50 Self-Help Classics 2nd Edition: Your shortcut to the most important ideas on happiness and fulfilment (50 Classics)

By Tom Butler-Bowdon

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.” William James 

No matter how adverse the situation, we always have room to determine what it will mean to us, a lesson given us in two books covered here, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. To consciously decide what we will think, not allowing genes or environment or fate to determine our path—this is the essence of self-help.

Whether you want to change the world or just change yourself, you are right in suspecting that no one is going to do it for you. In the end, it is all up to you.

Success now and in the future comes from being more yourself; if you are willing to express your uniqueness, you will inevitably contribute something of real value to the world. This has a moral dimension to it (Teilhard de Chardin referred to “the incommunicable singularity that each of us possess”), but also makes economic and scientific sense: Evolution happens by differentiation, not by matching up to some general standard, and therefore the rewards of life will always go to those who are not simply excellent but outstanding.

As a Man Thinketh- James Allen

• “Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul that have been restored and brought to light in this age, none is more gladdening or fruitful of divine promise and confidence than this—that you are the master of your thought, the molder of your character, and the maker and shaper of your condition, environment and destiny.”
• “Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results … We understand this law in the natural world, and work with it; but few understand it in the mental and moral world—although its operation there is just as simple and undeviating—and they, therefore, do not cooperate with it.”
• We don’t attract what we want, but what we are. Only by changing your thoughts will you change your life.
• Achievement happens because you as a person embody the external achievement; you don’t “get” success but become it. There is no gap between mind and matter.
• We are the sum of our thoughts. The logic of the book is unassailable: Noble thoughts make a noble person, negative thoughts hammer out a miserable one. To a person mired in negativity, the world looks as if it is made of confusion and fear. On the other hand, Allen noted, when we curtail our negative and destructive thoughts, “All the world softens towards us, and is ready to help us.”
• We attract not only what we love, but also what we fear. His explanation for why this happens is simple: Those thoughts that receive our attention, good or bad, go into the unconscious to become the fuel for later events in the real world. As Emerson commented, “A person is what he thinks about all day long.”
• Each set of circumstances, however bad, offers a unique opportunity for growth. If circumstances always determined the life and prospects of people, then humanity would never have progressed. In fact, circumstances seem to be designed to bring out the best in us, and if we make the decision that we have been “wronged” then we are unlikely to begin a conscious effort to escape from our situation. Nevertheless, as any biographer knows, a person’s early life and its conditions are often the greatest gift to an individual.
• The sobering aspect of Allen’s book is that we have no one else to blame for our present condition except ourselves. The upside is the possibilities contained in knowing that everything is up to us; where before we were experts in the array and fearsomeness of limitations, now we become connoisseurs of what is possible.
• Change your world by changing your mind….
• What measures us, what reveals us, is how we use those circumstances as an aid or spur to progress. A successful person or community, in short, is one who is most efficient at processing failure.
• “Most of us are anxious to improve our circumstances, but are unwilling to improve ourselves—and we therefore remain bound.”
• People who are calm, relaxed, and purposeful appear as if that is their natural state, but nearly always it is the fruit of self-control.

Meditations- Marcus Aurelius

• “Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will and selfishness—all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow-creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading.”
• “Love nothing but that which comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny. For what could more aptly fit your needs?”
• “Everything—a horse, a vine—is created for some duty. This is nothing to wonder at: even the sun-god himself will tell you, ‘This is a work I am here to do,’ and so will all the other sky-dwellers. For what task, then, were you yourself created? For pleasure? Can such a thought be tolerated?”
• A student of Stoic philosophy, Marcus Aurelius refused to be made miserable by the difficulties of life.*Love this.. A REFUSAL to be made miserable. It’s a choice 
• In simple terms, it taught that submission to the law of the universe was how human beings should live, and emphasized duty, avoidance of pleasure, reason, and fearlessness of death. Stoics would also have full responsibility for their actions, independence of mind, and pursue the greater good over their own.
• On every page of the Meditations is this theme of accepting things and people how they are, not how we would like them to be.
• The great worth of Stoic philosophy is its ability to help put things into perspective so you can remember the things that matter; the Meditations is, if you like, an ancient and noble Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
• The person who can see the world as it really is also carries the ability to see beyond that world. We are here and we have a job to do, but there is a feeling that we came from another place, and will eventually go back to it. Life can be sad and lonely, seemingly one thing after another, but this should never dull our basic wonder at our existence in the universe.

 

The Bhagavad-Gita

• “We are born into the world of nature; our second birth is into the world of spirit.”
• “He whose peace is not shaken by others, and before whom other people find peace, beyond excitement and anger and fear—he is dear to me.” “If thou wilt not fight thy battle of life because in selfishness thou art afraid of the battle, thy resolution is in vain: nature will compel thee.”
• Seek peace inside yourself, do the work that is yours, and wonder at the mysteries of the universe.
• The Bhagavad-Gita is the record of a conversation between a young man and God (in the form of Krishna). The young warrior Arjuna, from the royal Pandava family, is in a state of panic on the morning of a battle. The “enemies” he is expected to fight are cousins whom he knows well. In this desperate predicament, Arjuna turns to his charioteer Krishna for help. The answers he gets are not exactly what he wants to hear, but it is Krishna’s opportunity to tell a mortal about how the universe operates and the best approach to life.
• Joseph Campbell says in The Power of Myth that part of maturity is saying “yes” to the abominable or the evil, to recognize its existence in your world. What he calls “the affirmation of all things” does not mean that you can’t fight a situation, only that you can’t say that something does not have the right to exist.
• What exists does so for some reason, even if that reason is for you to fight it. It would be nice to withdraw from life, to be above it all, but you can’t. Because we are alive, we can’t avoid action or its effects—this is karma.
• Purposeful action seems more complicated and obscure, but is in fact the most natural way; it is the salvation of our existence and even the source of joy. The word for this is dharma.
• The Bhagavad-Gita is a great book because it embodies the reasoning mind, capable of choosing the way of purpose over the automaticity of a life led by desire. If Arjuna simply follows his desire not to fight, he learns nothing. Instead, Krishna tells him to “fight the good fight”—this is his duty, his purpose, his dharma.
• The Bhagavad-Gita draws attention to the three “constituents of nature,” Tamas (darkness), Rajas (fire), and Sattva (light). A Rajas style of life is full of action and endless business, with fingers in too many pies, hunger for more, lack of rest, and lust for things and people. It is about gaining and attaining, a life focused on “what is mine and what is not yet mine.”
• Tamas (inertia, dullness, lack of care, ignorance), it is still one of mediocrity. And the life of light, Sattva? You will know you are living it when your intentions are noble and you feel peace in your actions. Your work is your sanctuary and you would do it even for no reward at all.
• This holy book’s key point about work is that unless you are doing the work you love, you are darkening your soul. If this seems impossible, love what you are doing. Freedom—from fear and anxious worry over “results”—will follow. The wise always have an outcome or result in mind, yet their detachment from it makes them all the more effective.
• The Gita teaches that you can achieve a state where you don’t need any external commendation to make you feel right; you know you are of real worth.

The Bible

• “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” (Philippians 4:8)
• Love, faith, hope, the glory of God, the perfectibility of man.
• The Old was revolutionary because it put fresh emphasis on the individual, but the New took this to its logical extreme by saying that individuals could not only change the world, but had a duty to do so. Its challenge to transform the world in God’s image, using Jesus as the example, made it a manual for active love. Again, a love that heals and creates—like progress—is something totally taken for granted now.
• A man may spend his twenties and thirties as a sort of “flying boy”; in his imagination, nothing can hold him down. But for a man to be made whole, there has to be something that rips him open, a wound that allows his soul to enter.
• Appreciation of pain and sorrow, Bly says, is as vital to a man’s potentiality as is having the ability to soar through the air.
• In Iron John the prince, disguised as a knight, rides a red then a white then a black horse. These colors have a logical symbolic progression in relation to a man’s life: The “redness” of his emotions and unbridled sexuality in younger years; the “whiteness” of work and living according to law; and the “blackness” of maturity in which compassion and humanity have the chance to flower.
  • Bly comments that in the later years of his presidency, Lincoln was a man in black. He had seen it all. No longer ruled by his emotions (red) or some external set of principles or law (white), he had ceased to blame and had developed a brilliant, philosophical sense of humor. You tend to know a man who has begun to move into the black because he is really trusted. There are no hidden corners, because he has fully incorporated his shadow.

 

The Consolation of Philosophy- Boethius

• “’This is why,’ she went on, ‘the wise man ought not to chafe whenever he is locked in conflict with Fortune, just as it is unfitting for the courageous man to be resentful when the din of battle resounds. For each of them the difficulty offers the opportunity; for the courageous man it is the chance of extending his fame, and for the wise man the chance of lending substance to his wisdom.’”
• No matter what happens to you, you always have freedom of mind.
• Fortune comes and goes as she chooses, and therefore should never be depended on.
• Philosophy argues that these things cannot be the real source of happiness if they have led him to where he sits now. If one is to depend on Fortune, one should expect her departure as much as her arrival, just as seasons come and go. In his rage, Boethius has forgotten how the world is ordered.
• Unlike Fortune, God is unchanging and is accessed through looking inward. Paradoxically, the person who seeks to know God attains self-knowledge.
• His achievements, he realizes, are not as important as the self-knowledge he is now gaining. It dawns on BoThankethius that his life thus far has been about the power of mastery, or willful self-creation.

 

Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes- William Bridges

• “Throughout nature, growth involves periodic accelerations and transformations: things go slowly for a time and nothing seems to happen—until suddenly the eggshell cracks, the branch blossoms, the tadpole’s tail shrinks away, the leaf falls, the bird molts, the hibernation begins. With us it is the same. Although the signs are less clear than in the world of feather and leaf, the function of transition times are the same.”
• “Whether you chose your change or not, there are unlived potentialities within you, interests and talents that you have not yet explored. Transitions clear the ground for new growth. They drop the curtain so the stage can be set for a new scene. What is it, at this point in your life, that is waiting quietly backstage for an entrance cue?”
• All life transitions have a pattern, which if acknowledged will make tough times more comprehensible.
• One of the interesting things about transition is the way it descends on us unexpectedly. Many women and couples have a hard time dealing with the loss of time and freedom that accompanies a newborn baby in their lives, for example. Before they can enjoy the marvel of the child, they have to deal with the ending of their old, less restricted life.
• The only constant is change. It can be useful to see transition within the context of a larger life journey. Many social scientists see age 30 as a key turning point, a moving from youth to real adulthood, where in the past this point was 21.
• One of the messages of transition is that we can’t be the same person doing the same thing all our life. When you are young you imagine that from age 30 until death life is one unbroken plain of stability. However this is rarely so, and if life seems too settled you either choose to make changes or have them forced on you.
• Endings To have a new beginning you need to acknowledge an ending.

The neutral zone 

• We usually want to escape as quickly as possible from this uncomfortable time after the shock of an ending. It could, however, be one of the most valuable times in your life, when because you have been “broken open” you are also ready to consider other ways of being and doing. Bridges has some suggestions for your time in limbo:
  • Make sure that you find time to be alone. Welcome the emptiness. Go somewhere with few distractions where you can do literally nothing, but don’t expect any great revelations. The point is to pay attention to your dreams and thoughts. Keep a diary or log of your neutral-zone experiences, or write your autobiography. Give yourself the chance to “rewrite” your life story. Try to discover what you really want, what your purpose for living may be. If your life ended today, what you do feel you should have done by now?

• Beginnings can often only be seen in retrospect—they don’t seem impressive at the time.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “Not in his goals but in his transitions man is great.” If you can become skilled at getting through difficult periods, you will feel much more confident to cope with life generally.

 

The Road to Character- David Brooks

• • “Character is built in the course of your inner confrontation. Character is a set of dispositions, desires, and habits that are slowly engraved during the struggle against your own weakness. You become more disciplined, considerate, and loving through a thousand small acts of self-control, sharing, service, friendship, and refined enjoyment … If you don’t develop a coherent character in this way, life will fall to pieces sooner or later. You will become a slave to your passions. But if you do behave with habitual self-discipline, you will become constant and dependable.”
  • “People with character … are anchored by permanent attachments to important things. In the realm of the intellect, they have a set of permanent convictions about fundamental truths. In the realm of emotion, they are enmeshed in a web of unconditional loves. In the realm of action, they have a permanent commitment to tasks that cannot be completed in a single lifetime.”
  • Willingness to engage in moral struggle is more important than climbing the ladder of success.
  • One could be good at the strategy of life, Brooks realized, but have no strategy for the building of “eulogy” virtues, the ones talked about at your funeral: kindness, bravery, honesty, faithfulness. Paradoxically, it is when we fail in worldly activity that we learn humility, and so win in a moral sense. We move ahead in a career by building on our strengths; we develop morally by dealing with our weaknesses. Building character is a conscious project, and the most important one of our lives.
  • You are the master strategist of your life. First, you do an inventory of passions and gifts, then you set goals and set out to achieve them. Yet this whole outlook, Brooks says, begins and ends with the self.

• We should be willing to be pulled by something, rather than always pushing. Instead of asking what we want from life, is it not more powerful to ask: What does life want from me? What are my circumstances calling me to do?

• Frederick Buechner asked, “At what point do my talents and deep gladness meet the world’s deep need?”

• A vocation is bigger than you, and therefore you will not “complete” anything before you die. You are a contributor to the unfolding of something, and can take joy in the effort.

• “performing service is not something you do out of the goodness of your heart but as a debt you are repaying for the gift of life.”

• Augustine’s famous conversion scene in a garden finally ends his belief in self-cultivation. He surrenders himself to God and is flooded with grace and a sense of purpose. Until this point he had resisted surrender because he was not willing to give up worldly pleasures, but his epiphany makes him see that nothing is as joyful as a life of devotion.

• Augustine found, Brooks says, that “as people become more dependent on God, their capacity for ambition and action increases. Dependency doesn’t breed passivity: it breeds energy and accomplishment.”

• Yet at some point in life, or at some moment of crisis, we may come to see that the struggle for achievement was not as worth it as we thought. In place of narcissism and self-aggrandizement, there is a desire to find out who we are, what cause or purpose we can align ourselves with, what traits or virtues we need to develop to be of genuine service, not just to ourselves. We realize that we are not the center of the universe, that we are not as good as we had thought, that talents alone are not enough for a good life.

 

Brene Brown – Daring Greatly

“After doing this work for the past twelve years and watching scarcity ride roughshod over our families, organizations, and communities, I’d say the one thing we have in common is that we’re sick of feeling afraid. We want to dare greatly.”

• “Armor makes us feel stronger even when we grow weary from dragging the extra weight around. The irony is that when we’re standing across from someone who is hidden or shielded by masks and armor, we feel frustrated and disconnected. That’s the paradox here: Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you.”
• “Vulnerability is not weakness, and the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure we face every day are not optional. Our only choice is a question of engagement.”

“To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.”

• Not only is vulnerability not weakness, it can be the source of our power.
• “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood … who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly …”
• A culture in which so many people believe they are not enough—not successful enough, thin enough, powerful enough, smart enough, extraordinary enough, or certain enough—is a “culture of scarcity,”
• They find it difficult to take risks, social, emotional, and professional. Yet “daring greatly,” or daring anything at all, is the only way we become what we were meant to be.
• None of these things are weaknesses; all involve courage. All (you can insert your own) make your heart palpitate, hands go sweaty, stomach lurch, make you feel you are losing control, naked. Yet a good question to ask is: “What’s worth doing even if I fail?”
• “the result of daring greatly isn’t a victory march as much as it is a quiet sense of freedom mixed with a little battle fatigue.”
• As adults we equate success with no longer being vulnerable, with attainment of a state in which we have surmounted all risk and uncertainty. But there is no “Get out of vulnerability free” card. In every domain of life, no matter how rich or famous or successful we are, we are continually presented with moments at which, to move forward, we have to risk something.

Shame

• If guilt is the feeling, “I did something bad,” shame is the feeling, “I am bad.” While guilt about having acted in a way that doesn’t match up with our values is constructive, because it can make us change our ways, shame is always destructive, because it assumes a fixed, bad self that can’t be changed. It is shame that leads to addiction, violence, aggression, bullying, eating disorders, and depression.
• Brown found that men and women experience shame equally, but what they feel shame about differs. Women tend to feel more shame about not looking “perfect,” not being good mothers, not having children or being married, only having one child, not being a working mother, or only staying at home.
• For men, shame is most commonly experienced as a failure at work, in finances, in a marriage. Shame is a failure to be successful, of being proven wrong and ridiculed, of being seen to be soft, or weak, or fearful. Some wives have very fixed ideas about what a man should be, which puts the man in a state of shame if they cannot live up to it.
• In relationships, men and women feel shame differently: women feel it when they are not heard and not validated in their feelings. Men feel shame when their partner perceives them as inadequate—they never earn enough or do enough. When they feel accused like this, men get angry, or shut down, which makes women complain, prod and poke even more. 
• The reason so many people, men and women, unravel or have crises or affairs at mid-life, Brown argues, is that they are sick of the expectations that make them feel shamed, and that stop them from realizing or being who they are. They are reduced to being a mom, or a breadwinner, and want to feel worthy as they are. Sometimes, it seems that only people outside the family provide this. 

Psychological Armor 

• Foreboding joy is when you worry about bad things that may happen so much that it reduces the quality of the present. 
• Brown was shocked when her research participants said the moments they felt most vulnerable were also moments of joy. As soon as they experienced a feeling of how much they loved their husband/kids/parents, there was an immediate follow-on thought that it couldn’t last/something will go wrong/they will die. Eighty percent of the parents she interviewed admitted that, at the very moment that they are looking at their child and thinking, “I love you so much I can barely breathe,” they are also having images of bad things happening to the child. 
• Brown’s suggestion is to replace the moments of terror with gratitude. Being deeply grateful for joyous moments allows you to fully enjoy them, while at the same time you are being open about the uncertainty of life. When you feel joy, and admit that you feel it, you are effectively saying that, in this moment, I have everything. 
• A second kind of shielding is Perfectionism: if I can just do everything perfectly, shame will have no chance to exist in my life. Perfectionism is not about excellence or self-improvement, it’s about trying to earn approval for ourselves, based on the feeling that we are deep-down unworthy, it’s a defense against shame. 
• Perfectionism becomes a vicious circle, because when we do experience failure, it’s because we weren’t perfect enough. The antidote to perfectionism is self-love. Yet self-compassion is not a one-off but a practice that perfectionists need to put into place, and which allows you to do a lot of things that are “good enough” or “better than nothing.” 
• Numbing, a third kind of mental shielding, is the embrace of whatever reduces the feeling of shame or pain, or anxiety about the ability to cope with the demands of life. Being “crazy-busy” is a defense against really examining our lives, and truly being aware of how we are feeling. 
• We can easily see other people’s psychological armor, and it feels like a barrier between them and us, but it can be hard to see our own if we have worn it for so long. It becomes a second skin, and we can even forget what the real “me” is like, it has been covered up for so long.
• What is the way out of shields, armor, and masks? Mainly, to have the courage to say that we are “enough” as we are. Instead of disengaging, we show up, take risks, and let ourselves be seen. Instead of entertaining disaster, fully admitting our emotional dependence. In taking these small risks, which are often uncomfortable at first, the lives of Brown’s subjects were often changed. Putting yourself out there is far more important than waiting until everything is perfect, a point that may never come.

 

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy- David Burns 

“What is the key to releasing yourself from your emotional prison? Simply this: Your thoughts create your emotions; therefore, your emotions cannot prove that your thoughts are accurate. Unpleasant feelings merely indicate that you are thinking something negative and believing it. Your emotions follow your thoughts just as surely as baby ducks follow their mother.”

Feelings are not facts. Always question whether your emotions accurately reflect reality.

The Dhammapada

“He who in early days was unwise but later found Wisdom, he sheds a light over the world like that of the moon when free from clouds.”

“Better than a hundred years not seeing the Path supreme is one single day of life if one sees the Path supreme.”

In a nutshell Refine and improve the quality of your thoughts and you will have little to fear from the world.

Buddha’s teachings

• The title comes from the Sanskrit word dharma (dhamma in Pali), simply meaning the way of the universe, its law of being, while pada in both languages is a foot or a step. Thus the holy book represents a path guide to the universal way of love and truth that can lead us to nirvana, or personal liberation,
• Buddha was not a god, a divine incarnation, or even a prophet; through his own dedication, he had achieved perfect wisdom and purity of mind, laying down the example for anyone to follow him.
• It has been suggested that while the New Testament has the energy of a young man who seeks to transform the world, The Dhammapada carries the wisdom, serenity, and patience of an older person.
• Happiness It is our duty to free ourselves from hate, disease, and restlessness. This is not to be done by rejecting the world, but by cultivating love, health, and calmness within it. The ideal state is to “feed on joy,” joy that can be self-generated, flowing from an ever-reliable source; one no longer has to rely on the events and conditions of the world for happiness. Self-contained, we see ambition and acquisition to be inferior routes to happiness.
• Non-attachment Sorrow arises from what is dear, as does fear. For someone free from liking, there is no sorrow, so how could there be fear?
• How can we not have likes and dislikes? Perhaps it is impossible, but we should know that strong desires have a price. It makes sense that if we are attached to something, we have an attendant fear of its loss. By witnessing the transitory nature of the world and accepting whatever comes to us, we can reduce attachment and therefore fear and misery.
• Self-mastery Discipline is all-important. The following verses speak for themselves: “By energy, vigilance, self-control, and self-mastery, the wise one may make an island that a flood cannot sweep away.” “He who can be alone and rest alone and is never weary of his great work, he can live in joy, when master of himself, by the edge of the forest of desires.”
• “For hate is not conquered by hate: hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.” “Overcome anger by non-anger, overcome evil by good. Overcome the miser by giving, overcome the liar by truth.”
• Accept criticism as a fact of life “They disparage one who remains silent, they disparage one who talks a lot, and they even disparage one who talks in moderation. There is no-one in the world who is not disparaged.”
• If we are independent of mind and do not let ourselves become robotic reflections of our environment, life will not equate with suffering. Nirvana is not obliteration of the world of the senses but being able to live within it in total independence. In Pali, nirvana means “extinction”—of the afflictions of greed, hate, conceit, delusion, doubt, and arbitrary opinion.
• The famous “four statements” are central to Buddhism because they are the recipe for ending suffering: That misery or sorrow is a conditioned state. That it has a cause. That it has an end. That the way to end it is through practice of the eightfold path to Nirvana.
• The eightfold path involves: Accurate perception. Accurate thinking. Accurate speech. Appropriate action. Appropriate way of making a living (“right livelihood”). Precise effort. Mindfulness. Meditation.

 

The Power of Myth- Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers

“MOYERS: Do you ever have this sense when you are following your bliss, as I have at moments, of being helped by hidden hands? 

CAMPBELL: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all the time—namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”

• Always do what you love and appreciate your life as a wonderful journey.
• He believed that mythical characters act as archetypes of human possibility: They are confronted with problems and their ensuing action gives us an idea about how life might be handled.
• With myth, all experience can be empowering; without it, life can seem merely a meaningless series of ups and downs. We don’t look to myth to find the meaning of life, Campbell said, its purpose is to make us appreciate “the adventure of being alive.”
• Our bliss is an activity, work, or passion with the power to fascinate endlessly. It is unique to us, yet may come as a total surprise, and we may resist it for years.
• Campbell portrayed bliss as the track that has always been waiting for you, with “hidden hands” seeming to help you attract the right circumstances for the fulfillment of your work.
• In another book, The Way of Myth, Campbell talked about the people he had seen who had spent their lives climbing the “ladder of success,” only to find that it was put up against the wrong wall.
• Myths typically begin with the protagonist on home turf, living a quiet but unfulfilled life. Then something happens and he or she gets the “call” to leave on an adventure with some specific goal or quest.
• Following numerous smaller trials, the hero endures a supreme ordeal in which all seems lost, followed by a triumph of some sort. The hero must then try to bring his “magic elixir” (some secret knowledge or thing) back home, to reality.
• Myths reveal to us the incredible potential for more life, in whatever form it comes. “I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman or child,” Campbell stated. Yet he acknowledged that too many accept the sadness and desperation of inauthentic lives, living without their bliss or not even knowing that it exists.
• The idea involves no grasping or hurry (Campbell’s life itself is a good example), but enjoyment of the richness of the moment. And significantly, it focuses on self-knowledge rather than aggrandizement of the ego.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff … and It’s All Small Stuff 

“One of the major reasons so many of us remain hurried, frightened and competitive, and continue to live life as if it were one giant emergency, is our fear that if we were to become more peaceful and loving, we would suddenly stop achieving our goals. We would become lazy and apathetic. You can put this fear to rest by realizing that the opposite is true. Fearful, frantic thinking takes an enormous amount of energy and drains the creativity and motivation from our lives.”

• Put your little struggles into perspective; by doing this you can gain more enjoyment of other people and life generally.

 

Real Magic: Creating Miracles in Everyday Life- Wayne Dyer

“As I look back at the entire tapestry of my life I can see from the perspective of the present moment that every aspect of my life was necessary and perfect. Each step eventually led to a higher place, even though these steps often felt like obstacles or painful experiences.”

• When you are aligned with your higher self and your life purpose, miraculous things happen.
• Teilhard de Chardin: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
• As Dyer sees it, there are no accidents in life. Each experience we have, no matter how painful, eventually leads us to something of higher value. When looking back, we can see that everything made sense and was part of an unfolding plan.
• The thread running though Real Magic is the need to become aware of our unique purpose in life. People learn or become “enlightened” about life and themselves in three main ways:
  • Enlightenment through suffering. This might also be called the “why me?” path. Events occur, suffering takes place, and something is learned. But when suffering is our only teacher, we shut off the possibility of the miraculous.
  • Enlightenment through outcome. In this path we have goals and ambitions that make sense of life. While superior to enlightenment through suffering, we must still be reactive and struggle, missing out on the higher awareness that creates magic.
  • Enlightenment through purpose. Everything in the universe has a purpose, and by living according to our true purpose we begin to walk in step with it, magically creating what we want instead of battling against life.

• Apart from purpose, we create a miracle mindset through: Withholding judgment (“you do not define people with your judgments, your judgments define you”). Developing intuition. Knowing that intentions create your reality. Surrendering to the universe to provide for your needs.
• Particularly important is the need to separate what we do from any rewards it may bring.
• We cannot will miracles to happen, but must let them flow through us when we are fully concentrating on what we do, not what it might bring. By all means have a relaxed intention about the future, but do not let it interfere with your task in the present.
• Purpose also extends to our love life. Dyer says that all our relationships are part of a divine necessity; they were meant to be, so make the most of them.
• Spiritual partners go beyond what they may superficially have in common to see that their relationship has to do with the evolution of their souls. With this basic insight, we treat people as a gift, not a chattel. We try to be kind, rather than right. We allow people as much space and time as they need, which renews the relationship.
• Prosperity is chiefly a state of mind, just as scarcity is. It is not about getting, but being. Prosperity consciousness is about the knowledge of how much we already have in abundance;
• The chief point is that until we see that the personality we have now is not set in stone, that we can reinvent ourselves, we will not have a magic-filled life. The faint intuition or nagging inside about your possibilities knows more about you than you are willing to admit—treasure it and let it grow. Instead of focusing on what we lack, this growth should come from a knowledge that “we are it all already.” Reinvention of our personality simply means exposing more of our true and greater self to the air.

 

Self-Reliance – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him … Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? … Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.”

• Emerson thought it silly to run around reforming and bettering the world, even giving to “good causes,” before we had found our place in it. He famously observed: “All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.”
• If we could not examine ourselves and identify our calling, we would be of little use. Lack of awareness would see us quickly molded into shape by a society that cared little for the beauty and freedom of the individual. This is the path most of us take, happy to go along with society’s program in exchange for a level of status and reasonable material circumstances. Though we profess to break away from limitations, the reality is comfort in conformity.
• Just as an ant cannot appreciate the level of living that a human can enjoy, so most of us do not know what we are missing if we never look beyond our little worlds.
• The only proper defense against numbing conformity is to find and walk the trail of uniqueness.
• “We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.” In expressing this divine idea that is ourselves, the apparently strong and necessary bonds to society and other people fall away; we no longer need their approval to function. We stand in the same position as Martin Luther, who said: “Here I stand—I can do no other”; this is me, this is what I’m about.
• Through awareness of our own thought processes we might hope to clear the fog of self-deception and illusion, what we now call the “scripting” of our lives by society. To be self-reliant is not to take anyone’s word for anything. Emerson did not disagree with Thoreau’s contention that Harvard, which they both attended, taught many disciplines, but the roots of none of them.
• We would achieve real awareness in meditative thought that, instead of closing down knowledge into compartments, involved opening up to receive whole, changeless wisdom.
• “A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”
• Yet Emerson believed that all happiness was ultimately self-generated.

 

Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl

The meaning of life is the meaning that you decide to give it.

• Yet having been lowered into the pits of humanity, Frankl emerged an optimist. His reasoning was that even in the most terrible circumstances, people still have the freedom to choose how they see their circumstances and create meaning out of them. This is what the ancient Stoics called the “last freedom.”
• Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” The most poignant bits of this classic are Frankl’s recollections of the thoughts that gave him the will to live. Mental images of his wife provided the only light in the dark days of the concentration camp, and there is a beautiful scene when he is thinking of her with such intensity that when a bird hops on to a mound in front of him, it appears to be her living embodiment.
• We are not here to judge life according to what we expected from it and what it has delivered. Rather, he realized, we must find the courage to ask what life expects of us, day by day. Our task is not merely to survive, but to find the guiding truth specific to us and our situation, which can sometimes only be revealed in the worst suffering.
• The point of the anecdote is that in logotherapy, existential distress is not neurosis or mental disease, but a sign that we are becoming more human in the desire for meaning. In contrast to Freud or Adler, Frankl chose not to see life simply as the satisfaction of drives or instincts, or even as becoming “well adjusted” to society. Instead, he (and humanistic psychology in general, for example Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers) believed that the outstanding feature of human beings is their free will.
• Logotherapy says that mental health arises when we learn how to close the gap between what we are and what we could become.
• various sources of meaning, which according to Frankl are: Creating a work or doing a deed. Experiencing something or encountering someone (love). The attitude we take to unavoidable suffering.
  • The first is a classic source, defined as “life purpose” in the self-help literature. Our culture expects happiness, yet Frankl says that this is not something that we should seek directly. He defines happiness as a byproduct of forgetting ourselves in a task that draws on all our imagination and talents.
  • The second is important as it makes experience (inner and outer) a legitimate alternative to achievement in a society built around achieving. 
  • The third gives suffering a meaning, but what meaning? Frankl admits that we may never know, or at least not until later in life. Just because we do not comprehend meaning, it does not mean that there is none.

• “only the unfulfilment of potential is meaningless, not life itself.”
• Freedom is only one half of the equation. The other half is responsibility to act on it.
• What makes humans different as a species is that we can live for ideals and values. How else, as Frankl noted, would you be able to hold your head up as you entered the gas chamber? Aware that most of us would never even come close to such a horrible fate, he used it as a reference point, a symbol of personal responsibility that could guide the decisions we make in our everyday lives. No matter what the circumstances, his book says, we can be free.

 

Autobiography – Benjamin Franklin

“When another asserted something that I thought an Error, I deny’d myself the Pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of immediately showing some Absurdity in his Proposition; and in answering I began by observing that in certain Cases or Circumstances his Opinion would be right, but that in the present case there appear’d or seem’d to me some Difference etc. I soon found the Advantage of this Change in my Manners. The Conversations I engag’d in went on more pleasantly.”

• Constant self-improvement and a love of learning form your ticket to unusual success.
• “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”
• At no point did he claim any special mastery over how to live life, but he was committed to finding a formula that could assure a person of some success.
• disregarded any religious conception that we are naturally bad or good people, but saw humans rather as blank slates designed for success.
• Franklin wrote the Autobiography as an old man, considered a great man. He had arrived in Philadelphia from Boston with a couple of shillings and three bread rolls, two of which, characteristically, he gave to a woman in need.
• Instinctively knowing that mastery of words would be his ticket out of mediocrity, he would persuade a friend working at a booksellers to “lend” him books overnight, devouring them between finishing his day’s work and starting another.
• Franklin’s message is timeless: Greatness is not for the few, but is the duty of all of us.

The Art of Virtue, in which he listed the 12 qualities he aimed to possess.

1. Temperance. Eat not to Dullness. Drink not to Elevation. 
2. Silence.Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation. 
3. Order.Let all your Things have their Places. Let each Part of your Business have its Time. 
4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve. 
5. Frugality. Make no Expense but to do good to others or yourself; that is, Waste nothing. 
6. Industry. Lose no Time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions. 
7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful Deceit. Think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly. 
8. Justice. Wrong none, by doing Injuries or omitting the Benefits that are your Duty. 
9. Moderation. Avoid Extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve. 
10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no Uncleanness in Body, Clothes or Habitation. 
11. Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at Trifles, or at Accidents common or unavoidable. 
12. Chastity. Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring; never to Dullness, Weakness, or the Injury of your own or another’s Peace or Reputation. 
13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

 

• Franklin also advocated use of a “morning question”—“What good shall I do this day?”—and an “evening question”—“What good have I done today?”
• “the story of one person’s heroic effort to make principles the basis of existence.” This attention to character, rather than personality techniques, is the foundation of Covey’s seven habits.
• He developed the habit of only ever expressing himself in terms of “modest Diffidence,” never saying words like “undoubtedly” or trying to correct people. Instead, he used measured phrases such as “It appears to me …” or “If I am not mistaken …” The result was that, even though he was not a great speaker, people focused on his ideas and he was quick to gain credibility.

 

Creative Visualization – Shakti Gawain

Life tends to live up to the thoughts and images you have about it, good or bad. Why not imagine your future the way you want it?

• We live out so much of our lives in our imaginations, making pictures or movies of what we’d like to happen or what we fear will happen. We visualize all the time, but in an unconscious way. With creative visualization, you consciously decide and take responsibility for what you want to manifest as reality in your life.
• With creative visualization, the key to success is to quieten your mind so that your brainwaves are at “alpha” level. You will often find this state just before sleep, first thing in the morning, while meditating, or perhaps sitting next to a river or in a forest. While your first instinct may be to dream up nice “things” that you want, the real purpose is to peel away the layers of your normal reactive self and let thoughts flow that express the higher you. From this position you are only likely to think about what is really best for you and what would make you truly happy.
• Gawain notes that the purpose of creative visualization is not to “control” people with your mind—it doesn’t work if used for negative or manipulative ends—but to “dissolve our internal barriers to natural harmony.”
• When we creatively visualize or make affirmations of positive outcomes and states, we are radiating thought energy into the universe. The universe responds in the form of matter or events. Creative visualization is literally “sowing the seeds” of the life we want.
• Affirmations. You don’t have to actually “see” images to be a creative visualizer. Some people aren’t very good at this and find it more effective merely to think about what they desire, or turn it into an affirmation (e.g., “I deserve the best and the best is coming to me now.”) Affirmations, Gawain says, “make firm what you are imaging.” They must be in the present tense and should include verbs. Power also tends to be added if you invoke God, infinite intelligence, or the universe.
• Accepting your good. You may feel that you are unworthy of getting all that you’d like in life. Before you visualize, make sure that you are willing to accept what comes to you. Love yourself first. Belief. You don’t need to believe in any spiritual or metaphysical ideas for creative visualization to work; all the power you need to do it successfully is already in you.
• Gawain says that, as you get deeper into it, creative visualization becomes less of a technique and more a state of consciousness in which you realize just how much you are the continuous creator of your world. You can eliminate the need to worry, plan, or manipulate, because it dawns on you that these things in fact have a lot less power to change than does the relaxed visualization of outcomes that reflect your higher purpose.

Tao Te Ching 5th–3rd century BC Lao Tzu

“Flow around obstacles, don’t confront them. Don’t struggle to succeed. Wait for the right moment.”

“Trying to understand is like straining to see through muddy water. Be still, and allow the mud to settle. Remain still, until it is the time to act.”

“Whether faced with friend or enemy, loss or gain, fame or shame, the Wise remain equanimous. This is what makes them so extraordinary.”

• The title means “The Way of Power” or “The Classic (Ching) of the Way (Tao) and Virtue (Te).” The tao determines the te, or the manner in which a person might act who is attuned to the tao. Whatever can be defined is not tao—it is the timeless spirit that runs through all life, creating the essential oneness of the universe. The tao is not even “god,” god being an entity that has sprung from the tao.
• “a world of order that we must work with, not a world where we must just fend for ourselves.”
• The idea of the tao is that as you get in harmony with it, your actions cease to seem like “action.” Csikszentmihalyi has documented this feeling as “flow” and the physicist Bohm talks of it as being part of “the unfolding.”
• Tao leadership Lao Tzu saw two types of leader: the conventional one, a warrior who uses force to achieve his ends, symbolized by the yang or masculine aspect; and the healer-leader, symbolized by the feminine yin. The latter is the concept of “servant leadership,” in which the leader blends into the background so that their people can star.
• “The wise stand out, because they see themselves as part of the Whole. They shine, because they don’t want to impress. They achieve great things, because they don’t look for recognition. Their wisdom is contained in what they are, not their opinions. They refuse to argue, so no-one argues with them.”
• Listening, yielding, cooperating, being open, seeking the best possible outcomes—these yin aspects must balance the go-getting yang force that has given us civilization as we know it. The integration of the two will be a mark of the new leader, whose credibility rests not on what they say or even what they have so far achieved: “Their wisdom is contained in what they are.”
• The Tao Te Ching, on the other hand, is about how to lead a very simple life, not seeking power, fame, or riches. There is a quiet ecstasy to living in the moment, not trying to force anything to happen or get others to do things our way. This is a book about the power of timing: “Be still, and allow the mud to settle. Remain still, until it is the time to act.”

 

Psycho-Cybernetics – Maxwell Maltz

“Insofar as function is concerned, the brain and nervous system constitute a marvelous and complex ‘goal-striving mechanism,’ a sort of builtin automatic guidance system which works for you as a ‘success mechanism,’ or against you as a ‘failure mechanism,’ depending on how ‘YOU,’ the operator, operate it and the goals you set for it.”

• Our body/brain is a brilliant self-contained system for achieving goals. Use it.
• Maltz said that human beings have an “essence” or life force that cannot be reduced to a mere brain and physical body. Jung called it the “libido,” Bergson the “elan vital.” A person cannot be defined by their physical body or brain, just as electricity cannot be defined by the wire through which it travels. We are, rather, systems in constant flux.
• Cybernetics appeared such a breakthrough to Maltz because its implication was that achievement was a matter of choice. Most important to the dynamic of achieving was the “what” (the target), rather than the “how” (the path). The frontal lobes or conscious thinking part of the brain could devise the goal, or create the image of the person you wanted to be, and the subconscious mind would deliver its attainment. The “set and forget” mechanism of guided missiles would also work for our deepest desires.
• He came to believe that self-image was the “golden key” to a better life.
• The crucial and fascinating point about the self-image is that it is value neutral, that is, it doesn’t care if it is empowering or destructive, but will form itself simply according to what psychological food it is fed. We can either create an image of the self that can accommodate prosperity, peace, and greatness, or we can stick with a defective one that can’t even get us out of bed in the morning. The point is that a positive self-image that can see you fulfill your dreams does not happen by accident—it must be thought about and manufactured.
• The book’s most significant points—experimental and clinical psychologists had established beyond doubt that the brain is not great at telling the difference between an actual experience and one imagined in full and vivid detail. (Such results had been understood years before by William James.) This meant that winning images of the self could replace negative ones, denying any authority to past events. The beauty of self-image was that while it was the supreme factor in determining success or failure, it was also extremely malleable.
• The brain thinks in terms of images, therefore if you can consciously create the desired image of yourself the brain and nervous system will automatically provide continual feedback to ensure that it “lives up to” the preordained image. In a well-known clinical experiment, one group of basketball players was physically trained to throw more balls through the hoop, while another was taught merely to visualize throwing goals. Despite the absence of any physical practice, the second group far outscored the first.
• The brain, nervous system, and muscles are obedient servants of pictures placed in your head. But the ability of your body and brain to manifest the desired self-image depends on its indelibility. It must be tattooed on the brain. With such a strong image of ourselves, it is difficult not to live out and manifest all that is associated with the self image. Instead of just “having goals,” we become them.

 

Motivation and Personality- Abraham Maslow

• Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” is a famous concept in psychology. He organized human needs into three broad levels: the physiological—air, food and water—the psychological—safety, love, self-esteem—and, finally, self-actualization. His insight was that the higher needs were as much a part of our nature as the lower, indeed were instinctive and biological.
• Maslow saw needs as a continuum, in which the satisfaction of the lower needs came before a person’s higher mental and moral development. Having met the basic bodily requirements, and reached a state where we feel we are loved, respected, and enjoy a sense of belonging, including philosophical or religious identity, we seek selfactualization.
• He identified 19 characteristics of the self-actualized person, including:
  • Clear perception of reality (including a heightened ability to detect falseness and be a good judge of character). 
  • Acceptance (of themselves and things as they are). 
  • Spontaneity (a rich, unconventional inner life with a child-like ability to constantly see the world anew and appreciate beauty in the mundane).
  • Problem-centeredness (focus on questions or challenges outside themselves—a sense of mission or purpose—resulting in an absence of pettiness, introspection, and ego games). 
  • Solitude seeking (enjoyed for its own sake, solitude also brings serenity and detachment from misfortune/crisis, and allows for independence of thought and decision).
  • Autonomy (independence of the good opinion of other people, more interest in inner satisfaction than status or rewards). 
  • Peak or mystical experiences (experiences when time seems to stand still). 
  • Human kinship (a genuine love for, and desire to help, all people).
  • Humility and respect (belief that we can learn from anyone, and that even the worst person has redeeming features). 
  • Ethics (clear, if not conventional, notions of right and wrong). 
  • Sense of humor (not amused by jokes that hurt or imply inferiority, but humor that highlights the foolishness of human beings in general).
  • Creativity (not the Mozart type of genius that is inborn, but in all that is done, said, or acted). 
  • Resistance to enculturation (ability to see beyond the confines of culture and era). 
  • Imperfections (all the guilt, anxiety, self-blame, jealousy, and so on that regular people experience, but these do not stem from neurosis). 
  • Values (based on a positive view of the world; the universe is not seen as a jungle but an essentially abundant place, providing whatever we need to be able to make our contribution).

 

• A further subtle difference sets these people apart. Most of us see life as striving to get this or that, whether it be material things or having a family or doing well career-wise. Psychologists call this “deficiency motivation.” Self-actualizers, in contrast, do not strive as much as develop. They are only ambitious to the extent of being able to express themselves more fully and perfectly, delighting in what they are able to do.
• This is the paradox of the self-actualizer: the more of these traits a person has, the more likely they are to be truly unique.
• Maslow believed that only a tiny percentage of the population was self-actualized, but that these few could change the whole culture.

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind Joseph Murphy

• How the subconscious works and what it can do Murphy saw the subconscious mind as a darkroom within which we develop the images that are to be lived out in real life. While the conscious mind sees an event, takes a picture of it, and remembers it, the subconscious mind works backwards, “seeing” something before it happens (this is why intuition is infallible).
• The subconscious responds to habit and habitual thinking. We blithely let negative thoughts drop into the subconscious every minute of our lives, then are surprised when they find expression in day to day experiences and relationships. 
• This is the harsh reality, but knowledge of the subconscious also delivers us a breakthrough: It means that we can remake ourselves anew simply by controlling the thoughts and images we feed it. 
• Understanding your subconscious mind as a photographic mechanism removes the emotion and struggle from changing your life, because if it is simply a matter of replacing existing mental images with new ones, you begin to see the ease with which you can change. 
• Along with relaxed faith, the ease with which the subconscious accomplishes things increases with emotion. An idea or a thought alone may excite the rational, conscious mind, but the subconscious likes things to be “emotionalized.” When a thought becomes a feeling, and imagination becomes a desire it will deliver what you want with speed and abundance. 
• William James, the father of American psychology, believed that the greatest discovery of the nineteenth century was the power of the subconscious mind added to faith. The idea that you can change your life by changing the landscape of your mind may not have appeared in history books alongside the discovery of new continents or electricity stream, but all the great minds have known it. 
• Believing it to be so “The law of your mind is the law of belief itself,” Murphy noted. What we believe makes us who we are. William James observed that whatever people expect to be true will be so, irrespective of whether the object of their belief exists. 
• Whatever you give your subconscious—false or true, good or evil—it will register as fact. Be careful not to joke about misfortune, as the subconscious mind has no sense of humor. 
• A mentally disturbed person and a healthy person share the same power of belief; the sane differ from the insane only in that they retain objectivity about their beliefs. 
• Something that seemed impossible to us a year ago, yet at the same time would be an enactment of our heart’s desire. 
• Even today, doctors report the power of placebos to produce miraculous recoveries if they are accompanied by doubt-free instructions that “this will do the trick.” Miracles of healing, Murphy said, are simply the body obeying the subconscious mind’s knowledge of “perfect health when the questioning nature of the normal conscious mind is silenced. 
• The other aspect of mental healing is the premise that our individual minds are part of a larger human mind (as Emerson believed), which itself is linked to “infinite intelligence.” This is why it is not crazy, Murphy claimed, to believe that you can heal people who are not even physically near to you, by visualizing all the health, energy, and love in the universe applied to that life force pulsing through ever cell of their body. 
• The subconscious mind understands and follows the idea of compound interest. That is, little thought deposits made regularly over time compound to produce a large principal of mental abundance.
• Prayers traditionally consist of earnest utterances to God followed by “hoping for the best.” Logically, however, such prayers will carry little weight or power because they are framed in doubt. It is the great irony of conventional prayer (the pleading, wishing, hoping variety) that it involves no faith. Real faith is simple: the knowledge that something is happening, is being provided, present tense. When prayers become occasions to give thanks for the fact of assistance (even if it has yet to materialize), they cease to be a mystical ritual that we hope God will notice, and become a co-creating process with definite ends.

 

The Power of Positive Thinking Norman Vincent Peale

“Faith is the one power against which fear cannot stand. Day by day, as you fill your mind with faith, there will ultimately be no room left for fear. This is the one great fact that no one should forget. Master faith and you will automatically master fear.”

• He expressed the great secret of self-help that, in order to gain personal power and peace, we have to be willing to go beyond the merely personal to something greater than ourselves.
• “How to have constant energy” Peale revealed the secret source of energy of every great person he had known: attunement with the infinite. The knowledge that what one is doing is supported outside oneself and is serving a divine end provides a constantly renewable source of energy. Working only by oneself and for oneself leads to burnout.
• Instead of asking for things, give thanks in advance for what you desire, leave it in God’s hands, and visualize the good outcome. The Peale formula is “Prayerize, Picturize, Actualize.”
• “Expect the best and get it” Fearful creatures that we are, we tend to expect the worst. But an expectation of the best has a way of organizing forces in your favor. You are less likely to keep anything in reserve. The subconscious, which regulates many of our actions, merely reflects your beliefs. Alter the belief about an outcome and your actions will seem to be shaped in order to achieve it.

The Road Less Traveled

• Once you admit that “life is difficult,” the fact is no longer of great consequence. Once you accept responsibility, you can make better choices.
• Self-control is the essence of Peck’s brand of self-help. He says: “Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.”
• A person who has the ability to delay gratification has the key to psychological maturity, whereas impulsiveness is a mental habit that, in denying opportunities to experience pain, creates neuroses.
• Most large problems we have are the result of not facing up to earlier, smaller problems, of failing to be “dedicated to the truth.” The great mistake that most people make is believing that problems will go away of their own accord.
• The rewards of spiritual life are enormous: Peace of mind and freedom from real worry that most people never imagine is possible.

 

Awaken the Giant Within Tony Robbins 

👋 Also checkout The Distillation of Tony Robbins 

“Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is raise your standards. When people ask me what really changed my life eight years ago, I tell them that absolutely the most important thing was changing what I demanded of myself. I wrote down all the things I would no longer accept in my life, all the things I would no longer tolerate, and all the things that I aspired to becoming.”

“We don’t have to allow the programming of our past to control our present and future. With this book, you can reinvent yourself by systematically organizing your beliefs and values in a way that pulls you in the direction of your life’s design.”

• Pain and pleasure These are the key shaping forces in life. We can either let them control us or understand them to suit ourselves. Be careful what you link pleasure to.

The power of questions 

• All human progress occurs through questioning current limitations. We don’t need to have an answer prepared; ask a quality question and you will get a quality answer.

Clarity is power 

• Determine exactly what you want to achieve and write it down, creating a future so amazing that you are compelled to realize it. You must “focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear.”

Raise your standards, change your rules Make decisions rather than wishes about what you are and take action. Figure out the hidden personal rules by which you currently live and create new ones that will drive you to live out your destiny.

The Game of Life and How to Play It Florence Scovell Shinn

“Most people consider life a battle, but it is not a battle, it is a game.”

• If life is thought of as a game, we are motivated to learn and apply the rules for our own happiness.
• if you were to see life as a game, you would worry less about the outcomes and focus on the rules and laws that can lead you to success. This is the path of less resistance and more time for worldwonder. By taking it, you choose to be a person of faith instead of fear.
• The divine design Do you ever get an inspirational flash across your mind, a picture of what you could achieve or the person you could be? You have received a snapshot of your “divine design” from the universe, showing you that this image is actually within yourself. Plato called it the “perfect pattern,” the place you are to fill that no one else can.
• Don’t be like most people and pursue things that really have nothing to do with the real you, and would only make you dissatisfied if you were to achieve them.

The power of words 

• Anyone who does not know the power of words, the author said, “is behind the times.” Each of us has an ongoing conversation with ourselves, never realizing how it affects, for better or worse, the way we live out our life. Whatever words we say to ourselves fall into the blank slate of our subconscious mind as “fact,” therefore we must take supreme care about the internal and external words we utter.

 

Learned Optimism – Martin Seligman 

In a nutshell Cultivation of an optimistic mindset significantly increases your chances of health, wealth, and happiness.

• As with the dog experiments, one in every three human subjects would not “give up,” they kept trying to press buttons on a panel in an attempt to shut off the noise. What made these subjects different from the others?
  • Seligman applied the question to real life: What makes someone pick themselves up after rejection by a lover, or another keep going when their life’s work comes to nothing? He found that the ability of some people to bounce back from apparent defeat is not, as we sentimentally like to say, a “triumph of the human will.” Rather than having an inborn trait of greatness, such people have developed a way of explaining events that does not see defeat as permanent or affecting their basic values. Nor is this trait something that “we either have or we don’t”—optimism involves a set of skills that can be learned.

• If you have even an average level of pessimism, Seligman says, it will drag down your success in every arena of life: work, relationships, health.
• Seligman suggested that applicants be hired if they tested well for optimism and explanatory style. The result: Agents hired on this basis did 20 percent better than the regular recruits in the first year, and 57 percent better in the second. They clearly had better ways to deal with the nine out of ten rejections that would make the others give up. *This was for hiring job candidates and they found that people with optimism fared better than people with pessimistic outlooks. Seems obvious but powerful. 

Optimism and success 

• Conventional thinking is that success creates optimism, but the evidence laid out by Seligman shows the reverse to be true. On a repeat basis optimism tends to deliver success, as the experience of the life insurance agents demonstrated. At the exact same point that a pessimist will wilt, an optimist perseveres and breaks through an invisible barrier.
• Those who regularly “vault the wall” listen to their internal dialog and argue against their own limiting thoughts, quickly finding positive reasons for rejection.

The value of pessimism 

• • Yet Learned Optimism admits that there is one area in which pessimists excel: their ability to see a situation more accurately. 
  • Bill Gates discusses this very trait, lauding the Microsoft employees who can tell him what is going wrong and do so quickly.
  • Seligman is clear on the point that success in work and life results when we can both perceive present reality accurately and visualize a compelling future. Many people are good at one and not the other. Someone who wishes to learn optimism must keep the former skill, while becoming a better dreamer. The combination is unbeatable.

• Most depression results from thinking badly.

• Albert Ellis and Aaron T. Beck (see Feeling Good) set out to prove that negative thoughts are not a symptom of depression, they cause it. Most of us know this at a common-sense level, but psychotherapy allows us to believe that we are dealing with something beyond our control.

• He says that women are twice as likely to suffer from it because, although men and women experience mild depression at the same rate, how women think about problems tends to amplify them. Rumination on a problem, always connecting it back to some “unchangeable” aspect of ourselves, is a recipe for the blues.

• this idea that depression (i.e., the standard variety, not bipolar or manic) results from habits of thought. Seligman tells us the results in two words: “It does.” Moreover, developing the mental muscles of optimism significantly reduces the likelihood that we will become depressed.

 

Self-Help Samuel Smiles

In a nutshell History is full of people who achieved amazing things by sheer will and persistence.

• “lives of the artists” is their singular industry and never-say-die application to the task, almost equal to their artistic talent. In showing that many of the methods they pioneered were the result of years of trial and error, he explodes the belief that the most famous artists have the most “talent.” In fact talent is not thinly spread; what is rare is the willingness to put in the back-breaking labor to fulfill an artistic vision.
• Michelangelo would not have painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling if he had not been willing to lie on his back on boards for months on end. It took Titian seven years to produce his Last Supper for Charles V, yet the viewer might assume that it was created in a “burst of genius.”
• David Wilkie: “Work! Work! Work!” Johann Sebastian Bach reflected: “I was industrious; whoever is equally sedulous, will be equally successful.” History has a tendency to turn unwavering commitment and hard graft into grand words like genius, when its subjects knew otherwise.
• “It is not eminent talent that is required to ensure success in any pursuit, so much as purpose—not merely the power to achieve, but the will to labour energetically and perseveringly. Hence energy of will may be defined to be the very central power of character in a man—in a word, it is the Man himself.”
• De Maistre: “To know how to wait is the great secret of success.”
• Patience, ordering of the mind, and absorption in the task at hand are the key elements that Smiles cited in all our great advances, and neither government funding nor education can supply them. They are created talents.

Character

• Today we live in the so-called knowledge society in which the highest value is taken to be creative deployment of data and information, but Smiles asserted that “Character is power, more than knowledge is power.”
• Self-Help may be a simple book for a simpler time, but its dogged reiteration of the need to cultivate personal qualities that bring freedom of mind reveals a timeless truth: Character is something formed in spite of the great forces of instinct and cultural conditioning.

Sir Humphry Davy: 

“What I am I have made myself: I say this without vanity, and in pure simplicity of heart.”

• Davy’s admission spoke of courage, not as part of exciting tales of derring-do but of small daily decisions that reaffirm independence.
• The second is that, to imagine, discover and reach this superior form of existence, we have only to think and to walk always further in the direction in which the lines passed by evolution take on their maximum coherence.”
• In a nutshell By appreciating and expressing your uniqueness, you literally enable the evolution of the world.

 

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

• For Teilhard humankind was not the center of the world, but the “axis and leading shoot of evolution.” It is not that we will lift ourselves above nature, but in our intellectual and spiritual quests dramatically raise its complexity and intelligence. The more complex and intelligent we become, the less of a hold the physical universe has on us. Just as space, the stars, and galaxies expand ever outwards, the universe is just as naturally undergoing “involution” from the simple to the increasingly complex; the human psyche also develops according to this law. “Hominization” is what Teilhard called the process of humanity becoming more human, or the fulfillment of its potential.
• The noosphere and Omega point In 1925 Teilhard coined the word “noosphere.” Just as the biosphere is the living shell around planet Earth, the noosphere is its mental counterpart, an invisible layer of thought around the earth that is the sum total of humankind’s mental and spiritual states, all culture, love, and knowledge. He foresaw that each person would eventually need the resources of the whole planet to nourish them both materially and psychologically.
• The concept also preceded James Lovelock’s “Gaia” concept, by which we understand the planet as one living organism.

Walden Henry David Thoreau

“When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence—that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilirating and sublime.”

• In a nutshell Make sure that you have time in your life just to think.
• Yet Thoreau felt that he was richer than anyone he knew, having everything he materially needed and the time to enjoy it.
• The average person, with all their things, had continually to labor to afford them, meanwhile neglecting nature’s beauty and the gentle work of the soul, which solitude brings.
• His time by Walden Pond was a conscious exercise in what modern self-development would call “de-scripting.” He wanted to recover the total freedom of mind that was his at birth but that he suspected (despite his education) had been warped by “conventional wisdom” and the prejudices of his upbringing. He withdrew in order to stop himself being a social reflection, to realize what being a free individual meant.
• “If one advances confidently in the direction of his own dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
• “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.”
• on people and society. Near the end of Walden there is the story of a beetle that emerged from an old table, resurrected after a 60-year hibernation, thanks to the heat of an urn placed on it. The story sums up Thoreau’s philosophy, in that he felt that all of us have the potential to emerge from the “wellseasoned tomb” of society, like the beetle, to enjoy the summer of life.