Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Rita Grohowski. Rita is a writer, mentor, and angel investor. In addition to financial assistance, she also helps people find deeper meaning, and discover the “romance” in their careers, professional life, and businesses. When analyzing businesses, Rita asks people what they want to create, and contribute first, and then asks how they plan to make money because she believes hard work can’t be sustainable unless there’s passion. Here’s Rita on working towards self-acceptance…

I collect success. From stories of heroes to gems of insight, I gather and organize principles, patterns, and practices for success. It’s like a living playbook for life with short-cuts, success patterns, and proven practices. It supplies me with insight and action that I can use for just about every situation. Whether it’s motivation or strategies or tactics, it’s my unfair advantage and how I get the edge in life. It’s truly how I “stand on the shoulders of giants.”

One of our greatest sources of pain in life is when our expectations aren’t met. Surprisingly, we can control this if we know how to figure out our expectations and the expectations of others.

We all have rules for things, whether we know them or not. If you know your rules, you can find ways to speed up your success or change what’s not working for you. When you don’t know your rules, you might be doing all the right things, but then feel unsuccessful inside because you have unrealistic expectations. When you don’t know other people’s rules you might create conflict because you violate their rules.

“No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” — Voltaire

I see good people go from good to great all the time. It’s not magic. It’s passion, purpose, and action. They find their path, they have a purpose, and if they get knocked down, they get up again. They keep asking better and better questions that get them closer to their goals and they continue to find the people and resources that support them on their journey. They turn resistance into growth and they fully immerse themselves in the experience. I’ve boiled down the pattern I see into 10 keys.

While working on my latest book, I had more than a few people ask me about spirituality. They wanted a succinct explanation or a simple model. I started going through various definitions, models, and testing what I could find. Here’s what I arrived at …

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” — Charles Darwin

One of the best ways to get results is to change your approach. You can change yourself faster than you can change other people. This gives you incredible flexibility in any situation. Your ability to change your thinking, feeling, and doing is the key to changing your lot in life or changing the results you get.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” — Maria Robinson

A simple way to think about designing your life is — your job, your village, and your hut. These three together shape a large part of your every day experiences. Your job is what you do, your village is where you hang out and who you spend your time with, and your hut is your family and your home.

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.” — Benjamin Disraeli

It was a powerful year for Sources of Insight. I’ve added 190 posts on topics ranging from improving your productivity to sharpening your thinking skills. My quest is simple – find and share the best of the best insight and action for work and life. From quotes to featured guests to lessons learned — it’s all about improving your effectiveness and leading a better life from the inside out.

“A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.” – Mark Twain

If you want to change a habit and make it stick, this post has the keys (and just in time for New Years resolutions.) While the saying may go, “where there’s a will there’s a way,” I find it’s way more effective to bet on techniques that work, or at least improve your chances for success.

“The best mirror is an old friend.” – George Herbert

The more you know about yourself, the more you can skillfully motivate yourself, play to your strengths, limit your liabilities, and make the most of any situation. Socrates taught us to “Know thyself” … but how? What are some of the more effective ways we can learn about our patterns for thinking, feeling, and doing.

Some books and authors change how we think.

I was catching up with an old friend and I was distilling some of my favorite books into one-liners to show the contributions of various authors. He suggested I share them as a post, so here it is …

One of the models that helps me cope with learning new skills is the 4 stages of competence. It helps remind me of the progression from the early awkward stage to the competent stage. According to the model, you move from unconscious competence to unconscious competence.

Don’t Ruminate. Don’t dwell on things that go wrong. According to Martin Seligman, in the book Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life , people who mull over bad events are called ruminators.

When something goes wrong, be careful how you explain it to yourself. According to Martin Seligman in Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life , A pessimist explains it as permanent, personal, and pervasive.

The stories we tell ourselves can limit us or enable us. In any given situation, we’re telling ourselves stories about other people, the situation and ourselves. In these stories, we can play the victim or we can be the hero.

A friend of mine gave me the following advice … you’re the average of the 10 people you spend time with. Looking back through my life, I could see how impactful that guideline really is. I know I’ve grown the most, when I’ve surrounded myself with the best.

I’m a fan of lenses to help me get a better perspective or vantage point. If you’re looking for a job or thinking about your career, you can use Holland’s theory of career choice to help you find a better fit. John L. Holland identified 6 personality and work environment types. According to Holland, if you can match your personality type and your work environment, you can improve your success and satisfaction.

How long does it take to change a habit? You’ve probably heard ranges anywhere from 2 weeks or 21 days, up to 30 days or more. In my experience, it depends.

In this post, I summarize the key thing that changing a habit depends on. Once you know the keys to changing a habit, you can more effectively analyze your own habit changing attempts. Here are 10 keys that influence your ability to change an old habit or form a new one:

Everybody has a super hero power (or at least I haven’t found anybody yet who doesn’t.) The funny thing is, not everybody knows what their super hero power is (or at least not off the top of their head.) The people that know their super hero power and use it, find work more rewarding and they get more rewards. Why? Because they are giving their best where they have their best to give. They stand out.

PM is short for Program Manager. At Microsoft, the PM role is a fairly common role, and it can mean a lot of things, so I’ll explain a bit about what a PM does down below before we dive in. To bottom line it, you can think of a PM as a technical leader that orchestrates a product or service through planning, design, and execution. As you can imagine, this requires a variety of skills from communication and interpersonal skills to strategic thinking and execution.