In the spring of 1944 a boy who we’ll call J.P. was born to im- migrant parents in a rough neighborhood in the heart of Los An- geles. Before J.P. was two years old, his parents divorced, his mother struggled financially, and by the time he was nine years old J.P. was out on the streets looking for a way to help his mom make ends meet. Newspapers, flowerpots, Christmas cards–you name it, he most likely tried to sell it. When his mother could no longer take care of J.P. and his brother, the boys were placed in a foster home. As a teenager with no parental guidance, J.P. fell into the wrong crowd, joined a local gang, and struggled to pass his classes as a stu- dent at John Marshall High School in Los Angeles.
One day in 11th grade, J.P.’s high school teacher caught him and his friend Michelle goofing-off and passing notes in class, and proceeded to make them both stand up in front of the room while he proclaimed; “See these two? Don’t hang around them because they’re not going to amount to anything. They’ll absolutely never make it in any business.” J.P. may have not realized it at the time, but moments like that are what start to create our life habits: successful ones but also bad ones that can hold us back from our full potential. J.P. could have said to himself: “I’ll never amount to anything”. But he said, “The hell with that guy, I’ll prove him wrong.” J.P. developed his first success habit on one of his very first jobs. He said, “I worked all of my life, starting from nine years old.
I had things like paper routes at eleven years old that I continued through- out high school. I even worked for a while at the local dry cleaner sweeping the floors and doing odd jobs for an owner that was so tight with money that he squeaked when he walked! I was working as hard as I possibly could for a mere $1.25 per hour. Then one day after school he called me over and said, ‘Last night I looked behind Go to www.TheBetterLife.com and take the challenge 3 the cabinets and there was no dust! Then I picked up a rug, no dust! You clean this place as if I’m watching you every minute!’ I said, ‘You hired me to clean and my job is to do the best I can.’ He was so pleased he gave me a raise to a $1.50 an hour. For him to do that, it was like I won an Academy Award.
And to be honest, I learned an important lesson from this period of my life. Successful people, whether they’re working for somebody else or working for them- selves, do whatever they do to the best of their ability—as if the boss is watching them every minute of every day. I learned that in every- thing you do, always do your best.” Some may believe that this makes you a foolish “Yes man”. I believe that doing your best is just one of many success habits you should develop. The benefits are numerous, varied, and significant. In this instance, his habit helped J.P. complete a mundane task in the present (and complete it well) and led him to tasks in the future that he loved.
Before continuing with J.P.’s story, I’d like to tell you a little about success habits and how this book will help you to make them your own. I am going to show you a path and process that will allow you to adopt success habits so they stick. You don’t have to flip your world upside down, or try to force “new habits” overnight that disrupt your life and cause you to go back to where you started. Rather, you can make barely-noticeable, small shifts in your daily routines.
When I was a young researcher, just starting out, something happened that changed my life. I was obsessed with understanding how people cope with failures, and I decided to study it by watching how students grapple with hard problems. So I brought children one at a time to a room in their school, made them comfortable, and then gave them a series of puzzles to solve. The first ones were fairly easy, but the next ones were hard. As the students grunted, perspired, and toiled, I watched their strategies and probed what they were thinking and feeling.
I expected differences among children in how they coped with the difficulty, but I saw something I never expected. Confronted with the hard puzzles, one ten-year-old boy pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips, and cried out, “I love a challenge!” Another, sweating away on these puzzles, looked up with a pleased expression and said with authority, “You know, I was hoping this would be informative!” What’s wrong with them? I wondered. I always thought you coped with failure or you didn’t cope with failure. I never thought anyone loved failure. Were these alien children or were they on to something? Everyone has a role model, someone who pointed the way at a critical moment in their lives. These children were my role models.
They obviously knew something I didn’t and I was determined to figure it out—to understand the kind of mindset that could turn a failure into a gift. What did they know? They knew that human qualities, such as intellectual skills, could be cultivated through effort. And that’s what they were doing— getting smarter. Not only weren’t they discouraged by failure, they didn’t even think they were failing. They thought they were learning. I, on the other hand, thought human qualities were carved in stone. You were smart or you weren’t, and failure meant you weren’t. It was that simple. If you could arrange successes and avoid failures (at all costs), you could stay smart.
Struggles, mistakes, perseverance were just not part of this picture. Whether human qualities are things that can be cultivated or things that are carved in stone is an old issue. What these beliefs mean for you is a new one: What are the consequences of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait? Let’s first look in on the age-old, fiercely waged debate about human nature and then return to the question of what the sebeliefs mean for you.