The 6 Best Lessons I've Learned In Life So Far Making money doing what you value and using what you earn to live a bigger life are what entrepreneurship is all about.
By Timothy Sykes Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
My students always ask me how I became successful. I tell them that my experiences in life taught me everything I needed to know about being successful. The best lessons of all come from what we experience in the real world. But of all the lessons I've learned I can boil them down to six.
1. Travel everywhere you can.
My biggest personal outlay is for the traveling I do. It's my goal to eventually visit every country in the world. Every country and its people have something amazing to offer. You learn so much about the way people work and their societies function. I've taken many of those lessons back with me and incorporated them into my business.
Nothing has taught me more than traveling has.
Related: 25 Things You Need to Know to Happily Travel the World
2. Money can't make you happy but it does buy you time and experience.
Money for money's sake is pointless. You're not going to be motivated by that. But what it does buy you is time to do what you love. It buys you experience to become an expert in what you love. When you find your passion, you're motivated for life, even when times are tough.
By all means aim to get rich, but put it in perspective. Ask yourself the question: why do you want to get rich?
Related: 7 Poisonous Beliefs That Make You Desperately Unhappy
3. We're in an era like no other.
It's easy to complain about crowded markets and the effects of globalization on small business. But when you stop and think you realize we're in an era like no other. The opportunities that have always existed in the real world are still there. Now we have the online world, though. That's a second world we've never had before.
Use this additional world to create new money-making ventures. Sometimes when I'm stressed I just think that I have the advantages my parents and my grandparents didn't have. It encourages me to get right back to work.
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4. Be ambitious.
Dreaming big is what I've always done and it's what I encourage my students to do. The mainstream is largely full of unsuccessful people, so don't pay attention to them. There's nothing you can't accomplish if you're willing to put the work in.
5. Finding what you love is the key to happiness.
Fail at something you hate and you'll be miserable. Fail at something you love and you'll still be happy enough to get back on the horse again. During tough times, all that's kept me going is my desire to continue doing what I love. It sounds like something out of a Disney movie, but passion really is all you need in life.
Related: 8 Keys to Finding Your Inner Happiness
6. Build your dreams, not someone else's.
I've met plenty of successful people. I've also met plenty of successful people who're utterly miserable. Yes, they've achieved what most would consider as a success, but they haven't done what they've really wanted to do. They've achieved someone else's dreams. Maybe their parents pushed them into it? Maybe it was what society wanted? The point is they're not doing what they wanted to do.
Build your own dreams, not someone else's.
