Men and women succeed because they take pains to succeed.

Industry and patience are almost genius; and successful people are often more distinguished for resolution and perseverance than for unusual gifts. They make determination and unity of purpose supply the place of ability. Success is the reward of those who spurn delights and live laborious days. We learn to do things bydoing them. One of the great secrets of success is pegging away. No disappointment must discourage, and a run back must often be allowed, in order to take a longer leap forward. No opposition must be taken to heart. Our enemies often help us more than our friends. Besides, a head-wind is better than no wind. Who ever got anywhere in a dead calm? A fatal mistake is to imagine that success is some stroke of luck. This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away. We have been told, for centuries, to watch for opportunities, and to strike while the iron is hot. Very good; but I think better of Oliver Cromwells amendment make the iron hot by striking it. Everything good needs time. Dont do work in a hurry. Go into details; it pays in every way. Time means power for your work. Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly. Be orderly. Slatternly work is never good work. It is either affectation, or there is some radical defect in the intellect. I would distrust even the spiritual life of one whose methods and work were dirty, untidy, and without clearness and order. Never be above your profession. I have had many letters from people who wanted all the emoluments and honors of literature, and who yet said, Literature is the accident of my life; I am a lawyer, or a doctor, or a lady, or a gentleman. Literature is no accident. She is a mistress who demands the whole heart, the whole intellect, and the whole time of a devotee. Dont fail through defects of temper and over-sensitiveness at moments of trial. One of the great helps to success is to be cheerful; to go to work with a full sense of life; to be determined to put hindrances out of the way; to prevail over them and to get the mastery. Above all things else, be cheerful; there is no beatitude for the despairing. Apparent success may be reached by sheer impudence, in defiance of offensive demerit. But men who get what they are manifestly unfit for, are made to feel what people think of them. Charlatanry may flourish; but when its bay tree is greenest, it is held far lower than genuine effort. The world is just; it may, it does, patronize quacks; but it never puts them on a level with true men. It is better to have the opportunity of victory, than to be spared the struggle; for success comes but as the result of arduous experience. The foundations of my success were laid before I can well remember; it was after at least forty-five years of conscious labor that I reached the object of my hope. Many a time my head failed me, my hands failed me, my feet failed me, but, thank God, my heart never failed me.

If you think hard about it, youll notice just how many automatic decisions you make each day. But these habits arent always as trivial as what you eat for breakfast. Your health, your productivity, and the growth of your career are all shaped by the things you do each day most by habit, not by choice. Even the choices you do make consciously are heavily influenced by automatic patterns. Researchers have found that our conscious mind is better understood as an explainer of our actions, not the cause of them. Instead of triggering the action itself, our consciousness tries to explain why we took the action after the fact, with varying degrees of success. This means that even the choices we do appear to make intentionally are at least somewhat influenced by unconscious patterns. Given this, what you do every day is best seen as an iceberg, with a small fraction of conscious decision sitting atop a much larger foundation of habits and behaviors. This is one of the most important reasons to keep a diary: it can make you more aware of your own progress, thus becoming a wellspring of joy in your workday. On the days when these professionals saw themselves moving forward on something they cared about even if the progress was a seemingly incremental small win they were more likely to be happy and deeply engaged in their work. And, being happier and more deeply engaged, they were more likely to come up with new ideas and solve problems creatively. This is your life; savor it. Hold on to the threads across days that, when woven together, reveal the rich tapestry of what you are achieving and who you are becoming. The best part is that, seeing the story line appearing, you can actively create what it and you will become. Every creative endeavor, from writing a book to designing a brand to launching a company, follows whats known as an Uncertainty Curve. The beginning of a project is defined by maximum freedom, very little constraint, and high levels of uncertainty. Everything is possible; options, paths, ideas, variations, and directions are all on the table. At the same time, nobody knows exactly what the final output or outcome will be. And, at times, even whether it will be. Which is exactly the way it should be. Those who are doggedly attached to the idea they began with may well execute on that idea. And do it well and fast. But along the way, they often miss so many unanticipated possibilities, options, alternatives, and paths that wouldve taken them away from that linear focus on executing on the vision, and sent them back into a place of creative dissidence and uncertainty, but also very likely yielded something orders of magnitude better. Gilbert and Wilson highlight two phenomena to explain this bias. The first is immune neglect. Just as we have a physical immune system to fight threats to our body, we have a psychological immune system to fight threats to our mental health. We identify silver linings, rationalize our actions, and find meaning in our setbacks. We dont realize how effective this immune system is, however, because it operates largely beneath our conscious awareness. When we think about taking a risk, we rarely consider how good we will be at reframing a disappointing outcome. In short, we underestimate our resilience.

The second reason is focalism. When we contemplate failure from afar, according to Gilbert and Wilson, we tend to overemphasize the focal event (i.e., failure) and overlook all the other episodic details of daily life that help us move on and feel better. The threat of failure is so vivid that it consumes our attention. This happens in part because the areas of the brain we use to perceive the present are the same ones we employ to imagine the future. When we feel afraid of failing at a new business or anxious about the shame of letting investors down and what our peers will think, its hard to also imagine the pleasure we will get from our next venture and the other everyday activities that are a necessary and enjoyable part of life. Of the many regrets people describe, regrets of inaction outnumber those of action by nearly two to one. We are left with a paradox of inaction. On one hand we instinctively tend to stick with the default, or go with the herd. Researchers call it the status quo bias. We feel safe in our comfort zones, where we can avoid the sting of regret. And yet, at the same time, we regret most those actions and risks we did not take. People naturally vary in the amount of self-control they have, so some will find it more difficult than others to break a habit. But everyones self-control is a limited resource; its like muscle strength: the more we use it, the less remains in the tank, until we replenish it with rest. In one study of self-control, participants first had to resist the temptation to eat chocolate (they had a radish instead); then they were given a frustrating task to do. The test was to see how long they would persist. Radish-eaters only persisted on the task for about 8 minutes, while those who had gorged on chocolate kept going for 19 minutes. The mere act of exerting willpower saps the strength for future attempts. These sorts of findings have been repeated again and again using different circumstances. We face these sorts of willpower-depleting events all day long. When someone jostles you in the street and you resist the urge to shout at them, or when you feel exhausted at work but push on with your email: these all take their toll. The worse the day, the more the willpower muscle is exerted, the more we rely on autopilot, which means increased performance of habits. Its crucial to respect the fact that self-control is a limited resource and you are likely to overestimate its strength. Recognizing when your levels of self-control are low means you can make specific plans for those times. One of the universal questions of emotional life has always been, What is love? I believe that this is a misleading question, and one which has caught us in futile knots of confusion in an attempt to identify some definitive essence of true love. The lesson from ancient Greece is that we must instead ask ourselves, How can I cultivate the different varieties of love in my life? That is the ultimate question of love that we face today. But if we wish to nurture these varieties, we must first dispel the potent myth of romantic love which stands in the way.

Cosas de las que podran arrepentirse en la vejez. 1. No viajar cuando tuvo la oportunidad. 2. No aprender otro idioma. 3. Permanecer en una mala relacin. 4. No usar bloqueador solar. 5. El miedo a hacer cosas. 6. Hacer de la pereza una forma de vida. 7. No dejar un trabajo que odia. 8. No esforzarse en el colegio o universidad. 9. Tener miedo de decir te amo. 10. No seguir los consejos de los padres. 11. Darle importancia a lo que otros piensan. 12. Guardar rencores, especialmente con aquellos que ama. 13. No hacer cosas desinteresadas por los dems. 14. Descuidar los dientes. 15. Pasar tiempo con los abuelos. 16. Trabajar en exceso. 17. No saber cocinar al menos un buen plato. 18. No poder terminar lo que empez. 19. No jugar lo suficiente con sus hijos 20. No tomar riesgos. 21. Preocuparse demasiado. 22. No pasar suficiente tiempo con los seres queridos. 23. No ser agradecido con la vida. 24. Estar atrapado en dramas innecesarios. 25. No tomarse el tiempo necesario para obtener contactos.