When pessimism teams-up with ambition it often produces outstanding performance.To be the very best at anything, you will need to be your harshest critic, and that is almost impossible when your starting point is high self-confidence.

Pessimism + ambition = 🤯

Find a mentor! You don’t have time to make all the mistakes yourself, and of course making those mistakes can mean failure.It’s better to let others make those mistakes and you can learn from them. Great mentors and great teachers help you learn faster.

Mentorship is essential

Invest in strength versus lack of weakness. While improving yourself is noble and necessary, research shows that many of the more fundamental aspects of personality don’t change. Traits like verbal fluency, adaptability, impulsivity, and humility are stable from childhood through adulthood.

Invest in strength

Dealing with other people is a huge part of what most of us do, and how we get along with others is often key to success.As a rule of thumb for meeting new people, assume the other people will like you and they probably will.

Dealing with others

It is better to give than to receive, therefore look for opportunities to do something for other people (e.g., sharing knowledge).

The art of giving

The science of luck is about encountering new opportunities which can be simpler if you are an extrovert.

The science of luck

Success is not the result of any single quality; it’s about alignment between who you are and where you choose to be.People often say that effort is the number-one predictor of success, but research shows it’s actually one of the worst.

What is success?

What is takes to be successful? Many self-improvement books try to motivate the reader through phrases which are mostly meaningless. In this book, the author uses science and statistics to objectively show how to be successful (in our society).

Wall Street Journal Bestseller Much of the advice we’ve been told about achievement is logical, earnest…and downright wrong. In Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric Barker reveals the extraordinary science behind what actually determines success and most importantly, how anyone can achieve it. You’ll learn: • Why valedictorians rarely become millionaires, and how your biggest weakness might actually be your greatest strength • Whether nice guys finish last and why the best lessons about cooperation come from gang members, pirates, and serial killers • Why trying to increase confidence fails and how Buddhist philosophy holds a superior solution • The secret ingredient to “grit” that Navy SEALs and disaster survivors leverage to keep going • How to find work-life balance using the strategy of Genghis Khan, the errors of Albert Einstein, and a little lesson from Spider-Man By looking at what separates the extremely successful from the rest of us, we learn what we can do to be more like them—and find out in some cases why it’s good that we aren’t. Barking Up the Wrong Tree draws on startling statistics and surprising anecdotes to help you understand what works and what doesn’t so you can stop guessing at success and start living the life you want.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

books

Books

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

Wall Street Journal BestsellerMuch of the advice we’ve been told about achievement is logical, earnest…and downright wrong. In Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric Barker reveals the extraordinary science behind what actually determines success and most importantly, how anyone can achieve it. You’ll learn: • Why valedictorians rarely become millionaires, and how your biggest weakness might actually be your greatest strength • Whether nice guys finish last and why the best lessons about cooperation come from gang members, pirates, and serial killers• Why trying to increase confidence fails and how Buddhist philosophy holds a superior solution • The secret ingredient to “grit” that Navy SEALs and disaster survivors leverage to keep going • How to find work-life balance using the strategy of Genghis Khan, the errors of Albert Einstein, and a little lesson from Spider-ManBy looking at what separates the extremely successful from the rest of us, we learn what we can do to be more like them—and find out in some cases why it’s good that we aren’t. Barking Up the Wrong Tree draws on startling statistics and surprising anecdotes to help you understand what works and what doesn’t so you can stop guessing at success and start living the life you want.

Eric Barker is the author of The Wall Street Journal bestseller Barking Up the Wrong Tree which has been translated into more than 20 languages. Over 500,000 people have subscribed to his weekly newsletter. His work has been covered by The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Financial Times, and others. Eric is also a sought-after speaker, having given talks at MIT, Yale, Google, the United States Military Central Command (CENTCOM), and the Olympic Training Center. His new bestseller, “Plays Well with Others,” was released by HarperCollins in May of 2022.