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Get to know yourself Be original Start thinking positively. Get excited. Be open and flexible. Get competitive.

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. The fact of the matter is that you will always be you. Always. When you're someone you're not, eventually that person fades away and you return to you. This is the person you'll be working with, so get to know yourself! You'll be more comfortable in your own skin -- you'll be a better person, a better friend, a better boyfriend/girlfriend, a better employee, a better everything. You'll be less stressed and you'll be more confident. You'll know what you're working with and how to work it. Sold yet? Know that you are not your brand or what people think of you. This has nothing to do with anything. You will not be happy if you create an image that caters to the world around you and not to you. If you became the best lyrical soprano this side of Vienna, would that really matter if you truly wanted to the next John Lennon? No. So cater to no one. Find yourself and work with it. . There is no one else out there who is you. Therefore, you are the best you there is. But if you are trying to be someone or something else, that logic goes out the window. You become a second-rate copy of whatever it is you're trying to emulate. No matter who you are (or who you think you are), commit to it. This is the hand you've been dealt. Can't win if you don't play it. To be the best, you can't reinvent the wheel. You can't copy others. You have to do new, innovative things. You have to study biology when you want to become a computer scientist. You have to be yourself to avoid being someone else. Crystal clear? For the rest of your life, you will be your greatest obstacle. You will be the reason you don't walk up to that sexy guy/girl, you will be the reason you don't ask for that raise, you will be the reason you do or do not succeed. Thinking positively opens the door to so many opportunities. When you think you're capable of something, you try. When you view lifelike shooting fish in a barrel, you aim the gun and shoot. When you get negative, you put down the gun, walk away from the barrel and go to bed with the covers over your head. No one ever became the best doing that. If positive thinking doesn't come naturally to you, make it a point to do it. Wake up in the morning, take a look in the mirror and say out loud, "I'm awesome. Today is going to be great and I'll get closer and closer to my goals." And when the negative thoughts start creeping up, squash 'em. You pick your thoughts, you know. You're about to be the best at whatever it is you choose to be the best at. If you cannot get excited about that, what can you become excited about? Exactly. So get excited! Start thinking in exclamation points! When you're excited, things happen. You get filled with inspiration, creativity, and drive. You practically burst at the seams with possibilities. So much about succeeding in the real world is about actually wanting it. Remember all the times you turned in a crappy project to your English teacher and got an A because the rest of the class' works were even worse? You got complacent and stopped caring. You lost your excitement. Heads up: Life ain't like that. You gotta stay excited to turn in those papers that are actually worth the A. The real world is full of valedictorians and go-getters that are turning in A papers, too. It'll be a lot easier to keep up if you're chomping at the bit. There is no one path to greatness. You cannot say, "I'm going to go to school, get a job, fall madly in love, buy a house, knock out a few kids, and live happily ever after." For most of us, that's not exactly how it's going to work. If you want to be the best at something, you have to realize there's an entire web of possibilities in front of you. If you close your mind, you may not see the most direct way to your goals. So the next time you're sitting with your team and you're devising a project on say, how to get Lindsay Lohan to star in your next documentary for film school, don't laugh off Yoon's comment on tunneling into her swimming pool via her old babysitter's uncle's backyard. Remember when people thought Galileo was crazy, too? If you don't have a drive to be the best, it'll never happen. And part of being the best means having a thirst for competition. How else will you know if you're the best unless you compare yourself to your peers? Compare yourself to your peers and win, that is. If you're not comfortable with competitions, contests, and races, sour news for you: that's gonna have to change. And the only way to do that is to immerse yourself full in. Once you get a handful of who's-the-best contests under your belt, they'll phase you less and less. And after a dozen, it'll feel like breathing. Don't go overboard. If you're the friend that turns everything into a competition, you'll soon find yourself friendless. Keep the contests to the skills that you're actually trying to master -- not life in general.