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Everyone makes mistakes
It’s how you respond to the mistake you just made that defines you. Will you let your emotions get the best of you? Will you let yourself get paralyzed? Will you keep digging yourself into a deeper hole? Will you react with defensiveness when somebody gives you painful feedback? Or will you regulate your emotions?…
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Guarding against incentives
Credit card companies make spending money fun by giving you perks. For example, with every dollar you spend, you earn a point that you can redeem for a prize—such as cash, hotels, or airfare. Sometimes, these credit cards offer prizes for you to sign up—such as a free iPad, or enough points for you to…
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A genuine reaction
When you do good work, you need to believe in the work. Put it out there, find a place to publish and promote it (definitely more than once!), and let the people respond. You don’t need to ask them for a five star review, or for applause, or anything like that. If the work is…
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100% organic
Plants don’t necessarily need gardeners to grow; for many millennia, they have grown on their own. Even if a person wanted to, they don’t control how or when a plant grows—they can only influence the odds of survival by giving it good care. Organic growth just happens. You can do a lot of things to…
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What are you running away from?
One of the first things I did when I started a business was outsource bookkeeping and accounting. While it was a good move, I also think I handed off the reins far too much and for too long. It wasn’t difficult for me to find other priorities to care about—sales, marketing, operations, HR—but at the…
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The magic of the first trip
My first two trips out of North America were to Portugal and China. I hadn’t visited Europe before, and I only visited Hong Kong once, nearly two decades before. Both trips were the result of flight deals. My friends and I traveled together—a group of four, and then a separate group of seven. We shared…
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Overthinking and stopping
I recently came across a phrase that resonated with me, “I’ve realized that the only way I’ll lose is if I stop.” You stop because you talk yourself out of doing things you want to do, you put too much pressure on yourself, you avoid problems, you panic, or you try to control things that…