# Having a success-minded attitude An attitude is a general outlook or state of mind. Your attitude, more than anything else, determines your limits to success: - Contrary to popular opinion, success doesn't require intelligence, originality, or virtue as much as the right attitude. - Our most challenging barriers are driven by [emotional beliefs](purpose.md), and are rarely physical. - We don't see alternatives or listen to the call to be better when we're [cynical](mind-feelings-happiness-focus.md). - We can't set rational goals without an accurate view of the world. - Our optimism determines how well we recover from [hardship and failure](success-5_persevering.md). - We need worthwhile mentors and peers, and we tend to draw like-minded people near us. Everyone can see a bad attitude, but most people are never told they have one. - Our attitude is often defined by [what we place in the center of our existence](addiction-centers.md). ## The right attitude requires accurate beliefs Every extremely successful person in this world has a *very* specific attitude: - Finds pleasure in audacity and defiance (which is *sometimes* original) - Has an iron will that can express as passionate hatred - Holds an obsessive, extreme conviction that they have the one and only truth - Believes in their destiny and luck - Holds contempt for the present situation - Has a clever understanding of [human nature](people-3_respect.md) - Enjoys symbolic spectacles and ceremonies - Has a track record of winning that draws the complete loyalty of capable people We change our beliefs through daily reinforcement, which usually takes years. When we're trying to succeed, we must slowly adapt our beliefs every day. The correct beliefs for the situation use at least some of the following non-exclusive concepts. ## A. Prepare to sacrifice ### 1. Invest into it fully The margins determine success: - The difference between a C and an A on a test is 11-19%. - Eating 200 calories less every day will generate a net loss of ~28 pounds (~13 kg) across one year. - In the MLB, the average player's batting average is ~28.3%, and the Hall of Fame starts at 30.2%. - The [Pareto Principle](lawsaxioms.md), or 80/20 Rule, says the most significant effects come from 20% of the causes. Success looks a *lot* easier when you're planning it, so you're guaranteed to underestimate the work: - Money, time, energy - Pain from self-discipline - Social sacrifices like lost friends and difficulty relating - Lost opportunities from other forsaken decisions ([opportunity cost](money-economics.md)) - The feeling of being unimportant, underappreciated, or disappointed - Late nights, early mornings, multitasking, or uncomfortable sacrifices While "finding a passion" may be good, self-discipline is far more important. - Preferences *will* change across [life stages](maturity.md), but self-discipline sticks with you. You're not lucky. - You are lucky in one sense: you can read nearly every written work that has historically survived, with technology that connects you across the planet to nearly anyone. - But, if you were lucky, you wouldn't have to work hard because life would hand itself to you. - Since you're unlucky, don't wait for opportunities to happen. - Assume the odds are always stacked against you. - Increase your chances as much as humanly possible: 1. Grow as much as possible from every experience. 2. Stay positive about what may happen. 3. Take advantage of everything you can. 4. Overwork beyond what you need. No matter what, we're still partly responsible for the consequences. - While not everything is your fault, many things are still your responsibility, and neglecting them *will* be your fault. - If you do your absolute best, even when you don't see results, you'll rest well at night. We must believe we *can* succeed, or we'll sabotage ourselves because we'll feel like we're wasting our time. ### 2. Expect solitude Most people are too insecure or afraid to accept the social sacrifices of success. - The tasks for working on most projects often involve hours and days of complete isolation. Choosing to succeed can often create rejection. - Most of your close family and [friends](people-friends.md) will expect you to fulfill a preconceived role. - Unless people around you are also succeeding, you'll outpace and lose relationships with them. - If an endeavor is particularly unexpected, it's not uncommon to face denials and disinterest. People generally want you to succeed *up to* their level, but preferably a little less. - Expect loneliness until you find people confident enough to accept your new attitude. ## B. Focus on what you can control ### 3. Only focus on decisions you can make We tend to get distracted by conflicting views: - Vague goals or noncommittal approach - [Disorganization](organization.md) - Low [self-esteem](mind-feelings-happiness-focus.md) or a poor self-image - Exaggerating our fears or downplaying benefits Don't compare yourself to others, and don't measure your efforts against others'. Your only true power is through your current choices today. - Tomorrow has plenty of [uncertainty](mind-understanding-certainty.md), and you have plenty to worry about today without including tomorrow into it. Self-control gives us [power](power-types.md), and people tend to give or take power from us relative to how well we appear to wield it. You alone are responsible for changing previous choices you've made, even when they weren't your fault. - If you're [angry](mind-feelings-anger.md) with others, you're obsessing over their past actions and submitting your will to them. - If the past decisions created the present, current decisions will create the future. Learn to push [fears](mind-feelings-fear.md) out of your mind that don't affect your decisions: - 90% of what scares you can't conceivably happen. - Only consider what your fears can legitimately teach you. - When you know what you need to do, stop thinking about your decisions. - Beyond the decisions you need to make, ignore all competition. - If you feel [shame](mind-feelings-shame.md) from your past mistakes, commit to avoiding those actions in the future and move on. - Don't dwell on what other people are thinking or might say. - Disregard potential risks you can't do anything about. ### 4. Stop complaining and making excuses Nobody cares about your [feelings](mind-feelings.md) as much as you do. - Society usually judges behavior, not intent. - While self-identifying as a victim may change how people behave around you, it often feels [meaningless](meaning.md) because you haven't accomplished anything. You're probably correct about how bad your problems are, but you're also stronger than you think. - You can [identify](people-identity.md) your suffering, but that isn't "you". - With the right mental management, your feelings can help as much as they can hinder you. If you unconsciously *want* to fail, you'll seek advice to find someone to blame for your failure. Most people restate the same reasons why they can't do something: - "I'm not ready", but nobody ever is. - "I'm not good enough", but you can always become good enough. - "I don't have enough time", but you can make time. - "I don't have enough money", but your creativity and resolve can overcome it. - "I'm not sure what to do", but you'll learn in time. - "I don't have the credentials/degree/training", but nobody cares as much as you think they do. - "I don't have equipment", but other people can share it with you. - "I'm not in the right location", so you can [move](home-moving.md) if it matters to you. - "I don't have the network/reputation/work history", and 3-4 hours of intentional networking a day will fix that. - "It's too crazy", and most celebrated success stories were once "impossible". - "I'm not talented/gifted enough", and most successful people often have mediocre talents. - "If I work hard, I'll succeed no matter what", if you focus on the value you add and not how much you do. - "I want to be a great family person", and a [great parent](parenting-children.md) has a great career. - "I'm all alone", and other successful people have shared your exact same situation. ### 5. Do as much research as possible Learn how other people have failed and succeeded, which may require changing your hobbies to reading more nonfiction or watching more guides and tutorials. Use the internet to connect with people who *have* succeeded, and try to learn as much as you can from them. You're not trying to remove unknown elements, but to clarify exactly what you *do* know around those unknown elements. Spend more [money](money-1_why.md) on self-education than on creature comforts. ## C. Pick the right targets ### 6. Focus your decisions toward goals *away* from yourself "Follow your passion" is terrible advice because selfishness is a worthless existence. - Perseverance must be toward the right things to have any value, and endless "grit" without listening to the world's signals is foolishness. - The only good value and [meaning](meaning.md) in our tasks comes throughhow we feel responsible to serve others' interests. - A healthy mindset will expand itself beyond ourselves into how we see and treat others. Your sacrifices are always worth the attempt if you are pursuing something [virtuous](morality-virtues.md). - True "self"-improvement requires shifting focus to "other"-improvement. - Even certain "selfish" things, like self-reliance, can be selfless when they serve others' needs. At the same time, you don't "deserve" others' moral conduct, respect, friendship, love, courtesy, or understanding. - While you deserve to [be loved](people-love.md) in a general sense, this [fallen world](theology-sins.md) means you and every other person must work on being more loving. ### 7. Focus on "growth" over "status" Maintaining status is expensive, and growth is cheap by comparison. When you focus on where things are, you're not paying attention to how things are changing. - By observing what changes instead of what stays the same, you're more likely to notice small, important movements. It's easy to self-assess through a fixed status, but that viewpoint is wrong. - In reality, everything is in a perpetual state of [change](people-changes.md), and we are always either [growing or fading](people-trends.md). Instead of wanting fewer problems or that life was easier, shift your view to wanting more skills to handle life better. ### 8. Focus on your strengths As we keep attempting things, we'll learn pretty quickly what we're good at. Our impulse is to decrease our weaknesses, but we'll get more results by magnifying our strengths. - Since success requires doing a lot of something, our strengths are more defined on our [personality](people-personality.md) than skills or talents. - If you aren't aware of your strengths, focus on what you naturally hate and examine its opposite. [Foster relationships](people-friends.md) with people around you who are strong where you're weak. ### 9. Aim for long-term results Keep an eye on how you can most positively affect the future. Avoid conflicting goals (e.g., "spend more time outdoors" and "build my business"). Aim for things nobody can take away from you: - Broader [understanding](mind-understanding.md) that won't become obsolete - General [skills](jobs-specialization.md) that apply to many things - Aspects of [your reputation](people-image.md) tied to your competence and character Avoid secondary gain (things you can get through [lying or embellishing reality](people-lying.md)). - The opposites of success is name-dropping and victimizing. - More secondary gain often creates long-term risks to legitimate success later. ## D. Change your perspective ### 10. Prioritize new ideas over intelligence, talent, or effort Intelligent, hard-working, talented people do have an advantage, but will always lose to people who can use new ideas in a conventional context. Focus on [attitudes that permit new ideas to grow](mind-creativity-how.md). - Many people think cynicism is a sign of intelligence, but the ability to [find problems](https://adequate.life/fix/) is not as unique as the ability to [creatively solve them](mind-creativity-how.md). Seek advice everywhere. - Your [genetics](people-family.md) give you some insight into what you're good at, and your [culture of origin](people-culture.md) alludes to that. - [Your friends'](people-friends.md) advice is usually more valuable than general guides because it's personalized to you. When you hear or read about others' methods, always [analyze *why*](logic.md) those methods worked. - Even fools often observe reality correctly, so avoid throwing out the ideas with the person. - Most people love to give advice, and you can still learn quite a lot from losers about what to avoid. - Mind anyone who contradicts their advice or has [succeeded with past trends](people-trends.md). ### 11. Own that you're at least partly wrong right now If you remember yourself from 10 years ago, that person was a less educated and more foolish version of yourself. - Therefore, the future successful version of you will also see your present self in much the same way. All success requires gaining [wisdom](mind-understanding.md) (aka applied knowledge). - We tend to easily see others' bias more than our own, so it's critical to accept others' input about our thoughts. - Seek understanding, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. - Look at others' points of view before your own. - Prioritize wisdom over trivia. - Failure stories can often give as much wisdom as success stories. - Read and research *anything* you're interested in, even if it's unrelated to what you're presently working on. - Common sense is the set of prejudices acquired by adulthood, so most of them are half-truths that need changing. Even if you believe you're right, you will need to change all your beliefs at some point. - Most of the time, you will fail to observe a critical, important detail. - Criticize yourself before your critics do. At the same time, don't sabotage what you *do* know. - Self-criticism is only useful if it gives you something to measurably do better. - If you believe you're less competent than others think, you have a healthy amount of hesitancy and are likely not overstepping yourself. ### 12. Kill perfectionism Perfectionism will destroy your results. - If you keep imagining the perfect scenario, you'll become so anxious you won't even start. - Getting something done adequately today is better than a perfect solution in the future. Life is short enough that we'll regret the chances we *didn't* take far more than the opportunities we took and failed. Nobody is perfect. - Aspire for "good enough", but stop there and move on. - Embrace the messy nature of the tasks and results, and dive in. The more we know, the less we tend to do something, so push past your fears by simply taking action. - We're more likely to suffer regret over opportunities we didn't take than over our failed attempts. ### 13. Don't "visualize success" When you imagine the glory of success, you're ignoring ways you can fail. - We can easily [self-hypnotize](mind-awareness-meditation.md) ourselves to believing we're capable of things we're not. - We are also capable of spending so much time fantasizing that we become delusional. Further, a 5-year or 10-year plan is an arbitrary constraint. - Your best results will come from pursuing opportunities you couldn't have planned ahead of time to get. To mentally prepare for something, work to gain wisdom and skill instead. - The only thing you should visualize is the specific techniques you're trying to accomplish. - Scientific results have shown that [imagining](mind-imagination.md) a routine or [sleeping](sleep.md) while focusing on a task can improve our results as much as if we had done it. ### 14. Embrace change Being alive means *constant* change, and doing nothing is essentially wasting your life. Our instinct is to fight change and justify or reinforce familiar things. - Our subconscious minds are incapable of distinguishing between "I haven't" and "I can't". - But, we can embrace change if we believe a circumstance creates opportunities or a chance to learn. Successful people develop an intuition to position themselves to use changes to their greatest advantage. - Since most things rarely follow our plans, expect *every* plan or expectation to change. Learn to be comfortable with discomfort. - If you're uncomfortable, you're likely changing, which means you're probably moving in the right direction. ## E. Change your community ### 15. Distance yourself from people who sabotage your success Some people are utterly toxic for success: - Friends and family who discourage your vision without a suitable alternative - Rivals and "frenemies" - Anyone who criticizes without any clear advice toward alternative decisions - Anyone who condemns a legitimately good life decision ### 16. Seek out successful people You will become the sum of the five people you associate with the most. - If you want motivated people, you'll have to find them, not motivate them. Always search for mentors, associates, and anyone else who can teach, inspire, or grow you. - If you can't find a mentor, make a piecemeal mentor by combining the best components you want to model. - When you can't find a good mentor *model*, simply use the opposite of everything you hate about those around you. Examine the people you want to associate with: - Who has the most [power](power.md) over others and the group dynamics? - Who has lunch with whom? - Who is or isn't invited to important meetings? - Who seems to expect coming changes, and who seems to know last? - What changes are coming, and how must each person change to adapt? ### 17. You will probably break rules at some point [Rules](people-rules.md) eliminate extremes, both good *and* bad. - People usually create rules to protect from bad things, which will often prohibit good things. - Even when you're determined to always do what's right, *other* rule-breakers will make it necessary to break the rules in the spirit of what's right. Succeeding at anything requires following *many* various rules in that domain, but most of those rules have exceptions. - Even the laws of physics have odd conditions where universal concepts don't apply. No matter what, always try to honor the *spirit* of the rules (which is typically good) even if you must break the *letter* of the rules. When you must break rules, be careful. - Depending on the outcome, the rules you break can become a defining moment of glory or failure. ### 18. Your success means you'll attract other achievers and overcomers They will discourage bad decisions, create possible plans, and support you [when you get discouraged](success-5_persevering.md). - Healthy people never criticize failures toward good things. Seek criticism, not praise. - Accept praise for your *effort*, but not your natural skill. - Welcome constructive criticism, since it shows problems *and* gives answers to them. - Try to view feedback on the merit of its idea alone and not on who gives it. ## F. Learn to persevere ### 19. Ignore hypothetical situations Time is the ultimate equalizer: everyone gets the same 24 every day until the last. A full life is approximately 78 years: - 28.3 years of sleeping (assuming 8 hours per night) - 10.5 years working a job (assuming full-time) - 9 years of consuming entertainment - 6 years doing chores - 4 years of eating and drinking - 3.5 years of learning in a school setting - 2.5 years grooming - 2.5 years shopping - 1.5 years of [raising children](parenting-children.md) - 1.3 years commuting - 9 years left over as "free time" We fulfill most of our non-survival purposes through that extra leisure time. We're all slowly [dying](hardship-death.md), and we only have [some control](body-health.md) over it beyond [managing risks](safety-riskmgmt.md). For this reason, being young is more of a strength than a risk because you have time to fail and learn from those mistakes. ### 20. Aim small to see results fast If your goals are small enough, you can get results relatively quickly. - The faster you get results, the faster you can readjust your goals. You can become adequate at just about anything within 20 hours: 1. Dissect the skill into tiny pieces. 2. Learn enough to self-correct and self-edit as you practice. - Notice your mistakes and change as you see them. - Surround yourself with people who can teach you. 3. Remove any barriers to practice. - Don't obsess about details while you're still learning. - Find ways to force yourself to practice. Twenty intentional, devoted hours will get you past the frustration barrier. - The frustration barrier is where you stop feeling stupid and incompetent at it. - Most people never get past the frustration barrier. - Twenty hours is 30 minutes a day for 40 days. - It might take 10,000 hours of practice to become perfect, but you won't usually need that much expertise. ### 21. You must keep trying Most successful people learn to find pleasure in setbacks, obstructions, and the [fear](mind-feelings-fear.md) of the [unknown](unknown.md). - Success is often a numbers game of repeatedly trying until you break through. - Even if you fail, the fact that you're taking on challenges is growing you. Staying optimistic requires pursuing a vision somewhat untouched by reality. - Even when you're delusional, you're still trying to work toward *something* that'll improve your situation. Even when we don't begin with much self-discipline, we can [learn to persevere](success-5_persevering.md). ### 22. Your rewards won't be that fulfilling as you expected Don't expect overwhelming pleasure from succeeding. - *Expecting* an outcome tends to give us more excitement and enjoyment than *receiving* it (journey > destination). - Many successful people never learn to appreciate their victories. In fact, most successful people fail to carry on to more successes because [they become *too* satisfied with their lives](success-6_humility.md). Don't expect commendation for what you did. - Success typically requires doing many non-public things. - You'll succeed long before anyone else sees the results. - We want importance, but success often doesn't guarantee it. - Without a positive attitude, we usually become bitter *long* before we succeed. ### 23. Successful guarantees more success, but only if you keep showing up Mentors and connections only magnify [habits](habits.md) you should have already been doing. Even the most qualified people are mostly making things up and guessing as they go through life. No matter how well-connected you are, there will still be many solo times during the journey. --- After you've taken the time to find the correct attitude, you can *finally* [set realistic goals](success-3_goals.md)!