Modern Maxims for Success

Analyze your motives with the same level of effort you use to justify your choices.

Push back on making a decision as hard as others push you to make it quickly.

If you cannot or will not seek counsel with those you should trust (spouses, close friends, siblings, parents), evaluate either the relationships or yourself.

The greater the impulse to do something or buy something, the longer you should wait to calm down and think about it.

Measure acts by the opportunity cost of what is lost as well as by what is gained.

When told to make a choice from only two options, ask for a third.

Remember that you always have the choice to walk away from jobs, false friends, business offers, bad mentors and bad habits.

Set your goals based on where you want to be in 10 months and 10 years. If a decision doesn’t get you closer to those goals (finished education, happy marriage, health family, financial strength, physical health), don’t do it.

Those calling you selfish for saying “no” are typically selfish people themselves. Those demanding your time, money and help often do so because they are too selfish to do it themselves.

Those making you the most afraid likely have the most to gain by promoting it.

Those who say that others have too much would have much more if they spent as much effort working as they did plotting to take.

The right to free speech is not limited by the desire of others to never be offended or challenged.

Tolerance excludes violence to enforce tolerance.

If your idea of tolerance is forcing others to be silent, you are the intolerant one.

Working for money is not slavery but the opposite - you're free to choose where you work, how you work and how you live.

Tolerance is not acceptance. You can tolerate someone doing something of which you disapprove. You can tolerate misbehavior, but that doesn't make it right.

The person with the most passion is rarely right.

You do not have the right to destroy the property or lives of others in pursuit of your own, grand vision.

Just because you think a brand new world is paradise does not mean others would want to live in it.

When everyone who previously sat back quietly and watched is angry enough to get up, get out of the way.

There is not a right to be bailed out for your own, stupid decisions.

If the world isn't the way you think it should be, the problem may be your thinking, not the world.

If in doubt, don't do it.

Some atheists are more devout than many religious people - treat their beliefs as you would another faith instead of a negotiable logical position.

Tolerate diversity of opinion, as well as every other type.

Others have the right to disagree and be wrong. And their contrary opinions are not an attack on you, though they may face the consequences of being wrong on their own.

What modest maxims would you add to these that help you to succeed?