10 Simple Golden Rules for Life and Work

Success is a journey, not a destination. There is no way to predict the outcome of any endeavor, and it's important to be ready for difficulties and setbacks along the way. The following ten rules will help you keep your perspective and stay on track when work gets tough or life throws you an unexpected curveball.

1) A bad day at work is not the end of the world.

Whenever you have the opportunity to work on a meaningful project, you should be extremely grateful. Many people in the world would love to have the chance to do what you're doing, so don't take it for granted. The most successful and admired people in history often worked long hours and dealt with nagging bosses or colleagues, unreasonable demands from customers and clients, difficult family situations and all sorts of other problems yet they still managed to find satisfaction and fulfillment.

Focus on doing a great job every day without complaining or assuming that something is going wrong if your circumstances change.

2) A bad month is not a bad year.

It's possible to look back at a single month or even a year and see only negative aspects. Every employee who was passed over for promotion, every worker who was laid off and every entrepreneur whose company failed lost money, opportunity and time and perhaps worse during that period. Yet these aren't the best ways to measure the value of an experience. Sure, it's important to learn from your mistakes, but don't think about setbacks as total defeats because you'll lose perspective.

3) A bad year is not a bad lifetime.

Many people make the mistake of looking at one bad year and concluding that this was a catastrophe from which they will never recover. In fact, many other people make far worse mistakes during their lifetime and even die happy. We should all strive to reach the highest levels of income, level of wealth and good health that we can each obtain.

The more time you spend worrying about failures in the past or projecting too much doom and gloom into your future, the less time you'll be able to turn your energy toward building a better life now.

4) A bad decade is not a bad life.

Most people spend their entire lives in one decade; most of us can't wait to die. Yet many people interpret a bad decade like the current one, which has been marked with two wars, rising unemployment and a stock market crash as the worst thing that ever happened to them.

A home foreclosed on, bankruptcy declared or wasted opportunities are not things that everyone experiences; they're personal disasters that show up only in the stormiest minds. Don't focus on what's going wrong now but instead plan for positive change in the years to come by making better choices today.

5) A bad day doesn't mean you're an awful person.

On bad days, you might end up disappointing people or hurting their feelings, but this doesn't mean you're a bad person. When it comes to the people who work with and around you, it's important to remember that they know what a good person looks like and they won't actually define you by your worst moments. If you treat your coworkers with respect and kindness, they will be inclined to treat you with respect and kindness in return.

6) A bad month doesn't mean that you're a failure.

Dismissing yourself as a failure for having one bad month is just as foolish as writing yourself off for one bad year or decade. No matter how successful you are it's possible to have occasional setbacks, but these won't matter if you learn from them and move forward. Life is full of ups and downs, and while it's nice to be on an upward trend most of the time, the occasional dip can help make things better in the long run by keeping us humbled.

7) A bad year doesn't mean that you're worthless.

Many people interpret a bad year as indicating that they are meaningless or worthless, but this isn't true. The things you do right now can make an important difference in the world, and if you can learn from your mistakes, your mistakes may become the building blocks of success for someone else down the road.

In some ways, all of us are on a journey to become greater people we all have something to teach and we all have something to learn. We may experience some setbacks along the way, but if we keep our eyes on our goals, it's possible to reach them at last.

8) A bad year or decade doesn't mean you're a bad person.

When bad things happen, they usually happen to average people who just happened to be born during the wrong time period. Although we can't change the past, there's no reason we should let today's problems define our futures. Yes, there are those individuals who waste their lives in ways that bring little value to others and even harm themselves, but that's not representative of the typical person.

If you set realistic expectations for yourself based on your current situation and continue to seek out opportunities for advancement and learning in every area of life, you'll find no shortage of reason for optimism about the future.

9) You will fail at some point.

Even the most successful people in history failed at times. If you don't fail from time to time, you're not really trying anything new and you're probably not maximizing your potential. Don't let fear of failure paralyze your decision-making process or take any joy out of life. Simply try your best to avoid making bad decisions, take a step back if necessary and try again with a better approach the next time around.

10) The future is uncertain but exciting.

Most of us know that things will change in the future, but we tend to forget that change is often good. We're never going to be able to predict every twist and turn that life will take, but we can always find a way to adapt and make the best choices possible. In the same way, a pessimist focuses too much on negative outcomes, but an optimist focuses on possibilities. Always anticipate positive changes in the future and you'll automatically create more opportunities for yourself.

Conclusion

There are plenty of people who look at the world in a wholly negative way. We may hear them complain about bad sons in law or bad bosses or just bad luck. In the process, they ignore the fact that they have good sons-in-law and good bosses and good luck not to be killed by a falling meteorite. The truth is that we all need to focus on what's positive in our lives, even if there are also some negative elements along with it. After all, it's those little things that add up over time to give our lives meaning and joy.