Change captures our attention because it’s surprising and exciting. But the behaviors that never change are history’s most powerful lessons, because they preview what to expect in the future. Your future. Everyone’s future. No matter who you are, where you’re from, how old you are, or how much money you make, there are timeless lessons from human behavior that are some of the most important things you can ever learn. It’s a simple idea, but it’s so easy to overlook. And once you grasp it, you’ll be able to make better sense of your own life, understand why the world is the way it is, and become more at ease with what the future has in store.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once said that he’s often asked what’s going to change in the next ten years. “I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next ten years?’?” he said. “And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.” Things that never change are important because you can put so much confidence into knowing how they’ll shape the future. Bezos said it’s impossible to imagine a future where Amazon customers don’t want low prices and fast shipping—so he can put enormous investment into those things.

If you have the right answer, you may or may not get ahead. If you have the wrong answer but you’re a good storyteller, you’ll probably get ahead (for a while). If you have the right answer and you’re a good storyteller, you’ll almost certainly get ahead.

A common irony goes like this:
• Paranoia leads to success because it keeps you on your toes.
• But paranoia is stressful, so you abandon it quickly once you achieve success.
• Now you’ve abandoned what made you successful and you begin to decline—which is even more stressful.

It happens in business, investing, careers, relationships—all over the place.

Robert Greene writes: “The greatest impediment to creativity is your impatience, the almost inevitable desire to hurry up the process, express something, and make a splash.” An important thing about this topic is that most great things in life—from love to careers to investing—gain their value from two things: patience and scarcity. Patience to let something grow, and scarcity to admire what it grows into. But what are two of the most common tactics when people pursue something great? Trying to make it faster and bigger.

Entrepreneur Andrew Wilkinson echoed the same when he said, “Most successful people are just a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity.”

A carefree and stress-free life sounds wonderful only until you recognize the motivation and progress it prevents. No one cheers for hardship—nor should they—but we should recognize that it’s the most potent fuel of problem-solving, serving as both the root of what we enjoy today and the seed of opportunity for what we’ll enjoy tomorrow.

The trick in any field—from finance to careers to relationships—is being able to survive the short-run problems so you can stick around long enough to enjoy the long-term growth. Save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist. Plan like a pessimist and dream like an optimist. Those can seem like conflicting skills. And they are. It’s intuitive to think you should either be an optimist or a pessimist. It’s hard to realize there’s a time and a place for both, and that the two can—and should—coexist. But it’s what you see in almost every successful long-term endeavor.

An important lesson from history is that the long run is usually pretty good and the short run is usually pretty bad. It takes effort to reconcile those two and learn how to manage them with what seem like conflicting skills. Those who can’t usually end up either bitter pessimists or bankrupt optimists.

Charlie Munger once noted: “The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want. It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.”