Einstein’s was estimated at 160, Madonna's is 140, and John F. Kennedy’s was only 119, but as it turns out, your IQ score pales in comparison with your EQ, MQ, and BQ scores when it comes to predicting your success and professional achievement. IQ tests are used as an indicator of logical reasoning ability and technical intelligence. A high IQ is often a prerequisite for rising to the top ranks of business today. It is necessary, but it is not adequate to predict executive competence and corporate success. By itself, a high IQ does not guarantee that you will stand out and rise above everyone else. Research carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Techn... posted on May 5 2012 (78,688 reads)

the commencement of one of the finest universities on the planet. I first visited this campus as a high school senior named John Stephens in 1995 -- 19 years ago -- and I would have never thought at that moment that I would be standing here as John Legend, speaking to you today. The reason I'm here, the reason I've had such a wonderful journey so far, is that I've found love. Yes, love. We were all made to love. And I've found that we live our best lives, we are at our most successful, not simply because we're smarter than everyone else, or because we hustle harder. Not because we become millionaires more quickly. The key to success, the key to happiness, is opening ... posted on Jun 29 2014 (29,680 reads)

means different things to different people. But for the majority of us, regardless of our definition, the road to success is paved with challenges and tests. It can be a roller-coaster ride filled with highs and lows and fruitful learnings. One thing is clear -- all those of us who reach for the stars and actively stretch towards our dreams emerge from our efforts transformed. If you have a dream and are working hard to see it realized, be assured, the journey counts just as much, and sometimes more than the destination. Our failures are not a waste of time, humble persistence can sometimes serve us better than strokes of genius, and great heights can, and have been re... posted on Apr 2 2015 (20,148 reads)

dedicated the past two years to understanding how people achieve their dreams. When we think about the dreams we have, and the dent we want to leave in the universe, it is striking to see how big of an overlap there is between the dreams that we have and projects that never happen. (Laughter) So I'm here to talk to you today about five ways how not to follow your dreams. One: Believe in overnight success. You know the story, right? The tech guy built a mobile app and sold it very fast for a lot of money. You know, the story may seem real, but I bet it's incomplete. If you go investigate further, the guy has done 30 apps before and he has done a master's on t... posted on May 13 2015 (34,099 reads)

so forth... MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. MS. POPOVA: ...are long gone. But my real-life friends, the majority of them, are significantly older than I am. My partner is significantly older than I am. My youngest friend is six years older than I am. MS. TIPPETT: [laughs] OK. MS. POPOVA: So I don't feel — I feel like I'm such a profound failure of representing my generation. [laughs] MS. TIPPETT: [laughs] Alright. You are who you are. How — if I ask you how you measure success, like, in any given day, what comes to mind? MS. POPOVA: Well, once again, I am going to side with Thoreau. And he said something like, if the day and night are such that you greet them wit... posted on Jul 15 2015 (11,439 reads)

a job, they'll work for your money, but if they believe what you believe,they'll work for you with blood and sweat and tears. Nowhere else is there a better example than with the Wright brothers. Most people don't know about Samuel Pierpont Langley. And back in the early 20th century, the pursuit of powered man flight was like the dot com of the day. Everybody was trying it. And Samuel Pierpont Langley had, what we assume, to be the recipe for success. Even now, you ask people, "Why did your product or why did your company fail?" and people always give you the same permutation of the same three things: und... posted on Jun 20 2016 (22,833 reads)

You get what you pay for. Success is everything. Work is what you do for money, and that's what counts. How could it be otherwise? And the converse of that last rule, of course, is that if you're not paid to do a thing, it can't be important. If a child writes a poem and proudly reads it, adults may wink and ask, "Think there's a lot of money in that?" You may also hear this when you declare a major in English. Being a good neighbor, raising children: the road to success is not paved with the likes of these. Some workplaces actually quantify your likelihood of being distracted by family or volunteerism. It's called your coefficient of Drag. The ideal numbe... posted on Nov 4 2020 (9,745 reads)

hard and reminds me. I don't know that it's an issue for anybody but me, but it's true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn't wind up getting the money, either.  The things I did because I was excited, and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I've never regretted the time I spent on any of them. The problems of failure are hard. The problems of success can be harder, because nobody warns you about them. The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that any... posted on May 21 2023 (4,303 reads)

and greedy when you have no money, when you get a lot of money, you’re going to be rich, nervous, anxious and greedy. It doesn’t do anything to change your being. If I were to get $10 million today, in about a week I’d be worried about what I’m doing. I don’t think money changes your essential nature at all. On the surface, maybe. When I get a big check sometimes, I feel secure for a short while, and then I’m the same person.” We tie money to success. How else could we define success? “When you have discovered what your gift is as a human being. Whether you can play the piano, write books, earn money, or whether you’re go... posted on Feb 7 2012 (27,513 reads)

wisdom on how to find meaning and make wealth can be found in Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age. ALAIN DE BOTTON ON SUCCESS Alain de Botton, modern philosopher and creator of the“literary self-help genre”, is a keen observer of the paradoxes and delusions of our cultural conceits. In The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, he takes his singular lens of wit and wisdom to the modern workplace and the ideological fallacies of “success.” His terrific 2009 TED talk offers a taste: One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas ab... posted on Apr 22 2012 (55,697 reads)

how to improve quality-of-life for everyone living in today’s cities. Peñalosa’s ideas stand as a beacon of hope for cities of the developing world, which even with their poverty and immense problems will absorb much of the world’s population growth over the next half-century. Based on his experiences in Bogotá, Peñalosa believes it’s a mistake to give up on these cities as good places to live. “If we in the Third World measure our success or failure as a society in terms of income, we would have to classify ourselves as losers until the end of time,” declares Peñalosa. “So with our limited resources, we have ... posted on Aug 24 2012 (20,901 reads)

I wasn’t for many years, and I think most people are not. In my life, I’ve learned to be better at the skill of contentment (not that I’m perfect, but I’ve learned). I am happy with my life. I am happy with myself. I’m happy with where I am professionally, and don’t seek to add more readers or pageviews or income. I’m happy wherever I am. And while many might say, “Sure, you can say that now that you’ve reached a certain level of success,” I think that’s wrong. Many people who achieve success don’t find contentment, and are always driven to want more, and are unhappy with themselves. Many people who are poor ... posted on Jun 22 2013 (36,550 reads)

you love, you've drawn a lot of inspiration from, as have many people. And she makes a connection between struggle and hope — that in fact it's about the moments in our lives when we had to struggle and when we did something, when we got out of a jam and we didn't know how we could do that, that those are the moments we became who we are. So that's a long-winded way of saying what I thought I might ask you. You know, people who know you think of you and not just as a successful person, but a phenomenally successful person. And I wonder if you would talk to me about the moments of struggle and adversity and failure in your life that helped make you who you are &mda... posted on Sep 27 2013 (28,900 reads)

today’s workplace, what goes around comes around faster, sinking takers and propelling givers to the top. In the old world of work, good guys finished last. “Takers” (those in organizations who put their own interests first) were able to climb to the top of hierarchies and achieve success on the shoulders of “givers” (those who prefer to contribute more than they receive). Throughout much of the 20th century, many organizations were made up of independent silos, where takers could exploit givers without suffering substantial consequences. But the nature of work has shifted dramatically. Today, more than half of U.S. and European companies o... posted on Oct 14 2013 (5,553 reads)

pack. So what does it take to cultivate wisdom? In an enlightening study led by psychologists Paul Baltes and Ursula Staudinger, a group of leading journalists nominated public figures who stood out as wise. The researchers narrowed the original list down to a core set of people who were widely viewed as possessing wisdom—an accomplished group of civic leaders, theologians, scientists, and cultural icons. They compared these wise people with a control group of professionals who were successful but not nominated as wise (including lawyers, doctors, teachers, scientists, and managers). Both groups answered questions that gave them a chance to demonstrate their wisdom. For exampl... posted on Nov 20 2013 (57,447 reads)

modern conception of human excellence is too often impoverished, cold, and bloodless. Success does not always come from thinking more rigorously or striving harder.” “The best way to get approval is not to need it,”Hugh MacLeod memorably counseled. We now know that perfectionism kills creativity and excessive goal-setting limits our success rather than begetting it — all different manifestations of the same deeper paradox of the human condition, at once disconcerting and comforting, which Edward Slingerland, professor of Asian Studies and Embodied Cognition at the University of British Columbia and a renowned scholar of Chinese thought, explore... posted on Jun 3 2014 (13,870 reads)

was a Wild Turkey–drinking, chain-smoking, Harley Davidson–driving—in fact, when he retired, they said it would take two people to replace him; one to do the smokin’ and one to do the drinkin’. TS: [Laughs] JH: But Herb built Southwest Airlines on servant leadership, and when he retired—he’s still the honorary chair at Southwest—a reporter asked him, he said, “Herb, which leaders at Southwest are most responsible for your phenomenal success?” Now, keep in mind, Southwest Airlines is the largest domestic carrier in the United States. It’s been profitable for 40 straight years, including the 10 or 11 since 9/11, whic... posted on Aug 7 2014 (29,573 reads)

idea of being the furious, struggling artist that it wouldn’t even occur to you to write something that you loved writing—which means that you’re denying us the product of love when you write your books. And what you’re giving us is just the product of pain. EG: That clarification is helpful. It leads me to this question I wanted to ask you about your own threshold for fabulosity, if you will—or goodness. I was thinking, here Eat, Pray, Love is such a successful book. You’re in what appears to be in a deep and meaningful marriage relationship. Your threshold for success. You’re going on an eight-city tour with Oprah this fall. I’m... posted on Sep 16 2014 (23,744 reads)

around it . Ask yourself the question repeatedly when you wake up and just before you go to bed. Don’t look for a conscious answer; let your brain’s reticular-activating system (a network of nerve pathways that mediates your overall level of consciousness) initiate a scan for solutions. 2. Drop your assumptions. Having the belief that something that happened in the past will always happen that way in the present or future creates a fantasy that can hold you back. Past lack of success in no way predicts or affects the outcome of an action this time around. I’ve had to deliberately practice being open to the fact that I actually can accurately compute. Action step: ... posted on Sep 26 2014 (110,680 reads)

friends who expects everything of the universe and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods. Illustration by Julia Rothman from 'Nature Anatomy.' In a sentiment almost Buddhist in its attitude of accepting life exactly as it unfolds, and one that calls to mind his friend and Concord neighbor Thoreau’ssuperb definition of success, Emerson bows before the spiritual rewards of this disposition of gratefulness unburdened by fixation: In the morning I awake and find the old world, wife, babes, and mother... posted on Aug 3 2015 (1,554 reads)