Website DIVISIONS (Over 600 articles to help you to grow in every facet of your life)
Written by Jimmie Burroughs 
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Most of us receive our share of advice from parents, and friends, and sometimes from those who aren’t our friends. The easiest thing to do is just to ignore it all, and do our own thing, and that is also the most unwise thing to do. Of course not all advice is good advice; wisdom tells us which to keep and which to discard. Parental advice is usually good, but not always. If Bill gates had accepted his parent’s advice, there would have been no Microsoft Corporation, at least by Bill Gates. “The best advice for success you will ever get” is the advice that helps you the most in your life. Below are 14 items of good advice that has helped me:
1. Don’t be afraid to try
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better; the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt:
2. Learn to trust
”You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” Steve Jobs
3. Be objective
”The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is incomplete, or the subjective involves illusions that should be rejected.” Thomas Nagel
4. Expect to fail often
“Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.” Oprah Winfrey
“Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.” John F. Kennedy
“I didn’t fail the test; I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.” Benjamin Franklin
5. Don’t be afraid to be yourself…stand out from the crowd
“Don’t dare to be different, dare to be yourself; if that doesn’t make you different then something is wrong. All progress occurs because people dare to be different [by being themselves].” Harry Miller
6. Make friends first…business later
We all have an “aversion” to being sold to by a salesman, but we all want to buy. To distinguish yourself from your competitors, you must have a unique approach based on established relationships that you have nurtured who will want to buy from you when the timing is right.
7. Learn how to be a conversationalists
“Remember that the first goal of any conversation is to earn the right to have a next conversation!” Having the next conversation and the next one etc. builds relationships.
8. Success is about finding ways of addressing a customer’s needs better than your competitors, and then addressing it.
Be concerned about what would make a customer happier and better off, and you will also be happier and better off.
9. Find a valuable product that many want and need.
The reason why Facebook, Microsoft, Myyearbook, and many others are so successful today is because they are products that a lot of people wanted and needed. If you can’t create one, find one that someone else has created and be become a distributor.
10. The essence of business is finding prospects and connecting with them:
No prospects, no relationship, no business. So, building successful businesses is a matter of learning how to find prospects, and then building a relationship with them. Learn to relate with people where they are.
11. Be interested in others first
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” Athony Tjan
12. Cultivate a strong work ethic; this is a gift that my parents instilled in me
“Thousands of people could have done the same thing that Bill Gates did, at the same time. But they didn’t…How many of them changed their life plans–and cut their sleep to near zero, essentially inhaling food so as not to let eating interfere with work–to throw themselves into writing Basic for the Altair? How many defied their parents, dropped out of college and moved to Albuquerque to work with the Altair?” Jim Collins
13. Have a pay-it-forward attitude…the best kind of gratitude
You would think that more would have discovered this excellent advice by now, but the truth is that few have. Gratitude remains the rarest quality of the human race. If you develop it, you will be miles ahead of your competitors.
14. Be alert to all that is around you
“…People miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner, and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through the newspaper determined to find certain job advertisements and, as a result, miss other types of jobs…People [who] are more relaxed and open… see what is there, rather than just what they are looking for.” Richard Wiseman
Conclusion
All of us are products of what we have learned from others, whether it is our parents, teachers, bosses, mentors etc. What separates the prosperous individual for the looser is the driving desire to learn as much form others as possible, and never refusing the input of others. If you want to be successful at something, learn from someone who is already successful in that area. A know it all attitude restricts a person to their own limited little world of knowledge, and restricts them from the growth that can excel them.
Determining the good advice from the bad advice requires wisdom which takes time and experience to gain. Sometimes we do take bad advice and fail. When that happens, we learn from it and continue on, and become a little wiser.
About the author: Jimmie Burroughs is a motivational speaker and author who has been involved in teaching Christian Personal Development for more than 30 years. There are hundreds of articles to help you on this website, Website Contents , in your person growth. Be sure to take vantage of the FREE offer to get the “Personal Development” eBook while available.
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Website DIVISIONS (Over 600 articles to help you to grow in every facet of your life)
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