Monday Morning Mojo

Monday Morning Mojo: Intelligence Is Overrated: What You Really Need To Succeed

By Tom Tognoli | May 21st, 2012 0 Comments

Thank God…I still stand a chance. I was a struggling C student with ADHD and Dyslexia before they even knew what those where. Perhaps it now makes sense to some of you when you get those crazy emails from me with my letters and words all mixed up. Back when I was going to school it was just called being hyper and not very smart. Somehow, through the grace of God, and my parents, I was able to manage getting through school and even went on to Chico State. I guess there is still hope.

One of the coolest things about authoring Monday Morning MOJO is all the great stories on success, winning and perseverance people send me. Several people sent me the following article over the last couple of weeks and when I read it, I knew immediately it was a mojo. I can’t tell you how many times I see this first hand. Of course education and being smart are important and can help, but if you really want to know what you need to have to succeed, check it out.

Albert Einstein’s was estimated at 160, Madonna’s is 140, and John F. Kennedy’s was only 119, but as it turns out, your IQ score pales in comparison with your EQ, MQ, and BQ scores when it comes to predicting your success and professional achievement.

IQ tests are used as an indicator of logical reasoning ability and technical intelligence. A high IQ is often a prerequisite for rising to the top ranks of business today. It is necessary, but it is not adequate to predict executive competence and corporate success. By itself, a high IQ does not guarantee that you will stand out and rise above everyone else.

Research carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology shows that 85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge. Additionally, Nobel Prize winning Israeli-American psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, found that people would rather do business with a person they like and trust rather than someone they don’t, even if the likeable person is offering a lower quality product or service at a higher price.

With this in mind, instead of exclusively focusing on your conventional intelligence quotient, you should make an investment in strengthening your EQ (Emotional Intelligence), MQ (Moral Intelligence), and BQ (Body Intelligence). These concepts may be elusive and difficult to measure, but their significance is far greater than IQ.

Emotional Intelligence

EQ is the most well-known of the three, and in brief it is about: being aware of your own feelings and those of others, regulating these feelings in yourself and others, using emotions that are appropriate to the situation, self-motivation, and building relationships.

Top Tip for Improvement: First, become aware of your inner dialogue. It helps to keep a journal of what thoughts fill your mind during the day. Stress can be a huge killer of emotional intelligence, so you also need to develop healthy coping techniques that can effectively and quickly reduce stress in a volatile situation.

Moral Intelligence

MQ directly follows EQ as it deals with your integrity, responsibility, sympathy, and forgiveness. The way you treat yourself is the way other people will treat you. Keeping commitments, maintaining your integrity, and being honest are crucial to moral intelligence.

Top Tip for Improvement:Make fewer excuses and take responsibility for your actions. Avoid little white lies. Show sympathy and communicate respect to others. Practice acceptance and show tolerance of other people’s shortcomings. Forgiveness is not just about how we relate to others; it’s also how you relate to and feel about yourself.

Body Intelligence

Lastly, there is your BQ, or body intelligence, which reflects what you know about your body, how you feel about it, and take care of it. Your body is constantly telling you things; are you listening to the signals or ignoring them? Are you eating energy-giving or energy-draining foods on a daily basis? Are you getting enough rest? Do you exercise and take care of your body? It may seem like these matters are unrelated to business performance, but your body intelligence absolutely affects your work because it largely determines your feelings, thoughts, self-confidence, state of mind, and energy level.

Top Tip For Improvement:At least once a day, listen to the messages your body is sending you about your health. Actively monitor these signals instead of going on autopilot. Good nutrition, regular exercise, and adequate rest are all key aspects of having a high BQ. Monitoring your weight, practicing moderation with alcohol, and making sure you have down time can dramatically benefit the functioning of your brain and the way you perform at work.

What You Really Need To Succeed

It doesn’t matter if you did not receive the best academic training from a top university. A person with less education who has fully developed their EQ, MQ, and BQ can be far more successful than a person with an impressive education who falls short in these other categories.

Yes, it is certainly good to be an intelligent, rational thinker and have a high IQ; this is an important asset. But you must realize that it is not enough. Your IQ will help you personally, but EQ, MQ, and BQ will benefit everyone around you as well. If you can master the complexities of these unique and often under-rated forms of intelligence, research tells us you will achieve greater success and be regarded as more professionally competent and capable.

Monday Morning Mojo: The Tiny Black Dot

By Tom Tognoli | May 14th, 2012 1 Comment

If I were to make a little black dot on an 8 1/2 x 11″ piece of white paper and show the sheet to a group of people and ask them what they see, the majority will say that they see a black dot. The majority will say that they see a black dot. Very few, if any, will tell me that they see a white sheet of paper with a tiny black dot.

We tend to look at our lives in very much the same way. We have our health, enough food to eat, a job that pays the bills and allows us some leisure activities, but we don’t focus on that. We don’t appreciate that.

Instead, we concentrate on the tiny black dot – the 10% in our lives that we don’t like or the things we wish we could change. By concentrating on the 10% that represents our problems or things we don’t like, we develop a negative attitude and feel lousy. Plus, there’s a universal principle that comes into play: we attract what we think about most.

By focusing on what is lacking in our lives, we create more experiences of scarcity.

Think about your life. Are you paying too much attention to the 10% that isn’t what you want it to be as opposed to the 90% that’s going well? I’m not saying we should ignore our challenges or things we’d like to change. But if we paid a lot more attention to the 90% that IS working, we’d have a better attitude and we’d get better results.

When it comes to your job, do you concentrate on all the positive aspects of what you do, or do you gripe about how much money you make, your co-workers, or the fact that someone else got the recognition and rewards you wanted?

What about the basic necessities of life? Do you feel gratitude every day for the food you eat, the clothing you have, the roof above your head or do you take all of these things for granted? Worse yet, do you complain that you don’t have more?

And let’s not forget your body and your health. How much time do you spend thinking about what IS working? Your body is a miracle, make no mistake about that. There’s nothing “ho-hum” about your body and its day to day operation.

Albert Einstein once said that there are two ways to live your life – one way is as though nothing is a miracle – the other is as though everything is a miracle.

Most of us walk around with a ho-hum attitude about the miracle of our bodies. We treat this amazing creation as if it’s no big deal.

Consider this: your heart is only the size of a fist and yet it pumps blood through your body. Every day, the heart pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood and beats about 100,000 times. That’s just in one day.

In one year, that amounts to 36,500,000 beats. And in most cases, the heart just keeps on beating 36,500,000 times a year for many decades. Stop for a moment and recognize the enormity of this miracle.

And, of course, you don’t have to change any body parts or beat your chest manually to keep your heart going. It automatically beats and sends the blood through your body with no effort on your part.

Now, let’s consider your brain. The brain and spinal cord are made up of many cells, which include neurons. There are about 100 billion neurons in the brain. 100 billion! Neurons are nerve cells that transmit nerve signals to and from the brain at up to 200 miles per hour. Isn’t this amazing?

Of course, your ears … your eyes … well, I could go on all day about the miracle of your body and how we take it for granted. Just one final example to drive the point home: When you get a cold and have difficulty breathing for a few days, I bet you’ll often tell everyone that you are congested and don’t feel well. When the cold clears up in a week and your breathing returns to normal, you probably don’t say: “My breathing is perfect today! I’m able to get all the oxygen I need!” Why does it make sense to complain about your breathing for the one week it is impaired … while failing to acknowledge the other 51 weeks when your breathing is full and healthy?

Stop taking this incredible body for granted. Appreciate all the things that ARE working! You’re a walking miracle, and part of an extraordinary universe.

Some of you may feel that ignoring the black dot is not the answer – and that you need to focus on the black dot to improve certain conditions in your life. Well, if you choose this route, here are three strategies you could use:

1. Worry about the black dot.
2. Complain about the black dot.
3. Take some proactive steps to eliminate or reduce the black dot.

The only strategy that makes sense is #3. Yet many people select strategies #1 and #2, which only makes them more miserable.

Be brutally honest with yourself. Are there any areas of your life where you’re ignoring the large white sheet and seeing only the tiny black dot? Do you see the faults of those at work or at home, and seldom affirm people for their positive contributions to your life? If you’re like most of us, you have an abundance of blessings, yet you’re often blind to them.

If you’ve been staring at some tiny black dots recently, take responsibility for that. And recognize that nobody is forcing you to keep your eyes on the black dot. You’ve developed the habit of focusing on the negative and your life (and the lives of those around you) will be greatly enriched if you start to shift your vision toward the white sheet.

You have a choice. You can keep staring at the black dot and telling others about all the things that are wrong in your life, or you can begin to appreciate your many blessings. Sounds like a pretty easy choice to make, doesn’t it?

Monday Morning Mojo: Ask For Forgiveness, Not Permission

By Tom Tognoli | May 7th, 2012 0 Comments

“What should I do?”…”what do you think?”…”let me give that some thought?”…”I will get back to you on that”…”let’s have a meeting so we can get everyone to agree”…blah blah blah. So nothing ever happens.

Being decisive is one of the biggest keys to success…while procrastinating is one of the biggest success killers. However, being decisive is something we have to train ourselves to do because it is not natural for most people while procrastination comes naturally. Unfortunately, most of us are conditioned not to be decisive because we don’t want to offend anyone, we are afraid of making mistakes or we just don’t want to take risks. It’s so much easier to just not make a decision…go along to get along. I see people every day that just sit there and think, procrastinate, and ponder what to do but never actually do anything. Unfortunately, they never get any closer to the things they want. The reality of it is not making a decision gets you farther away from what you want because in life if you are not changing and improving every day, you are slipping back. Remember what JFK said “Change is the law of life…and those who look only to the past or the present…are certain to miss the future.”

What all of us need to do is figure out our goals and then write down specifically what we need to do to accomplish them. Put those specifics into our schedule, and then make a commitment to JUST DO IT!!!!! No more waffling…no more waiting…no more putting off what you need to do to get what you want. At the beginning of each day, review your goals and specifically what you need to do, then simply just do it. Then, at the end of each day, review your goals and specifically what you need to do and compare that to what you did today. Is it in alignment? If not, why? Once your day is over, recommit yourself and then start again the next day. Do this day in and day out…before you know it your goals will become a reality. Just don’t give up…remember it is the accumulation effect of doing it over and over again that will get you what you want. It will typically come out of nowhere just about the time you are ready to give up and throw in the towel. Don’t!!!! Push through the pain and the doubt at all cost…success is just on the other side. It requires breakdowns for breakthroughs. Just remember that is part of the process of getting better.

Ask for forgiveness…don’t ask for permission. Make it a great week!!!!

Monday Morning Mojo: Just 20 Seconds of Insane Courage….

By Tom Tognoli | April 30th, 2012 0 Comments

I was on a flight home from Hawaii with my family after spring break and they were showing “We Bought a Zoo” as the in-flight movie. If you have not seen it yet, it is a great family/feel good movie, check it out. In the movie there was a great line and when I heard it I immediately thought Monday Morning MOJO.

“Just 20 seconds of insane courage…literally, just 20 seconds of embarrassing bravery and something great will come of it.”

Check out the clip from the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmMFIganRQY

Think about it…so frequently the gap between where we are and where we want to be is just 20 seconds of courage away. The interesting thing is that what holds most of us back from doing something is the fear of being embarrassed, but more times than not when we close our eyes, hold our breath and jump in, all the things we were afraid might happen don’t and great things do. I guess it is one of those prices of success. It is what the most successful people I know have learned to overcome…they have learned to overcome the fear and have the courage to go for it.

In sales it’s making that first cold call, or knocking on that first door. These two things terrify most people. What most people are afraid of is someone slamming the phone down on them or slamming the door in their face. Take it from someone who has knocked on thousands of doors and made thousands of cold calls…this very rarely ever happens. Most of the time people are pretty cool and once you get past the first few calls or doors, it is pretty easy and can actually be pretty fun and rewarding.

So, what is it that you have been wanting to do, but have been afraid to take that first step or just have not had the courage to jump in and do it? It may be in any of the areas of your F5 (Faith, Family, Friends, Fitness, Finance)? My advice this week is to go for it…take a chance!!!!!! What is the worst thing that can happen? Can you live with that? What is the best thing that could happen? How does that feel?

Be courageous and have an AMAZING week and an AMAZING life!!!!!!

Monday Morning Mojo: Don’t be an Average Joe

By Tom Tognoli | April 23rd, 2012 0 Comments

Are you an average Joe or average Jane? I sure hope not, because average or “normal” in America today sucks!
Here are just a few things that are considered normal in America today:

The average American household carries nearly $15,000 in credit card debt. That sucks.
63% of Americans are overweight and over 31% of Americans (nearly 90,000,000 people) are obese (that has tripled in the last 20 years.) Nearly half a million people die each year from obesity related illnesses. That sucks!!! Want to find out where you are at? Use this BMI Calculator (Body Mass Index). If your number is not what you like, don’t start making excuses such as “it can’t be right”, “I have big bones”, “it’s my genes”, “it does not apply to my body type” or any other crap you will brainwash yourself with to make you think it is okay. Even though it is normal, it is not okay.
Over 43% of marriages end in divorce (they say that percentage is climbing and may be as high as 50% today). I think a big part of the reason the divorce rate is so high is because we are “normal” at everything else in our life and normal sucks? So, because our life is normal, it leads to our marriage being normal and we know what normal is – right? It sucks.
There are 49 counties in the world where the people there have a longer average life expectancy than Americans. We live in America the greatest country in the world and we are number 50?!?!?! Some say our children’s average life expectancy may be the first in history that will be less than their parents. That sucks. Why? Because our children are watching us and doing what we are doing.
Over 55% of people in America suffer from high blood pressure and over 300,000 people each year die from it. That sucks.

Unfortunately because the majority of people in America are ‘normal’ (or average) it has become our measuring-stick to measure our lives by. We measure ourselves against “sucks” so compared to the masses we look fine…it is “ok.” However, for people whose life is “normal” or average, guess what? Their life is not all that great, but they just don’t know it. If someone is normal they are probably one or more of these – overweight, broke, addicted, divorced, depressed, unhappy, stressed out and God only knows what else. It is all they know, so they don’t know what it could be like. Now don’t get all bummed out if you are thinking I am normal. The great part is we can do something about it.

It all starts with the first step – start spending more time with people who aren’t normal or average. Think about it, if all of the people you are spending your time with are like you, do you think you are going to change? NOT. On the other hand, do you think if you hang out with people who are achieving more than the average, you might learn by their examples and achieve more than the average? You bet.

So, why isn’t this a natural behavior? Because when we spend time with people achieving more than us, it makes us uncomfortable it exposes us. This forces us to acknowledge our weaknesses and forces us to improve and improving requires us to get uncomfortable and change. You see, we want to spend time with people that make us feel comfortable…make us feel good about our life. That’s what’s natural and easy. When we spend time with people like us it makes it all okay that we are the way we are that we are a “Normal Joe” or a “Normal Jane.”

Something to remember – we will very rarely achieve 10% above or 10% below the average of our five best friends. The five people we spend the majority of our time with in all areas of our life. So be careful who you are spending YOUR time with. Don’t get too comfortable, because comfortable is typically “normal,” and “normal” sucks!

Don’t be “normal,” be exceptional and have an amazing life!

Monday Morning Mojo: Use a rifle…not a shot gun!!!!!

By Tom Tognoli | April 16th, 2012 0 Comments

Is what you are doing today building on what you did yesterday or are you starting from scratch…again? So often we are jumping from one thing to another, to another, to another but never getting any significant results….never getting ahead. Why? Because we are spreading ourselves to thin.

To have a quantum leap at almost anything in life and really have a significant impact, it is not going to be the result of trying to do everything. It is going to be the compounded result of doing only the most important activities over and over again…we need to do fewer activities more frequently. We really need to start shooting at life with a rifle and not a shotgun. If we do those few, most important activities consistently over and over again, at some point we reach the tipping point…we will explode into a quantum leap. It’s all about K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple, Stupid. Getting what we want in life is not complicated, but it is difficult…it involves doing the important activities, not the urgent ones. The difficult part is being disciplined enough to do those important, not the urgent activities consistently…and doing them over and over again until we have a Quantum Leap…a Breakthrough.

Why is it so hard? Because we have to do it over and over and over again for long periods of time with what appears to be little or no results. But if we have the discipline to stick with it, all of a sudden out of nowhere, one day we will have a radical breakthrough. The hard part is not to quit when we feel like we are running into a brick wall with no results…not quitting when we are having a breakdown. Because when the wall comes down, it won’t come down one brick at a time, but the accumulation effect of hitting it over and over again will bring it tumbling down all at once. It will happen when we are exhausted and beyond wanting to quit. We will hit it again and BANG!!!!

Think about this: All the individual activities we do in our life to accomplish our goals represent one piece of paper. What most of us do is have a bunch of different activities going on trying to stack each of them (pieces of paper) on top of each other to create a quantum leap. Unfortunately, the Quantum leap never happens…why? Because there is no accumulation affect…no compounding. Let’s say you are working your butt off 10, 12, 15 hours a day, 7 days a week…doing all of those different activities. In the end, even if we are doing 50 different activities (50 pieces of paper), that stack of paper is only going to end up ¼ of an inch high. Consider this….figure out which activities are the most important and stop doing the rest. Spend all of our time doing just those few important activities. When we do this, we are compounding our activities…folding the piece of paper instead of stacking individual pieces. Check this out…as I said 50 individual pieces of paper (individual activities) is ¼ of an inch high. Instead, take 1 piece of paper (one activity) and do it over and over again 50 times (folding it 50 times). How thick do you think your stack will be? 5 inches…a foot…20 feet…1000 feet…a mile…100 miles…1000 miles…100,000 miles…1,000,000 miles? It will actually be tall enough to touch the sun…89,000,000 miles. Now that is a Quantum Leap.

Monday Morning Mojo: Poor planning on YOUR part does NOT constitute an emergency on mine

By Tom Tognoli | April 9th, 2012 0 Comments

We start our day with the best of intentions to get all those important things done on our list. We plan on doing all the things to get us closer to accomplishing our goals and dreams. Then, before we know it the day is over and nothing on that list got done, but we are exhausted from a busy day – a busy day of doing the urgent, not the important.

How did that happen?

Because we let others dictate how our day will go instead of taking control. We let other people’s urgent issues, a result of their poor time management, poor planning, their drama, and their procrastination, take priority and control over ours. Remember, poor planning on THEIR part does NOT constitute an emergency on your part. We have to be discipline and in many ways selfish with our time.

Most of us are doing the urgent and that is why we never seem to get closer to our goals and what we want to accomplish. The key is being disciplined enough to brush off the urgent and do the important. It is probably one of the biggest keys to success.

So, how can we do that when all of our time is spent just dealing with the crap and people coming at us all day – their urgent stuff, you ask? Learn to say NO! It will be tough in the beginning, but after a while of saying NO and not letting yourself get dragged into other peoples drama, into their urgent and out of control life, eventually they will just stop screwing up your goals and take it to someone else or better yet, figure out how to deal with it on their own.

So, to get your important stuff done, make a conscious decision every day not to get caught up in the drama of everyone one else’s urgent life. Learn to say NO!

Monday Morning Mojo: The Masters

By Tom Tognoli | April 2nd, 2012 0 Comments

If you’re a golf fan like me, this is the best week of the year to watch golf. There is no other tournament more important and fun to watch than The Masters.

It is truly amazing to me what these guys can do – especially with thousands of people watching them live and millions more watching them on TV. If you are a golfer you know just how amazing it really is. I remember a commercial during the tournament a few years ago that summed it all up great in just a few words from the late great golfer Bobby Jones who said “Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course, the space between your ears.” I had heard it before but it had been a long time so I scrambled for a piece of paper and wrote it down knowing that it had the makings of a great MOJO.

Think about it – the average golf course on the PGA tour plays about 7,000 yards…4 miles. As big and daunting as it can seem with water, bunkers, trees, wind, lightening fast greens and competition…at the end of the day winning is not really about conquering the course, but more about conquering your thoughts. It is our ability to remain focused, disciplined and remain under control in the face of stress, obstacles and competition that makes winners. Everyone has to play on the same course whether it is golf, business, or life. Like golf, to win at anything in life the challenge is mastering the five-and-a-half-inch course. There are just some who know how to play five-and-a-half-inch courses better than others.

So next time you are trying to figure out how to cut some strokes from your game at golf, business, or life perhaps we should look at hitting a few less proverbial golf balls at the range and look at doing things to help us conquer the five-and-a-half-inch course between our ears.

Check out the Top 10 Masters Moments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gAnwAdRpaE

Grip it and Rip it!

Monday Morning Mojo: Your feelings are screwing you.

By Tom Tognoli | March 26th, 2012 0 Comments

Yes…that’s what I said…your feelings are screwing you. If you listen to how you feel when it comes to getting what you want you will never get it, because you will never feel like doing what you need to do to have the life, business, relationships, money, etc that you want in life.

Think about the things you really want in life. Most of the time the activities required to get those things aren’t all that complicated and candidly are pretty simple. Unfortunately, they are incredibly difficult to force ourselves to do. Here are some examples:

I want to lose 20 pounds, but that means I need to get up at 5am instead of 6:30 so I can hit the gym before work…I don’t really feel like doing that.
I want to make some extra money but that requires me to work an extra hour or two a day, or a Saturday and/or Sunday…I don’t really feel like doing that.
I want to start prospecting for business on a consistent basis so my business is predictable and successful…I don’t feel like doing that.
I want to spend more QUALITY time with my wife and kids, but I am too tired when I get home from work. I just don’t have the energy because I eat terrible and never exercise and God knows I don’t feel like doing that.
I want to start eating healthier, but I don’t feel like doing that.
I want to start saving a little bit more money for my future, but I love my $5 Lattes at Starbucks every morning and I don’t feel like giving that up.
I want to start going to church and having a closer relationship with God, but I don’t feel like doing that on my Sunday mornings.

Do you get it? The gap between what we want and what we currently have is typically not that wide. However in that gap lies your feelings and the only way you will ever get it is by FORCING yourself to do it even though you don’t feel like it.

Here is the good news…if you will force yourself to do it, the first few seconds or minutes are typically the only really hard part. For example… the alarm goes off at 5am and all we feel like doing is hitting the snooze bar and going back to sleep…can you relate? But if we force ourselves to get out of bed and get past those first few seconds when our feet hit the floor that totally suck, we feel great that we are up and did it. But to get that good feeling we need to force ourselves to get through that feeling of “I don’t really want to” and just do it!!!

Gang, I love you, but I don’t really care how you feel…I only care about what you want. And if you are really serious about getting what you want in life, you have to FORCE yourself to do it because you will never feel like it. Let’s face it…it won’t just happen…you have to get out and make it happen.

Have a kick ass week!!!!!!

Monday Morning Mojo: Just Lin, Baby!

By Tom Tognoli | March 19th, 2012 0 Comments

I typically write Monday Morning MOJO myself each week, but this week while I was reading Forbes Magazine I saw a great article on Jeremy Lin and knew I needed to send this as a MOJO. Whether you are a basketball fan or not, unless your head is completely in the sand, I am sure you have heard of him. The article is a month old, but it is an AWESOME article with some GREAT lessons. Check it out.

Lin-sanity has swept up the NBA over the last week. Now it seems like the phenomenon has gone worldwide.

Friday’s 38 point performance by Harvard grad Jeremy Lin for the New York Knicks against the LA Lakers was his greatest performance yet as a starter, since he burst on to the scene and propelled the team to 4 straight wins.

Lin now has over 200,000 followers on Twitter. He’s got over 800,000 on Weibo – including 200,000 new ones in the 24 hour period after beating the Lakers.

But there’s more to this story than basketball. This isn’t just a modern-day, real-life version of the Hoosiers movie. The Jeremy Lin story is incredibly popular because we can all see a little bit of ourselves in this man’s struggles and now successes.

What can all of us learn from this young man — and how can we apply these same lessons to our own lives when we go back to work on Monday morning?

Believe in yourself when no one else does.Lin’s only the 4th graduate from Harvard to make it to the NBA. He’s also one of only a handful of Asian-Americans to make it. He was sent by the Knicks to play for their D-League team 3 weeks ago in Erie, PA. He’d already been cut by two other NBA teams before joining the Knicks this year. You’ve got to believe in yourself, even when no one else does.
Seize the opportunity when it comes up. Lin got to start for the Knicks because they had to start him. They had too many injuries. Baron Davis was gone. The other point guards were out. Carmelo Anthony was injured. Amare Stoudemire had to leave the team because of a family death. Lin could have squandered the opportunity and we would have never have noticed. But he made the most of it. You never know when opportunities are going to arise in life. Often, they’re when you least expect them. Make the most of them. Don’t fritter them away.
3. Your family will always be there for you, so be there for them. It wasn’t until a few days ago that Lin got his contract guaranteed by the Knicks for the rest of the season. Before that, he could have been cut at any time. He had to sleep on his brother’s couch on the Lower East Side to get by. His family always believed in him and picked him up when he could have gotten down on himself. That made him continue to believe. If you want your family to believe in you like that, you’ve got to be there for them too when they need it.
Find the system that works for your style.Lin isn’t Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. He’s not a pure scorer. He’s a passer and distributor – who can also score very well. It didn’t work for him in Golden State or Houston – where he was before landing at the Knicks. But Mike D’Antoni’s system at the Knicks has been perfect for him to show off his strengths. You’ve got to do your best to understand what your strengths are and then ensure that you’re in a system (a job or organization or industry) that is a good fit for those strengths. Otherwise, people overlook the talents you bring to the table.
Don’t overlook talent that might exist around you today on your team.You probably manage people at your own company today. Are you sure you don’t have a Jeremy Lin living among you now? How do you know that “Mike” couldn’t do amazing things if you gave him a new project to run with? How do you know “Sarah” isn’t the right person to take the open job in London that you’ve been talking over with your colleagues? We put people around us in boxes. He’s from Harvard. He’s Asian-American. Not sure he can play. How many assumptions have you made about talent around you? Don’t be like the General Managers in Golden State and Houston, and let talent slip through your fingers. With all their money, scouts, and testing, they didn’t have a clue what they had in their hands. Do you know what your people (or even yourself) is really capable of? Take off the blinders of assumptions you wear when you look at the world.
People will love you for being an original, not trying to be someone else.You’ve got to be you. You can’t be some 2nd rate copy of Michael Jordan. There will never be another Michael Jordan. Just be Jeremy Lin — yourself. Whatever that is. That doesn’t mean you don’t work hard — it just means you find what you’re good at and do it. Fans will love you for being you, just like they love Jeremy Lin. Judy Garland said it best: “Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.“
Stay humble. If you one day are lucky enough to have newspapers want to put you on the cover in order to sell more, don’t let it get to your head. It’s been remarkable watching how humble Lin remains through all this media frenzy. It makes his teammates and fans love him that much more.
When you make others around you look good, they will love you forever.I didn’t know how good Tyson Chandler was, until I saw him playing with Jeremy Lin. Lin has set Chandler up many times over the last week for easy dunks because he drew the defense and then passed the ball. That’s partly why the Knicks are playing so well. They are all working harder to share the ball with others. And it’s beautiful to watch. And when the media swarms Lin, he tells them how good his teammates are. Do the same with your peers and reports.
Never forget about the importance of luck or fate in life.Some people believe in God, some in destiny, some in luck. Whatever you believe in, be grateful for it.
Work your butt off.Lin couldn’t have seized his opportunity if he hadn’t worked like crazy for years perfecting his skills. There are no short cuts to hard work. Success is a byproduct of that. If you’ve got a Tiger Mom who’s always pushed you to work hard, great. If not, let your conscience be your own Tiger Mom! Get up early, stay up late. Nobody gave Lin any free passes. Why should you get any? You can only control what you control and that means you’ve got to work harder than anyone else you know.

I hope the Lin-sanity continues. And I hope we all can apply these lessons to our own work and family life.

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