The best way to succeed in life is to learn from the best people on earth and follow their footsteps. Here are 20 life-lessons from successful people around the world.
1. Ask for negative feedback.
“You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it. Seek negative feedback, particularly from friends.” — Elon Musk
2. Be grateful for what you have.
“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” — Oprah Winfrey
3. Be specific while solving problems.
“When there’s an ache, you want to be like aspirin, not vitamins. Aspirin solves a very particular problem someone has, whereas vitamins are a general ‘nice to have’ market.” — Reed Hasting
4. Never stop learning.
“Just because you are CEO, don’t think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I’ve never forgotten that.” — Indra Nooyi
5. Work hard on something uncomfortable.
“What is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!” — Larry Page
6. Invest in others.
“The moment you discover in life that it’s not about yourself, that it is about investing in others, I think you’re entering a steadier state to be a great leader. Because above all, I think the main quality of a leader is to be a human being. There’s no reason you are special because you happen to have this job or these responsibilities.” — Paul Polman
7. Work with smart people.
“I realized in all the cases where I was happy with the decision I made, there were two common threads: Surround myself with the smartest people who challenge you to think about things in new ways, and do something you are not ready to do so you can learn the most.” — Marissa Mayer
8. Learn from other people’s mistakes.
“Instead of learning from other people’s success, learn from their mistakes. Most of the people who fail share common reasons(to fail) whereas success can be attributed to various different kinds of reasons.” — Jack Ma
9. Experiment and fail.
“We would experiment and fail. We must have attempted nearly 34 projects.” — Evan Spiegel
10. Embrace pain.
“Without pain, there would be no suffering. Without suffering, we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.” — Angelina Jolie
11. Focus on customers, not competitors.
“If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.” — Jeff Bezos
12. Care about people.
“As a leader, you need to care deeply, deeply about your people while not worrying or really even caring about what they think about you. Managing by trying to be liked is the path to ruin.” — Dick Costolo
13. Make thinking a daily habit.
“I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.” — Warren Buffett
14. Be curious.
“Be a sponge. Curiosity is life. Assumption is death. Look around.” — Mark Parker
15. It’s not what you do, but why you do it.
“In anything we do, any endeavor, it’s not what you do; it why you do it.” — Howard Schultz
16. Aim to reach large number of people.
“If you value having an impact and reaching a large number of people, you have a benchmark for doing a good job.” — Jonah Peretti
17. Build a highly talented team.
“You gotta build a team that is so talented that they almost make you slightly uncomfortable…” — Brian Chesky
18. Enjoy the journey.
“Let your joy be in your journey — not in some distant goal.” — Tim Cook
19. Move fast.
“Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” — Mark Zuckerberg
20. Address what the world needs.
“Every startup should address a real and demonstrated need in the world. If you build a solution to a problem lots of people have, it’s so easy to sell your product to the world.” — Kevin Systrom
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