Why is it that some who have more than they could ever need are miserable, while others who possess much less are satisfied? We know that this phenomenon can and does exist, but it defies logic. Make enough money and have a comfortable, or even extravagant life, and all should be well, right? 

On paper, someone’s net worth and their level of life status seems to equal success. But this is not the case. The person who purposefully cleans restrooms at a local school while maintaining a healthy personal life is living more successfully than someone who seems to have everything yet really has nothing of value. 

Way back in 1986 investor and businessman Charlie Munger shared a speech to the graduating class at Harvard. Instead of telling these college grads what they should do, Munger flipped the script and gave his entire speech by pretending as if each person would want to live an unhappy life, and he gave them clear instructions on exactly how to go about it. The title of this speech was “How to Guarantee a Life of Misery”. 

In recent years I have presented a similar idea in terms of things that “successful” and “unsuccessful” people do. Certain behaviors tend to mark each group. So, what are some of those behaviors?

The Unsuccessful List

These first three points come from TV Personality Johnny Carson, who passed away about 20 years ago.

1. Ingesting chemicals. Drugs, alcohol, and so on. No person has ever become MORE successful because of an addiction, or even a hobby, with these sorts of things. They erode money and mental ability and leave the user the worse for wear. Nowadays many people consume alcohol 7 days a week, “socially”, and I am sure that they cannot live without it. Included in this could be caffeine, unhealthy fried foods, energy drinks, etc. Things that harm the body. As James Clear says, “What you consume today is what you will become tomorrow”.
2. Being envious. The Bible says not to covet what other people have, and that we should be content with what we have. Nowadays it’s so easy to see what others have or what they are doing on social media and to be envious of them. Any moment spent wishing we had what someone else has is a moment that we will make ourselves miserable and miss the blessings that we already have been given! Unsuccessful people choose envy. Do you often find yourself wishing you were in someone else’s situation? Maybe that you looked like them, or had their skills, or got to own what they own or go where they go? If so, you’re missing out on your own life. It will be exhausting trying to keep up with the Joneses.
3. Displaying resentment. Resentment means having anger and disgust towards someone else due to a feeling of having been treated unfairly. USUALLY, we have not been treated unfairly and are just being victims for no real reason. Other times there was an actual offense, but we take it too personally. Holding onto wrongs for a long period of time will in no way aid us in being successful. Resentment keeps us looking backwards. It keeps us acting like we are still being offended by this same person every day, even if we never see that person again for the rest of our lives.

The next points come from Charlie Munger in his “How to Guarantee a Life of Misery” speech.

1. Being unreliable. When others cannot count on you then you are like the hare who starts the race fast but then stops running. For the unsuccessful person, innumerable other steady, consistent people will pass them by in life. This one will absolutely bury you in the workplace. If others sense that you can’t be relied on, they will start working around you and will partner with people who they know are reliable. Whether right or wrong, I myself do this at Chick-fil-A. After giving someone a few chances, giving them clear coaching, and then telling them a system to use, if they are still showing themselves to be unreliable, I just work around them. The same goes for personal relationships. When you display a lack of reliability then people cannot trust you. Trust is the most basic foundation block of a relationship. Erode trust, and your relationships will crumble. Whether in the workplace or in your personal life, you do NOT want this to happen to you! 
2. Ignoring the learnings of others. SO many people have come before us and learned so much about life, relationships, work…and many of them have shared what they learned in books, articles, podcasts, and videos. The unsuccessful person will ignore all of this wisdom and make basic mistakes over and over again. They lack understanding of things and therefore don’t know what to do. When a person fails to listen to and learn from others, they show that they are either arrogant or incompetent. Either way, they never get anywhere near what they could achieve had they learned from others.  
3. Going down and staying down when life first knocks you down. I once heard it said that some people are victims and some are survivors. Survivors can be successful; they have gotten up and moved forward. Victims will be failures, because they’re always looking backwards. They lack resiliency and the world will crush them, even the smallest of things. Life is going to be tough, at some point and in some form or fashion. The successful person works through the hard times, learns, and moves forward. Unsuccessful people complain, wallow, and think that they are the only ones who have difficulty in life.

To recap, the Unsuccessful: Ingest unhealthy things, are envious, display resentment, are unreliable, ignore learning from others, and stay down when knocked down.

The Successful List

These first three points come from billionaire Sam Altman:

1. Focusing. The successful spend the needed amount of time thinking about how to spend their time. Many people just do things, at work and in their personal life, without sitting down to examine where their time would be best spent. They show up and start pumping out work and do this for 8 hours and then call it a day. It’s often necessary to put the screens away, sit down with a pen and blank sheet of paper, and think about what to focus on so as to ensure that you are not wasting your efforts. Are you spending much or any time each week thinking about what to work on?
2. Working hard. This one is almost too obvious, but it’s so important that it just HAS to be in here. Some people are very diligent, others not so much. Some people work less hard than those around them, some work at the same level, and then a few work a little harder than everyone else. Sam Altman says that you can get to the 90th percentile in any field simply by working hard. But when you combine working both hard and smart you can get to the 99th percentile. If you want to be great at something then you have to work extra hard, and you should go ahead and do it while you are young before you have kids and other commitments vying for your energy. I unknowingly did this myself, working extra hard in my mid 20’s. Now I still reap the benefits of it every day. 
3. Being internally driven. Most people focus on what others have/think of them, and so they behave in ways to keep up and to keep others happy. Successful people ignore all that noise and just focus on impact and on achievement that matters to them. This is why it’s so important to know your WHY and to know that it is that is motivating you. Externally driven people are frail and insecure. If anyone doesn’t like them or doesn’t agree with them, it’s devastating. Internally driven people are firm, rock solid, and able to achieve much more. When I am interviewing someone for a job, I am actively trying to figure out whether they are internally driven, as well as what exactly it is that is motivating them.

The next point comes from Donald Knuth, then two final points coming from me:

1. Having a high minimum. As I have shared before, another way to say this is that successful people do NOT have any really bad aspects of who they are. This means that if you have two people, person 1 has say two things that they are unbelievably good at (like pumping out work and getting others to buy things from them), but then has one thing that is REALLY bad (like having an explosive temper where they fly off the handle). Person 2 is good at getting work done and at sales, but not as good as person 1. But Person 2 doesn’t have a terrible temper or really anything that is real bad about them. Person 2 has a higher MINIMUM…the worst things about them are not so bad. I have worked with people before that their skill was through the roof, but you couldn’t stand them and couldn’t keep them around because they had some bad that was just awful. Think about when an athlete is on top of their game but their team trades them away for nothing just to get the toxicity of who they are out of the locker room. They have a LOW MINIMUM.  In contrast, successful people  have a HIGH MINIMUM.
2. Maintaining optimism. The successful see possibility in everything and believe that even if it’s raining, the sun is soon to come out. A marker of someone who is NOT optimistic is complaining. Complaining is like a cancer that eats you up but also spreads to others around you. When we complain, we move into this victim state where growing and winning is impossible. The unsuccessful live in complain-land, while successful people avoid complaining and focus on what they can control and on moving forward. Optimists still get frustrated and they vent when needed, but to vent, they preface it with “Can I vent for a second?”. They also say things that frustrate them, but then they shift to finding an action point, something that they can do, to try to make the situation better! Successful people are optimistic.
3. Balancing hunger and patience. Successful people are never satisfied. They always know there is more to learn, more impact to have, more effort to give, more mission to pursue, and more values to be lived out. They’re trying to get somewhere and want to do it sooner rather than later. But they are also patient enough to work the process. They are like an athlete who is 3rd string but STILL practices hard every day and doesn’t transfer or take the easy way out. They know that the process can and will take years in many cases. Anything worth achieving takes time, like getting a college degree…it simply can’t be done in 4 months. In the words of James Clear, “The visible progress you’re hoping for usually comes slower than you’d like”. Or as John Heyward said,  “Rome wasn’t built in a day (PATIENCE), but they were laying bricks every hour (HUNGER)”.

To recap, the Successful: Focus on how to spend their time, work harder than others, are internally driven, maintain a high minimum, are optimistic/avoid complaining, and they are both hungry AND patient.

Closing Queries

When you look at your life, how do you measure up? How many of the 6 unsuccessful and 6 successful points are true/untrue of you?