• The best way to progress is to learn from those who have gone ahead in life and have found solutions.
• Don't be too quick to give up; failures have a way of setting you up for later success in life.
• In life, we often discourage failure and we inadvertently discourage success by doing so. The truth is, failure is inevitable, and the journey of life is filled with numerous — nobody ever gets to enjoy a smooth ride.
• Always see failure as an opportunity for growth and development. It is the failures you experience in life that pave the way for a more successful future.
• Losing sets you up for winning.
• Opportunities present themselves in many manners and many avenues, and most of us often find it difficult to realize a lot of these opportunities, let alone seize them.
• More often than not, great opportunities are not always attractive on the surface.
• Don't make essential life decisions based solely on what you see and your previously held beliefs. You can't be a visionary or aspire to make great impacts in your society, or the world in general, if you anchor your decisions with what you see and know now.
• Be a "founder" in the sense that you’re willing and prepared to make something rather than just join something.
• In essence, life’s greatest opportunities run on their own schedule, not yours.
• To never get sucked into the wrong commitments, you have to keep saying no.
• One of the greatest problems for anybody who starts gaining success is they become crippled by opportunity, and saying no becomes imperatively more important than saying yes.
• The more you become successful in your area of expertise and yourself as a prominent figure, the more people will clamor for your attention.
• To keep your dreams alive and always get a sense of fulfillment after your days, you have to keep your commitments in check by constantly finding ways to say no. You have to learn how to politely say no to trivial tasks, in order to be able to focus on essential ones.
• According to co-founder and former CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, focus isn't all about saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. Focus actually means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that are available in order to focus on that one idea that is essential. You have to pick carefully.
• Did you know? Most of the top visionaries Tim Ferris planned to interview for "Tribe of Mentors" rejected his offer, even though he was quite close to some of them. The rejection letters were so well written that he had to include them in his book because they taught him a lot about commitment.
• Being busy is a decision; you only have time for what you make time for.
• If you keep justifying your excuses for not doing something important for any reason, you will never get it done.
• Most of us mistake being busy for being productive, without knowing they are not the same in any way. You need to know that 'busyness' doesn't mean business. You can be busy doing unimportant things while leaving the important ones untouched.
• The truth is, we do the things we want to do, and pass on things we'd rather not do.