Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life

This life isn't a dress rehearsal, it's not a practice or a training session, it's the real thing. It's the only one you have.

The fact that I had such vivid impressions and expectations at all is the reason I got there in the first place.

First, create little goals for yourself. Don’t worry about the big, broad stuff for now. Focus on making improvements and banking achievements one day at a time.

Life isn't just the high points or the big moments... it's also those stretches of time in between. Life happens as much in the transitions as it does in the poses.

But more importantly, I have a rule: no complaining about a situation unless you’re prepared to do something to make it better. If you see a problem and you don’t come to the table with a potential solution, I don’t want to hear your whining about how bad it is. It couldn’t be that bad if it hasn’t motivated you to try to fix it.

The author of Lord of the Flies was rejected by publishers 21 times. J. K. Rowling’s original Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times.

You have 24 hours. Use them.

The only difference between them and us, between me and you, between any two people, is the clarity of the picture we have for our future, the strength of our plan to get there, and whether or not we have accepted that the choice to make that vision a reality is ours and ours alone.

You need to be able to see what you want to achieve before you do it, not as you do it. That’s the difference.

First of all, rest is for babies and relaxation is for retired people.

If you can choose joy over jealousy, happiness over hate, love over resentment, positivity over negativity, then you have the tools to make the best of any situation, even one that feels like failure.

The beauty of pain, not only is it temporary...is it tells you when you begin to give enough of yourself in pursuit of your dreams. If the work hasn't hurt or cost you anything, or at least made you uncomfortable, then I'm sorry to be the one to tell you but you're not working hard enough, or sacrificing all that you could to be all you can be.

Going for a walk, going to the gym, reading, riding your bike, taking a Jacuzzi, I don’t care what you do. If you are stuck, if you are struggling to figure out a clear vision for the life you want, then all I care about is that you make little goals for yourself to start building momentum and that you create time and space every day to think, to daydream, to look around, to be present in the world, to let inspiration and ideas in. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, at least give it a chance to find you.

In German, we have a saying: Wenn schon, denn schon. Roughly translated, it means “If you’re going to do something, DO IT. Go all out.

...what every person who gets shit done has in common is that they either find the time, make the time, or turn the time they do have into what it needs to be for them to accomplish the task in front of them.

The famous Austrian psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl believed that, while we can’t control many things that happen in our lives, we always have the power to control how we feel and what we do about them.

It's just not an excuse to give less of yourself. Regardless of the size of your dream, if you don't push yourself, if you don't give it your all, if you don't cut the legs off your sweatpants when the situation calls for it, then you're only letting yourself down.

Learn from your mistakes and say "I'll be back

But that is not the purpose of good advice. It’s not to tell you what to build, it’s to show you how to build and why it matters.

No man is more unhappy,” the Stoic philosopher Seneca said, “than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.

We can’t change those stories, but we can choose where we go from there.

That is what a clear vision gives you: a way to decipher whether a decision is good or bad for you, based on whether it gets you closer or further away from where you want your life to go. Does the picture you have in your mind of your ideal future get blurrier or sharper because of this thing you’re about to do? The happiest and most successful people in the world do everything in their power to avoid bad decisions that confuse matters and drag them away from their goals. Instead, they focus on making choices that bring clarity to their vision and bring them closer to achieving it. It doesn’t matter if they’re considering a small thing or a huge thing, the decision-making process is always the same. The only difference between them and us, between me and you, between any two people, is the clarity of the picture we have for our future, the strength of our plan to get there, and whether or not we have accepted that the choice to make that vision a reality is ours and ours alone.

I’m sure your story is complicated too. I bet growing up was more difficult than the people around you think it was. We can’t change those stories, but we can choose where we go from there.

Vision is the most important thing. Vision is purpose and meaning. To have a clear vision is to have a picture of what you want your life to look like and a plan for how to get there.

Use it or lose it is the rule with ripe fruit, political goodwill, media attention, coupons, economic opportunity, space to pass on the highway, all sorts of things. But most importantly, it’s true of the knowledge you soak up over your lifetime. If you don’t regularly flex your mind like a muscle and put your knowledge to work, it will eventually lose its power.

First, create little goals for yourself. Don’t worry about the big, broad stuff for now. Focus on making improvements and banking achievements one day at a time. They can be exercise goals, nutrition goals. They can be about networking or reading or getting your house organized. Start doing things you like to do or that make you proud of yourself for having completed them. Do those things every day with a little goal attached to them, and then notice how doing that changes what you pay attention to. All of a sudden you will find yourself looking at things differently.

Your job is to bust your ass in pursuit of your vision—yours and nobody else’s—and to embrace the failure that is bound to come.

Not merely bear what is necessary . . . but love it.

I owe a lot to my upbringing. I was made for it and made by it. I wouldn’t be who I am today without each one of those experiences. The Stoics have a term for this: amor fati. Love of fate. “Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to,” the great Stoic philosopher and former slave Epictetus said. “Rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens. Then you will be happy.

When it comes to realizing your dreams, you cannot allow that to happen. In fact, it should never happen, because no one is better equipped or motivated than you to sell your vision to the world. It doesn't matter if you want to move your family to a different country or your football team to a new town, if you want to make movies or make a difference, if you want to build a business, buy a farm, join the military, or create an empire. No matter the size of your dream, you have to know how to sell it and who to sell it to.