All share these two traits:

I’ve known a lot of successful people, at least as our culture defines success.

And I’ve known successful people our culture would see as failures, people who’ve lived well, loved intensely, and devoted themselves to helping others.

Honestly, both kinds of successful people share these two traits:

A love of learning and resilience, the ability and resolve to keep going after suffering massive set-backs.

“I think they never stop learning things…whether it’s about themselves, it’s about their market, it’s about their audience, etc. I think they see themselves as constantly learning. And that hunger for knowledge is what fuels them to be successful in everything that they do.”

“Jeff Bezos started his career with an auction site called Zshops which failed. Arianna Huffington’s second book was rejected by publishers 36 times before getting picked up.”

That’s Karen Dillon, former editor of the Harvard Business Review.

Whether your goal is creating a business that will outlive you or changing lives – including your own – it’s time for a bit of self-examination.

Time is always shorter than we know.