45 (More) Things That I Think Are True

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In a previous post (75 Things That I Think Are True), I compiled quotes from countless books, mentors, podcasts and blogs to present 75 ideas that I believed to be fundamentally true, spanning both business and personal considerations.

Since publishing that post last year to an unexpectedly positive reception, I have come across 45 additional quotes that I thought were also worthy of presentation. I hope that some of these new submissions also distill a lifetime of wisdom into only a few words.

As in my previous post, I’ve done my best to attribute each quote to its original source, but I’m sure that I’ve made many errors and omissions in the process.

Nonetheless, happy reading.

Business

1. “Every boxer has a plan until he gets punched in the face” (Mike Tyson)
   
   
2. There’s no such thing as “no”, just “no for now” (Jim Sharpe)
   
   
3. “Turn “what” problems into “who” problems” (Jim Collins) (for example: Instead of asking what you should do to solve a problem, ask instead who should solve it, or who has solved a similar problem in the past)
   
   
4. “Either change the people, or change the people”
   
   
5. The use of Debt when financing an acquisition is like the use of salt in cooking: If you don’t add enough, it’s really easy to fix. If you add too much, it’s really hard to fix
   
   
6. “Running a business is learning to go to sleep at night with unresolved issues” (Paul Orfalea, founder of Kinko’s)
   
   
7. “The only way to learn how to be a CEO is to be a CEO” (Ben Horowitz)
   
   
8. How you do one thing is how you do everything
   
   
9. If you have to make a list of pros and cons, then the answer is “no”
   
   
10. You’re killed by the bad deals that you do, not the good deals that you don’t do (Jeremy Giffon, paraphrased)
    
    
11. Fear of failure tends to be highest among those who have never really failed at anything
    
    
12. The loudest boos usually come from the cheapest seats
    
    
13. “Every battle is won before it is ever fought” (Sun Tzu)
    
    
14. “There are two types of successful people: Those with imposter syndrome, and sociopaths” (Morgan Housel)
    
    
15. (On CEOs dealing with what seems like a never-ending torrent of problems, on a near daily basis): “Shit rolls uphill”
    
    
16. “In allocating capital, activity does not correlate with achievement. Indeed, in the field of investments and acquisitions, frenetic behavior is often counterproductive” (Warren Buffett)
    
    
17.  “You can mess up a lot of things in business and still do well as long as you get the big trend right” (Ludwig Jesselson)
    
    
18. “An empty seat is less damaging than a poor fit” (Brad Jacobs)
    
    
19. “The experience of observing constant motion without lasting achievement, is so wearisome that no amount of speech can catalogue it” (David Gibson)
    
    
20. “There are two types of forecasters: those that don’t know, and those that don’t know they don’t know.” (John Kenneth Galbriath)
    
    
21. Perhaps the best sign of business quality is how much sleep the CEO loses the night before she raises her prices
    
    
22. Companies are almost never doing as well as they seem to be doing from the outside looking in. They are also almost never doing as poorly as they seem to be doing from the inside looking out
    
    
23. Despite what you’ve read, past financial performance usually is indicative of future performance. In fact, in most cases, it’s about as predictive as anything could be.
    
     

Personal

24. It often helps to act the way you want to feel (Gretchen Rubin, paraphrased)
    
    
25. “You are not your thoughts” (Sam Harris)
    
    
26. To maximize learning, growth, and progress, it is almost always better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond
    
    
27. One of the surest paths to increasing your own happiness is to spend your time increasing the happiness levels of other people
    
    
28. Anxiety is best described as “suffering in advance”. Yet, with the clarity that only hindsight seems to provide, the majority of the things that we worried most about never actually came to pass
    
    
29. Give yourself permission to be human
    
    
30. FEAR = False Evidence that Appears Real
    
    
31. Nobody has it all figured out. Including, and sometimes especially, those who seem like they do.
    
    
32. We often try to prevent ourselves from getting too high after a win, and too low after a loss. The unintended consequence however is that we often allow ourselves to fully feel the lows, but don’t allow ourselves to fully feel the highs
    
    
33. When we try to get the best of both worlds, we often end up getting the worst of both worlds.
    
    
34. “Nothing like a health problem to turn up the contrast dial for the rest of life” (Naval Ravikant)
    
    
35. Youth is wasted on the young
    
    
36. There is no progress without pain
    
    
37. “In the end, winning is sleeping better” (Jodie Foster)
    
    
38. “Our fears are always more numerous than our dangers” (Seneca)
    
    
39.  “A mistake only counts as experience if you learn from it” (Derek Sivers)
    
    
40. Stop thinking that meaning and happiness and satisfaction reside in novelty. What is new is not really new, and what feels new will soon feel old (David Gibson)
    
    
41. It is only when you reach the top of a mountain that you realize that it’s still nothing but you and a bunch of thin air (paraphrased)
    
    
42. “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil” (Ecclesiastes)
    
    
43. “We make real, responsible decisions every single day, but in reality we each know that the seasons of life are almost completely out of our hands” (David Gibson)
    
    
44. Nobody is thinking about you nearly as much as you’re thinking about yourself
    
    
45. It is amazing how much more critical we are of ourselves than we would be of a loved one in the exact same situation. The next time you’re chastising yourself for making a mistake, ask: “How would I advise my spouse if they found themselves in an identical set of circumstances?”. Chances are you’d be much more understanding and empathetic with them than you would be with yourself. If it’s so logical and intuitive to treat others with empathy and understanding, why isn’t it equally logical and intuitive to treat ourselves in this same way?

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