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