Your state is the most important thing to get under control. If you are thinking of horrible things all the time, guess what you will find in life?
 
Work on your mindset, the rest will follow.
 
Try to not complain for a month.  Switch your watch or armband to the wrong wrist when you catch yourself complaining.  See what happens…

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​Being centred in gratitude is a great way to get perspective and be happier.
 
Entitlement is often used in modern language as a bad thing.  In that people who think they are entitled to things do not wish to put in the work to get them.
 
However, if you are in the mindset that you are going nowhere, then gratitude might make you feel better about it but it will not make you change.  Flipping a little entitlement on in your brain may be the trigger you need.
 
Between gratitude and entitlement emerges self-belief. Still wanting for more, to strive to become better all the time.  Knowing you are better than your current situation and being prepared to work yourself out of it.
 
At some point, there will be a breaking point between your current situation for which you are grateful, and a new opportunity to grow and better yourself.  So, don’t use gratefulness as an excuse not to move forward.  And don’t use entitlement as an excuse that you should get everything you want without working to better yourself.

​If everything is important then nothing is.  If everything is urgent then nothing is.  Guess what, if you combine the two, that still doesn’t help.
 
I saw a small team at work using an Eisenhower box on a whiteboard, but everything was in one quadrant.  Guess which one?
 
Is brushing your teeth important?  Yes, to oral health.  To get a promotion?  Well, you could say yes, but is it more or less important than getting results expected by your boss?
 
You can always make a case for the important.  Who wants to admit to themselves that all their work is not even important? But is it important within the context of your goals and dreams?
 
Instead of categorising things as important or not important you could try a small tweak.  Try categorising your to-dos “more important” and “less important” within the context of a given goal. Then make sure you are allocating time appropriately to those that are less urgent.
 
The alternative is to look up from the hamster wheel in 10 years’ time and realise you are still in the same place.

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​There is the adage that you are the average of the five people closest to you.  In writings about how to be “successful”, the advice is usually then to cut out the losers and get closer to people that are more successful than you.
 
If you have a truly toxic influence on your life then I agree, best to distance yourself from them. I have had to do this myself, but in hindsight, I realise that it was my problem rather than theirs. However, the ruthless culling of true friends based on their success is not something that should be encouraged.
 
Ask yourself, are they really holding you back, or is it just you?
 
Remember, you don’t have to listen to what other people say. If you cannot distance yourself from negativity and criticism then you are probably not going to have the spoils of the “successful” that can.
 
Also, remember that you are one of the five too. How much are you trying to pull the others up? Those that have been there for you in the hard times.
 
As Gary Vee says, there are two ways to build the biggest skyscraper in town. Afford this thinking to your nearest and dearest before you bulldoze everything around you.

​I think people gravitate towards wanting to help others because other people’s problems are always much clearer to fix than our own. 
 
If only we had the clarity of thought and the simplicity of action that we can afford others.
 
The consultant, the self-help guru, the armchair critic.  Before you take their advice, seek what have they actually built themselves.  Find those who have not just told others what to do, but are actually practitioners of their craft. 
 
These are the people to follow.  Because of the internet, they are more accessible than ever.  And, because of the internet, they are also harder to find than ever, in amongst a sea of charlatans and snake oil salesmen, if you start looking in the wrong place.

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Life is full of paradoxes. When young you have lots of time and not much money. At some point, that will switch and the opposite will be true.  During that transition, your mentality will need to switch with it.
 
When young, say yes to everything to be successful. Then say no to almost everything to be successful.
 
Finding the right side of the paradox is the secret no one can tell you.  It must come with hunger, experience, self-esteem and humility.  Often paradoxes themselves.  That is the beauty of this big game we are all playing.  Enjoy it while you figure it out.  It is the only way.

Why wait for someone else to change things you don’t like?  If something bothers you, then use this trigger to go into action mode.  Find a solution and implement a fix.
 
What if there is no good solution available?  Great.  You just got your next business idea. 

​Now go start.

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There are lots of examples where school has failed entrepreneurs, who were clearly gifted to do something else. 
 
Less so, the examples of people who are doing okay, that have all the trappings of modern life.  A mortgage, a car lease, living pay-day to pay-day.
 
And for people that were disruptive at school, never did anything and ended up in prison?  Well that is obviously their fault, isn’t it?
 
The main things that school did not teach me that I will try to teach my kids:

• Social skills can be learned.  And they are the most important thing to learn.  It does not matter if you are cleverer than everyone else around you.  If you do not have the skills to convince others and to bring them together, then you will be working for someone less clever than you who can.  And that might be a little crushing as all through your childhood you were told that getting good grades is the thing to aim for.
• Learn how to teach yourself.  In the “real world” the only point of learning should be only to do something immediately practical.  And the faster you can learn and do, the more success you will have.  In fact, the real secret is do-to-learn and catch up on theory afterwards, if at all.
• How to get financial freedom.  Earn more, use less, invest wisely quickly and often.

 
There are so many books that I have read in my adult life that I wish someone had given me at school.  Actually, that is a lie, because I would not have read them at school because school distilled in me a hatred for reading.  If the only point of reading is to take a test, to see if you can remember the same things as the person who wrote the questions, is it any wonder that we have a generation of people that only read fiction to fall asleep, or worse do not read at all.
 
What’s the best thing you learned after school that you think should be included?