Eleven pieces of general advice.
1. If you can turn a negative thing into a positive one then you have improved yourself and the world.
2. If the cost to you is small, and the benefit to someone else is large, give freely. If the cost to you is greater than the benefit to someone else, suggest an alternative.
3. Enable people to be responsible for their own success. It is very hard to help someone that isn't trying to help themselves.
4. By understanding yourself, and your own reasons for doing things, you begin to understand others. If you can't understand another person's motivations, it's because you don't know the full story. Wisdom is hard to come by without perspective.
5. Attempt to leave everything you come across in a better position than it was before you came across it.
6. The most valuable currencies a human can ever give or receive are time and energy. Almost everything we value is made of one or both of those things. Everything else is a symptom of them. Be mindful that you spend what limited time and energy you have on things that make you proud. This is the single biggest influence upon your happiness.
7. The difficulty of most situations is directly related to the amount that you want to succeed.
8. Comfort does not equate to happiness as often as achievement. Strive to achieve great things, especially and most importantly with those that you love.
9. If you feel there is something you are lacking in your life, attempt to be the cause of change. It is truly amazing at how much the world will give back to you the things you give to it.
10. People will forget what you said, but never how you made them feel. Somebody else's emotions are not decided by your interpretation of them.
11. Communicating clearly and honestly (especially with yourself) is easily the most underrated method of approaching most of the problems you'll ever encounter. It is a skill that will make everything considerably easier if used effectively.
