A successful life is far easier than you think. It’s not about what you do: it’s about what you don’t do. If you could identify life’s biggest mistakes and simply avoid them, you’d be far happier than your average person.
As a philosopher, entrepreneur and author of books including The Art Of Thinking Clearly, I know the quality of your life largely depends on two factors: the quality of your thoughts and the quality of your relationships. Of these relationships, none matters more than your choice of life partner.
Here are my suggestions for how to succeed when it comes to your relationships.
Don’t rush into commitment with the first promising candidate. Take time to understand what truly matters in a partnership. Despite the romantic notion that “opposites attract,” seek someone who shares your core values and life goals. The natural gaps between partners are challenging enough without adding fundamental disagreements about money, children or lifestyle.
Warren Buffett, when asked about his successful marriages (his first lasted 52 years and his second is still going strong), cited “low expectations” as a key factor. Especially low expectations of your partner towards you. This isn’t about settling, but rather accepting your partner as they are instead of trying to change them. The most toxic relationship pattern is entering marriage with the intention of “fixing” your spouse.
And don’t treat marriage like a zero-sum game where one person’s gain is the other’s loss. The best marriages operate like partnerships where both parties work toward shared goals.
Emotional management has always been a difficult matter. In recent decades, it’s become normal to indulge in one’s emotions. People show them, live them, proudly carry them around, and spread them everywhere and always.
However, new studies show that letting go and venting doesn’t always help. If you blow off steam by chopping wood, jogging, boxing, or throwing plates against the wall, it only amplifies negative emotions. This applies to both men and women of all ages.
Tip: view your negative emotions like the weather. Clouds come and go. Just as you can’t turn off the weather, you can’t turn off emotions. Recognise that emotions are temporary and don’t define your identity; they don’t belong to you. And if you still find feelings interesting then try being more interested in other people’s’ emotions than your own.
They say humans think about a 100,000 thoughts daily – roughly two per second, excluding sleep time. But most of these thoughts are unwanted, unoriginal, and irrelevant. This chaotic jumble is aptly described as the “inner voice” – an endlessly bubbling volcano of hot, quickly cooling thought fragments. Expecting guidance from this chaos is simply absurd.
First, you are not your inner voice. You’re merely its listener. You decide whether to listen at all. The inner voice constantly seeks problems, sounds alarms, and stages endless drama. Since it often just interferes, you should largely ignore it.
Second: Your inner voice has surprisingly little to do with reality. What stresses us usually isn’t reality, but our thoughts. Stay in the world out there. Tackle real problems. Focus on your long-term goals and today’s tasks.
Third: Even when it comes to big-picture orientation like what to do with your life, consciously ignore the inner voice. Instead, look at your concrete abilities. What are you demonstrably above average at? Focus on that. That gives you direction.
“You are who you hang out with” isn’t just folk wisdom – it’s backed by science. Emotional contagion, the tendency to absorb the moods and attitudes of those around us, is real and powerful. Don’t surround yourself with chronically negative people, complainers, and drama-seekers. Instead, seek out those who lift you up and challenge you to grow.
I’m constantly amazed by how far people can go who don’t have the highest IQ, aren’t particularly creative, or can’t express themselves eloquently – but who are reliable.
Reliability is the most underrated success factor; I believe it’s actually the strongest. Intelligence, charisma, or creativity won’t save you from failure. Reliability will. If you’re reliable, you simply can’t fall.
People will always want to work with you. Even if you possess sky-high intelligence or galactic talent – why not also be dependable? It costs you nothing. Indeed, all the brilliant and creative people I know – from star architects to Nobel laureates – are exceptionally reliable. It doesn’t make them any less “cool” – quite the opposite.
The Not To-Do List: The Surprisingly Simple Art of Success, by Rolf Dobelli, is published on Thursday by Allen & Unwin UK, at £12.99
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