In this section

Your attitude to life is probably the crucial starting place, the most important ingredient that will determine what you make of it. I say 'be positive', and by that I mean be highly active and enthusiastic. Do things! Engage with life, don't drift across the surface. Initiate things, get involved and take on plenty - plenty of responsibilities and projects, plenty of opportunities and adventures. If we don't improve, we don't grow. If we don't grow, are we really living?

New experiences and ideas are incredibly rewarding, but the problem is they don't come to you - you have to get out there and get involved.

Improvement and growth take place when the individual takes calculated and considered risks and dares to experiment with his or her own way of life.

Life is like a musical instrument: nothing happens until you decide to play it. And the more you do, the more that will happen to you.

As your beliefs about limits change, the limits themselves are pushed back.

By all means make mistakes, but just be sure that you live to fight another day. Never over-stretch yourself so that a mistake or failure prevents you from having another go sometime in the future.

We cannot discover new islands unless we have courage to lose sight of the shore.

Be prepared to challenge yourself; challenge your prejudices and your preconceptions about what you enjoy and how you behave.

Develop by experimenting. Try things out in low-cost situations. Innovate. If an idea appeals to you, then do it! You're in a no-lose situation. So what if something doesn't work out. At least you can learn from your mistakes, and if it does work out, then "bingo!"

Calculate risks and reduce risk as far as possible, but don't be afraid of taking them.

Nobel Prize winners very often describe themselves as having a thirst for knowledge, or an exceptional sense of direction, or as being very keenly - even obsessively - interested in the problems they have pursued.

Your needs and ambitions will evolve in the light of new experiences, so it makes sense to regularly re-evaluate and keep ready for change.

You have to keep running fairly hard just to stand still. You learn lessons and then something happens and you realise you've got to learn them all over again. You have to keep at it. It's called living!

The fundamental instinct is for growth, and so one should always aim a bit higher so as to maintain a sense of satisfaction from life.

Very rarely is it money or time that really stops us from doing the things we'd most like to do. It's fear of what other people might say. It's our own inhibitions.

At some stage, try to work with some respected specialists in your chosen field, so you realise that they, too, are flesh and blood, and that you can perhaps keep up with them from time to time, if only for a moment.

The more you progress, the harder it is to go further, or even maintain your present form.

One of the greatest enemies of success is the various pressures on you not to attempt to get up and do things, to rock the boat or change the status quo for those around you, whether that pressure be from friends, family or institutions.

Surprise yourself. Take on new things that you've no idea whether you'll enjoy or not. That doesn't mean drugs, of course, because if you enjoy those, you've only got addiction to look forward to; but if you discover that you enjoy archaeology or hiking, then you've got the whole world ahead of you.

You need to make sacrifices to really excel in one or another area. What are you prepared to sacrifice to make something else to happen? What's more important to you?