Collin Li

As humans, we have a very reliable mechanism for beating ourselves up over our failure. When we do something wrong, we're often good at finding out about it - and even better at feeling guilty about it. We're pretty good at punishing ourselves, whether it's because we failed to stick with our gym schedule, or because we didn't perform in a potentially life-changing opportunity.

On the flip side, we seldom celebrate when we succeed. Partly, it's because we don't know what we mean by success. It's easy to fail, or to do something wrong. It's also easy to realise it afterwards too. But it's not so easy to know whether you've done something "right". There's no limit to success - but ironically it's because of this that so few will bother to chase it.

Often, we will not reward ourselves after sticking to the gym schedule. We might just assume it's normal, or "supposed to happen". There's no such thing as success in this mindset, only failure.

But if instead, we set clearly defined and reachable targets upon which "success" is achieved, then we can justify celebration. When we celebrate, it means that we know what it means to succeed.

Don't make failure the only achievable condition - define success.

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There is some truth to this commonplace playground retort as well. Although often used in a derisive manner, it takes one to know one also implies a very positive and reaffirming message.

Have you ever envied someone, and wished you had some of the amazing skills that they possess? Perhaps it was the professional and authentic salesman who you felt had sold with persuasiveness but integrity. Maybe it was the determination of a sporting star, or the charisma and charm of a politician, the list goes on. It could even be as simple as the perceptive power of your best friend.

The skills that they have are not far from you. In fact, the very fact that you have identified their critical success factors suggests that you already have them internalised! Identifying strengths and qualities in others reflects something about you. It takes one to know one.

The next time you worry about how much you lack compared to others, simply look within yourself, and you'll find it.

Feel empowered when you notice the success of others. That success is also yours.

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When it comes to (for-profit) business, there is often a tendency to focus solely on the money. Rightly so too, as money is, and should be, the bottom-line.

But oft forgotten is the amount of value that businesses actually create for society, and how the money they create is inextricably linked to the amount of value they create. For if a business wishes to gain money from somebody, the business must provide enough value to the individual so that he or she would actually be willing to give up their money. And if the business manages to do it efficiently with as few resources as possible (hence, minimal costs), they will most likely be reaping the rewards of their profits as well.

As Adam Smith wisely stated:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

So the next time you feel "dirty" about making money, just think about the value you are bringing to others in doing so.

Money is just a way of keeping score of how much society is indebted to you.

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Think about all the times you have made a good decision. What was it? What did you do? What did you change? What did you achieve?

Those are often the first questions that might come to mind. But beyond this, there is an oft underestimated question:

What did I say no to?

Sometimes doing nothing is the right decision. Change for the sake of change is no good. As productive as you might feel after you make a significant change in your life, stop and think whether it actually helped. Sometimes you should just say no - and then reward yourself to the same extent as you do when you make a positive change. You've made a positive "no"!

Good executive decision making is about saying yes and no.

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The meaningless retorts in the playground have never acknowledged such a profound simple truth before.

The words you use and surround yourself are extremely important in shaping your future. When the Asian kid is told that Asians are good at maths, the Asian kid typically becomes good at maths. When the young child who was placed a year ahead due to resource issues (no one else knows this), they receive remarks such as: "wow, you must be smart to skip a grade!" And so the young child becomes smart.

Simply put, your expectations drive your reality. Words stick - good or bad.

Who can talk you into success, and who can talk you out of it? Assimilate and appreciate all compliments and encouragements. On the flip side, insults should immediately be wiped from your system - one should fail to believe these are true.

Cherish the power of words.

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The next time you feel like you're too lazy to do something, ask yourself if you can really afford the energy you require to be lazy.

If you think you haven't got enough energy to do something when you're lazy, think about how much energy you lose from not doing something.

Every time you put off something, you are only saving physical effort at the cost of mental energy. You're leaving an unclosed mental process open in your mind, which will continually sap your energy until it's off your mind. On the other hand, when you finish something, you're freeing up mental energy for more creative and productive thought processes.

Ever wondered why cleaning your room makes you feel so pumped, enthused and energetic? Or how once you get started you just want to do everything in the world? You can be in that state all the time - just get it off your mind. A simple way to do that is to just do it.

Get in the zone. Stop paying those hidden mental fees.

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The next time someone suggests that you should "be realistic", act offended. Be offended too. Act like it's so absurd and rude to be told to be realistic. But don't blame them, it's up to you to correct their poor manners.

Too many people let others tell them that they cannot something. Sadly, it's often their friends or family too - who needs enemies then?

Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't do something. If you have a dream, go get it.

The R word is now a swear word. Make it your mission to tell the world.

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I'm not a fan of the following suggestion:

If you want success, however that is defined for you, then you should take a role model that exhibits the type of success you want, and then you should imitate him or her as closely as possible.

If two people are exactly the same, one of them is obsolete. I don't think anyone can afford to be anyone but themselves. You cannot play the game of life constantly thinking: "what would my role model do next?" Your role model is not thinking about it.

Once you are in the game, you can't afford to stop and think - you have to be in flow. I highly doubt top athletes, great public speakers, or experts in any field are thinking when they are performing their master art. They are using a voice from within - their intuition.

Instead of focusing on what is wrong with you and what is amazing about someone else, you can be far more effective if you simply learn to foster your inner voice. Rather than crowding out your instincts with thoughts of what you "should" be doing, have faith in your own ability to build the skills that you want within your own internal circuits.

It's far more effective than having two impaired circuits.

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It's a natural human trait to avoid blame. It's proven that humans have a self-serving bias - they will offer explanations that credit themselves for good things, but tack the flame on others when the heat's on. Nothing weird, I admit I'll do this all the time. It seems like commonsense to me to avoid the pain of blame!

However, there is also a psychological effect at play here. When you blame others for your own misfortunes, it is your subconscious way of communicating that you do not have the power to improve your life in that area. Otherwise, you should have done something about it, and you only have yourself to blame. By removing your own actions from the outcome, you essentially have no control of the outcome.

Instead, if you try to accept blame today and take responsibility, you can empower yourself to change. When you blame others, you aren't avoiding pain - you're only causing yourself more pain by disabling yourself of the opportunity to improve.

What can you take responsibility for today?

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What motivates most people to do well is their passion for what they do. With passion alone, you'll rarely need financial reward or something else in return. At the very least, it'll make doing it that much easier.

Whether it's working, studying or learning, passion can go a long way. The rewards don't just come as the light at the end of the tunnel, or as a weekly pay cheque either. Passion just continuously gives back as much as you give, and in many cases so much more as well.

What an amazing thing.

But the most important thing to realise about passion or excitement is that it's not something you're born with. It's part of your identity - and you choose your identity. Your passions and what excites you are a choice.

Do you have the right mindset going in to what you do? Do you choose to love it?

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There is an old-fashioned way of living called consistency. But in today's age of constant and never-ending improvement, the only certainty we have is change.

The most obvious example of this is in business. No matter how successful your business model is today, if you keep doing the same thing day in and day out, someone will eventually out-do you. You may have felt confident, but your daily consistency was merely an illusion for certainty. Somebody came from behind and crushed all your dreams.

So what is the point of starting something if it won't even last? What's the use in dreaming when everything will just change?

What obviously happened is that you stopped dreaming. And as soon as you became comfortable with consistency, you let someone else dream harder instead.

Dreaming isn't a choice. It's an arms race, and you have to dream to keep up.

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If you've decided how to learn to be lucky, chances are you'll hit a brick wall somewhere along the track.

There'll be a period of setbacks, lower motivation, and an era of a misplaced vision. You get caught up with the rough-up of daily life. You're thinking about giving up, or worse, lowering your standards.

This is the most exciting part of the ride. If you give in, that's when you lose. But if you don't, you can only win. Success only exists in contrast to complacency. It's there to be taken only by those who are truly committed to it.

Don't be discouraged. To get to the gold, you'll need to dig up a lot of crap first. That's the only way you can be sure no one's bothered to get it yet. The brick walls are there to separate those who want to achieve their dreams from those who don't.

Keep going strong. It will pay off.

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From a young age, we have been repeatedly inundated by a plethora of mixed messages about what we should do, or how we should do things.

Often, we have no problem understanding these messages individually. For example, it makes sense that a good communicator is also a good listener. But it also makes sense that a good communicator speaks clearly, has good posture, or doesn't overthink - the list is endless.

But even if you try to listen to everyone's advice, chances are you that you won't become a better communicator. This applies for everything, whether you are trying to build great study skills or achieve business success.

In order to actually convert your understanding into real results, you need to decide where to improve, and ignore everyone else's advice for the time being. Remember that decide in Latin means "to cut off" - to cut off from every other option.

The power of focus is the difference between a 100W light bulb lighting up a small room, or a concentrated laser beam, strong enough to perform surgery! The same applies to the information overload you've been exposed to over your lifetime. Instead of absorbing more information, just pick one key point and actually apply it for once.

Don't spread yourself too thin. Focus on a single message, and get great results.

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There are days where you've spent the whole day doing stuff, and you come out of it and you wouldn't be able to tell yourself what you just achieved. The most deceptive part of these days is that they feel productive. But they're not.

Recently, I realised I was working five days a week on a project that didn't really need more than two days a week. But sure enough, whenever I gave myself five days to do the work, I'd easily fill up the time.

I was simply keeping myself busy for three of the five days!

Do you make things harder for yourself by chunking out large blocks of time for tasks that could be done in less? Unless you set yourself a goal and an appropriate time limit on getting the task done, you're simply going to fill up the time with inefficiency or procrastination.

Now the hard part is just getting corporations to realise this about their full-time employees.

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Are you one of those people who trivialise the success of so-called instant millionaires - those who receive a windfall due to some "lucky" discovery?

Take J. K. Rowling for example. She was once a single mother living in near-poverty. Then, she wrote some books that became a hit with children, and all of a sudden she's richer than the Queen. Lucky? I don't know if I completely buy that.

I don't know if I buy the idea that "luck" makes you write a book. Luck certainly played a role in the success of the books, but most people would have already given up by this stage. Instead, J. K. Rowling - a single mother living off government benefits at the time - made a commitment to write a story. She dared to dream, even if it was just a little bit. And it was enough to make her write.

On the other hand, most people would have said to themselves by now: "I'm no book writer, I'll just leave it to the experts." Well, you only become one by beginning.

Have the vision to succeed, and the luck will follow.

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Commitment is a bit of a funny concept. Most people talk about commitment in the context of relationships, but what about the commitments we make with ourselves on a day-to-day basis?

To commit is to pledge yourself to a certain purpose or line of conduct. It is a contract or promise with yourself that you will follow through with a certain action. Simple enough right?

The problem is that our subconscious knows that it can trick us from getting out of the commitment you've made to yourself. Pledged to do a morning jog every morning at 6 am? All good! That is, until your brain will convince you to stay in your nice warm bed instead.

When we make commitments with ourselves, they are often only a conscious decision. But to fulfil a commitment, it must be both a conscious and subconscious act. To successfully follow through with your commitments, you must convince your subconscious to commit too. But how?

The simplest way to ensure success is to ask yourself if this commitment is what you really want. If so, why? And why is that? Make sure you highlight the benefits of your commitment loud and clear, because otherwise the subconscious will come up with a big list of costs instead.

For the times when you're not so strong-minded, acknowledge that you are playing a mind-game with yourself. Add in some artificial costs for not following through with your commitment. For example, you could air your commitment to the public for some accountability from friends and family. Or you can make some changes in your physical space that will make it harder to put it off - put your alarm in a place you can't reach without jumping out of bed. That'll reduce the costs of that morning jog because you have to get out of bed anyway!

Learn to make effective commitments with yourself first.

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This post isn't about how to save your money - trust me, I would have jumped on the opportunity to lengthen the alliteration in the title if it were.

Too many people simply spend their salary for their whole lives. They'll say, "I'll earn a wage, set a budget, maybe set aside some savings, and that will tell me how much I'll spend."

One day, they get a pay-rise. "Booyahhh!" they shout. "Now I can finally spend more!"

Now, as financially responsible as that is, people rarely stop to think like this instead: "I have my own values, desires and needs. I decide what I want to buy, and how much I want to spend. I will aim to create my salary to afford it."

Of course, we must also be fiscally responsible in the now, but as we look forward, we should ultimately aim to serve our desire to fulfil our values and desires in the best possible way.

Get out of the I can't afford it! trap, and start asking yourself: how can I make myself afford it?

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Most people are brought up to believe that risk is a Bad Thing.

We're brought up thinking that the only reason we should take a risk is either (i) because we have to (every part of our day involves some risk), or (ii) because the "return is worth the risk." And sure enough those are reasons we take risks in our day to day lives.

But there's more to risk-taking than that. Instead of viewing risk as an absolutely untouchable and irrefutable negative side-effect of life, we can instead seek to learn and benefit from the turbulence that risk creates.

Firstly, risk is not an absolute - it's subjective, based on the beholder. Sure, owning a business might be "risky", for example, but it might be more or less risky depending on who owns it. Each person will manage the risk of that business differently. Some will manage it better, and some will manage it worse. As a result, the owner who does the best job of it will beat every other competitor in that market. The competitors, once beaten and rejected, will quit, but they will move on and eventually find a type of risk they can manage better than anyone else will.

And if they're smart, they'll give that successful business owner a call later down the track. They'll buy some shares in her company, and let her manage the risk that they couldn't. In return, they'll sell her some of their own shares, but from the risk they manage best. They'll take some of her risks and manage it better, and she'll do the same for them.

So instead of worrying about risk, where do you have an advantage over others at managing risk? This is your risk - no one else is better than you at managing this risk.

How can you help others help you, by "swapping" your risks with other people? A business is defined by the risks it chooses to take on - this is what grants it the power to charge a price for its products, services and shares. Without risk, none of this gain could be possible. Risk is an opportunity for you to create value for others.

Embrace your risk.

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