No One Can Keep You From Success Except Yourself- Deshun Wang

His name is Deshun Wang

Namanya Deshun Wang

Born And Raised in Shenyang, China

Lahir di Shenyang, China

Many people started noticing him after a cat walk show

Some people call him “the hottest Grandpa”

Samo also said that he is the instant internet sensation”

But you know what, to prepare for this day

He is been getting ready for 60 years

At 24 he was a theatrical actor

At 44 he was starting learning englishat 49 he created his own pantomime trope

And went to Beijing, became the bejing Drifter”

He had nothing to his name, starting everything from scratch

At 50 he start his first GYM

At 57 he returned to the stage and created the word’s only from the performance art

Call “living Scrulpture Performance”

At 70 he was really got into  working out

At 79 he got his first catwalk

And now he is 80. Thera still many dream he want to  achieve

He said, potensial can be explored.

When you think its too late, be carefull you don’t let that

Become your excuse for giving up

No one can keep you from success except yourself

When it time to shine, be the brightest

Dushun Wang an 80 year old Chinese actor- in Hollywood films such as he Forbidden Kingdom (2008), Detective Dee: Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010) and Warriors of Heaven and Earth (2003).

This Is The Lazy Way To Kill Bad Habits: 8 Secrets From Research

Bad habits; we all got'em. You know what they are. You know you should stop. But... it's hard. In fact, sometimes you feel downright powerless. And you're not crazy...

Research from Duke University shows 40% of what you do every day isn't a decision -- it's a habit.

One paper published by a Duke University researcher in 2006 found that more than 40 percent of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits.

Yeah, you spend almost half the day on autopilot. And changing bad habits isn't just "kinda nice." If you want to be a success, studies show habits really do matter.

People who have career momentum are 53% more likely to have good habits.

Comparing middle management employees, researchers have found that those whose careers continue to have momentum are 53 percent more likely to engage in healthy life habits than those whose careers are stalled. – Roberts and Friend 1998

If we're on autopilot for half the day, we want those routines to be good ones. So what really works for ditching bad habits? And isn't horribly difficult? Let's get to it...

1) Change A Bad Habit. Singular.

At one time we have all felt as if our lives are a constellation of bad habits. You get home from work, you're exhausted and you go from one "I should not be doing this" to the next.

It's like you need to change everything. And you need to do ittomorrow... No. Bad. Wrong. Does not compute.

Do less. Just focus on just fixing one thing at a time. When I spoke to Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg, he said that's the key to lasting change. Here's Charles:

If you try to transform everything at once, it tends to be very, very destabilizing. In general, what people should do, is they should think of change as a project. It’s a project that takes a while... Now, it might feel frustrating to say, “If you have ten habits you want to change, that means it’s going to take eight months or nine months.” The truth of the matter is if this is a behavior that’s really important, changing it will have this huge impact on your life. It’s worth spending a month to change one behavior permanently. You’re going to be reaping the benefits of that for the next decade.

You don't need to overhaul your life. Just kill one bad habit. Give it a month and then move on to the next.

(To learn the four rituals neuroscience says will make you happy, clickhere.)

Okay, you're focused on one thing. What's a painless way to start?

2) Don't Stop. Just Count.

Whatever it is you shouldn't be doing, you don't have to stop yet. (Doesn't that sound nice?) Don’t try to reduce the habit, reduce thevariability in the habit.

In other words, don’t even try to quit smoking; try to smoke the exactsame number of cigarettes each day. Or only check Facebook your usual 90 times an hour.

This tiny effort toward self-control can lead to a decrease in bad habits over time, unconsciously.

Behavioral economist Howard Rachlin proposes an interesting trick for overcoming the problem of always starting a change tomorrow. When you want to change a behavior, aim to reduce the variability in your behavior, not the behavior itself. He has shown that smokers asked to try to smoke the same number of cigarettes every day gradually decrease their overall smoking— even when they are explicitly told not to try to smoke less.

Label users who did not exercise displayed a slightly greater likelihood of weight loss than those who exercised but did not read food labels. Additionally, those who only read labels were more likely to improve their chances of weight loss by adding exercise to their routines rather than abandoning label usage in favor of exercise.

You don't have to deny yourself at first. Just notice the numbers and continue to behave badly -- but consistently.

That's not hard. You don't have to change. How else can you beat bad habits without changing yourself at all?

3) Don't Change You. Change Your World.

Every day I download Instagram on my iPhone and every day I delete Instagram off my iPhone. Does it sound like I have a problem? Nope. It's a great way to make sure I only check it once a day.

The app isn't there tempting me to check it 600 times. And it's a pain to keep downloading it. And this is a big secret to beating bad habits.

Don't change yourself. Change your context. We engage in habits because of "triggers" in our environment. Remove the triggers or make them more difficult to reach and you're less likely to engage in the behavior.

When I spoke to behavioral economist Dan Ariely he said context affects your behavior much, much more than you think. Here’s Dan:

One of the big lessons from social science in the last 40 years is that environment matters. If you go to a buffet and the buffet is organized in one way, you will eat one thing. If it’s organized in a different way, you’ll eat different things. We think that we make decisions on our own but the environment influences us to a great degree. Because of that we need to think about how to change our environment.

So get the tempting stuff away from you. Bestselling author Shawn Achor recommends "the 20 second rule." Make bad habits 20 seconds harder to begin and you're far less likely to engage in them. Here’sShawn:

Watching too much television? Merely take out the batteries of the remote control creating a 20 second delay and it dramatically decreases the amount of television people will watch.

You don't need to change yourself just yet. Change the things around you.

Pretty simple, right? Good. And let's keep it that way. Do you need to put pressure on yourself and be a demanding taskmaster to eliminate bad habits? Nope. Neuroscience says do the exact opposite...

4) Chill, Dude.

What makes you more likely to engage in bad habits? Stress.

UCLA neuroscientist Alex Korb says staying relaxed helps your brain make the right choices. Here’s Alex:

I have a friend who always says, “Stress takes the prefrontal cortex offline.” Stress changes the dynamics of that conversation. It weakens the prefrontal cortex. That part of your brain doesn’t have infinite resources. It can’t be eternally vigilant and so while it’s not paying attention, your striatum is like, “Let’s go eat a cookie. Let’s go drink a beer.” Anything that you can do to reduce stress can help strengthen the prefrontal cortex’s control over your habits.

Don't pressure yourself. Stay calm and you'll behave better.

Alright, the tips so far have been plenty easy. Time for some black belt methods. And we also need to correct some myths. How do you really eliminate those bad habits? It's easy: Don't.

5) Don't Eliminate Bad Habits. Replace Them.

Ironically, studies show saying, “I’ll never do that again” makes you even more likely to do that again.

Charles Duhigg wrote the book on habits. And he says the research is clear: you can't eliminate bad habits but you can replace them. Want to stop shoving donuts in your mouth?

When you feel the urge, put some sugarless gum in your piehole. The "trigger" stays the same and you still get a nice reward but you're replacing the bad behavior with a good one.

From The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business:

We know that a habit cannot be eradicated— it must, instead, be replaced. And we know that habits are most malleable when the Golden Rule of habit change is applied: If we keep the same cue and the same reward, a new routine can be inserted.

Notice what triggers your bad behavior and then replace your usual response with a new one that gives you a different (but still pleasurable) reward.

Am I making this all sound too easy? Don't worry -- I know you're gonna screw up. We all do. In fact, I bet you know when you're most likely to screw up. So here are the two words that can make sure you don't blow it...

6) "If" and "Then"

Plans are good. And with a very simple one you can resist temptation. When do you always perform that bad habit? For instance, "Whenever I sit on the couch I surf the internet endlessly."

Okay, now use two words to make a teensy weensy little plan:

If I sit on the couch, then I will pick up a book. 

From Nine Things Successful People Do Differently:

It’s called if-then planning, and it is a really powerful way to help you achieve any goal. Well over a hundred studies, on everything from diet and exercise to negotiation and time management, have shown that deciding in advance when and where you will take specific actions to reach your goal (e.g., “If it is 4 p.m., then I will return any phone calls I should return today”) can double or triple your chances for success.

Sound too simple to be true? Wrong.

From Nine Things Successful People Do Differently:

The results were dramatic: weeks later, 91 percent of if-then planners were still exercising regularly, compared to only 39 percent of nonplanners! Similar results have been shown for other health-promoting behaviors, like remembering to do monthly breast self-exams (100 percent of planners, 53 percent of nonplanners), and getting cervical cancer screenings (92 percent of planners, 60 percent of nonplanners).

Two words. Big changes.

But what happens if you still blow it? Don't worry, buddy. I got you covered...

7) Forgive Yourself.

You're going to screw up. And that's okay. In Richard Wiseman’s study of people who achieved their goals he realized we should:

Expect to revert to your old habits from time to time. Treat any failure as a temporary set-back rather than a reason to give up altogether.

So you say you’re not going to eat cookies. Then you accidentally eat a cookie. That’s not when the diet is blown.

The diet is blown when you eat the one cookie and say, “I give up” —and then devour the rest of the bag.

What does science say we should do when we lose self-control orprocrastinate? Forgive yourself and move on.

Via The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It:

Study after study shows that self-criticism is consistently associated with less motivation and worse self-control. It is also one of the single biggest predictors of depression, which drains both “I will” power and “I want” power. In contrast, self-compassion— being supportive and kind to yourself, especially in the face of stress and failure— is associated with more motivation and better self-control.

In trying to do anything to better your life, it’s okay to stumble. It takes time. You learn.

(To learn how to be more compassionate with yourself, click here.)

Okay, we've covered a lot. Let's round it up and learn the eighth tip -- which is the easiest and most fun of them all...

Sum Up

Here's how to get rid of those awful bad habits:

·  One at a time. Beat one bad habit per month and in a year you'll be awesome.

·  Don't stop. Just count. Don't eliminate the bad behavior just yet. First, be consistent in your awfulness.

·  Don't change you. Change your world. 20 second rule. Make it harder to engage in bad habits.

·  Chill, dude. Stress makes the bad stuff tempting. Relax and you'll behave better.

·  Don't eliminate. Replace. You can't kill bad habits but you can swap them out for new ones.

·  "If" and "Then." A simple plan for how you'll beat temptation helps you beat temptation.

·  Forgive yourself. Beating yourself up makes you behave worse. Self-compassion keeps you going.

And what's the final tip?

Peer pressure is a good thing -- when you use it strategically. Mom wanted you to hang out with the smart kids in school because they provided good examples. Mom was right.

It's simple, really. Hang out with people who you want to be. Procrastinate a lot? Spend more time with uber-productive friends. Want to get in shape? Hang around those healthy-eating gym addicts.

When I spoke to Carlin Flora, author of Friendfluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We Are, she said:

Research shows over time, you develop the eating habits, health habits and even career aspirations of those around you. If you’re in a group of people who have really high goals for themselves you’ll take on that same sense of seriousness. And conversely, if you’re in a group of friends who are not that ambitious, then you too will lower your standards.

Okay, enough talk. Right now, email or text one of those friends you want to be and set a time to hang out.

Friends don't just make us happy. They can also make us better people.


Get started on beating bad habits with friends. Share this with them now and get help with leading a better life. Thank you!

Eric Barker ebarker@ucla.edu

Secrets To Success: 6 Tips From The Most Successful People

What are the secrets to success? Well, successful people work hard. But you work hard too, right?

And if you keep working harder and harder you're just going to be miserable. So what's the answer?

Successful people don't just work hard, they also work different.

So let's see what you and I can learn from extremely successful people who achieve big things -- and hear some really cool stories in the process.

And since we're talking about big accomplishments, it only makes sense that the first thing you and I should do is lift the entire city of Chicago...

1) When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Creative

Extremely successful people make the impossible possible. And they do it by being resourceful. Creative.

The research shows most people don't do what is best, they do what is easy. Successful people, on the other hand, struggle to find a better way.

In the 1800's, Chicago was filthy. Not "it smells in here" filthy, but "people are dying from disease" filthy.

Via How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World:

The effects of all this filth were not just offensive to the senses; they were deadly. Epidemics of cholera and dysentery erupted regularly in the 1850s. Sixty people died a day during the outbreak of cholera in the summer of 1854.

But how do you dig sewers underneath the entire city of Chicago with 19th century technology? Seems impossible. Nope.

Maverick railway engineer Ellis Chesbrough said we'll just lift the whole city. And so he did.

Via How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World:

But here Chesbrough’s unique history helped him come up with an alternate scenario, reminding him of a tool he had seen as a young man working the railway: the jackscrew, a device used to lift multiton locomotives onto the tracks. If you couldn’t dig down to create a proper grade for drainage, why not use jackscrews to lift the city up? Aided by the young George Pullman, who would later make a fortune building railway cars, Chesbrough launched one of the most ambitious engineering projects of the nineteenth century. Building by building, Chicago was lifted by an army of men with jackscrews. As the jackscrews raised the buildings inch by inch, workmen would dig holes under the building foundations and install thick timbers to support them, while masons scrambled to build a new footing under the structure. Sewer lines were inserted beneath buildings with main lines running down the center of streets, which were then buried in landfill that had been dredged out of the Chicago River, raising the entire city almost ten feet on average.

Nothing was shut down. As a 750-ton hotel was lifted, people went about their lives inside -- perhaps only taking a second to marvel at the surreal experience going on beneath them.

Isn't accomplishing huge stuff like this hard? Of course it's hard. But when you try to do things bigger and better you have one enormous advantage: other people's laziness. You're trying to improve and they're not.

Elon Musk realized the same thing in his quest to build a better spacecraft.

NASA always felt you had to have crazy high standards for equipment that would get you into space. Makes sense, but what they didn't do was pay attention to just how much better cheap, off-the-shelf technology had gotten over the years.

Musk believed much of what was being produced now was up to the job. So, ignoring NASA, he tested it. And he was right.

Via Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future:

“Traditional aerospace has been doing things the same way for a very, very long time,” said Drew Eldeen, a former SpaceX engineer. “The biggest challenge was convincing NASA to give something new a try and building a paper trail that showed the parts were high enough quality.” To prove that it’s making the right choice to NASA and itself, SpaceX will sometimes load a rocket with both the standard equipment and prototypes of its own design for testing during flight. Engineers then compare the performance characteristics of the devices. Once a SpaceX design equals or outperforms the commercial products, it becomes the de facto hardware.

This kind of creativity is seen in all types of successful people... even drug dealers.

Yes, drug dealing is illegal but undoubtedly successful, so you can learn some good from the bad.

The Colombian authorities had finally nailed Pablo Escobar. And the judge wouldn't take a bribe. So what did Escobar do? No, he didn't kill him. Pablo got creative.

He hired the judge's brother as his attorney, forcing the judge to recuse himself. The replacement took the bribe.

Via Pirates, Prisoners, and Lepers: Lessons from Life Outside the Law:

Potentially facing a long prison sentence, Escobar tried to bribe the judge, who refused the offer. Escobar then hired the judge’s brother as his attorney, forcing the judge to recuse himself from the case. The next judge accepted Escobar’s bribe.

We often hear a "no" and stop. Or we double down with what didn't work the first time. Wrong.

Do like extremely successful people do: get creative.

So you've stopped banging your head against the wall and you're being innovative. Cool. How do you impress the people who can back your awesome capers? That's easy: stop trying.

2) Don't Be Great. Be Consistently Good.

Everyone wants to look great during that big presentation, to excel during that critical moment.

But that's not how Steve Martin became the king of comedy. He didn't worry about being the best at any particular time.

He focused on improving his skills and being consistently good no matter what the situation.

Via Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life:

I learned a lesson: It was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances.

Yes, Steve Martin. The silly guy on SNL shouting, "We're two wild and crazy guys!" The comedian who performed with a fake arrow through his head.

But in perhaps the height of irony, Martin took being silly very seriously.

Via Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life:

I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success... Enjoyment while performing was rare — enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford.

Focus less on specific opportunities and more on improving your skills every day.

Georgetown professor Cal Newport named his book on expertise after Martin's philosophy: you need to be "So Good They Can't Ignore You." And Steve Martin isn't alone. Jerry Seinfeld said something very similar.

Via Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy:

It’s very easy to get a break. It’s very hard to be good enough.

Most of us think about impressing others at the important moment. But that's all about appearances. Instead, focus on constant improvement and be the real deal. As Jose Narosky said:

Many are the varnish. Few are the wood.

You're working hard to be the best. But what happens if that big moment comes and you don't impress everyone?

3) Use Rejection As Motivation

Any biography of an extremely successful person is a litany of rejection. But they keep going.

Matthew Weiner was a writer on The Sopranos and went on to be the creator of Mad Men. But it wasn't easy to get there. How did he keep going?

He used rejection as fuel to motivate him and he made sure to remember the compliments he got along the way.

Via Getting There: A Book of Mentors:

While being battered always hurts, an important survival mechanism I've acquired over the years is to both thrive on rejections and hold on to compliments. Rejection enrages me, but that "I'll show you!" feeling is an extremely powerful motivator. I'm at a point where I'm afraid that if I lose it I'll stop working. On the flip side, there's nothing like a meaningful compliment from someone you respect.

He tells a great story of how he developed this talent while in the fourth grade.

Via Getting There: A Book of Mentors:

In my youth I was a miserable student and rarely did my homework. My fourth grade teacher once pulled me aside and let me have it. She said, "Talking to you is like talking down the drain; you don't hear anything. You think you are going to make it through the rest of your life because you are charming. You think you don't have to do all the work -- but you do." I remember looking up at her after this tirade and saying, "You think I'm charming?"

So you're fueling your hard work with rejection and remembering the kind words. So how do you get that big break?

4) Working Hard Is The Best Way To Network

Yes, successful people show up early and leave late. But it's not just the hard work that gets them results.

Mike Bloomberg became a billionaire and then the mayor of New York City. He credits long hours but reveals a secondary benefit to being at the office when most people weren't: the only people there are the successful people.

So bring them coffee and make a friend.

Via Getting There: A Book of Mentors:

Be the first one in and the last one out. If you are there early and stay late, you get a chance to talk to people who would not otherwise take your call. I built many relationships by being early. You can call the chairman of the board of almost any company early in the morning. If he's a good chairman, he's there. The secretary's not, so he'll actually answer the phone. The best time to strike is when gatekeepers aren't there! When I started developing Bloomberg, I wanted feedback. So every morning I'd arrive at the deli across the street from Merrill Lynch's headquarters at six a.m. and buy coffee (with and without milk) and tea (with and without milk), plus a few sugars on the side. I'd go up and roam the halls looking to see if there happened to be somebody sitting in their office alone reading a newspaper. I'd walk in and say, "Hi, I'm Mike Bloomberg, I bought you a cup of coffee. I'd just like to bend your ear." Nobody is going to say, "Get outta here" if you just bought him or her a cup of coffee. When someone would occasionally say, "I don't drink coffee, " I would say, "Well, then have a tea."

When you're at the office at 6AM (or still there at 10PM) successful people know you're part of the tribe. So they give you a chance.

But what if you do network with the bigwigs and they don't get behind your plans?

5) Don't Wait For Permission

John Leal knew how to prevent disease: just add chlorine to the water.

Sounds obvious to us now but in 1898 this had never been done. And chlorine is a lethal poison. So basically what people heard was, "HEY EVERYONE, LET'S SYSTEMATICALLY POISON THE WATER SUPPLY!"

And that got the reaction you'd expect. But Leal knew he was right and they were wrong. So...

...he did it anyway.

Via How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World:

In almost complete secrecy, without any permission from government authorities (and no notice to the general public), Leal decided to add chlorine to the Jersey City reservoirs. With the help of engineer George Warren Fuller, Leal built and installed a “chloride of lime feed facility” at the Boonton Reservoir outside Jersey City. It was a staggering risk, given the popular opposition to chemical filtering at the time. But the court rulings had severely limited his timeline, and he knew that lab tests would be meaningless to a lay audience. “Leal did not have time for a pilot study. He certainly did not have time to build a demonstration-scale facility to test the new technology,” Michael J. McGuire writes in his account, The Chlorine Revolution.

It worked. Of course, this got him dragged in front of a judge, which is what happens when you do something that sounds like one of The Joker's plans to attack Gotham City.

But Leal got off and his system was implemented across the US. What was the result?

Via How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World:

They found that clean drinking water led to a 43 percent reduction in total mortality in the average American city. Even more impressive, chlorine and filtration systems reduced infant mortality by 74 percent, and child mortality by almost as much.

Similarly, scientist Barry Marshall believed that ulcers weren't caused by in-laws, they were caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. Of course, nobody listened. So he drank a beaker of the stuff.

He got sick, puked a lot and quickly developed an ulcer. Then he took antibiotics and tah-dah! The ulcer was gone. (Now that's how you deal with haters.)

Marshall and his partner Robin Warren were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2005.

(If you've ever suspected that people develop ulcers on their way to getting a Nobel Prize, well, how very right you are... but probably not the way you imagined.)

No, I'm not saying you should risk poisoning yourself or others but those who achieve success don't wait around for permission. They test things.

And with the internet, testing ideas is now easier than ever. There's really no excuse not to.

When Tim Ferriss was writing his first book he knew he'd need a great title. But the title had to be great to readers, not just to him. So he tested some names. He took out ads on Google with the various titles and saw which one got the most clicks.

The answer surprised him. But that's how The 4-Hour Workweek became a runaway bestseller.

Don't listen if they don't know more than you do. Test.

Some might be saying, "I've done all these things and I'm still not a huge success!" Fine. You can't always have the best solution to every problem. And you don't need to...

6) If You Can't Be #1, Be Clever

Some succeed by merely differentiating. By being clever. Doing things with a panache that people find irresistible.

We all get email receipts and we all ignore them. Why? They're boring. They're just receipts. But Derek Sivers took it to another level by being creative where no one else was.

When you placed an order on CDBaby, what arrived in your email inbox? This...

Via Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday, June 6th. I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

How can you not love that? And CDBaby went on to become the biggest seller of independent music on the internet at that time, racking up over $100 million dollars in sales.

Your stylish angle doesn't have to be the most effective method because it can motivate others to join your efforts.

Let's go back to drug dealers for a second: after Escobar was killed, Colombia was a mess. Crime ran rampant and people didn't trust the government.

Antanas Mockus was elected mayor of Bogotá... and he had no idea what he was doing. He had been a philosophy professor of all things.

He had no experience in politics. In fact, he got elected because he had no experience in politics. Nobody in the country trusted politicians at the time. So what was his solution to lawbreaking?

Mimes.

Yeah, he hired mimes to mock lawbreakers in public. (I'd like to post a peer-reviewed study here but I doubt there is a large body of research on the effectiveness of silent comedy as a tool of the criminal justice system.)

But the people of Colombia loved it.

Via Pirates, Prisoners, and Lepers: Lessons from Life Outside the Law:

Mayor Mockus used inexpensive social pressure — such as mimes who mocked people for jaywalking or silently teased cabbies who clogged intersections — to restore a sense of civil order in Bogotá. He had “thumbs-up” and “thumbs-down” cards printed and distributed around the city so that average citizens could use to cards to actively — and peacefully — bring attention to antisocial or prosocial behavior. For a passerby who helped a mom lift a stroller onto a bus: thumbs-up. For hooligans hassling an old lady: thumbs-down. People loved the cards and used them frequently.

What happened? It got citizens on board with the government. And crime plunged.

Via Pirates, Prisoners, and Lepers: Lessons from Life Outside the Law:

The unconventional measures triggered a new era of safety and trust in public officials. In 1992 only 17 percent of the population claimed to trust the police, but the level of trust increased to 75 percent by 2006. Bogota had more than 81 murders for every 100,000 inhabitants in 1992. That number dropped to just over 16 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012. Bogota today has a murder rate roughly below that of Chicago, where the rate is 19 per 100,000.

Even if you don't have the best solution, if you implement a clever one, people will love you. And if you can motivate people, you can work wonders.

Okay, we've heard some crazy stories and learned a lot. Let's round it up and learn the most important thing that's missing from your personal success system.

Sum Up

Here are some of the secrets to success on an epic scale:

• When the going gets tough, the tough get creative. Don't do more, do different. Lift a city.
• Don't be great, be consistently good. Don't worry about the big break, worry about being good enough.
• Use rejection as motivation. And remember the compliments you receive. You're charming, right?
• Working hard is the best way to network. Bring coffee and tea.
• Don't wait for permission. Don't poison anyone, but test and prove.
• If you can't be #1, be clever. Energizing others with style can beat "the best way." (Mimes are nodding right now.)

But financial success isn't everything. In the end, what makes us happy with our lives is relationships. And who better to explain this than billionaire Warren Buffett?

From : Eric Barker. ebarker@ucla.edu