There are certain things that will, over time, lead to sustainable human productivity and outcomes of prosperity and plenty.

- Hard work – the willingness to put together a short-term and long-term effort to continuously better your circumstances and the circumstances for those who you care about (i.e. friends, family, future generations, fellow citizens, neighbors). Hard work is a willingness to continuously aim your actions at chosen goals. Continuous goal-directed behavior.

- Smart work – valuing the ability of the human mind to continuously find better ways to do things. Smart work includes an effort to continuously innovate, figure out more efficient ways of doing things, expand your breadth and depth of knowledge in ways that will achieve productive outcomes. Smart work means using reason to guide your efforts.

- Freedom – in order to encourage work, both of the hard and smart variety, individuals need to be able to reap what they sow so to speak. Individuals who work hard and work smart will create valuable benefits in their lives. These individuals should be able to freely dispose of the product of their labor. The products of their mental and physical labor (either goods produced with their owned product which they fully own and can dispose of, or the wage that they receive when working for someone who employs them) should be their property to use freely. They must also be allowed to freely operate their minds in order to create their own outcomes.

- Long-term thinking – Short term thinking has been proven to provide less long-term benefit than long term planning and goal orientation. Immediate gratification robs from the future to make someone feel good in the present. Over the long haul positive actions or negative actions accrete to produce a surplus and relative happiness or a deficit and relative pain. Where you are today is a product of the outcome of your long term actions up to this point. Where you will be in 20 years will be a product of all your actions up to that point. Living day to day with no guiding philosophy provides less likelihood of long-term success.

- Investment – This comes down to the idea that if you invest present time and move resources out of present consumption in order to make your stock more productive for the future, you will gradually make your future more easy by having your past efforts work for you. Again, creating a surplus leads to the creation of long-term assistance via your accumulated capital. You must save in order to invest.

- Ability to work with other individuals – there is no way one person can do more than a collection of people. In order to achieve what is possible, an individual must be able to work in a cooperative environment. There are always people who are better than you at something, and you can always be better than your buddy or your neighbor at something. This is where you have to be able to work with them to get the most out of each others’ talents whether through trade or via combined efforts. The modern corporation is a huge development of this concept. They combine efforts and trade with others.

- Seeing reality – you must be able to judge the facts to have long term prosperity and success. You must believe your senses and have a methodology for combining data in to knowledge and knowledge in to wisdom in order for you to conquer the challenges of the environment that surrounds you. Through evading reality, ignoring reality, denying reality or just not learning from and respecting reality you will not be able to overcome reality. The challenge is to discern reality and overcome the challenges that it presents to you. Theories that say you cannot discern reality will do nothing but hold you back from achieving your goal of overcoming the challenges inherent in the world.

- Clarity of thinking/awareness – being aware of the world around you is huge. Having the clarity of thought to be able to understand ever more complex lines of reasoning and compound concepts will allow you to better see the angles that will lead to success and the obstacles along the way. Hazy thought, and again ideas that say you cannot effectively discern reality will destroy your abilities. The self-limiter mindset is one of the largest destroyers of long term success.

- Awareness of risk – this comes back to the above mentioned topics. You need to be aware of the possible dangers of actions that you may be taking. If you expand your knowledge base you will be way more likely to avoid possible pitfalls to your path towards long term prosperity and ease. Taking unenlightened risks is a great way to get yourself unexpectedly knocked on your ass. This is yet another reason why discerning reality is one of the most important tools for success.

- Believe in your abilities and the abilities of others – you must know that you can do whatever you set your mind to do as long as you continuously better your approach and keep hitting the nail on the head. Without this belief it is very easy to give up. You have to believe that others can achieve as well because you need other successful people in your court to be able to reach your full potential.

- Perseverance – there will always be setbacks. You cannot get disheartened by failure or give up at the first sign of difficulty. You have to see challenges as the only way to get better. Challenges are learning experiences.

Written and published by Kemp Moyer

Filed under: Uncategorized, Social Mood