You know that feeling when someone shows up for you just when you need it most? That's what Uber is all about. Not just a ride or dinner at your door. It's how Uber helps you show up for the moments that matter. Because showing up can turn a tough day around or make a good one even better. Whatever it is, big or small, Uber is on the way so you can be on yours. Uber, on our way. Where does self-confidence come from?
And this is the best advice I can give you on that. Not neglecting first of all the small daily disciplines. Self-confidence really comes from feeling good about yourself. And one of the best ways to feel good about yourself is at the end of the day to know that you poured it on. You did your best. If you conducted a meeting, you did the best you could. If you made a phone call, it was the best phone call you could possibly make. If you wrote a letter, it wasn't a casual letter. It was your best letter. At the end of those kind of days,
When you feel good about yourself, self-confidence starts to rise. You know that if you can have this kind of a good day, you can have another one the next day. And those days become the weeks, the weeks become the months, and the month becomes a powerful year. I got a key phrase for you. Life accumulates. We either accumulate the debt or the value. We either accumulate the regret or we accumulate the equity. Now, we must all suffer one of two pains. The pain of discipline or the pain of regret.
And I'm suggesting discipline, mental discipline to refine ideas. Of course, it's laborious and of course, it's a push, but it's called small price to pay so that you won't have the regret later on. Regret weighs tons. Discipline weighs ounces. I'm telling you, for things to get better, you got to get better. Don't ask for it to change out there. Ask for you to change here. Don't ask for a more favorable wind. We call that naive. Don't ask for better seed, better soil. This is the only planet you got.
Just ask that you can get wiser and stronger and better and be able to take care of your own responsibilities. Get better. Learn how to handle the seasons better. Let's go through them. Just get better at handling the winters. You can't change the winter. You can't change the seasons. But you can change yourself. The whole key is to make yourself valuable.
The key is to make yourself attractive. The key is to make yourself skillful, competent, willing, powerful, unique, sophisticated, cultured, being able to manage, in control, healthy. The whole key really to the future is personal development because the greatest gift you can give to someone else is your personal development, self-development, self-investment.
If I become 10 times wiser, 10 times stronger, 10 times brighter, 10 times more competent, think of what that will do for my success. Your successes fuel your ambition. Your successes give you extra energy. Your successes pave the way for more successes. It's the snowball effect. With one success, you're excited to meet another and another and another.
And pretty soon, the disciplines that were so difficult in the beginning, the disciplines that got you going are now part of your philosophy. There is one magic word that stands out above all the rest. It is discipline. Discipline is the bridge between thought and accomplishment, between inspiration and achievement, between necessity and productivity. Remember, all good things are located upstream from us.
The passing of time takes us adrift and drifting only brings us the negative, the disappointment and the failure. Failure is not a cataclysmic event. It is not generally the result of one major incident, but rather of a long list of accumulated little failings.
If your goal requires that you write 10 letters today and you write only 3, you are down 7 letters. If you want to make 5 calls and only make 1, you are down 4 calls. If your plan calls for saving $10 today and you save none, you are down $10. The danger is looking at an undisciplined day and concluding that no great harm has been done.
But add up these days to make a year and then add up those years to make a lifetime. And it will become apparent how repeating today's small failures can easily turn your life into a major disaster. Success, on the other hand, is just the same process in reverse. If you plan to make 10 calls and you end the day having made 15, you are up five calls. You can see what a massive difference this sort of thing could make in a year.
and what wealth and accomplishment await over a lifetime. Discipline is like a set of magic keys that can unlock all the doors of wealth, happiness, culture, high self-esteem, pride, joy, accomplishment, satisfaction, and success. The first key to discipline is awareness of the need for and value of discipline, especially the discipline to make the necessary changes.
What will it take? What must I do and what must I become to get all I want from life? The second key is willingness. More than that, it is the eagerness to maintain your new discipline deliberately, wisely and consistently. The third key to discipline is the commitment to master the circumstances of your daily life.
to see and harness the opportunities to make something of the good, as well as that which comes in the guise of misfortune. Discipline does many things, but most important of all is what it does for your mindset. It makes you feel better about yourself. Even the smallest discipline can have an incredible effect on your attitude and the good feeling you get.
that surging feeling of self-worth that comes from starting a new discipline is almost as good as the feeling that comes from the accomplishment the discipline brings. A new discipline immediately alters your life direction. You don't change destinations immediately. That is yet to come. But you can change direction immediately. And direction is very important.
Discipline cooperates with nature. Everything strives. It is a common life function. How tall will a tree grow? As tall as it can. Everything strives to become all it can possibly be. And that is what discipline is all about. Striving to fulfill our natural potential.
to become all that we can be. The human will in action, driven by inspiration, enticed by desire, tempered by reason, guided by intelligence, can bring you to that high and lofty place called the good life. Discipline attracts opportunity, which is always attracted to ambition and skill in action. Discipline taps the unlimited power of commitment. Discipline
Those unique steps of intelligent thought and activity that put a lid on temper and a faucet on courtesy, that develop the positive and control the negative, that encourage success and deter failure, that shape lifestyle and control frustration, that enhance health and curb sickness, that promote happiness and manage sadness. Discipline, the continuing process that brings all the good things.
Remember, anyone can start the process. It's not if I could, I would. Rather, it's if I would, I could. If I will, I can. So, start the process. Begin a new habit no matter how small it is. Size isn't important. Whether or not you start and whether or not you continue are all that matter. What's at the core of achieving the good life?
It is not learning how to set goals. It is not learning how to better manage your time. It is not mastering the attributes of leadership. Every day in a thousand different ways, we are trying to improve ourselves by learning how to do things. We spend a lifetime gathering knowledge in classrooms, in textbooks, in experiences. And if knowledge is power,
If knowledge is the forerunner to success, why do we fall short of our objectives? Why in spite of all our knowledge and collected experiences, do we find ourselves aimlessly wandering, settling for a life of existence rather than a life of substance? There may be many answers to this question. Your answer may be different from that of everyone else you know.
While there may be many answers to this question, the ultimate answer may be the absence of discipline in applying our knowledge. The key word is discipline, as in self-discipline. It doesn't really matter how smart you are if you don't use your knowledge. It doesn't really matter that you graduated magna cum laude if you're stuck in a low-paying job.
It doesn't really matter that you attend every seminar that comes to town if you don't apply what you've learned. We spend our lives gathering, gathering knowledge, gathering skills, gathering experiences. But we must also apply the knowledge, skills and experiences we gather in the realms of life and business. We must learn to use what we've learned.
And once we've applied our knowledge, we must study the results of that process and refine our approach. Finally, by trying and observing and refining and trying again, our knowledge will inevitably produce worthy, admirable results. And with the joy and results of our efforts, we continue to fuel our ambition with the positive reinforcement of continued progress.
Pretty soon, we'll find that we're swept into a spiral of achievement, a vertical rise to success. And the ecstasy of that total experience makes for a life triumphant over tragedy, dullness and mediocrity. But for this whole process to work for us, we must first master the art of consistent self-discipline.
It takes consistent self-discipline to master the arts of setting goals, time management, leadership, parenting and relationship. If we don't make consistent self-discipline part of our daily lives, the results we seek will be sporadic and elusive. It takes a consistent effort to truly manage our valuable time. Without it, we'll be consistently frustrated.
Our time will be eaten up by others whose demands are stronger than our own. It takes discipline to conquer the nagging voices in our minds. The fear of failure, the fear of success, the fear of poverty, the fear of a broken heart. It takes discipline to keep trying when that nagging voice within us brings up the possibility of failure. It takes discipline to admit our errors and recognize our limitations. The voice of the human ego speaks to all of us.
Sometimes that voice tells us to magnify our value or accomplishments beyond our actual results. It leads us to exaggerate, to not be totally honest. It takes discipline to be totally honest, both with ourselves and with others. Be certain of one thing. Every exaggeration of the truth once detected by others destroys our credibility. It makes all that we say and do suspect.
As soon as a business colleague figures out that we tend to exaggerate, guess what? He'll think we always exaggerate and he'll never quite hold us in the same regard again. The tendency to exaggerate, distort or even withhold the truth is an inherent part of all of us. It starts when we're kids. Johnny says, I didn't do it. I didn't do it.
Well, maybe Johnny didn't do it, but he probably had something to do with it. And then it continues when we're adults, exaggerating the benefits of a product to make a sale, exaggerating our net worth to impress old friends, exaggerating how close we are to closing a deal to impress the boss. Only an all-out disciplined assault can overcome this tendency.
It takes discipline to change a habit because once habits are formed, they act like a giant cable and nearly unbreakable instinct that only long-term disciplined activity can change. We must unweave every strand of the cable of habits.
slowly and methodically until the cable that once held us in bondage becomes nothing more than scattered strands of wire. It takes the consistent application of a new discipline, a more desirable discipline to overcome one which is less desirable. It takes discipline to plan. It takes discipline to execute our plan.
It takes discipline to look with full objectivity at the results of our applied plan. And it takes discipline to change either our plan or our method of executing that plan if the results are poor. It takes discipline to be firm when the world throws opinions at our feet. And it takes discipline to ponder the value of someone else's opinion when our pride and our arrogance leads us to believe that we are the only ones with the answers.
With this consistent discipline applied to every area of our lives, we can discover untold miracles and uncover unique possibilities and opportunities.