10 Skills That Are Hard To Learn But Will Pay Off Forever

one of the things you would want to

be sure to do is

whether you like it or not get very

comfortable

and may take a while with public

speaking for example i mean that

that’s a an asset that will last you

50 or 60 years and it’s a liability if

you don’t like doing it or uncomfortable

doing it that almost

will last you 50 or 60 years and it’s a

necessary skill

one of the big things that all startups

do is they lie to themselves

over and over and over mine’s faster

mine’s cheaper

mine’s better mine’s this mine’s that

no it’s not and the reason it’s not is

because whoever it is you’re competing

with

it’s not like they’re ignoring you it’s

not like oh my goodness

this guy just started on shopify in the

startup competition he’s doing a million

dollars this year

woe is me i might as well close up the

doors what are they doing i’m gonna copy

what they’re doing

and now you’ve got to stay ahead and so

you know you’ve got to be very careful

as an entrepreneur to be brutally honest

with yourself

and those are some of the things that

you’ll hear from me as a mentor

that you know know what you know know

what you don’t know but you’ve got to

know your business better than anybody

and everybody has a different talent and

the reason we’re all so messed up is

because you’re looking at everybody

else’s talent

and wishing you had some of their talent

all the energy that you spend

thinking about wishing about being

jealous of envious of anybody else

is energy that you’re not only putting

out is going to come back to you

negatively

but you’re taking that away from you

all your energy should be forced on what

do i have to offer

what do i have to give how can i be used

in service because dr king’s message

of not everybody can be famous but

everybody

can be great because greatness is

determined by service

and there is not a job in here that you

can do

that you don’t switch the paradigm to

service

and not make that job more fulfilling i

don’t care what the job is

if you say i’m a singer i’m a dancer i’m

an artist i’m a teacher i’m a nurse

i’m a doctor i’m a janitor i’m a i’m a

clerk

if you say if i look at this from how do

i use this

in service to something bigger than

myself

no longer becomes a job it becomes an

offering

to the world

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you’d agree with me on this but in many

ways one of the key

factors to legendary success

isn’t your natural ability it’s not

whether you have the right product it’s

not whether you’re in the right field

it’s not whether you’ve had a blessed

background

it’s not whether you have the right iq

i want you to really think about and

deconstruct

and play with maybe later tonight in

your journal i want you to deconstruct

this idea

of confidence and it seems like a very

simple word but just think about it in

your own life

when you have confidence or we could

even call it fire

when you have that fire within you that

confidence

that interior bravery

you almost have this power to do

whatever it takes to get

your brave vision done you see

in this world it’s not about you know in

many ways your strategy in your business

or your ability in your life it’s about

this thing called

confidence and we have all had these

times in our lives when we are

full of confidence and what other people

see as a problem we simply do see as an

opportunity

other people see it as a stumbling block

block or a wall and we see it as a

stepping stone

or this solution and so confidence is

something that you really want to wire

in confidence is something you really

want to develop

confidence is a practice confidence is a

muscle

and like any muscle the more you focus

on it and

practice it and train it the stronger

your confidence is going to grow and i

just have to say it again

when you are at a place in your life

when there is an

ongoing steady state stream of

confidence moving through your mindset

moving through your heart set you do the

heroic in your business

and you achieve the remarkable in your

life

nelson mandela is a particularly special

case study

in the leadership world because he is

universally regarded

as a great leader you can take other

personalities and

depending on the nation you go to we

have different opinions about other

personalities but nelson mandela

across the world is universally regarded

as a great leader

he was actually the son of a tribal

chief

and he was asked one day how did you

learn to be a great leader

and he responded that he would go with

his father

to tribal meetings and he remembers two

things

when his father would meet with other

elders one

they would always sit in a circle

and two his father was always

the last to speak you will be told your

whole life that you need to learn to

listen

i would say that you need to learn to be

the last to speak

i see it in boardrooms every day of the

week even people who consider themselves

good leaders who may actually be decent

leaders

will walk into a room and say here’s the

problem here’s what i think but i’m

interested in your opinion let’s go

around the room

it’s too late the skill to hold your

opinions to yourself until everyone has

spoken

does two things one it gives everybody

else the feeling

that they have been heard it gives

everyone else the ability to

feel that they have contributed and two

you get the benefit of hearing what

everybody else has to think before you

render your opinion

the skill is really to keep your

opinions to yourself

if you agree with somebody don’t nod yes

if you disagree with somebody don’t not

know

simply sit there take it all in and the

only thing you’re allowed to do is

ask questions so that you can understand

what they mean

and why they have the opinion that they

have you must understand

from where they are speaking why they

have the opinion they have

not just what they are saying and at the

end

you will get your turn it sounds

easy it’s not practice being the last to

speak

that’s what nelson mandela did

my challenge in our generation

is that gradually through entertainment

through television through media through

every way

possible we are living in a generation

of the dumbing

down of ideas because

we have traded effectiveness

for busyness statistics say

yeah somebody ought to clap on that

we are busier than any other generation

we have seen in the last three to four

hundred years

we are so busy we are we are busier than

a wall

than a one-armed wallpaper hanger we’re

just busy

you’ll get it later don’t worry about it

it’ll hit you in a minute we are just

as busy as we can be and we think

because we’re busy

we’re effective but i want you to

challenge your schedule for a minute

and ask yourself are you are you really

being effective

or is your life cluttered with all kinds

of stuff

that demands you and drains you and

taxes you

and stops you from being your highest

and best self

and are you substituting busyness and

all the chaos that goes along with

busyness

from being effective let me tell you a

bunch of scientists got together they

begin to do some research

and they begin to determine that 80 of

the things

we do are busy things that we do in an

area that is not effective that the

average person only spends

20 percent of their time doing the thing

that they are really

gifted at created at passionate about

excited to do and the rest of it is all

the

dismal dumb stuff that we all have to do

in order to survive

just crazy stuff that we’re doing wonder

what would happen

if we would go from doing 80 of things

that are busy but not effective

and 20 of the things that are really

effective if we would

switch those numbers around and only

give 20

of our time to the things that we have

to do and 80

of our time to the thing that we were

created to do

wonder what would happen to your life

now think about it a minute i

there’s a lot of things you could take

from me and i could make it you could

take my suit

i got another one you could take my car

i could get another one

you could take my house i could get

another house

but when you take my time

you have taken something from me that is

totally

irreplaceable we take all kind of

classes for money management

we we know how to manage our money we

know how to repair our houses

we’re working on our hair and our bodies

and all of this kind of stuff

we do everything except the most

important thing is to value

our time it takes

time to be creative you were

meant to be creative you were created in

the likeness and the image of a creator

and in that likeness and in that image

you have

creativity if you had time

you would be creative but in the absence

of time

and with busyness and clutter and people

following baby

y’all got music playing on your phone

all kinds of stuff and no matter what

kind of song you put on

after a while you hate to hear it

because every time you hear that sound

you know it’s somebody else

wanting something else from you that’s

taking you away

from what you are gifted and creative to

do

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so i have this thing that i’ve been

promoting called no whining wednesdays

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wednesday you cannot whine complain

or criticize and people like well what

is whining

whatever you think it is don’t do it

and every time you do it you have to put

a quarter in a jar

if you whine about anything i can’t i’m

tired

of me why don’t you what happened

every one of them will cost you a

quarter or complaining why don’t you

why do you always how come you i always

they never

cost you a quarter then last week i had

people

send me pictures of their jaws a

quarters

oh my god but what they said to me also

was

this was wonderful because i was never

ever

aware of how much whining and

complaining

and criticizing i do now i’ve got

mothers

doing it with their children so

wednesday is no

whining wednesday we need to practice

that

we need to stop whining

about what isn’t happening what we don’t

have what we can’t do

what somebody didn’t do we got to get it

clean in 2014

no whining no complaining

no criticizing

if you’re living in the past you’re

going to be depressed because

you are rehashing things that happen to

you that are not going to happen again

if you’re living in the future you’re

going to be anxious because you are

anticipating what’s coming or you’re

wishing for things that aren’t happening

yet

being in the present is where the gold

is being in the present moment

is where you will have the greatest

control

where you will feel the most at ease and

where

happiness flourishes there’s a

super tight connection between happiness

and the ability to live in the present

moment

a lot of people believe that happiness

is tied to the things that happen to you

not so at all in fact there is a uh

professor of positive psychology he’s

one of the grandfathers of the

movement he teaches at the university of

pennsylvania his name is

martin segelman and he’s studied

happiness for decades

now one of the things that we’ve talked

about a lot is that 40

of your happiness levels are preset by

genetics

60 you are in complete control of

and one of the things that this

professor has has discovered is that it

doesn’t matter what’s happened to you

in fact some of the people that have had

the worst things

the worst things happened to them like

people that have survived the holocaust

are actually the happiest and most

grateful people in the world

happiness comes down to this right up

here

comes down to your thoughts comes down

to your mindset it comes down to your

attitude and you

are 100 control of what you’re thinking

you may not be in control of how you

feel in the moment but you can always

always always

always be in control of what you think

and that will change how you’re feeling

one of the most powerful things that you

can do in terms of think and this gets

back to strict’s question is how do you

be present

being present is literally nothing more

than the skill

of having your thoughts be in this

moment not in the past

not in the future but right here the way

that you teach yourself how to do that

is that the moment that you catch

yourself

being distracted the moment you catch

yourself starting to worry

the moment you catch yourself drifting

to the future drifting to the past

that’s a moment of tremendous power

because you basically just woke up

you basically just noticed that you’re

not here in this particular moment

so use that wake up call 54321

and ground yourself in this moment the

best way to ground yourself in the

moment is to look for something in this

particular moment that you can savor

now i’m using the word saver on purpose

because it’s the word that psychologists

use to describe

what happens when you find something in

this moment right now

right here right now to focus on and to

appreciate

it could be literally the questions

these are these are printed out

questions from people on social media

and

if i were to stop and look at these and

savor them

what i would feel in this moment is a

tremendous amount of gratitude because

people are taking the time to write

and that makes me feel incredibly

grateful and it also makes me very happy

because it means that

that the folks that are writing are

taking control of their lives and

seeking out the information that they

need

another form of savoring that we can all

relate to is eating

as you’re eating instead of drifting to

the future and thinking about all the

things that you need to do or

hanging out in the past and rehashing

everything that’s happened during the

day

be in this moment in this meal slow down

think about the food that you’re eating

think about the people that you’re

sitting with

and how you feel about them and if you

want to take it up a notch

actually acknowledge them hey this food

tastes amazing thank you for cooking or

i’m so glad to see you and that we get

the time to have this meal together

those small simple acts of savoring are

how you expand

your happiness inside the present moment

so how do you be more present simple

the moment that you catch yourself in

the future in the past worrying whatever

refocus yourself right here right now

and then find something

right here right now that you can savor

and when you do that

you’re not only going to be present

you’re going to feel more grateful and

you’re going to feel a little boosted

out

well first of all i prioritize sleep

and that means making that means saying

no to things you want to do it’s not

easy

no it’s hard i think the hardest thing

yeah last night um you know

cheryl sandberg interviewed me at the

san francisco symphony hall

and then i had to sign books and i would

have loved to

go and have dinner with her but i went

to bed

and you know because if i hadn’t got if

i had gone out to dinner

and hadn’t got my at least seven hours

sleep that i need and had to get up

early to do tv

i would not be enjoying being here with

you now and i’m really enjoying it and

i’m 100 president i’m not tired

and i hate being tired more than i hate

anything

i’ve thought a lot about the power of

empathy

in my work it’s the current that

connects me

and my actual pulse to a fictional

character

in a made-up story it allows me to feel

pretend feelings and sorrows and

imagined

pain and my

nervous system is sympathetically wired

and it conducts that current to you

sitting in a movie theater

and to the woman sitting next to you and

to her friend

so that we all feel that it’s happening

to us

at the same time it’s a very mysterious

and valuable resource

of the human species

and women i think access it most

effortlessly

we cry at sad movies we don’t feel we

lose face or

stature or position doing it

we see a news story that enrages us and

we

write letters through tears our hearts

pounding i’ve often

i used to wonder why human beings

developed these inconvenient and

embarrassing

responses this sniffling choking

wet obstruction you know the thing that

physicians and soldiers and

stock traders and journalists and

fashion models and

politicians and news commentators and

venture capitalists all must

suppress in order to work most

efficiently

i thought what possible value

function could it serve in the darwinian

scheme of you know survival of the

fittest and the strongest and the most

heavily armed

no seriously i thought why and how did

we evolve

with this weak and useless

passion intact within the deep hearts

core

and the answer as i’ve formulated it to

myself

is that empathy is the engine

that powers all the best in us

it is what civilizes us

it is what connects us

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you