4 Choices to Lifelong Success and Happiness

In July of this year, there was an Inc. magazine article called ‘Bill Gates Says the Path to Lifelong Success and Happiness Comes Down to 4 Simple Choices’. I want to write about this because it ties in so well with what I help my client’s with – resilience.

1. In Bill’s initial choice he states; Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world… if you do so, you are insulting yourself. I really appreciated reading this one. This is because it really gets down to who we are and what we can do. Yes, this comparison idea perpetuated on people in businesses or industries is silly or asinine. Let me give you an example; you are in a sales team and at the end of the month the sales leaders are posted on a board and you are not in the top position. You can take this into your heart and feel bad, or you can honestly decide that what you accomplished in your area has been decent or not. I state that because when you compare yourself to others either it can motivate you or defeat you depending on how you look at the situation. That is a decision that you make on your own. It is all about being resilient to the outside pressures. Football coach Tony Dungy stated; “You should never be defined by what you do, by the things you have; you’ve got to define yourself by who you are and who you impact and how you impact people. And that’s the thing I try to get across to my players.”
2. Next of Bill’s list was; It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure. I could not agree more on this one. Too many of us get all excited about our successes and fail to remember that you learn more from failure than you will ever learn from success. It is all about being resilient to what the world teaches us and going deeper into what is most important in your personal development.
3. The subsequent choice Bill Gates suggests is; If you are born poor, it’s not your mistake. But if you die poor, it’s your mistake. Absolutely, it is not where you start it is where you end. Consider the following real-life examples;

• Years before Hallie Berry won an Oscar, she slept in a homeless shelter. This struggling actress wanted desperately to make it in Hollywood. She endlessly sought out cheaper housing options. The key to remember is what she said about the struggles during her early career; they made her stronger in the end.
• Howard Schultz grew up the son of a truck driver who barely made enough money to support the family. Even though he grew up in a poor family, he was athletically gifted and earned a scholarship to the University of Northern Michigan. After graduating, he worked for Xerox; then everything changed when he came upon a small coffee shop called Starbucks. He later joined as an executive, and the rest they say is history.
• The funnyman Jim Carrey, didn’t exactly have a childhood to laugh at. Carrey grew up on the lower end of being middle class, and was pushed into the world of hard labour and poverty when his father lost his factory job. He took odd jobs as a janitor and then a security worker to help his family make ends meet, Carrey eventually dropped out of high school. Jim was even forced to live in a van after the family’s earnings weren’t enough to allow them to keep their house. This may be hard to imagine that such an entertaining individual could have had such tough early years. But he managed to make it through; didn’t he?

4. Finally, Bill stated; Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose. From personal experience and speaking to business owners or managers, I know that many of them think this way. Reflect on what Winston Churchill said; “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” Or ponder what author C.S. Lewis stated; “Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.”

Do you see how being resilient is the key to business and life?

What can you do today to be more resilient?