Going through life and business requires that you take a series of right decisions. These decisions will determine if you end up successful or not. Below I will share with you my top 10 principles for success in business and in life. These have served me well, many of them have been learned the hard way.
Take from them what you will, but I’m sure it will help many of you build your freelancing or agency businesses!
1. Learn to trust your instincts
And your experience over what other people say (that includes statistics, science and studies – that’s also what other people say).
2. Work on both theory and practice
Working just on one of them is likely to prove hurtful in the long run. Too much theory (for example reading), and you lose the ability to think on your own, too much practice, and you don’t spend time to reflect or learn from others as well.
3. Keep your word
When you say something, do it, otherwise don’t say it. That’s true both towards yourself and towards other people. If you say lies to yourself all the time, there’s no wonder you’ve got no self-esteem.
4. Don’t trust science or scientific thinking on non-science matters
Psychology, economics, human relationships, business and so on are not sciences. In sciences, if you do A, you always get B (for example physics). In psychology, sometimes your dad abuses you, and you end up OK, other times you get abused and you end up NOT OK, hence it’s not a science.
5. Reduce your exposure to advertisements, it destroys your brainÂ
Advertisement was created to get people to buy shit they don’t need in order to sell more. Your desires and thoughts are warped by advertising, and if you don’t take control of your media intake, you’ll swing from one side to another, without any control.
6. You need to develop yourself intellectually AND physically
Don’t neglect physical development. A man with an oversized brain but a weak body is an abomination with diseased thoughts. It is not possible for the mind to function at its peak if the body isn’t well taken care of.
7. Practice some form of stress elimination
I practice TM, it cleans stressors on a deep level, and gives you creativity, clarity, and inner strength.
8. Develop energy, vitality, lust for life, what the Greeks called thumos
You don’t need confidence, mindset, and what not. What you need to actualize yourself is thumos – the energy that makes it possible for you to smash through fears, weaknesses, and setbacks. Confidence, self-esteem, mindset are all BULLSHIT. None of the real big hitter warriors of the past did any mindset work. None of them read Napoleon Hill. Their entire work was living a certain way and imitating others greater than them. Watch this video:
9. Read less self-help and more stories
Human beings learn more through imitation than through principles, since principles always lack the context required to be well understood. But don’t read any crap pulp fiction or whatever is popular. Go back to the time-tested classics, which offer timeless lessons into humanity, human behavior, and what dealing with life and other people is like.
10. Focus on people first
People have everything that you want. Focus on building relationships, getting to know others, and working out win-win deals. If you focus on anything other than people, your journey will just be a lot slower. Service, product, technology, systems, automations, all these things may be important, but they’ll never be as important as people
