As you operate your business, you realize that changes are necessary. You have to adapt in order to survive in an inconsistent world. The thing becomes an issue when everyone wants these radical changes, and people either love them or hate them. The crucial way to survive this is to set up wins along the way.

People obsess over this model idea of sitting on the beach, cashing in on millions with your phone while your company pulls in millions a year. They see these dreamboat stories on Snapchat or Instagram and it’s suddenly the American Dream of this century. It’s also a great big lie.

As a businessman, looking into the future is an absolute must. The long term goal is something that weighs heavily in my mind at any point in time. With people relying on me for my trade and my business with employees and their families, I have no choice but to focus on how to keep my business afloat and sailing. Instant oatmeal businesses go as quickly as instant oatmeal.

Unpredictability and chance are two of mankind’s greatest weaknesses, because there’s very little we can do about it. Science says that we cry out of frustration over any other emotion. When you think about it, that’s pretty accurate.

At the intersection of victory and defeat is opportunity. One opportunity, one chance to seize the moment and suddenly you’re on top. This is where patience comes in. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point your opposition will underestimate you or take their eyes off of you and then you have every chance in the world to take it for your own. Maybe all you need is a little boost, support from people who have been in it with you since the beginning.

Life has a habit of going its own way, not our way. When you turn on the news and see the constant and unrelenting flow of misery and sadness, it’s hard to look around and be grateful for the world as it is. Yet, at the end of the day we still have homes, families, friends, and so much else.

We trade our fresh sense of curiosity for the comfort of the reassurance that comes from seeing the sun rise for the thousandth time. In every person’s life there comes the night they go to sleep fearing that the sun won’t come up the next day, only to wake up and understand that nothing will impede the sun from making its voyage across the sky. It’s a natural part of life, aging and growing old doesn’t have to be a sentencing, it’s something that can be savored and enjoyed.

No matter what profession or situation you find yourself in, one of the hardest things for us to do is tackle something by ourselves. It’s one of the unspoken difficulties of being a leader, in fact it’s something most people gloss over, but a lot of the time you are looking down the barrel of a gun at whatever challenge is coming up all by yourself. You don’t have the luxury of taking it on with a well-assembled team, you’re out there fighting all by yourself. You have to learn to be okay to do it by yourself.

Life is what we would call a finite resource--we only have so much of it. We can increase it or decrease it, given the amount of care we take of ourselves, but ultimately there will come a time when we reach our due date. Those of us who have faith and believe realize that there is something that comes after, but that doesn’t mean we should waste the time and opportunities that we have here.

As much as you may want to strangle the snot-nosed brat with a beret ordering a 16-syllable drink at Starbucks, you have to realize for every one of them, there are three others who are hardworking and willing to see what the world has to offer. They don’t know the struggles of the past and how the world has changed, to them the world is inconsistent and equally full of threats and wonder.

Something no one likes, we all wish we could do without, but most of us benefit from in the end: criticism. In your time in school or work, I am sure you’ve had to go through peer review or peer edits, it’s inevitable. We use criticism to help evaluate our shortcomings and our talents to see what we can hone and what we can improve.

The wonderful thing about life is the vast potential it has for someone--anyone to tap into. There are endless capabilities and pathways a person can take. This can be daunting for anyone to realize, so, often we try to limit our scope to the easy and the possible.

Hesitation is the most crippling human affliction, it prevents us from taking the chances we need to seize to move forward. Especially in business, people are harmed by their inability to make a decision. For better or worse, the choices you make are more crucial to your business than staying still.

You either love it or hate it, but it’s one of the most beneficial things you can do. Reading can open the gateway to seemingly infinite knowledge or it can transport us from the dull monotony of our daily life to another world in an instant. Whether it’s reading an informative work or diving into a solid story, reading is one of the most basic methods of self-improvement.

When I started in the industry, 40 hours a week was a bare minimum. Suddenly, it seems like 30-32 hours is the official part time company line. Statistically speaking, the people who are bringing in the real money aren’t working 40 hours a week. They’re working 10, 12, up to 14 hours a day for 7 days a week.

If you live long enough, you’re bound to learn more and more, and it’s amazing how many of us become more religious as we begin to figure it out. When we’re young, we have this superman cape, and as we age, we become wiser and realize we aren’t invincible. We start to fear death; the unknown scares us because we don’t know what we don’t know.

Comfort is a sign of stagnation. If you aren’t uncomfortable, odds are you’re at a plateau. When you climb up a hill, you’re pushing yourself; you’re straining to achieve greater heights—heights you can’t achieve if you’re strolling across a plateau. When I went to my first Austin Builders Association meeting, there were about 500 people gathered there and I felt really uncomfortable and out of place.