Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.

Recommended reading: Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond.

Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.

Recommended reading: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change.

Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.

Recommended reading: Charles F. Kettering: A Biography.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Recommended reading: The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Recommended reading: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.

Recommended reading: Raja Yoga.

 

Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.

Recommended reading: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court.

Take everything that’s bright and beautiful in you and introduce it to the shadow side of yourself. Let your altruism meet your egotism, let your generosity meet your greed, let your joy meet your grief…. But when you are able to say, “I am all of the above, my shadow as well as my light,” the shadow’s power is put in service of the good.

Recommended reading: A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life.

Two things can be true at once – even opposing truths… And you can hold those two truths in two hands, and walk forward.

Recommended reading: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar.

When we look deeply into a sheet of paper, we see that it’s full of everything in the cosmos: the sunshine, the trees, the clouds, the earth, the minerals, everything – except for one thing. It’s empty of one thing only: a separate self. The sheet of paper cannot be by itself alone. That is why the word inter-be can be more helpful than the word be. In fact, to be means to inter-be. The sheet of paper cannot be without the sunshine, cannot be without the forest. The sheet of paper has to inter-be with the sunshine, to inter-be with the forest.

Recommended reading: Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm.