Students, if you were to list your five most successful and fulfilling achievements—a good grade on a test, a raise at your part-time job, a learned skill in something that matters to you—what would you learn from it? What behaviors led to the success? How can you apply those approaches to other areas of your life?
Successful people get that way in part because they learn from the inevitable failure that comes with repeatedly embracing challenges where they might not succeed. But they also know that success comes with its own valuable lessons.
This isn’t about pushing yourself to get better at everything all the time. It’s important to savor your successes and not to instinctively demand that you do even more all the time.
But the thrill that comes along with success is motivational fuel. And recycling the behaviors that lead to that success makes your fuel more efficient.