By: Quora

Everyone loves to go on about work smarter, not harder and I do agree but let's not pretend hard work isn't required to succeed at anything meaningful.

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What are 10 life lessons that you have learned in your life? originally appeared on Quora: The best answer to any question.

Answer by Daniel Da Vinci, owner of fitjapan.com, on Quora.

• Work hard at what challenges and tasks you are given. Everyone loves to go on about work smarter, not harder and I do agree but let's not pretend hard work isn't required to succeed at anything meaningful. The harder the work, the greater the reward. I learned this growing up rough on the farm. It's stayed with me and I plan to keep it with me to the end.

• Confidence trumps (mostly) all. Do everything you need to do to ensure you carry your confidence with you everywhere you go. Dress appropriately, learn to use words appropriate to you your audience, stay in good shape physically, spend the time to really get to know your customer, understand what failure is and don't fear it. Be constantly working on building your confidence at all times.

• You are not a pizza, you can't please everybody. Haters gonna hate, find your audience in life and speak to them. Time spent trying to convert haters is time lost forever and you are unlikely to succeed - and who cares anyway!

• Take the time to be in physically good shape. "It's not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong." Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild. Work hard on building your strength and one day you will wake up and feel strong. This will change your life.

• You are the average of the five people whom you spend your time with most. Be very careful who these five are. Take a look, if you are not happy make some adjustments. If you can't find physical people, find them via the medium of youtube, books and internet forums.

• Focus. Not just on tasks, and to do lists. Be right in the moment where you are with what it is you are doing. Put the phone away when having coffee with your friends, hold the tweet until later (it wasn't that great anyway if you forget), Facebook will be there when you get to it later. Utterly immerse yourself in the moment and focus on the activity taking place and draw as much out of it as possible.

• Center of control. For every situation and problem you encounter learn what elements you control, those you influence and those you have no control. Respond accordingly.

• Empty your cup. We make shortcuts in our brain on conclusions to things to avoid re-thinking. Sometimes we make the shortcuts because it suits us not to hear what someone/something in life is telling you. Empty your cup, relearn the lesson and THEN see if your shortcut still holds.

• Autodidacticism. Don't ever stop learning and learning doesn't have to be structured. What you learn by your free will, using your own terms will provided the greatest impact in your life.

• Embrace your multitudes. No one is watching you so closely waiting for you to slip up and fall out of line with your own value system. Give yourself the slack to try something out of the ordinary that you are curious about. I'm not saying do and try everything and damn with what the world think, but don't be dogamatic one way or another about who you identify with. It's annoying to others and you limit your experiences.

• Accept that everything passes. We want to dearly hold onto what we love and cherish, but we cannot. Everything fades, loved ones betray us, we die. You don't get to chose, you might be lucky, most are not.

About I.C. Collins

I.C. Collins is grateful that he can pursue something that is both interesting and has value on several levels. For over three decades in the Automotive Sales Industry a bottom-line guy Collins doesn't shy away from telling the truth in ways that cut through the noise to deliver streetwise and corporate knowledge from someone who's been there and done that, many times over.

He aims to create “a long-lasting major brand that for generations is a company that is business-critical to the leading brands in the world. We are focused every day on creating something that’s valuable and has permanence.”

P. S. Urgent if you’re looking to optimize your interpersonal skills for success get your copy of " How to Succeed in the Automotive Sales Industry " today @TechAutoCareers.com. Then settle in for a satisfying read that will surely enhance your interpersonal skills for success this year, it is not just a book we are a service.

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