Fourteen years ago, When I wrote Words to Live By: Reflections on the writing life from a 40-year veteran, I intended the title to mean how I earned my living as a writer. One of my editors turned that idea on  its head when she asked, “But, where are the words to live by?” By that, she meant “Where are the lessons I had learned during all those years and wanted to share with readers?”

This was a completely new idea to me and one that sent me on a trip down memory lane. Each chapter in the book focused on one of the jobs I had held or on a particular aspect of my career. At that point, I had been a working writer for four decades and had experienced all the ups and downs one might expect from twenty years of being an employed writer and later, running my business and being my own boss. No journalism school could have provided a more well-rounded education on what it takes to build a career from scratch, master all of its subtleties, and continue to grow and develop as a writer. My education was on the job. I learned the job by doing the job and asking experts to teach me what they knew: how to take good photographs and read a contact sheet, how to work with graphic designers, the basics of production and printing, and how to turn a mediocre article into an excellent one.

But those were not the lessons my editor had in mind. What she wanted to know was what I had learned that would help me improve in my profession and beyond that to succeed in life. This was not an easy question to answer. Even though the book covered every aspect of my career as a writer, I did not reread it. Instead, I really did reflect on the writing life. I thought about every job and every boss and every client, and what I had learned that I could apply to the business of living. Here are a few lessons that have stayed with me:

• Success doesn’t always come in one dramatic leap. Most of the time, it is incremental, one tiny step at a time. Then, one day you look up and think wow I made it!
• When you are out of your depth and don’t know what questions to ask, you can’t go wrong with this one: what do I need to know?
• Everything you do, no matter how inconsequential it may seem is like a puzzle piece in a much bigger picture. The piece may not fit anywhere at first, but eventually, the pattern will become clear.
• When a perfect opportunity comes along, if you have even one moment of doubt, no matter how fleeting or elusive, pay attention that’s your inner wisdom trying to tell you something.
• Whoever coined the phrase pay it forward was a genius. If you have achieved anything in your life, someone helped you, guided you, mentored you. You can’t pay that person back; you can only pass the gift along.

With a little tweaking, these lessons can apply to any dream, any career, any life.