Get Smart!: How to Think and Act Like the Most Successful and Highest-Paid People in Every Field

Anaïs Nin wrote, “We do not see the world as it is, but as we are.”

As Winston Churchill said, “I long ago stopped listening to what people said. Instead, I look at what they do. Behavior is the only truth.”

But as Josh Billings, the western humorist, once said, “It ain’t what a man knows what hurts him; it’s what he knows that ain’t true.”

Thomas Edison once said, “Thinking is the hardest work of all, which is why most people avoid it at all costs.” There is a saying, “There are those who think. There are those who think they think. And then there is the vast majority who would rather die than think.”

Here is a simple way to transform your thinking to that of the most positive and successful people in our society. Think about the biggest problem that you have in your life today. Now imagine that this problem has been sent to you as a gift, to teach you something. Ask yourself, “What is the lesson or lessons that I can learn from this situation t

At the lowest socioeconomic level, lower-lower class, the time perspective was often only a few hours, or minutes, such as in the case of the hopeless alcoholic or drug addict, who thinks only about the next drink or dose. At the highest level, those who were second- or third-generation wealthy, their time perspective was many years, decades, even

Dr. Edward Banfield of Harvard studied upward social and economic mobility in the United States and other countries for almost fifty years. He was looking for the reasons why some individuals and families moved up from lower socioeconomic classes to higher socioeconomic classes, generation by generation, sometimes starting at laboring jobs and beco

His conclusion was simple and largely irrefutable. In diagnosing the economic success or failure of individuals, he concluded that “time perspective” was the overwhelmingly important factor. Banfield divided society into seven classes from the lowest to the highest: lower-lower class; upper-lower class; lower-middle class; middle-middle class; uppe

The top people in every society projected years, even decades into the future when they made their day-to-day decisions. They thought carefully about what might happen before they made important or irrevocable commitments.

Milton Friedman, the economist, once wrote, “The best measure of quality thinking is your ability to accurately predict the consequences of your ideas and subsequent actions.” His point was that economic theory divorced from what actually happened when that theory was applied was clearly incorrect.