People make the world go around. They teach you what is possible and that nothing is impossible. Be inspired; read biographies. If you can unlearn the "how to" of our society--getting that "right answer" out of a white paper, and replace it with the "who to" attitude, you'll open up creativity to help boost success. You can find out what is universal, what works throughout the ages. Start to meet these people, living and dead and learn from them.
Don't mimic. Model. Learn from their mistakes, begin to think like they do, and make appropriate decisions. You can learn that Einstein failed at school and succeeded in life. You can realize that by the age of 33, Alexander the Great ruled the world. Watch how Teddy Roosevelt struggles from being a weak child into the strength of a nation and goes beyond to help create the Wild West myth. Know, feel, and master within yourself the persistence of the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison. Watch how Rockefeller goes from the poverty to his determination to land his first job to becoming the richest man to ever walk the planet.
When you dive into biography of a great person, look for character. The reason you read biography is to develop your own character, not facts…don’t get stuck on facts! Cold facts will change over time, but the stories tell us about character. The world was flat: this was a fact. Stories, whether true or not, often tell us more about the person, states Plutarch. He wrote the greatest book of character of all time, that many other great people read, including Lorenzo de’ Medici, Elizabeth I, Napoleon, and most of the founding fathers of the United States.
Here is the takeaway. Make a list of living people: Take 10 great people you want to know that are still alive. Now think through how you can meet them. Write them a letter, call them, mail them a present, send them flowers. Meet them and start a dialogue with them.
Dead people: Make a list of 10 great people. For each of these people, endeavor to read as many biographies as possible about them. After five or six, you really start to get a flavor for the person. A list of some of my favorites are Leonardo da Vinci, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alexander the Great, Madame de Stael, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Beethoven, Goethe, George Washington, T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman.