Even the hard times are part of your life story. If you acknowledge them and move past them, they eventually add up to the experience that makes you wise.

Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die. But when a business ceases to be creative, when it believes it has reached perfection and needs to do nothing but produce no improvement, no development, it is done.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

Just because you are CEO, don't think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I've never forgotten that.

It has been an exciting time to be at Walmart. Looking back, I'm not sure I could have imagined some of the things we're doing in our business today but, at the same time, it feels like we're just getting started.

Today, we still have more than 300,000 U.S. associates who were with us since 2015 and are now leading teams, running stores and clubs, and continuing to grow their careers. Their stories are a reminder that when people are given opportunity, they make the most of it - and a culture of opportunity creates a cycle where happy associates lead to happy customers and members, and vice versa.