What have you learned that served you?

A short paragraph from the book Think and Grow Rich (Napoleon Hill). It is condense and full of knowledge to take in and apply for our lives.

It talks about our innocent or lack of knowledge that we cannot make a right decision for our lives. Many people are waiting for someone making the decision for their lives so they can blame others if they fail in life. Common sense is a crucial character that show that you are smart and intelligent. Keep learning cause knowledge is an unlimited source.

"The majority of people who fail to accumulate money sufficient for their needs, are, generally easily influenced by the "opinions" of others. They permit the newspapers and the "gossiping" neighbors to do their "thinking" for them. "Opinions" are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyone has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by "opinions" when you reach decisions, you will not succeed in any undertaking, much less in that of transmuting your own desire into money

If you are influenced by the opinions of others, you will have no desire of your own. 

Keep your own counsel when you begin to put into practice the principles described here, by reaching your own decisions and following them. Take no one into your confidence, except the members of your Master Mind group, and be very sure in your selection of this group that you choose only those who will be in complete sympathy and harmony with your purpose. 

Close friends and relatives, while not meaning to do so, often handicap one through "opinions" and sometimes through ridicule that is meant to be humorous.

Thousands of men and women carry inferiority complexes with them all through life because some well-meaning, but ignorant person destroyed their confidence through "opinions" or ridicule.

You have a brain and mind of your own. Use it, and reach your own decisions.

If you need facts or information from other people to enable you to reach decisions, as you probably will in many instances, acquire these facts or secure the information you need quietly, without disclosing your purpose

It is characteristic of people who have but a smattering or a veneer of knowledge to try to give the impression that they have much knowledge. Such people generally do too much talking and too little listening. Keep your eyes and ears wide open-and your mouth closed-if you wish to acquire the habit of prompt decision. Those who talk too much do little else. If you talk more than you listen, you not only deprive yourself of many opportunities to accumulate useful knowledge, but you also disclose your plans and purposes to people who will take great delight in defeating you because they envy you.

Remember, also, that every time you open your mouth in the presence of a person who has an abundance of knowledge, you display to that person, your exact stock of knowledge, or your lack of it! Genuine wisdom is usually conspicuous through modesty and silence."