I never liked giving specific advice for specific situations. It almost never works. People long for specific advice and for tools because of — forgive me — mental laziness.
All of us in this era have become lazier in our thinking, and it is killing us.
But enough complaining. I came this morning to tell you something about the rules of success and happiness as I understand them, and as my observations of the human species over the past twenty years have shown me.
When I try to decode what causes people, relationships and businesses to succeed and flourish and be glad over time, I arrive at two enormously important super-factors.
Sense — and endurance.
That is it. Let us repeat it for emphasis: the common denominator of most successful human efforts in almost every field is a generous measure of sense and endurance.
Now let us turn to a slightly deeper explanation.
Sense does not necessarily refer to level of intelligence, although I am a known enthusiast on that subject. Sense refers to the ability to understand which are the right things.
Look, our world is a competitive world with limited resources. Which means that at any given moment there is an enormous number of things you could be doing, and a very small number that will actually move you. Sense is the faculty that tells them apart. It is not cleverness. Clever people misapply themselves constantly, at great speed and with great sophistication.
And endurance is the willingness to continue after the interest has gone.
Note that neither of these is talent, and neither of them is luck. Notice also that they are useless separately. Endurance without sense is a person working extremely hard on the wrong thing for eleven years. Sense without endurance is a person who can tell you exactly what should be done, has been able to for a decade, and has done none of it.
Almost every failure I have watched at close range was one of those two, and almost never a shortage of ability.