

In response, however, Jobs doesn’t really answer either of the man’s questions. Instead, he answers the question beneath the question. In doing so, Jobs doesn’t attempt to defend his intelligence or success. He embraces the most brutal part of the man’s criticism–that he isn’t always going to get it right.

To be clear, Jobs, who by all accounts was known to be a perfectionist, wasn’t excusing mistakes. “We’ll find the mistakes,” he continued. “We’ll fix them.”

That’s an important point that we’ll get to in a minute, but first, there are a number of things that are astonishing about this interaction, not the least of which is that Steve Jobs was sitting on stage taking questions from an audience of developers. I think the chances of Tim Cook doing the same on stage at Apple’s WWDC at any point in the future are zero.

Second, Jobs handles the insult with an incredible amount of grace and patience. Jobs could have gotten defensive or angry. He would have been justified had his response betrayed that he was, at least, a little annoyed. But that’s not how he responded at all

Most important, however, those two sentences are a beautiful lesson about success. You see, success isn’t the pursuit of not making mistakes. Almost always, mistakes are the way you find your way to whatever you define as success.

Mistakes are an unavoidable part of the process. You can spend a lot of time trying to figure out a strategy that doesn’t involve making any mistakes, but it usually means you don’t do much of anything–certainly not anything of value.

Jobs’s answer takes only a few minutes, but it’s an invaluable lesson about how to define success, and then how to get there.

“One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology,” Jobs explains. “You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it. And I’ve made this mistake, probably more than anybody else in this room. And I’ve got the scar tissue to prove it.”

That last part is important. Jobs admitted that he’s made plenty of mistakes, but those mistakes don’t take away from his credibility–as the man who asked the question suggested–but rather, they form it. Scars, after all, don’t mean you failed. They mean you made it through the battle.

Obviously, your job is to make lots of little mistakes–the kind you grow from–and not big mistakes (or, the kind your business dies from). Those you grow from are a great way to learn how not to make the other kind.

Mistakes also teach you something important about whatever it is you’re building. When you make mistakes, find them, and fix them, they make your product and your business stronger. That might be the most beautiful part of all.

Thanks Jason Aten for Your Wisdom

Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

Failure is not the opposite of winning; it is part of the learning process.

You’ve probably experienced that moment of gratitude for an event in your life that you originally perceived as negative — failing that exam, losing your job, ending a long-term relationship. And when you’re able to appreciate and own your failures, you’re able to learn and grow from them.

That’s when the magic happens. Because no longer will you fear your failures; you’ll be able to use them as stones and guides that pave your way to success.

Thanks for your Wisdom Denis Waitley

The 64-year-old investor, serial entrepreneur and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks says the strategy helped him accumulate his own wealth — a net worth of $4.6 billion, according to Forbes. He recently broke down his rules for GQ, noting that while they’re meant to help you earn cash, they’re really about being able to “control your own destiny.”

“If you want to be a millionaire, you can do it, but there’s a couple things you have to be able to accomplish,” Cuban said.

1. His first rule: “Find something you can be good at. Then, be great at it.”

To do that, you’ll probably need to study your subject relentlessly. Counterintuitively, you may also need to “cross-train” your brain by studying other topics of interest, too. Research published by the Association for Psychological Science last year noted that what separates Nobel Prize winners from national-level winners is often multidisciplinary experience.

Similarly, the research found that competitive athletes had “greater sustainability of long-term excellence” if they played more than one sport as a child. Those athletes didn’t immediately excel at their preferred sport, but showed a more consistent route to eventual mastery over time, the authors added.

2. Cuban’s second rule is “know how to sell.” His own sales career started early: At age 12, he sold trash bags door-to-door to earn money for new sneakers, he said.

The billionaire has previously given out advice on how to succeed at sales — by showing people how you can help them in the first couple of seconds of your pitch.

“Selling isn’t about convincing, it’s about helping,” Cuban told the School of Hard Knocks in a TikTok. “When you understand what people need and want, you put yourself in a position to help them,” he said. “Then you make good things happen, close deals and that’s how you create companies.”

3. The third rule: “Be curious and always learning,” Cuban said.

Having a “lifetime learning mentality” correlates with both objective and subjective success — from the number of promotions you get to how happy you are in your job — according to a 2020 study from University of Waterloo finance and education researchers.

Lifelong learners can even save their employers money in the long run, study co-author Judene Pretti told UWaterloo’s “Alumni Know” podcastin April.

“As technology continues to move at the rapid pace it is, employers need their employees to … undertake learning and development to stay on top of what the latest technologies are,” Pretti said. “It isn’t a matter of needing to replace workforce. Instead, develop and grow the existing workforce.”

4. Lastly, Cuban’s fourth rule is his longest — and perhaps his most important, especially for aspiring entrepreneurs.

“When you walk into a room, you [need to] know your s–t better than anyone else in the room,” he said. “That’s when it’s time to start a company. Then, you can start to control your own destiny.”

Knowledge, of course, doesn’t guarantee success. Before Cuban started his first company, he quit or was fired from three consecutive jobs and slept on the floor of a three-bedroom apartment he shared with five roommates, he wrote in Forbes in 2013.

He touched on a similar subject in his 2011 book “How to Win at the Sport of Business,” writing that it “doesn’t matter how many times” you fail. “You only have to be right once” to be “set for life,” he added.

That lesson may be why Cuban seems confident enough in his four rules to stake his own livelihood on it. Even if he lost everything, he’d build himself back into a millionaire again, he told NPR’s “How I Built This” podcast in 2016.

“I would get a job as a bartender at night, and a sales job during the day, and I would start working,” Cuban said. Could I become a multi-millionaire again? I have no doubt.”

Thanks for your Wisdom Megan Sauer