Oliver Emberton: How to Master Your Life

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Oliver Emberton is the founder of Silktide a web software company. He’s also a pianist, programmer and artist. He writes about getting the most out of life on his blog with many articles getting upwards of 500,00 views per month and he holds the most up voted post on Quora ever about overcoming procrastination. Oliver has been published on Forbes, Huffington Post, Life Hacker and many more.

Favorite Success Quote

“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” – Tim Ferris

Key Points

1. Be Careful Who You Associate With

Who you associate with will determine who you become and will determine the success you can have in any endeavor.

Oliver partnered with a totally clueless and abrasive person when he started his first business.

This lead to a mere $200 profit in their first year and more failures and stress than most people can deal with.

If you want to avoid these kinds of situations, then you need to become extremely selective about who you associate with and who you allow into your life.

Eliminate people who bring you down, have negative outlooks on life, or volatile tempers.

It might not be easy and you may have to cut ties with people you have known your entire life, but it will be worth it.

2. When You Have No Choice You Will Succeed

If you want to succeed, then cut off all avenues of escape.

When you are left with the choice to succeed or die, you will succeed, period.

Find ways to cut out any options for retreat in your life.

Whether this means quitting your job to pursue business, committing to a gym partner that you will show up or you will give away $1,000, or even breaking up with the person you are dating so that you can really work on yourself, when you give yourself no other choice than success, success becomes inevitable.

3. Learn from History to Solve Your Problems

Your life is not special.

Sure, you are a unique individual with your own story and challenges, but everything that you are trying to achieve and overcome has already been done (in some form or fashion) by great men in the past.

If you are struggling in any area of your life, then take a moment and learn from history.

Find other great men who had the same challenges that you are facing and learn from their mistakes and successes.

There is a solution to every problem you are facing if you are just willing to look for it.

If your health is suffering, if you can’t find a healthy work-life balance, or if your business is breaking down, someone else has already faced and overcome that challenge.

It’s just up to you to find them and model their actions to achieve success in your own life.

4. Just Act

Quit thinking, quit second guessing, quit waiting and just ACT.

If you want to break out of any rut or overcome any obstacle, then just act.

Even the wrong action is better than no action.

The biggest problem we face in the 21st century is that we have an abundance of information and a lack of action.

If you want to master your life and change your destiny, then just start taking massive imperfect action towards the attainment of your dreams and desires.

With enough action, no matter how misguided or imperfect it may be, you will eventually figure out the “right” path and achieve success.

5. Become a Master of Your State

Your state in any given moment determines your emotions.

Your emotions determine your actions which ultimately determine your results.

If you want to change your life, then change your state.

Are you feeling stressed out? Overwhelmed? Depressed?

Take a deep breath, sit up straight, force a smile onto your face and start telling yourself over and over “I’ve got this”

If you do this for long enough, your emotions will start to change, you will start taking better action, and you will start to feel like a new man.

If you can master your state, you can master your life.