67 Steps to Getting Anything You Want Out of Life Health, Wealth, Love, & Happiness
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To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.
There is a certain pleasure in knowing that it is not impossible to get what you want out of life.
Advertisers know this. When you browse the internet or walk past a magazine rack you are tempted with headlines that promise:
“3 Steps To Becoming Rich”
Or
“How To Lose 30 pounds in 14 days”
Or
“2 Quick Secrets To Find Your Soulmate and Love This Weekend”
Or even,
“How To Go From Depressed To Happy, Overnight”
Most of those promises are just a hook to get you to buy something. They lure you in but rarely hold up their end of the deal.
These four subjects (health, wealth, love, and happiness) are appealing to us precisely because they are the raw ingredients we need to live the good life.
But in my experience, getting the good life isn’t quite that simple. You must avoid chasing a mirage, the lies of modern day life (that is actually step #32 in the 67 Steps).
There are no “3 quick secrets” or anything of real value that you can get overnight. That’s what marketers want to sell you.
The real question I asked myself many years ago was, “If there aren’t 3 steps to get whatever you want, how many steps really are there? And if you can’t get success overnight, how quickly can you actually make a big change?”
Your success in life hinges upon you finding the answer to these questions.
In some ways the answer has already been laid out by the self-made billionaire Charlie Munger when he said, “To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.“
The 67 Steps are not a get-rich-quick scheme, although I am sure they can make you richer than you’ve ever imagined.
The 67 Steps will not make you lose 30 pounds overnight, although you can use them to get in the best shape of your life.
The 67 Steps will not bring you a soul mate or rekindle your love life in 24 hours, But as Dr. Helen Fisher teaches, we are attracted to people on our level and as the 67 Steps raises your level, the quality of love you attract will rise accordingly.
John F. Kennedy was right, "A rising tide lifts all boats."
Start by asking yourself: do you tap dance out of bed each morning? Are you so excited about life that you can't wait to wake up? Not many people are. But it would be nice. I have been mentored by people who live life like this; great men like Joel Salatin and Allan Nation. It's a beautiful way to live.
It sounds like an impossible feat - to really live the dream. Like I said in my recent TED Talk, everybody wants the good life, but not everybody gets the good life.
The good news is that you don't have to be like everyone else. You can be the exception to the rule.
As Thoreau wrote in Walden Pond: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."
But if you proceed carefully you will not be part of those desperate masses.
You must start by following Pablo Picasso’s rule of life:
"Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time."
Joel Salatin told me the same thing, “If you have to go on a vacation from your job, never come back.”
There is no need to compromise. You can find whatever it is that you want from life.
For you, maybe it’s becoming a millionaire, or getting the perfect body, or falling madly in love, or waking up each morning feeling alive and optimistic.
But you won’t find it if you are looking in the same places as everyone else.
Don't follow the crowd, because most of the world is just the blind leading the blind.
Fortunately, there have been many wise people over the last 8,000 years of civilization. And they point the way. They have left clues.
But can these clues really be mapped out or is it just the old causation vs. correlation argument? Is there a pattern?
I think there is. Throughout history, a handful of people have found out how to live an extraordinary life. These 67 Steps I am about to share with you now are my attempt to lay out this success ‘blueprint’.
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Everybody wants the good life, but not everybody gets the good life...
From my TED talk last month...
Read what people are saying about the 67 steps and how they changed their lives
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Magali Pineda
You are a modern day Andrew Carnegie. A polymath whose philosophy has changed my life for the better. Now I'm on the road to riches, I have a new exciting job opportunity that I did not have before. It's a blessing to learn from you.
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Alida McDaniel
Since I began working with the system, I found the courage to live my life's purpose. In the last few months I found a perfect business partnership, with full creative expression and the ability to travel the world doing what I love most. It's everything I've ever wanted and more! I'm truly grateful to all of your teachings.
Since I was a young boy, I have been fascinated by greatness: athletes like Michael Jordan, musicians like Bach, scientists like Einstein, billionaires like Bill Gates, entertainers like Oprah, humanitarians like Martin Luther King Jr., spiritual leaders like the Dalai Lama. Their lives hold the inspiration we need.
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We are usually just too busy or too proud to pay attention.
I currently read a book a day precisely because I use books to download their knowledge, wisdom and experience directly into my brain.
Thousands of people already following these 67 steps have seen the transformation: A 15 year old kid is using it to grow his architecture company, a New York businessman increased his revenues to $50 million a year, a woman used it to lose 50 lbs., two people followed the principles and finally found each other, true soul mates, after 30 years and got married, and tens of thousands of people have found new hope and direction in every area of their life.
The verdict is in - following the path of the world’s greatest people in these 67 steps is a sure bet.
This 67 step collection of collective wisdom will be your greatest tool in maneuvering through the challenges life sends your way. Because make no mistake, life will throw incredibly hard tragedies your way: sickness, injury, betrayal by close friends, failures of businesses, natural disasters, or the death of loved ones. You must be cool under pressure. You must live through it. You must thrive.
In order to overcome, you have to have the mental tools freely available to anyone who is a 'seeker.' I have tried to be a seeker of knowledge and truth. At some points in my life I have done this well. At other times, unfortunately, I have gotten off track and had to learn the hard way. Don't learn the hard way.
Like the billionaire Warren Buffett says, "You only learn from mistakes. But they don't have to be your mistakes. It's a hell of a lot easier to learn from the mistakes of others.” He learned this from his mentor, the famous investor and Columbia professor Benjamin Graham who said, “An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes."
The 'no mistake' fast track is what we all want to be on. Because as the Dutch say, "We are too soon old, and too late smart." Steve Jobs was right when he said, "I didn't want to be the richest man in the graveyard." It's not enough to just be successful. You have to be successful while you are young enough to enjoy it.
It doesn’t matter if you are 18 years old or 80 years old, the arrow of time moves forward.
Hall of Fame pro basketball player Charles Barkley was right, "Father time is undefeated." Today is the youngest you will ever be. Do not let the sands of time slip aimlessly through your fingers. Instead, follow Chief Tecumseh when he said, "Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life."
Since this all seems a self evident truth, you must inject a new urgency into your life. Stop feeling entitled to unlimited time.
Imagine if you could have back the years you have wasted on a bad marriage or dating the wrong person; recover the youth you lost to being overweight and unhealthy; get back the money you lost on bad investments; take back the lost decades spent in the wrong career; find lasting friendships instead of having squandered time around people who ended up betraying you in the end.
The greatest wish of every human is to have their wasted years back.
But time moves forward. I just finished "Theory of Everything", by the great physicist Stephen Hawking. He says he was wrong. He used to think that at the end of the universe, about ten thousand million years from now, time would reverse, the universe would contract and the movie, “Benjamin Button,” would come true. You would be old before you were young. You would age in reverse.
Now he says he was mistaken. Hawking says there are three forms of time: thermodynamic, cosmological, and psychological. And he says, unfortunately for you and me, all three are moving forward. The arrow of time never turns backwards.
On Essay 6, Hawking states, "Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases. You can't have a safer bet than that." (Haha, that is a physicist’s attempt at humor).
You and I are left with no way to undo our mistakes.
So you must cut your future big mistakes to the absolute minimum because mistakes bring regret. Your happiness is lost from too much accumulated regret. Some people try to avoid the pain of regret by becoming delusional and saying, "I don't regret anything." Well, the person with no regrets is a moron. Regrets are functional tools of your brain designed to keep you from putting your hand back on the stove and getting burned again.
Regret is like a nerve in the brain. When I was 6 years old I bumped my leg on a chair. I asked my scientist grandfather, "Why did that hurt?" He said because of nerves. I asked him, “Why don't we invent a way to turn off our nerves so we won't have to feel pain anymore?” He replied, "No Tai, that's what happens with leprosy. When you lose your nerves you will eventually lose your life because you will keep bumping into things and getting infections."
It’s the same with the ‘regret’ nerve in your brain. You must embrace the regret, but simultaneously commit to never squandering the years of your life again.
These 67 Steps will be your guide to avoiding the pain of a wasted life.
In my TED Talk I tell the story of how I first realized this dilemma of time when I was 16 years old. I remember thinking, "Life has too many hard decisions -- what career to choose, what religion to believe, who to marry, where to live, what politics to follow... What if I make a mistake? Wouldn't it be easier if I could just find one person who could give me all the answers?"
So I wrote a letter to my grandfather Charles, the smartest man I knew at the time, and asked him if he would be that person. He wrote me back four days later, "Tai, sorry the world is too complicated. You will never find the answers all from one person. Over your life, if you pay attention, you would find a handful of people who can point the way."
I was disappointed. But a week later a big package came. It was from grandpa - a huge volume of 11 books by Will and Ariel Durant called "The Story Of Civilization." The books total 9,995 pages and took a lifetime of work. A true masterpiece. They tell the story of the past with a bit of philosophy and a lot of wisdom. Durant believed that, "Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom."
The good life we all want is found at the intersection of science, knowledge, philosophy, and wisdom. The easiest place for you to find the "good life" is in this combination.
I didn’t fathom it at the time but my grandfather was trying to send me a subtle message on how I could get what I wanted out of life. I was just too young and foolish to fully embrace the message at the time.
Maybe you have been young and foolish. Maybe you have been fortunate in life or maybe you haven’t.
I have had some luck and a lot of hardship. But one thing I learned early on is that you and I have been robbed by the conventional education system. Our schoolteachers didn't teach us the principles we really needed. Thousands of years ago the Greeks taught their children how to think. They had specific classes on how to sculpt and train the mind. For some reason that simple, genius educational idea has died out.
And all we are left with is a system that teaches kids to memorize facts and dates (that will be quickly forgotten after class) and does not put first things first. Once you graduate and move on to college you were probably not matched up with a career that would really bring you fulfillment. You were simply trained to be another cog in the machine. A machine we call the 9-5 consumer driven, rat race.
But while the masses are looking for satisfaction through consumerism, buying more toys, or finding more momentary pleasure, researchers like Dr. Martin Seligman have found:
“There are three very different routes to happiness. First the Pleasant Life, consisting in having as many pleasures as possible and having the skills to amplify the pleasures. This is, of course, the only true kind of happiness on the Hollywood view. Second, the Good Life, which consists in knowing what your signature strengths are, and then re-crafting your work, love, friendship, leisure and parenting to use those strengths to have more flow in life. Third, the Meaningful Life, which consists of using your signature strengths in the service of something that you believe is larger than you are.”
Seligman says these 3 levels of happiness has been proven scientifically:
“Chris Peterson at the University of Michigan and Veronika Huta at McGill University have just tested (the 3 routes to happiness) with converging results that are startling... The target was life satisfaction. They found that both the Good Life and the Meaningful Life were related to life satisfaction. Astonishingly, however, the amount of pleasure in life did not add to life satisfaction.”
We were lied to.
What you want out of life will not come from being another mindless consumer. You will find the good life by remembering what makes us humans great is our minds. The solution to your problems lie in your ability to think more clearly - to enter a higher state of reality. Plato taught that most people are deep in a cave, watching shadows on the wall, thinking they are seeing clearly.
Plato invited you and me to step out of the cave and see life under the new light of a more clear reality. Only then will we understand. Only then will we truly live the authentic human experience.
The good news is that for you, there is a way to get what you want. You must start by taking back control of your mind. Taking control back from a media driven society that is always pushing you to be the consumer. The average American makes $51,017 a year yet is $225,238 in debt. As they say in poker, "If you've been in the game 30 minutes and don’t know who the sucker is, you’re the sucker.”
Guess who the sucker is in that $225,238 debt equation? Here is a hint, it's not the bank.
You never want to be the sucker.
Now, I do not know exactly how you found me. Maybe you are one of the 1.4 million people in 40 countries who read my newsletter and articles as I share about reading a new book each day. Or maybe you saw my TED Talk or one of my shows. Or maybe you just randomly stumbled on to this because you are always looking to learn something new. I am the same way.
Over the years I have been reading the obvious signs (by the way, that is step 22 in the 67 steps).
You have probably heard of that one book by Robert Kiyosaki, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad."
I didn’t have a rich dad. But over the years I have had poor friends and rich friends - friends who rarely succeeded and friends who almost always got what they wanted.
I don’t judge my friendships simply by money or success. But for sure I try to only make the successful friends into actual mentors.
Since I was 16 years old I have traveled to 51 countries, read thousands of books, been mentored by 5 people (three millionaires and two closer to the billion dollar level), learned from 12 of the world's top business partners, started or invested in over a dozen multi-million dollar companies, and collected the quotes, thoughts, and teachings of the greatest, wisest, and most intelligent people on earth that I could talk into helping me.
My collection of principles, thoughts, and sayings has grown over the years. Today it's pretty massive. I have written some down on note-cards. Some are stored on old laptops. Some are in Evernote or Google Docs.
The problem now is that when I try to refer back to all this wisdom, the list has become too long and too hard to sort through. I can't find everything I need, when I need it most.
So not too long ago I set out to narrow the list from several thousand principles down to a more manageable number. I chose the number 67. That number's based on new research by the University College London that found it takes about 66 days to form a new habit.
So I added one more for good luck & came up with 67.......
- -- 67 mental frameworks...
- -- 67 new ways to think about life..
- -- 67 principles for getting everything you want...
- -- 67 steps to to finding the good life: health, wealth, love, & happiness...
21 days to habit change is a myth. Habit formation typically takes longer than that. The best estimate is 66 days.
Now as you will see in a minute the list of 67 steps here is not a full explanation of each step. Today I just wanted to share the short list of catchy phrases I use to memorize each of the 67. The actual full explanation of each is much more in-depth.
I thought about writing out a long explanation of each here but it would literally make this page about 1000 times longer. It would be a full book. You can already see how long this one page is with just a short sentence on each step.
So instead I decided to record a video explanation for each one. Through careful testing with my inner circle and those I mentor over the last 10 years I have found that people absorb these 67 steps much better if I simply record a video explanation for each. That allows me so much more room to expand and make each one relevant for your life.
So I created a 67 day series. Once you get started you will receive one new video explanation at a time. You will have a private login that you can check 24 hours a day as each new daily video lesson unlocks...
These 67 steps are going to give you the control of your life back.
They help me each day.
They have been invaluable to each and every person I have shared them with. They will change your life forever. Use these concepts wisely. They are not some trite set of inspirational quotes that you see people posting on their Facebook wall.
Since 2001 I have shared these concepts with over 1.5 million people in 40 countries and the testimonials and feedback has been overwhelming. Lives are changing around the world. So use this for whatever your end game goal is.
Do you want to be a millionaire, a great artist, musician, athlete, painter, actor, model, humanitarian, or parent? Do you want to lose weight, find your soulmate, or solve social injustice?
These 67 Steps are the best way to get what you want. And I don't say that because I wrote it. I didn't really write it. You could say that I compiled it from people much greater than myself.
These 67 Steps come from the teaching of powerful, often famous people like Bill Gates, Charlie Munger, Martin Seligman, Peter Drucker, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, and Gandhi. Some from spiritual thinkers like a Shaolin Temple Monk or Mother Theresa. Others are from my personal mentors like Joel Salatin and Allan Nation who helped me so much. Some are from my own personal experiences as an entrepreneur and investor and from in-person meetings with some of the greatest minds around the globe. They also are from the reading one book a day pace I have been following for so long.
You must be humble enough to be teachable. Step 3 in the 67 Steps is about Sam Walton level humility. That is almost the most important step in this outline (although I had a very hard time actually figuring out how to prioritize the 67 Steps, they all seem important)...
As I mentioned earlier, I strategically chose 67 days because it's the scientifically proven optimum timeframe you will need to begin to rewire your brain to jump up to a new level of success.
I don't care how successful you are today, there is always a new level you can reach. The other day my highly successful buddy was down visiting me in Hollywood. He started a company a few years ago and is now making about $500k to $1 million a DAY! I told him, "Let's go see a movie." He replied, "Tai, recreation is overrated. Let's keep working." He was right. He reset the wiring of my brain... He is on his path towards an end goal that he is passionate about. Of course trifles don’t motivate him much anymore.
This must be the mindset you adopt if you want to rise above a mundane, meaningless life.
Remember when I say 'steps', what I mean is that these are frameworks and tools you can run every big life decision you have through. Charlie Munger says before he makes any important decision he has a checklist he double checks through step by step, logically and methodically. He says that process is why he is a billionaire. Charlie is the one who inspired this list. Some of his sayings are in the list.
As you apply these to your life you want to look for the violations. Are you violating any of these 67 Steps? If so, think twice. I have learned the hard way that if smart people tell me not to do something and I go where 'angels fear to tread' it's always a nightmare in the end.
Too many mistakes add up to missed opportunities. You do not have infinite chances in life. Like Charlie Munger's grandfather taught him when he was a boy: "Charlie, real opportunities that come to you are few, its a very fortunate life that is just bathed in opportunity all the way, most people just get a few times where they can make a huge difference by seizing a huge activity. So when you find one my dear grandson, and you can clearly recognize it, seize it boldly and don't do it small!"
I want you to be able to say about your life, "I squeezed every opportunity out of life. I lived big. I sucked the marrow out of every opportunity…" Most people can't say that. But if you take your own life experience and add these 67 Steps on top you will find whatever it is that you are looking for.
And I am sure you can stack other specific dreams and goals of yours on top of my short list of common dreams. Don't let the fear in your Amygdala hold you back. Go straight to the top (that is rule #35)...
Alexander the Great said, "There is nothing impossible to him who will try." This is coming from a man who conquered the known world by the time he was 30 years old (He is part of step #63). But remember Alexander had the power of a mentor. He was personally trained by Aristotle as a teenager, the greatest thinker of his day (And Aristotle was mentored by Plato, and Plato by Socrates, and on and on the pattern of learning from great mentors goes).
So without further ado, here is the list of the 67 steps in priority order:
1. The Billionaire’s Brain & Jennifer Lopez’s Voice: The worth-a-damn-deserve-it awareness factor...
2. Blue-Footed Booby Birds, ESS, & Being Broke: The changeability to survive...
3. Sam Walton’s Night In A Brazilian Jail And Stealing From McDonald’s: The humility it takes to overcome...
4. Picasso’s Rising Tide & The Law of 33%: Using mentors to shave years off the learning curve.
5. My Poor Friends & Cameron Diaz’s Parrot: The difference between how rich and poor people assimilate knowledge.
6. Sculpture vs. The Lottery & The Anthropic Media Bias: Eliminating biases on successes' exponential time frame.
7. Martin Seligman’s Salary Slave & Learned Helplessness: Realizing in the modern world you are out of the cage & out in the jungle.
8. The Integrated Good Life & The Four Pillars Of Eudaimonia: Moving past a linear reductionist understanding of your life's work.
9. Warren Buffett’s Book-A-Day Diet & Making War With A Multitude Of Counselors: Why billionaires read a lot.
10. Stoic vs. Epicurean: Arnold’s 1000 Reps, Apache Cold Showers & the Spartan Whipping Post: Why you have to develop thick skin.
11. The Whispers Of 10,000 Generations, Dunbar’s 150, & Evolutionary Mismatch: Your neural programming doesn’t have the genetic ‘memory’ to understand the complexity of the modern world.
12. Mike’s Stack Of Resumes, My 96 Year-old Grandma, & Your Eulerian Destiny: How to create your one sentence destiny plan.
13. The Amish Vacation, Tap Dancing To Work, & Avoiding What You Love: How to set up your life so that your work is your vacation.
14. The Shaolin Monk & Touching An Electric Fence: Why everything is your fault.
15. Descartes, The Investor, & Solving Problems With A Calculator: When you seek for truth, the only thing that remains.
16. Rousseau, The Renaissance Man, & Iron Sharpening Iron: Why you must embrace controversy.
17. Elon Musk‘s 14-Hour Workday vs. The 4-Hour Workweek: The myths of our time.
18. Man-On-The-Moon Contrast & Keeping Easy Things Easy: The mental framework to simplify anything.
19. Amazon.com & The $32,000 Brain Budget: The education budget you must institute.
20. Richard Branson’s Hurricane & The Imaginary World Of Kanye West: How to remake the world in your own image.
21. Mastering The Four P.A.S.E. Energies & Casanovas Chameleon: A new perspective on social skills.
22. The Seven-fold Path To The Obvious Signs: The methodology that took us out of the dark ages.
23. Landing Your Plane On The Great Wall: How to bypass the obstacles of life.
24. Gandhi’s Funeral, Stephen Covey’s Wars, & Flurries Of Activity: The true test of a life well-lived.
25. Joel Salatin On Nature Laughing Last, The Respect Of Seasons, and The Terrible Twos: The natural cycles that dictate your life.
26. Belts, Suspenders, Failing To Fail, The Six Sigma Heartbeat, & How To Not Crash Your F-22: Creating perfect systems.
27. The Frontman & The Two Ways To Pick Your Trench Mate: Insider tricks on assembling your support team.
28. Lao-Tzu’s and John Wooden's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very, Bad Day: The preparation that precedes good luck.
29. Stephen Hawking, Entropy, & Remembering The Future: The injection of energy to overcome time.
30. Peter Drucker, The Cluttered Attic And The Invention Of Rules: Removing disabling ignorance.
31. Delegating To Shalini & Sam Walton’s Over-The-Shoulder Style: How to manage people.
32. Slot Machine Probability & Chasing The Mirage: How to step out of the cave into a more accurate reality.
33. Teaching Pigs To Fly & Pushing On Strings: When to persevere and when to quit.
34. Bill Gates & The Ten Dark Years: Overcoming the media cognitive bias.
35. Ignoring The Ninety-Nine, & The One-Tenth Rule: The counter intuitive approach you must adopt.
36. The Sucker In The Room & The Lollapalooza Effect: Using cognitive biases but not having them used against you.
37. Why Restaurants Fail: Controlling all 3 of the classic factors of production.
38. Throwing Idiots To The Crocodiles: Construct a barrier only against this type of person.
39. Alienating The 82% With Your Messy Message: The proper use of the niche.
40. Practical Pessimism, Paris Hilton's Grandfather, & Contemplating The Downside: The fine balance of proper perspective.
41. Sam Chupp & Making, Watching, Wondering: Moving beyond the 3 types into just the 2 types.
42. Donuts, A $250,000 Check, And General Eisenhower: The tendency to misweight.
43. 20% Weird Factor, The Cabbage Mind, & The Treachery Of Scoundrels: The leeway you should allow.
44. Six Pack Of The Mind: Focusing on first things first.
45. Bone Thugs-n-Harmony & The Tyranny of The 1st & 15th: Undoing the chains of the rat-race.
46. Allan Nation‘s 1,000 Sheep And Not Doing It Small: The framework to scalability and expansion.
47. The 5% Tweak, Nothing Janky, & When Good Enough is Perfect: The paradox of perfectionism.
48. Michael Jordan Swagger & American Idol Syndrome: The truth about humility, pride and delusion.
49. Why Jay-Z & Warren Buffett Like Baseball: The ratcheting pattern of success.
50. Mastering The Wrong Things & Blue Eyeshadow Numb-nuts: The how and why of self-reliance.
51. Chatting With Wittgenstein’s Lion: The power and effectiveness of language.
52. Pareto Efficiencies & The Business Triple Entente: Achieving the ultimate win-win with a level 3 approach to life.
53. The Second Rule Is Never Forget The First Rule: The profit motive.
54. Chess-Like Assiduity & Armchair Meditation: The real use for deep thinking.
55. The 7 Habits Of Highly Unsuccessful People & The Tardy Tree Sloth: How to invert your way into getting what you want.
56. Floating Across The Pacific On A Raft And Why Sitting Bull Liked To Be Shot At: The most important of all personality traits.
57. Unstumpability & Sherlock Holmes Sleuthing: Uncovering all the knowledge at your fingertips.
58. Death By Faint Praise and Charlie Munger's Grandfather: What you never want to hear someone say about you.
59. The Diligent Celebrity & Meeting The King: How to get local celebrity status.
60. The Dutch Big Gulp: Readjusting the pace of success.
61. The $495,000 Honda Accord: The real value of money.
62. $20 Billion Gift From Strangers & Building Forgiveness Into The Land: Building systems that persist.
63. Alexander the Great's Aggression and The Truth About Your Age: The best way to counter any opposition.
64. Forgetting Who’s In The Room: Avoiding the success faux pas..
65. The Pierian Spring & From Whence Cometh The Pride: The self fulfilling delusion.
66. Elvis Presley & The Persistent Widow: What Jerry Weintraub knew.
67. Annihilating The Amygdala & MPFC Mastery: Moving past the primitive regions of your brain.
You are about to receive all of these plus a few extras that I will explain in a bit.
You and I are alive at a special time in history. Never believe the hype that the world is so bad these days. There has been no better decade to be alive then now.
All the knowledge in the world at your fingertips... The ability to work from anywhere... Advances in health care that will allow you to live God knows how long…
Never before has wealth been able to be accumulated by people like you and I who weren’t born into wealth (look at the Forbes list, almost none of the wealthiest inherited it)... Think Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Richard Branson...
But there is a flipside to all this advantage. You are in a competitive world. There are 7 billion other people competing for the same resources. You will have to rise above through planning and execution.
Luckily like Charlie Munger says, competence is relative. He says when he was in college he realized one kid, Homer, was always going to be better at him in science and engineering. So Munger switched majors so he didn't have to compete against Homer. Now Munger says, “What you really want to do is compete against idiots.” He adds, "Luckily idiots are in large supply"...
He meant that somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But the point is valid. You will need to strive and not fall into the trap of entitlement, thinking the world owes you something. It doesn't. You have to compete. Like it or not. Hard truth, but truth nonetheless.
The great historian Will Durant says in "The Lessons Of History":
“The second biological lesson of history is that life is selection. In the competition for food or mates or power some organisms succeed and some fail... Since Nature has not read very carefully the American Declaration of Independence or the French Revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man, we are all born unfree and unequal... Inequality is not only natural and inborn, it grows with the complexity of civilization...every invention or discovery is made or seized by the exceptional individual, and makes the strong stronger, the weak relatively weaker, than before."
Now this might sound like an elitist understanding of society. But flip it around - invert - yes life is competitive, but YOU have the ability to be one of the great ones, regardless of your natural born skills. Dr. Moalem in his fascinating book “Inheritance” says your genes can adjust and change and express themselves differently. Mother Nature is an elitist. But like the old saying goes, "If you can't beat it, join it." I don't mean literally become an elitist or look down on others. No, max out your capacity through these 67 Steps and then use your newfound abilities to help the world.
But please understand, not everyone who comes across these 67 steps actually has what it takes to benefit from them. Like I say in the beginning of my TED talk, “Everyone wants... But not everyone gets." The world isn't fair like that. It doesn't care about what we want. Like the wise teacher says:
"I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up... Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve."
That's the trick. Not everyone gets because not everyone deserves.
So some of you should close this page. These 67 steps are not yet right for you. It is not the time and place. I know because for many years I simply was not able to fully absorb them myself. I was not in the right frame of mind. As the saying goes, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
If these concepts seem a jumble or too advanced it’s fine. Cut and paste these words into a word document and print them out to read in a year or two.
But if you feel these 67 Steps are for you today then remember that the steps all work together as an integrated whole. Do not leave one out or emphasize one over the other. This is not a linear reductionist understanding of life (this is taught in step #7) so compartmentalizing these will defeat their purpose.