Lesson 1: Reliability and Increasing Your Deserving Factor
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An AI-generated podcast discussion covering the same core concepts as this lesson is available below. While it isn't a word-for-word reading of the article, it explores the same ideas in a conversational format:
Reliability Begins with Keeping Promises to Yourself
One of the first lessons in The 67 Steps challenged me more than I expected. At first glance, it seems simple: if you want to be successful, you need to be reliable. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that reliability is not just about keeping commitments to other people—it is about keeping commitments to yourself.
Most of us have experienced the cycle. We set goals, make plans, and commit ourselves to positive change. Then life gets busy, motivation fades, and we slowly drift away from those commitments. Consider New Year's resolutions. More than half of Americans make them, yet the overwhelming majority abandon them within a matter of weeks. Why? The issue is not usually a lack of good intentions. The issue is consistency.
One of the key ideas from this lesson is that every time we make a commitment and fail to follow through, we are training ourselves to become less reliable. Conversely, every time we keep a commitment—even a small one—we reinforce the habit of execution. Reliability is not built in a single moment. It is developed one decision at a time.
Throughout my military career, I have observed that successful people tend to be planners and executors. They may not always have the best ideas, the highest intelligence, or the most favorable circumstances, but they consistently take action. How many times have you had an idea that someone else eventually turned into reality? Often the difference was not the idea itself—it was execution.
If we want the good life—health, wealth, love, and happiness—we must become people who execute. Ideas have value, but execution produces results. There is a reason reliability is the very first lesson in The 67 Steps. Before we can improve any area of our lives, we must develop the ability to follow through on our commitments. Before learning the other 66 lessons, we must first be willing to commit to the process. Completing all 67 steps requires the very trait the first lesson is trying to teach.
“Every time we make a commitment and fail to follow through, we are training ourselves to become less reliable. Every time we keep a commitment, we reinforce the habit of execution.”
Execution is critical, but execution should not be confused with stubbornness. Some people continue pursuing a plan long after it has become clear that the plan needs to change. Reliability is not blindly following a bad course of action. Reliable people remain committed to their goals while staying flexible enough to learn, adapt, and make course corrections when circumstances change. As Warren Buffett points out later in this lesson, intelligence is often less about having all the answers and more about making small adjustments before small problems become large ones.
Accountability and the Power of Community
Tai Lopez discusses the concept of willpower and reminds us that it is not unlimited. We can exhaust it. That is one reason accountability is so important. When possible, pursuing goals alongside others can dramatically increase the likelihood of success. Whether it is physical fitness, professional development, financial goals, or spiritual growth, community often helps us stay committed when motivation begins to fade.
I have seen this principle play out repeatedly in military life and in our residency programs. One of the reasons residency can be such a transformative experience is that residents are not carrying the burden alone. They are surrounded by peers who share the same challenges, goals, frustrations, and victories. There is accountability, encouragement, and a sense of shared purpose.
Even today, I remain close friends with my co-resident. We went through the same demanding experiences together. We shared the workload, the stress, the setbacks, and the successes. Looking back, I am convinced that having someone alongside me made the journey easier and increased the likelihood that both of us would succeed. There is a reason the military places such a strong emphasis on teams. We are often capable of accomplishing far more together than we are on our own.
Putting the Pieces Together
This lesson also reminded me of an illustration that Stephen Hawking shared in A Brief History of Time. Hawking points out that disorder is naturally more common than order. He uses the example of a jigsaw puzzle in a box. You can shake the box millions of times, but the pieces will never assemble themselves into a completed picture. The only reliable way for the puzzle to come together is through intentional effort.
Life works much the same way.
The puzzle pieces of health, relationships, leadership, career, finances, and personal growth do not usually fall into place by accident. We have to invest energy, effort, discipline, and consistency to build the life we want. Waiting for circumstances to improve rarely works. At some point, we have to pick up the pieces and begin assembling the puzzle ourselves.
Reliability Requires Self-Awareness
One of the reasons reliability is so difficult is that it requires self-awareness. We must be willing to honestly evaluate ourselves. What promises do we repeatedly make but fail to keep? Where do we procrastinate? What habits are holding us back? Where are we making excuses rather than taking responsibility?
Self-awareness allows us to honestly assess which direction our lives are moving. Are we making things happen, merely observing what happens around us, or simply wondering why things never seem to work out the way we hoped?
Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, once said: “ There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, those who wonder what happened.” It is okay to spend time watching things happen. In fact, some of life's best lessons come from watching how successful people think, lead, and solve problems. There are seasons when observation is necessary before action. The goal, however, is not to remain a spectator forever. At some point, we must step forward and begin making things happen ourselves. What we want to avoid is becoming the person who looks back on life and wonders what happened.
Increasing Your Deserving Factor
This idea connects to another theme from the lesson: increasing what Tai Lopez calls your "Deserving Factor."
Lopez tells a story about discussing an author he admired with a mentor. After praising the author's accomplishments, his mentor asked a simple question:
"But is he worth a damn?"
It is a blunt question, but it forces us to think beyond titles, degrees, awards, promotions, and accomplishments. Those things can certainly be indicators of success, but they do not always reflect a person's character, integrity, work ethic, or true value. Sometimes people receive recognition they have earned, and sometimes they do not. Life is not always fair.
Charlie Munger expressed a similar idea when he wrote, "To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people."
The idea of "deserving" can be uncomfortable because we all know examples of people who seem to receive rewards they have not earned and people who suffer despite doing everything right. The world does not always distribute outcomes fairly. That is not really the point of the lesson. The question is not whether life will always give us what we deserve. The question is whether we are becoming the kind of person who deserves greater responsibility, greater opportunities, and greater trust. While we cannot control every outcome, we can control who we are becoming. Someone who achieves success without earning it is often the exception rather than the rule. More often than not, people who consistently achieve meaningful success have invested the time, effort, discipline, and character necessary to deserve the opportunities they receive.
It is important to recognize that reliability does not guarantee success. We have all known people who worked hard, kept their commitments, and still faced setbacks, disappointments, or circumstances beyond their control. Life is not always fair. Reliability is not a guarantee that everything will work out as planned. However, unreliability almost guarantees that opportunities will be missed. Reliability may not ensure success, but it significantly improves the likelihood that we will be prepared when opportunities arise.
Many people spend their lives looking for shortcuts. They hope circumstances will change. They hope for a lucky break. They hope success will somehow find them. Yet when we look closely at people who consistently achieve meaningful goals, we usually find something else: preparation, effort, discipline, and personal responsibility.
This does not mean life is perfectly fair. It is not. But it does mean that increasing our value, our reliability, our integrity, and our capabilities generally improves our opportunities.
The Warren Buffett Test
One question I found particularly interesting from this lesson comes from Warren Buffett. He asked a group of MBA students to imagine that they could purchase 10 percent of the future earnings of one of their classmates for the rest of that person's life. The catch? They could only choose one person.
Who would you choose?
More importantly, would you choose yourself?
Buffett suggests that grades and test scores are often poor predictors of long-term success. Instead, he highlights three characteristics:
Integrity
Energy
Intelligence
Integrity means consistency between what we believe, what we say, and what we do.
Energy is the willingness to get up each day and move forward.
Intelligence is not simply intellectual horsepower. It is the ability to make adjustments, learn from mistakes, and change course before running headfirst into a wall.
As I reflected on this lesson, I found myself asking a different question: How do I increase my own deserving factor?
When I ask whether I would invest in myself, I do not view it as a condemnation exercise. The goal is not to beat ourselves up over our shortcomings. Rather, it is an opportunity for honest self-assessment. If there are qualities that would make me hesitate to invest in myself, those are often the very qualities I should focus on developing. The good news is that character, discipline, reliability, and self-awareness can all be improved over time.
Becoming More Deserving
Part of the answer is becoming more aware. Awareness of ourselves. Awareness of our habits. Awareness of our strengths and weaknesses. Awareness of opportunities that others overlook.
Helen Keller achieved remarkable things despite lacking sight and hearing. Yet many of us, blessed with all our senses, move through life without truly paying attention.
Another part of the answer is continual growth. Be on an upward path to deserve more in life. Charlie Munger often said, "Go to bed a little wiser than when you woke up." I love that idea because it is attainable. We do not have to become extraordinary overnight. We simply have to keep moving forward.
The lesson concludes with an uncomfortable but necessary challenge. Instead of focusing only on what will make us more deserving, perhaps we should ask what is preventing us from becoming more deserving.
Questions Worth Asking Yourself
Are we procrastinating?
Are we lazy?
Do we quit too easily?
Do we avoid difficult conversations?
Do we lack integrity in small matters?
Are we reliable?
These are not always easy questions to answer, but they are worth asking.
Key Takeaways
Ideas alone do not make us successful. Most ideas are not unique. What separates people is often their willingness to act consistently on those ideas over long periods of time.
For me, that is the heart of Lesson One: become the kind of person who can be trusted to follow through. Be reliable. Build your character. Increase your deserving factor. Then keep doing it day after day, one small decision at a time.
A Faith-Based Reflection
As I reflected on this lesson, I could not help but think about the biblical concept of faithfulness. Scripture consistently emphasizes qualities such as integrity, perseverance, diligence, and being trustworthy in both small and large matters. Reliability is not merely a business principle or a success strategy; it is also a character trait. Long before I encountered The 67 Steps, I was encountering many of these same ideas in Scripture.
One of the themes woven throughout the Bible is the faithfulness of God. Time and time again, God demonstrates that He keeps His promises. Despite humanity's failures, shortcomings, and repeated acts of rebellion, God remains faithful to His word and faithful to His character. Whether through His covenants with Abraham, Israel, David, or the promises fulfilled through Messiah, Scripture presents a God who can be trusted. His reliability is not based on circumstances or emotions; it is rooted in who He is.
As believers, we are called to imitate God's character. While none of us will do so perfectly, we should strive to reflect His faithfulness in our own lives. When we keep our word, follow through on our commitments, act with integrity, and remain steadfast in the responsibilities entrusted to us, we reflect something of God's character to those around us.
Jesus taught this principle when He said, "One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much" (Luke 16:10). Faithfulness is often built in the small decisions of everyday life long before it is tested in larger responsibilities. The habits we develop, the promises we keep, and the commitments we honor shape the kind of people we become.
Viewed through that lens, reliability is about more than achieving success or reaching personal goals. It is about becoming a person whose character can be trusted. Whether we are leading soldiers, treating patients, mentoring residents, raising children, serving our communities, or pursuing our relationship with God, faithfulness remains one of the most important qualities we can develop.
Reflection and Journaling
One of the recurring themes throughout The 67 Steps is the importance of reflection. Knowledge has limited value if it is never applied. Take a few minutes to think about this lesson and how it relates to your own life. Consider writing your thoughts down.
What commitments have I made to myself that I have failed to keep?
Where am I reliable, and where am I inconsistent?
What goals have I delayed because I failed to execute?
If someone observed my daily habits, what would they say I truly value?
Am I currently making things happen, watching things happen, or wondering what happened?
What is one area of my life where I need to stop making excuses and start taking responsibility?
Would I invest in myself if I were Warren Buffett? Why or why not?
What habits or behaviors are decreasing my "deserving factor"?
What is one specific action I can take this week to become more reliable?