Just finished reading this very good article on HBR: http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1
I highly recommend reading this once. Following are key takeaways from this article for me:
- If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most
- If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into your family’s culture—and you have to think about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works
- The lesson I learned from this is that it’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.
- Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really good about yourself—and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves, too
- How can I ensure that my relationship with my family proves to be an enduring source of happiness?—concerns how strategy is defined and implemented
Advertisement
