Grow Yourself by Meeting People and Reading Books

“Five years from now, you’re the same person except for the people you’ve met and the books you’ve read.” John Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach

I really like this quote. It reminds me that to grow we need to:

1. Meet the right people, and
2. Read the right books

Meet the right people
Meeting the right people is important because you will become more and more like the people around you. The people you meet will influent you, whether it is good or bad. That’s why it is important to carefully choose the people you meet, especially if they are to be your close friends.
Try to surround yourself with positive people. If you want to be a winner, then meet winners. If you want to be successful, then meet successful people. Whenever possible, try to find someone with higher capacity than you. Someone with more experience, more wisdom and more knowledge. These are the people from whom you can learn most. I am always excited whenever I meet someone I can learn from.
Interestingly, everybody has his or her own unique strengths, so chance is someone you meet will have higher capacity than you in certain fields. It means that you can learn from many, many people.
Read the right books
For me, it is the surprising part of the quote. I know reading books is important, but I never thought that it is that important. But after thinking about it for a while, I know that it’s absolutely true.
Reading books is important because in many ways it is the same as meeting people. When you meet someone, you will know and be influenced by her thoughts. In the same way, when you read a book you will know and be influenced by the author’s thoughts. It’s just as if you meet the author and she shares her wisdom and knowledge with you. A valuable experience, right?
What unique about books is you can easily absorb the thoughts of the best people in the world. It may not be easy to meet them personally, but through their books you can deeply know their thoughts. Through their books they speak hours and hours to you. Wow!
Realizing this, I now appreciate reading books even more than before. How else can I deeply know the thoughts of the best people in the world? How else can I learn from their experiences? Through books I can learn from people with much higher capacity than me. They have gone through years in their life to accumulate the wisdom they write in their books, and I can just directly absorb it! What a privilege.
Of course, it is important to read the right books. Just as meeting the right people is important, so is reading the right books. The thoughts in the books can deeply influence you, so you’d better pick only the best.

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Examine Your Life with a Simple Life Map

To get the most of your life, it is important to see how your life is doing. While you can do it at the micro level by looking at your single day or week, it is even more important to see it at the macro level. As I’ve written in Vision – The First Step of Life Optimization, all of us should have a vision, a life purpose, that will guide our whole life and provide measurement of our productivity. The macro level view will allow us to see how our life is doing to meet that vision. Have we done good enough? Or years just pass by without anything significant?

To answer these questions myself, I create “life map” which shows how my life is doing at years level. I just make a simple one. Maybe next time I will think about creating a more complex one, but for now I’m just interested in making a simple one. Anyway, simpler is better, right?
So here’s what I do: I write down several recent years in my life and simply divide each year into two parts, semester 1 and 2 (you can use any other kind of division if you like). Then I write the important events in each semester regarding my life, which are my “life milestones”.
Here is an example:
2005
Semester 1
Passing Microsoft Certified Professional exam.
Semester 2
Starting blog in personal development.
2006
Semester 1
Starting writing book on personal development.
Semester 2
Publishing my first book on personal development.
That’s just an example, not my real life map (I’ll be glad if I already have a book to publish :)). But I think the idea is clear: simply write the important events in your life. Of course, the definition of “important” here can be different for each person. So simply write the events which are important for you.
This life map enables you to get a bird-eye view of your life and how your life is doing. With this bird-eye view, you can see:

1. Whether or not you have wisely used your years
   I think this is probably the most useful thing I can get from the life map. Personally I can see that I have underutilized my recent years. People often talk about not wasting a day, but here we are talking about wasting years! How bad is that? Fortunately, this life map can give me clear warning so I can avoid repeating those mistakes in the future. The same thing applies to you. Using the life map you can clearly see whether you have wisely used your years or not.
2. Where you should go next
   Since you now get the big picture, it is easier to see where you should go next. You are looking at the whole path you have passed, so it is easier to guess where the next step should be. It will help you plan your current and coming years better.

It’s simple, right? It won’t take you much time to create such kind of map. Yet this simple practice of making a life map can prevent you from wasting not just days and weeks, but years.


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A Stone Age Called "the Internet Age"

I always think that our current civilization is advanced. I even leave a comment recently saying that I believe this time will have special spot in human history. Why? Because advances like the Internet has improved human civilization like never before.
That is before I come across the Kardashev scale though. I’ve now changed my mind. I think our civilization is actually very, very “primitive”.

What is Kardashev scale? Kardashev scale is a measurement of how technologically advanced a civilization is. It is measured based on the amount of energy which can be harnessed by the civilization. There are three categories in Kardashev scale:

• Type I: a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available in a single planet.
• Type II: a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single star (which in our case is the sun).
• Type III: a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single galaxy (which in our case is Milky Way with its 200 billion stars).

Our civilization hasn’t even reached Type I! Far from it. Thus our civilization is just called Type 0. Scientists predicted that we will achieve Type I by year 2200 and Type II by year 5200 (3000 years after type I!). What about Type III? Due to the limitation of speed of light, it might be even millions of years away.
This makes me think. I thought our civilization is very advanced. But I imagine that a Type I civilization will look back at our civilization the same way we now look at 1000-years-ago civilization. And I imagine that a Type II civilization will look back at our civilization the same way we now look back at the stone age! Our civilization with all its achievements is just a stone age for them! Here is a stone age called “the Internet age”.
Lesson for Personal Development
I think we often do the same thing with our personal development. We may think that we already know quite a lot, have a lot of experiences and so on. Or maybe we think that we have already reached 30%, 40% or 50% of our potential.
This is the problem: we look to short ahead! Go, climb a mountain, and see how vast the world is. Already reach 30% of your potential? Come on, maybe you have reached only 1%, or even less. Don’t look to short ahead.
This makes me excited. Why? Because I can be far, far more than what I currently imagine. I can be far beyond my limited imagination. There is no boundary on what I and you can achieve.
If you doubt it, just remember this: even our Internet age with all its achievements is actually nothing but a stone age.


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What is the Most Important Skill to Have?

I’m thinking about this question lately: what is the most important skill we need to have? What kind of skill do we need most in this kind of world? To answer it, I guess we need to see what the main characteristic of our world is.
What words will you use to describe this world? For me, there are two words which come to my mind: change and speed. The world is changing and it is changing at increasing speed.

Since we are now living in that kind of world, I once thought that the most important skill is the ability to learn quickly. Of course it contains truth: to be able to keep up with this world we need to learn quickly. This way we can quickly adapt to new changes whenever they occur.
But later I thought that the ability to learn quickly alone is not enough. The world is changing so fast that even those who can learn quickly may not be able to keep up. There’s one more thing required: the ability to choose what to learn. This way we won’t waste our time learning something which is not useful. We learn only those things which are the most effective for us. The number of new things to learn is huge that choosing which one to learn becomes increasingly difficult. Mastering the art of choosing what to learn is valuable because it will save our time – not to say our entire career.
So to summarize, I think this is the most important skill we need to have: the ability to choose what to learn and to learn them quickly. If we master this skill, we will be ready to face whatever new waves coming in our way.
If you have other thoughts about what you think is the most important skill, feel free to share them in the comments.



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If You Can Get Into the Essence of Productivity, Why Not Trim the Fat?

In my post about the two simple rules of productivity, I wrote that:

With these two rules in place, the purpose of the rest of your productivity system (such as calendar and to-do list) is actually nothing but to help you figure out what the most important task at any given time is.

There is actually a hidden implication of this statement. If you somehow can figure out what your most important task at any given time is, you don’t even need a productivity system. Why do you need a productivity system if you already have what the system tries to provide?
I think it explains why some people are known for their ‘unstructured’ productivity. Darren Rowse from Problogger for example, said that he is “incredibly spontaneous and often work out of this”. Even Bill Gates said that he is “not big on to-do list”. I also know some other people who simply follow their intuition in doing their work.
The lesson is, you should find the simplest possible productivity system that works for you. What is the simplest possible system you need to help you figure out what your most important task at any given time is? Or maybe you don’t even need a system?
Just don’t waste your time trying to implement a productivity system you do not need.


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Five Areas of Life You Should Balance To Live the Fullest of Life

The key to living your life to the fullest is balance. How can you live your life to the fullest if one or more areas of your life suffer? For example, maybe you are successful in your career. But will it matter if your family life is not happy? Or maybe you are a very knowledgeable person. But will it matter if your body is sick?
To live your life to the fullest, I believe there are five areas of life you need to develop in balance. Those five areas are spirituality, mind, body, relationship, and work. Here are the details:

1. SpiritualityThis area deals with your conscience, values, and principles. It also deals with your relationship with the infinite. Your spirituality is where your life purpose and meaning comes from. In my opinion, the fact that it gives meaning to your life makes it the most important of all five. But it doesn’t mean that you should focus on only developing your spirituality. Even if your spirituality is strong, you won’t live your life to the fullest if you do not develop the other four areas in balance.
2. Mind
   This area deals with your desire to learn. In this fast-changing world, your ability to absorb new skill and knowledge become increasingly important (in fact, I think this is the most important skill you should master). To have a strong desire to learn, be sure to develop your intellectual hunger.
3. BodyThis area deals with your physical health. Since your body is the mean through which you conduct your actions, it is important to keep your body in tip-top shape. Not only you should prevent yourself from being sick, you should also thrive to have the high-level of energy you need to accomplish your tasks with speed and enthusiasm.
4. RelationshipThis area deals with your relationships with your family, friends, and colleagues. As I wrote in 5 Reasons Why Relationships Should be Your Top Priority, relationships are what make your life beautiful. The greatest feeling of fulfillment doesn’t come from your achievements; it comes from your relationships.
5. Work
   This area deals with your career and achievements. This is the output of your life; your productivity is measured here. If you want to be a productive person, you should increase your output in this area.

These five areas serve as a framework for me to build my life on. What I want is strong and balanced growth in all these areas. To grow my life in all of them, I allocate my daily time around them. I have my blocks of time for spirituality, mind, body, relationship, and work. Whenever I feel that I under develop one area, I will put more effort to it.
I have used this framework for months and I do feel the benefit. Again, the key is balance.


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106 Tips to Become a Master Connector

To succeed, who you know is just as important as what you know. In fact, relationships should be your top priority. The book Never Eat Alone talks about how to apply the timeless principles of relationships in the 21st century. It contains a lot of practical tips on how you could thrive in today’s world through your relationships. It’s one of the best books I read recently.
To give you the only gems, I’ve summarized what I learn from the book into 106 tips. Put these tips into practice and you will be a master connector who live a successful and fulfilling life:

1. Make other people more successful Real networking is about finding ways to make other people more successful. It is sharing your knowledge and resources, time and energy, friends and associates, and empathy and compassion in a continual effort to provide value to others, while coincidentally increasing your own.
2. Work hard to give more than you get
   It’s the value you bring that makes people want to connect with you. All this takes work. It means you have to think hard not only about yourself but also about other people.
3. Don’t keep score Don’t think of relationships as finite. In fact, it’s the exercising of equity that builds equity. There is no score to keep when abundance leads to even more abundance.
4. Remember that the key to success is generosity The currency of real networking is not greed but generosity.
5. Find your mission in life
   Intersection of your talents and desires is your “blue flame”. Which activities excite you the most, where you don’t even notice the hours that pass?
6. Be specific about what you want The more specific you are about what you want to do, the easier it becomes to develop a strategy to accomplish it.
7. Make setting goals a habit
   Something as simple as a clearly defined goal could distinguish you from all others. The kind of discipline that turns a dream into a mission, really just comes down to a process of setting goals.
8. Create a Relationship Action Plan There is a process involved in building a network. Your Relationship Action Plan consist of three sections:
   1. Your goals up to three years from now in three months increments.
   2. Names of people that could help you reach each goal.
   3. Strategies to reach the people you list in point 2.
   Once you have your plan, post it in a place where you will see it on regular basis.
9. Create a Personal “Board of Advisors”
   It helps to have enlightened counselors who will hold you accountable. They are your Personal “Board of Advisors”.
10. Build your network before you need it Reach out to others long before you need anything at all. The most important thing is to get to know those people as friends, not as potential customers.
11. Start connecting with the people you do know
    At the outset, concentrate on the people who are already part of your existing network.
12. Be bold
    Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Audacity was often the only thing that separated two equally talented men and their job titles.
13. Be willing to ask
    Nothing in your life could create opportunity like a willingness to ask, whatever the situation. Until you become as willing to ask for help as you are to give it, you are only working half the equation. Remember that the worst anyone can say is no.
14. Balance your fear Mustering the audacity to talk with people who don’t know you often simply comes down to balancing the fear you have of embarrassment against the fear of failure. It’s between choosing risk and striving for greatness, or risking nothing and being certain of mediocrity.
15. Treat people with respect Treat people with respect up and down the ladder.
16. Be transparent
    Openness has become a valuable and much-sought-after attribute.
17. Make friends Those who are best at it don’t network – they make friends. A widening circle of influence is an unintended result, not a calculated aim.
18. Do your homework
    Spectacular achievement is always preceded by spectacular preparation. Whom you meet, how you meet them, and what they think of you afterward should not be left to chance.
19. Be informed about whom you meet
    If you are informed enough to step comfortably into their world and talk knowledgeably, their appreciation will be tangible. The idea is to find a point of common ground that is deep and rich. Then you’ll have an opportunity to bond and impress.
20. Find out others’ interests Find a way to become part of those things that are of most interest to them, and you will have found a way to become part of their life.
21. Don’t eat alone
    Food has a unique ability to facilitate conversation. Eating with other people is an effective way to build relationships.
22. Organize and manage your information
    The successful organization and management of the information that makes connecting flourish is vital. If you’re organized, focused, and a stickler for taking names, there’s no one that’s out of reach.
23. Make lists
    Create lists in your own categories (such as potential customers, potential acquirers, etc) that correspond to your goals. When you make such lists, it’s important you name the actual decision makers, and not just an organization.
24. Know the most important players in your field To make your goals possible, map the most important players in your field. Write down a list of “influentials” in that field.
25. List the people you already know
    Take time to list the people you already know such as: relatives, current colleagues, people you went to school with, former teachers, former employers, and so on.
26. Be flexible in organizing your information
    The way you organize your lists can be fluid. You could have lists by geographical location, by industry, whether they’re acquaintance or friend, and so on.
27. Use other people’s lists to make your listsOne great resource for making lists is other people’s lists. Newspapers and magazines do rankings of this sort all the time.
28. Create “aspirational contacts” list Another category you might want to add is “aspirational contacts”. These are those extremely high-level people you want to know someday.
29. Just plunge right in to cold call
    When you are about to cold call, your fears will never be completely quieted. The trick is to just plunge right in. Envision yourself winning to win. You have to view getting to know new people as a challenge and an opportunity.
30. Be persistent Frequently, people won’t get back to you when you call or write them. You have to put your ego aside and persist in calling or writing. It is up to you to take the initiative. Sometimes, you have to be aggressive.
31. Make warm calls
    Use these four rules for warm calling:
    1. Convey credibility: mention a familiar person or institution.
    2. State your value proposition: what can you do for them?
    3. Impart urgency and convenience: in most instances, the sole objective of the cold call is to get an appointment.
    4. Be prepared to offer a compromise: go big at the outset, leaving room for compromise.
32. Make the gatekeeper an ally rather than an adversary
    Treat the gatekeepers with the dignity they deserve. Never, ever get on their bad side.
33. Never, ever disappearIn building a network, remember: Above all, never, ever disappear. Invisibility is a fate far worse than failure.
34. Work hard to remain visible and active Keep your social and conference and event calendar full. You must work hard to remain visible and active among your ever-budding network of friends and contacts.
35. Clone an event
    You have to work hard to be successful at reaching out to others, but it doesn’t mean you have to work long. Clone an event to save time. You clone an event by inviting all the people you want to meet to join you.
36. Have fun Building network should be fun, not time-consuming.
37. Share your passions Shared interests are the basic building blocks of any relationship. When you are truly passionate about something, it’s contagious.
38. Emphasize on the quality of time Friendship is created out of the quality of time spent between two people, not the quantity.
39. Follow up or fail
    When you meet someone with whom you want to establish a relationship, take the extra little step to ensure you won’t be lost in their mental attic. Follow-up is the key to success in any field.
40. Do your first follow up soon Give yourself between 12 and 24 hours after you meet someone to follow up. E-mail is a fine tool for dropping a quick note.
41. Don’t forget to do your second follow-up In a month’s time, drop the person another e-mail, just to keep in touch.
42. Spend your time at conferences to meet people An all-too-common misperception is conferences are places to find insight. Wrong. Conferences are good for mainly one thing: they provide a forum to meet like-minded people.
43. Be a conference commando
    Don’t just be an attendee; be a conference commando. A conference commando is prepared in advance with information on who they were to meet, how, and where.
44. Give speeches Giving speeches is one of the easiest and most effective ways to get yourself remembered.
45. Collect as many follow-ups as you canDon’t be the persons that shadow their best friends the entire conference. Collect as many follow-ups as you can.
46. Connect with super-connectors Some people know many, many more people than the rest of us. Such people should be the cornerstones to any flourishing network. Once you become friendly with a super-connector, you’re only two degrees away from thousands of different people.
47. Get as many acquaintances as you can Often the most important people in our network are those who are acquaintances. Why? Because our close friends seldom know information that we don’t already know. The more acquaintances you have, the more powerful you are.
48. Know people from many different worlds The key is not only that we know thousands of people but that we know thousands of people in many different worlds, and we know them well enough to give them a call.
49. Exchange your network with someone else’s The most efficient way to enlarge your circle of friends is to connect your circle with someone else’s.
50. Create your own host committees
    Politicians have what are called “host committees”: group of well-connected people in their respective worlds. If you want more access to a world, see if you can find a central figure within that world to act as your own one-person host committee.
51. Build your “verbal fluency” “Verbal fluency” – the ability to confidently make conversation with anyone in any situation – is a common trait among the most accomplished people. “Getting-along skills,” more than anything else, determined who got ahead.
52. Be yourself
    When it comes to making an impression, differentiation is the name of the game. One guaranteed way to stand out: be yourself. Charm is simply a matter of being yourself. Your uniqueness is your power.
53. Use the power of vulnerability Vulnerability is one of the most underappreciated assets in business today. The power of the vulnerability principle in the art of making small talk is surprising.
54. Talk from your heart When you realize the best icebreaker is a few words from the heart, the act of starting a conversation becomes far less daunting.
55. Learn the power of nonverbal cuesYou have about ten seconds before a person decides, subconsciously, whether they like you or not. In that short period of time you don’t exchange a lot of words; their judgment is mostly based on nonverbal communication.
56. Develop conversational currency
    Be prepared to have something to say. Keep up with current events. Cultivate some niche interest.
57. Learn to listen One should seek first to understand, then to be understood.
58. Always remember the other person’s nameNothing is sweeter to someone’s ears than their own name.
59. Be sincere
    The surest way to become special in others’ eyes is to make them feel special.
60. Try to find out what motivations drive the other person In your initial conversation with someone, try to find out what motivations drive that person. It often comes down to one of three things: making money, finding love, or changing the world.
61. Help someone accomplish his or her deepest desires
    Initial invitation is just to connect strongly enough with other people to help them address the issues that matter to them most.
62. Make yourself indispensable to othersReal power comes from being indispensable. Indispensability comes from being a switchboard, parceling out as much information, contacts, and goodwill to as many people – in as many different worlds – as possible.
63. Start thinking about how you’re going to make everyone around you successfulWhen someone mentions a problem, try to think of solutions. The solutions come from your experience and knowledge, and your tool kit of friends and associates.
64. Take the initiative to help Don’t wait to be asked to help. Just do it.
65. Be a knowledge broker Performing social arbitrage when your financial and relational resources are thin is actually not too big a hurdle. The solution is knowledge. The ability to distribute knowledge in a network is a fairly easy skill to learn.
66. Be interested to others’ success You can be more successful in two months by becoming really interested in other people’s success than you can in two years trying to get other people interested in your own success (Dale Carnegie).
67. Ping all the time 80 percent of building and maintaining relationships is just staying in touch (or “pinging”). Pinging takes effort. You have to keep pinging and pinging and pinging and never stop. You have to feed the fire of your network or it will wither or die.
68. Repeat and repeat again Becoming front and center in someone’s mental Rolodex is contingent on one invaluable little concept: repetition.
69. Create a rating system
    One way to make maintaining easier is to create a rating system for the network that corresponds to how often you reach out. For example:
    1. A “1″ gets contacted at least each month.
    2. A “2″ gets a quarterly call or e-mail.
    3. A “3″ gets reached at least once a year.
70. Integrate pinging into your workflow The important thing is that you build the concept of pinging into your workflow.
71. Be personal Always try to make any message as personal as possible.
72. Don’t forget birthdays Birthdays should be one of your favorite pinging occasions.
73. Get anchor tenants for your dinner parties We all have developed relationships with older, wiser, more experienced people. They are “anchor tenants”. Get them to add a little electricity to your dinner party.
74. Be interesting Virtually everyone new you meet in a situation is asking themselves a variation on one question: “Would I want to spend an hour eating lunch with this person?”
75. Be a person of content Content involves a much more specialized form of knowledge. It’s your differentiation. It’s the message that will make your brand unique. Have a unique point of view.
76. Be relentless in learning and presenting your content What will set you apart from everybody else is the relentlessness you bring to learning and presenting and selling your content.
77. Acquire content from someone else’s
    On some occasions, you can acquire content by simply appropriating another person’s innovative ideas and become a leader in distributing and applying those ideas.
78. Develop your own content On other occasions, you have to develop the content from scratch. That means taking all the disparate dots of information and connecting them in a way others have not.
79. Get the attention Once a resonating pitch is perfected, getting attention is less of a problem. Simply give the press what they need: great stories.
80. Be an expert The easiest route to become content creators is by expertise.Do what experts do: teach, write, and speak about your expertise.
81. Teach what you want to learn There’s no better way to learn something, and become an expert at it, than to have to teach it.
82. Use stories to communicate your content Powerful content communicated in a compelling story can energize your network to help you achieve your mission. In your stories, use emotion to convince your doubters.
83. Have a personal brand
    A powerful brand – built not on a product but on a personal message – is a competitive advantage. Good personal brands do three things: they provide a credible, distinctive, and trustworthy identity.
84. Be distinct or extinct Your brand articulates what you have to offer, why you’re unique, and gives a distinct reason for others to connect with you.
85. Focus on adding value To become a brand, you’ve got to become relentlessly focused on what you do that adds value. That means going above and beyond what’s called for.
86. Develop your Personal Branding Message What do you want people to think when they hear or read your name? Your positioning message should include a list of words that you want people to use when referring to you.
87. Package the brand Looks count, so you’d better look polished and professional. And why not create a personal Web site?
88. Broadcast your brand
    If you don’t promote yourself, no one else will. Like it or not, your success is determined as much by how well others know your work as by the quality of your work.
89. Start building relationships with the media You have to start today building relationships with the media before you have a story you’d like them to write.
90. Trumpet the message, not the messengerAll your efforts at publicity need to feed into your mission, not your ego.
91. Do collaborative writing If you have any writing skills at all, you can get close to almost anyone by doing a piece on them, or with them. By writing collaboratively, you’re expanding your network exponentially with contacts that otherwise might have seemed out of reach.
92. Write articles Writing articles can be a great boost for your career. It provides instant credibility and visibility.
93. Be a good writer by keep writing To become a writer: “Write, then write some more. When you’re done – and here’s the kicker – keep writing.”
94. Go for the big names
    Are you only connecting with field mice? If you are, start turning your attention to reaching out to the sort of important people that can make a difference in your life and the lives of others.
95. Build trust to get close to power Trust is the essential element to get close to power; trust that you have no ulterior motives behind your approach; trust that you’ll deal with them as people and not as stars.
96. Join associations
    There is an association for everything. If you want to meet the movers and shakers directly, you have to become a joiner.
97. Build your own club Sometimes all clubs that seemed worth attending have their doors closed. There’s no reason not to build your own. Figure out what your unique selling proposition is, and start an organization. Invite those people you want to meet to join you.
98. Be humble
    Arrogance is a disease that can betray you into forgetting your real friends and why they’re so important. Be humble in your hike up the mountain. Help others up the mountain along with and before you.
99. Reach back to your past Reach back into your past regularly to touch base with the folks who have meant so much to you since you were a kid.
100. Find mentors
     Finding a talented, experienced mentor who is willing to invest the time and effort to develop you as a person and a professional is far more important than making career decisions based purely on salary or prestige.
101. Learn from many people There isn’t just one special person to be all things at all times. Mentors are all around you.
102. Build a successful mentoring relationship A successful mentoring relationship needs equal parts utility and emotion. Utility means promising something in return to your mentor. Emotion means your mentor becomes emotionally invested in your advancement.
103. Find mentees
     As much as you stretch yourself by reaching up, be sure you are stretching just as far to reach back and help others. You can learn so much from your mentees.
104. Hold your principles Connecting should advance, rather than compromise, your principles. Your determination to connect with others should never come at the expense of your values.
105. Don’t try to balance your professional and personal life Balance is a myth. Real connecting insists that you bring the same values to every relationship. As such, dividing your life between professional and personal spheres no longer made sense.
106. Build close relationships How many people can walk into your homes and just open up the fridge and help themselves? It is close relationships like these that keep you well-adjusted, happy, and successful.

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