What constitutes a successful life? Ultimately, the value in your life does not come from earning money. Value arises from the opportunity to grow and learn, recognition for your achievements, and building a happy life outside of work. Achieve this by accomplishing the 6 pillars below.
“Create a strategy for your life”
When companies decide to rely on tangible, quick gains, they often fail to allocate resources for better, long-term investments.
Focusing on the short-term and day-to-day tasks will not yield long-term success and happiness.
e.g., preoccupation with work can lead to an underinvestment in family.
In the long term, this will likely yield estrangement.
“Allocate Your Resources”
Like companies, there is a limited amount of time and resources in your life.
Individuals allocate a lot of their resources to work because their achievements at work are tangible - a good meeting or sale, obtaining a client.
Similar metrics are less clear for families
Children misbehave, spouses argue.
Allocating too much of your time and resources to work will cause you to miss the long-term rewards and felicity of a strong familial bond.
“Create a Culture”
Creating a culture at a company requires significant time and effort by management to ensure buy-in by employees.
The effects of good company culture are immense, yielding greater productivity and better output.
If you want your family to be cohesive and your children to have high self-esteem, you have to build these values from the get-go and over years.
“Avoid the ‘Marginal Costs’ mistakes”
There will be times and extenuating circumstances that you will be tempted to betray the values around which you have structured your life.
Betraying these values even a single time will likely turn into repeated actions.
The more you do something that you know is wrong, the less wrong it feels and the more you do it.
“Remember the Importance of Humility”
An overinflated sense of self worth and a failure to listen to the advice that individuals you perceive to be less smart than you restrict your learning opportunities.
By having respect for everyone including yourself, you avoid the follies of arrogance and pride.
“Choose the Right Yardstick”
Accumulating money should not be your only goal in life.
Everyone has to figure out how to measure success in their own life.
Once this yardstick is identified, try to live by it every day, so that when you die your life is a success by that metric.