9780132287517

Imagine meeting more than 300 people who've made a profound difference: not for weeks or months, but for decades. Imagine discovering what they've got in common, distilling it into a set of simple practices, and using them to transform your life. You've just imagined Success Built to Last. The culmination of the world's most thorough research project on lifelong success, this book draws on in-person conversations with hundreds of the world's most remarkable human beings. Authored by three legends in leadership and self-help - including Built to Last co-author Jerry Porras - it challenges conventional wisdom at every step.

Foreword by Senator John McCain

Acknowledgements

Introduction From Built to Last to Success Built to Last

The Mandela Effect

Why Peter Drucker believed leadership is a pointless conversation without an understanding of what success means

Chapter 1: From Great to Lasting—Redefining Success

What high achievers don't tell you about success and survival that you really need to know

How success can betray you

Why celebrity is synonymous with short-term marriages and long-term addictions

The teen detective and the ravishing redhead reporter

PART I: MEANING—HOW SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE STAY SUCCESSFUL

Chapter 2: Love it or Lose—Passions and the Quest for Meaning

You're not safe in that safe job

Why it's dangerous not to do what you love

Lovers finish first

Why Warren Buffet thinks the way most folks build their careers is like saving up sex for old age

Chapter 3: Portfolio of Passions—It's Not About Balance

There's NOT just one thing to do with your life

Why balance is bullshit Stealth passions and the power of peripheral thinking

Why Google pays you to play on the job

Transforming lives for 64 cents apiece

The paranoid survive, but the passionate prosper

Chapter 4: Why Successful People Stay Successful—Integrity to Meaning

Don't treat passion like a trivial pursuit

Practice integrity to what matters to you

The reinvention of three ex-presidents

What a billionaire Sex Pistols marketer and the celibate Dalai Lama have in common

PART II: THOUGHTSTYLES-EXTREME MAKEOVERS START IN YOUR HEAD

Chapter 5: The Silent Scream—Why It's So Damn Hard to Do What Matters

When it's not considered a worthy career

The allure of Bright Shiny Objects

The seduction of competence

How we're more obsessed with being loved than being what we love

The tyranny of the OR

If you haven't found your lover yet, keep looking

Chapter 6: The Cause Has Charisma—You Don't Have to Be Charismatic to Be Successful

Give me liberty or give me death—how Norma chose between her calling and suicide

Decolonizing your mind

When the cause has charisma, shrinking violets bloom in public

Dr. Doolittle and the silverback gorilla

Whatever you are, be a great one

The world would be a darker place without you

Why self-esteem is highly overrated

Chapter 7: The Tripping Point—Always Make New Mistakes

When successful people sound like losers

Positive thinking can hurt you

How to harvest failure

Why Yoda is so misunderstood

When the going gets tough, feelings come last

There is a dark side to every best practice

Persistence can be just another addiction

How innovation is failure sped up

Chapter 8: Wounds to Wisdom—Trusting Your Weaknesses and Using Your Core Incompetencies

There is no cure

Don't use a weakness as a reason to distrust yourself

You can't have it all until you use all you have

Finding greatness at the intersection of pain and passion

Don't make the future pay the debts of the past

Beyond blame—creating a future that matters

PART III: ACTIONSTYLES-TURNING PASSION INTO ACTION

Chapter 9: Earning Your Luck—Preparing for Serendipity by Using Big Hairy Audacious Goals

Why you have to earn your luck

The myth of authenticity

How big, hairy, audacious goals help you prepare for serendipity

Too much presidential information

Bold risks measured in small steps

When bad goals happen to good people

The secret life of goals

Chapter 10: Naked Conversations—Harvesting Contention

Why enduringly successful people seek it out

Contention as an employee perk

Turning your next fight into a feast

Making sure the best idea wins

Don't be right—be effective

It's all about shining eyes

Chapter 11: Creating Alignment—The Environment Always Wins

Anything worth doing can't be done alone

Recruiting a team to your dream

Relationships built to last

Why you really are only as good as your people

Don't believe in words—believe in behaviors

In search of the miraculous

Understanding incentives really matters

The final secret

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out—A Look at the Research Behind Success Built to Last

Endnotes

Biographical Index

Index

What is included with this book?

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From Built to Last to Success Built to Last ForewordAlthough success can easily be defined as the achieve-ment of goals, therers"s a difference between temporary and lasting success. I donrs"t think you achieve lasting success unless you add another ingredient to the mixture, and that is to serve a cause greater than yourself. Thatrs"s what lasting success is all about.I canrs"t tell you the number of people I have met who have been very successful in the pursuit of wealth, but late in the day began to sense that they didnrs"t really succeed. And yet, I have known people from all degrees of financial wealth who have dedicated themselves to causes greater than themselves and their own self-interests who have led a very satisfying life.In my book,Character Is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember(Random House, 2005), we wrote stories about different kinds of qualities that make up a personrs"s character, based on the lives of people that yours"ve probably never heard of-such as Sister Antonio, who resides in a jail in Tijuana taking care of people-to people we all know, such as Mark Twain.InSuccess Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters, you will find practical wisdom drawn from the stories of hundreds of the worldrs"s most remarkable and enduringly successful people who the authors actually interviewed. This is a book that will make a difference.Senator John McCain Preface FromBuilt to LasttoSuccess Built to Last The Mandela EffectIt was close to midnight at the World Economic Forum when we sat down to wait for the last meeting of the day. The freezing rain had turned to a blizzard, but inside it felt like noon in the Sahara as the heating system gushed to overcompensate. Mark Thompson was nodding off in his chair when Nelson Mandela suddenly appeared around the corner, extending a sweaty hand and a tired smile. Thompson shivered as Mandela leaned on his shoulder and eased onto the leather couch.In the years before Mandela, an activist lawyer, had been sent to a death camp, he was rarely without zealous overconfidence about his mission to end apartheid. South Africa had suffered violence and unrest that seemed irreconcilable. Although Mandela initially advocated a peaceful solution, he eventually took up arms when the path of peace appeared to be a dead end. In 1964, he was convicted of conspiracy and sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment.Most of his years as an inmate were on Robben Island, off Cape Town, where the South African government sent the opposition to break its morale. During his many years of hard labor, the government pressed him repeatedly to compromise his beliefs in exchange for early freedom. He refused.After 27 years in captivity, in 1990, at the age of 71, Mandela was released. He had every reason to have become the most dangerous man on his continent, but instead he accelerated the peaceful reinvention of his nation.How could he have overcome his hatred to lead a non-violent revolution, seeking reconciliation instead of revenge? There he sat, exhausted, but radiant; continuing his quest to heal his homeland. The adulation of Mandela's fans has grown or evaporated, depending on whom you ask. Nevertheless, he took his own unique path--a journey that matters so much to him that he has stayed the course year after year, often despite the social and political consequences, not because of them. When he could be lounging in retirement, the Nobel Laureate and ex-President was instead recruiting people to his cause--as he had been doing not just for a month or a year, but for a lifetime, with an intensity that had not faded despite his decades of suffering in a South African jail.

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Success Built to Last : Creating a Life That Matters

Success Built to Last : Creating a Life That Matters

013228751X

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