Peter Diamandis is the Chairman of Singularity University and the Chairman and CEO of The X-Prize Foundation, which creates competitions to solve some of the biggest issues we are facing today. I read his laws in his brilliant book Bold. These very interesting laws provide a great window into the person’s mindset. We like the first three so we have included his additional ideas.

Rule #1: When given a choice…take both!

Society teaches us that when you’re given a choice, you have to choose one. Why? Why do you have to choose?

But you should be asking, “Why choose?”

All throughout graduate school, I was told, “Go to school or start a company.”

For me, the answer was both. In fact, I started three companies while in grad school. Steve Jobs did the same with Apple and Pixar. Elon Musk is running Tesla and SpaceX; he’s also chairman of SolarCity. And Branson — well, Branson’s Virgin Group has started over 300 Virgin companies and built eight different billion-dollar companies in eight different industries.

So, I challenge you: When someone says choose vanilla or chocolate, say, “I’ll have them both, please.” Multiple projects lead to multiple successes.

Rule #2: “No” simply means begin again at one level higher.

When someone says “no” to your request, often it’s because that person isn’t empowered to say “yes,” and the only person who can say “yes” is the person at the top of the food chain.

This is one of the reasons it took me 10 years to get Zero Gravity Corporation, my commercial parabolic flight company, started. I had to battle an entire FAA bureaucracy that insisted it was not possible to operate large-scale zero gravity flight operations for the public, despite the fact that NASA had been doing it for 40 years.

Ultimately, because there was some risk, none of the mid-level bureaucrats had the power to say “yes.” At last, my request made it all the way up to the FAA Administrator, an amazing woman who told me, “Of course, you should be able to do this – let’s figure out how.”

Rule #3: Patience is a virtue, but persistence is a blessing.

If I had to name my superpower, it would be persistence – not giving up, even when everyone tells me it isn’t going to work.

My most important successes (companies like the Zero Gravity Corporation, XPRIZE, and Planetary Resources) have taken me 10 years or more to implement.

What good is patience without persistence? Doing anything big and bold in life is hard work, and learning to persist is fundamental to your success.

Another name for this superpower is ‘grit.’ This is your will to keep pushing, iterating, and taking the next step in the face of hardship.

Remember that failure is only inevitable when you give up.

Rule #4: The squeaky wheel gets replaced.

Rule #5: The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.

Rule #6: An expert opinion is not the final word.

Rule #7: Most breakthroughs begin as a crazy idea.

Rule #8. If it were easy, it would have been done already.

Rule #9: The world’s most precious resource is a passionate mind.