40 universal truths for success in business and your career

Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2018, and its description of Julie Bort as a journalist for 20 years in this latest stage at Business Insider reflects her situation as of 2013.

There are universal truths in business, just as there is universal advice that, if applied, should work for anyone in any business or career.

Julie Bort has been a journalist for 20 years, most recently at Business Insider. Over that time, she says, she has interviewed and written about thousands of people at different stages of their success, from millionaires to entrepreneurs just launching a tech business, and even a young man who launched his business while fighting brain cancer.

All of that led Julie to write 40 universal truths for success in general (and in business and careers in particular), which I completely agree with; we had already covered many of them in previous articles.

These, then, are the universal truths of success.

See also: 8 inspiring truths for achieving success in any field

1. Be passionate about your work. If your work is meaningful to you, your working life will be a constant joy.

2. If you can’t be passionate about the work itself, try to be passionate about the reasons you do it. Maybe you don’t love your job, company or profession, but the money and benefits are good and necessary for your family. At least feel passion for your choice to make sacrifices in order to do right by your family.

3. If something needs to change, lead that change. If you don’t like your job but feel trapped in it, work on gaining the skills that will help you break free.

4. Start small and build from there.

5. Do the obvious, easy things first, then move on to the harder ones.

6. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Improve it.

7. The hardest lessons to learn are when to keep going and when to stop. Nobody can teach you that. When the time comes, you will have to choose.

8. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing the same way and expecting a different result. If the result isn’t good, change something in how you execute.

9. Nobody succeeds alone.

10. Ask for help. Be specific when you ask for help. Be gracious and grateful when the help arrives.

11. Surround yourself with positive people and you will get a positive result.

See also: The key to success with the Seinfeld strategy

12. Embrace diversity. The best way to make up for your own weaknesses is to choose colleagues whose strengths differ from yours and from one another’s.

13. People experience the world differently. Two people can attend the same meeting and come away with different impressions. Don’t fight it. Use it.

14. You don’t have to like someone to treat them with respect and courtesy.

15. No matter what you do or how much you achieve, there will always be people who have more.

16. There will always be people who have less, too.

17. If you spend most of your time using your talent and doing things you are good at, you are more likely to be happy.

18. If you spend most of your time trying to fix your weaknesses, you are very likely to get frustrated.

19. Practice is the one true way to master a new skill. Be patient with yourself while you learn something new.

See also: 5 keys to achieving excellence

20. The only way to stay “fresh” and agile is to keep learning new things every day.

21. Learning new things means being a beginner, and that means making mistakes.

22. The more open you are to making beginner’s mistakes, the more easily you will learn new things.

23. You will never have all the resources (time, money, people…) you would like for your company or project. Nobody ever has all the resources they need. Accept it.

24. A lack of resources is not an excuse. It is a blessing in disguise, because you will have to be creative.

25. Creativity and innovation are skills that can be learned and practiced by doing the usual things in a new way.

26. You will have to take calculated risks.

27. In the early stages of a company, career or project, you have to learn to say YES to a lot of things. In later stages, you have to learn to say NO to a lot of things.

28. Negative feedback is necessary. Don’t reject it automatically. Examine the truly constructive criticism and then ignore the rest.

29. Treat your dream as your ultimate roadmap. You don’t have to reach your dream right away, but the only way to get there is to take many steps toward it.

30. How long it takes you to create something matters less than how valuable and useful it will be once it exists.

31. One of the secrets of success is this: share your plans with other people and keep those same people updated on them.

32. Grow your network. Make an effort to meet new people and stay in touch with the ones you know.

33. No matter how successful you have become or how high you have climbed, you can still fail, and fail big.

34. Failure is not a bad thing. It is part of the process.

35. Things almost always go wrong at some point. The only way to avoid getting hurt is to plan for when it happens.

36. Learn to say “NO” respectfully but firmly.

37. Say “YES” as often as you can.

38. No matter how rich, famous or successful someone is, inside that person is a human being with hopes, dreams and fears, just like you.

39. Getting what you want doesn’t mean you will be happy. Happiness is the art of being grateful for what we already have.

40. Focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want.

Further reading

• 26 lessons to prepare your child for the real world
• 10 wise lessons from the best executive of the century
• 50 inspiring quotes from successful business leaders for entrepreneurs

Featured image: The Fun Chronicles, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.