Hard Truths You Should Know Before Becoming Successful: Part 4

Welcome to week four of my mini series from Benjamin Hardy, the Bestselling author of Willpower Doesn’t Work. The series highlights important concepts for success in both your business and personal life. For your convenience find Week #1, Week #2, and Week #3 here.

Today we look at five new hard truths about the journey to success. Enjoy!

Your comments are greatly appreciated!

1. Don’t Seek Praise. Seek Criticism.

As a culture, we’ve become so fragile that we must combine honest feedback with 20 compliments. And when we get feedback, we do our best to disprove it. Psychologists call this confirmation bias — the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information that confirms our own beliefs while giving excessively less consideration to alternative possibilities.

It’s easy to get praise when you ask family and friends who will tell you exactly what you want to hear. Instead of seeking praise, your work will improve if you seek criticism.

How could this be better?

You will know your work has merit when someone cares enough to give an unsolicited critique. If something is noteworthy, there will be haters. As Robin Sharma, author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, has said, “haters confirm greatness.” When you really start showing up, the haters will be intimidated by you. Rather than being a reflection of what they could do, you become a reflection of what they are not doing.

2. The World Gives To The Givers And Takes From The Takers

From a scarcity perspective, helping other people hurts you because you no longer have the advantage. This perspective sees the world as a giant pie. Every piece of the pie you have is pie I don’t have. So in order for you to win, I must lose.

From an abundance perspective, there is not only one pie, but an infinite number of pies. If you want more, you make more. Thus, helping others actually helps you because it makes the system as a whole better. It also builds relationships and trust and confidence.

I have a friend, Nate, who is doing some really innovative stuff at the real estate investment company he works for. He’s using strategies that no one else is using. And he’s killing it. He told me he considered keeping his strategies a secret. Because if other people knew about them, they’d use them and that’d mean fewer leads for him.

But then he did the opposite. He told everyone in his company about what he was doing. He has even been giving tons of his leads away! This has never been seen before in his company.

But Nate knows that once this strategy no longer works, he can come up with another one. And that’s what leadership and innovation are all about. And people have come to trust him. Actually, they’ve come to rely on him for developing the best strategies.

Nate makes pies — for himself and several other people. And yes, he is also the top-selling and highest-earning in his company. It’s because he gives the most and doesn’t horde his ideas, resources, or information.

3. Create Something You Wish Already Existed

Many entrepreneurs design products to “scratch their own itch.” Actually, that’s how loads of problems are solved. You experience difficulty and create a solution.

Musicians and artists approach their work the same way. They create music they’d want to listen to, draw painting they’d want to see, and write books they wish were written. That’s how I personally approach my work. I write articles I myself would want to read.

Your work should first and foremost resonate with yourself. If you don’t enjoy the product of your work, how can you expect other people to?

4. Focus Is Today’s I.Q.

We live in the most distracted era of human history. The internet is a double-edged sword. Like money, the internet is neutral — and it can be used for good or bad based on who uses it.

Sadly, most of us are simply not responsible enough for the internet. We waste hours every day staring idly at a screen. Millennials are particularly prone to distractions on the internet, but nowadays, everyone is susceptible.

Our attention spans have shrunk to almost nothing. Our willpower has atrophied. We’ve developed some really bad habits that often require extreme interventions to reverse.

There is a growing body of scientific evidence suggesting the internet — with its constant distractions and interruptions — is turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers. One of the biggest challenges to constant distraction is that it leads to “shallow” rather than “deep” thinking, and shallow thinking leads to shallow living. The Roman philosopher Seneca may have put it best 2,000 years ago: “To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”

In his book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport differentiates “deep work,” from “shallow work.” Deep work is using your skills to create something of value. It takes thought, energy, time and concentration. Shallow work is all the little administrative and logistical stuff: email, meetings, calls, expense reports, etc. Most people aren’t moving toward their goals because they prioritize shallow work.

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.” — Cal Newport

5. If Your Goals Are Logical, Don’t Expect Luck (or the like)

“You need to aim beyond what you are capable of. You need to develop a complete disregard for where your abilities end. If you think you’re unable to work for the best company in its sphere, make that your aim. If you think you’re unable to be on the cover of Time magazine, make it your business to be there.Make your vision of where you want to be a reality. Nothing is impossible.” — Paul Arden

Most people’s goals are completely logical. They don’t require much imagination. They certainly don’t require faith, luck, magic, or miracles.

Personally, I believe it’s sad how skeptical and secular many people are becoming. I find great pleasure in having faith in the spiritual. It provides context for life and meaning for personal growth. Having faith allows me to pursue that which others would call absurd, like walking on water and transcending death. Truly, with God all things are possible. There is absolutely nothing to fear.

That is all for this week. I would love to hear from you in my comments section and have you weigh in on some of the writing that I have been sharing. What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts, or send me a note at skrawitz@savills.ca. Thank you to all of you who are sharing these articles on your own profiles, keep it up!

-All the best,

Stan Krawitz