LET’S GET AFTER IT THIS YEAR!
Life is too short to suffer. There are two types of states- beautiful states and suffering states. Suffering is a choice. Make two decisions- live in a beautiful state and take 100% responsibility. It is not about the goal – it is about who you have to become to achieve the goal. Your brain is not there to make you happy- it’s there to make you survive. If we cannot fail, we cannot learn. All I need is within me now. Everyone has the resources within themselves to change. Change your language, change your life. Everything we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure. Dance with the fear of life. Knowledge is potential power- execution is real power. Too much certainty = lack of growth, we need uncertainty. Your problems will either help you grow or help you die. The way we communicate with others and the way we communicate with ourselves ultimately determine the quality of our lives. Life is not the challenges that you face, but the meaning that you give to those challenges. If you’re driving and looking in the rearview mirror you will never get what you want out of life. It’s in our moments of decision that our destiny is shaped. Know that it’s your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny. Your values are your targets, you either move towards or away from them. Life will pay whatever price you ask of it. Be the person today that you want to be in 10 years- the person you have to become to achieve the results. Good timber does not grow with ease- the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees. Serving people is about finding the gap from where they are to where they want to go- fill the gap! When you serve without expectation, anything can happen. Who you spend time with is who you become. People’s lives are a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer group. If your peer group doesn’t expect much- it’s only a matter of time before you’ll be not expecting much of yourself. Hunt for humans that are fucking outstanding. It’s not “can you?” It’s “will you?” Your relationship with yourself is the most important one. I don’t hope I feel good, I make myself feel good. Raise your standards. Nothing is impossible if you want it bad enough. Direction determines destination. The wall that protects you also imprisons you. What if problems were always gifts… What if every problem you ever had in life was happening for you not to you? No strategy in the world will work unless we resolve our inner conflicts. Stress is just the overachievers’ code word for fear. Fear and anger cannot coexist with gratitude. The rewards you get in public are from the things you practice in private. My past does not have to equal my future unless I live there. All our beliefs either empower us or limit us. The strongest force in the human personality is the need to stay consistent with one’s identity. If we shift identity, then we create long-term, lasting change. Be the change you want to see in the world.
The Most Important Advice I heard All Year
“I was 45 years old, and I’d been conducting for 20 years or more and suddenly I had the realization for the first time that the conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. Now my picture appears on the front of the CD. But the conductor doesn’t actually make a sound. He depends for his power on his ability to make other people powerful. And when that occurred to me, it was so profound, it had such an effect on me that people in the orchestra said, Ben, what happened to you? And that’s what happened. I realized that my job was to awaken possibility in other people.
Now the real question became was I doing that. And the way you find out whether you’re doing that is to look at their eyes. And if the eyes are shining you know you’re doing it. And if the eyes are not shining, you get to ask the question. And this is the question: who am I being that my players’ eyes are not shining?”
“The highest life you can live is when every single moment that passes before you is better
off because it did.”
“I myself am my only obstacle to perfection,”
-Kierkegaard
You have one life to live. How do you want to live it?
“I know only two things,” a student said to Rollo May. “One, I will be dead someday; two, I am not dead now. The only question is what I shall do between those points.”
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
― Howard Thurman
If you are doing something you would do for nothing, then you are on your way to salvation. And if you could drop it in a minute and forget the outcome, you are even further along. And if, while you are doing it, you are transported into another existence, there is no need for you to worry about the future.
“No one in the world is going to beat you at being you. You’re never going to be as good at being me as I am. Your goal in life is to find out the people who need you the most, to find out the business that needs you the most, to find the project and the art that needs you the most.
There is something out there just for you. What you don’t want to do is be building checklists and decision frameworks built on what other people are doing. You’re never going to be that. You’ll never be good at being somebody else” – Naval Ravikant
Our paths are not always obvious, but they can be found by following our bliss–however bliss is not to be confused with hedonism. If the path is too comfortable, you’re not on your path; you’re following someone else’s.
Heroes are not born–they are created from the practice of showing up and choosing to act from a place of love and courage.
The most crucial element involved in a hero’s journey is courage. Courage feeds all other virtues. It takes courage to show up every day, and show-up-every-day you must!
“If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I am not interested in or open to your feedback. There are a million cheap seats in the world today filled with people who will never be brave with their own lives, but will spend every ounce of energy they have hurling advice and judgement at those of us trying to dare greatly. Their only contributions are criticism, cynicism, and fear-mongering. If you’re criticizing from a place where you’re not also putting yourself on the line, I’m not interested in your feedback.”- Brené Brown
“I’d much rather take big risks and sometimes fail than not take risks at all. I didn’t want to be in the business of playing it safe. I wanted to be in the business of creating possibilities for greatness. Of all the lessons I learned in that first year running prime time, the need to be comfortable with failure was the most profound. Not with lack of effort but with the unavoidable truth that if you want innovation—and you should, always—you need to give permission to fail.”
“What you believe about yourself and your world is the primary determinant of what you do and, ultimately, how well you do it.”
James Hollis recommends asking of every significant decision in life: “Does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?
“Man is so made,” wrote La Fontaine, “that whenever anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.”
“To be a master, act like one. Assuming greatness is not phony; unworthiness is the imposter. You may have played small for a long time and fallen prey to the hallucination, “I can’t.” But behind every “can’t” is a “won’t.” When you reach the chalk circle others have drawn around you, keep walking. The moment you look a monster in the eye and demand, “Show me what you really are,” the beast will shapeshift into an ally.Emerson proclaimed, “Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.” When dark and light are placed in the same room, light always wins. And because your nature is light, you will triumph over every limit you have learned.”
-Alan Cohen
“understanding that if my patient suffers and dies, which happens, it doesn’t matter how good you are as a doctor or how good you are at anything else, people are going to suffer and die. But the question is, what do you do with that? You let it sort of dissipate in the universe or do you try to use it as fuel to get better for the next thing? And so this concept of sort of never wasting the suffering that you’re exposed to tends to be one of the biggest pieces of it.” – Dr. Dan Dworkis
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?”’- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“There were over a thousand steps leading up the mountain, but our aim was not to get to the top. Our aim was to touch peace and joy with every step.”
“When I’m most confident, I have a conversation with myself where everything is centered around the success that I’m going to have, not the question marks that lie in front of me.”- Cody Townsend
“Wisdom will not open her doors to those who are not willing to pay the price in self-sacrifice, in hard work. Her jewels are too precious to scatter before the idle, the ambitionless.”- Orison Swett Marden
“Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second. Give your dreams all you’ve got and you’ll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.”
– William James
“If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The root of the word ‘influence’ is the Latin influence, ‘to flow in.’ As a river. A current. Your influence flows from other people, and to other people, and from them to others, and on and on. Sometimes you’re aware of those who lifted you up or helped inspire your great ideas, sometimes not. Sometimes you’re aware of your own ripple effects, sometimes not. Small nudges here and there, sacrifices by brave and committed individuals, kind acts by not-so-committed individuals, accidents and acts of fate: they all connect us.”- Zoe Chance
“When it comes to discomfort, our mind gives up before our body.
In my experience, people are surprised when they suddenly grasp that everything they’ve invested time and effort in in the name of performance was about making themselves feel more comfortable. The most common request I get is for techniques to take away anxiety and tension. It comes as a revelation when I suggest that it’s not about trying to reduce the level of discomfort but about learning to face it. For those used to pursuing the comfortable life, walking towards discomfort (running is too scary) opens up a new world. When we appreciate the power of being more comfortable being uncomfortable than others, we actually become energized by the challenge of discomfort. Adopting an approach of walking towards the pressure–embracing it–does not mean that we like the pain and stress, just that we appreciate that pain and stress will definitely stop other people–which will allow us to be the one who remains standing.”
Go small. Don’t focus on being busy; focus on being productive. Allow what matters most to drive your day. Go extreme. Once you’ve figured out what actually matters, keep asking what matters most until there is only one thing left. That core activity goes at the top of your success list.
Focus on what matters. Be a Stoic in the face of temptation. Use Time to your advantage. Diversify your investments
“As Stoic students we should try to express our highest self in every moment and close the gap between who we’re capable of being (our ideal self), and who we actually are in that very moment.”
“There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are. They have the gift of kindness or courage or loyalty or integrity. It really matters very little whether they are behind the wheel of a truck or running a business or bringing up a family. They teach the truth by living it.” ― James Garfield
Power of Meditation
“Recently a team of researchers from the State University of New York at Albany studied the meditation practice of around 100 people to assess the impact of the reasons why people meditate on whether they would reap the rewards of meditation. Almost half of the participants meditated to manage difficult feelings or to get rid of stress or fear, while the remaining participants meditated with the purpose of better opening up and accepting whatever thoughts and feelings may arise. Those in the second group got all of the expected benefits of meditation: Less anxiety, less worry, less depression, and better mindful awareness. Those in the first group — meditating to manage difficult feelings, and diminish stress or fear? Ah, no — those benefits largely eluded them.
It is almost ironic: Contemplative practice to get rid of stress and fear is less likely to have that impact. If you are unwilling to have it, you’ve got it; if you are unwilling to lose it, you’ve lost it. By contrast, the more you are willing to open up to these difficult thoughts and experiences, the less likely you are going to suffer from them.”
“Character is plural… It’s ways of thinking, acting, feeling, and doing that benefit others and yourself, that you can continue to cultivate your whole life. They’re not just thoughts you have. They’re not just beliefs. They’re enacted.” – Angela Duckworth
“For renewal, tough-minded optimism is
best. The future is not shaped by people
who don’t really believe in the future.
Men and women of vitality have always
been prepared to bet their futures, even
their lives, on ventures of unknown
outcome. If they had all looked before
they leaped, we would still be crouched in
caves sketching animal pictures on the
Wall.”
“We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure all your life.”― John W. Gardner
Life is Juggling Five Balls
“Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”
“I don’t know you, your dreams or your desires…. but I do know what you’re made of. Pure possibility. A core made of power. A mind made for visions. A heart built for love. A spirit designed to wow. And so today, as you move through your hours, let go of who you were to become all you are. Please. Return to greatness. Model mastery. Show us what the best of being human is all about. And lift us with your light. Make this day epic. And let’s not take our tomorrows for granted.” – Robin Sharma
What’s the ONE Thing I can do / such that by doing it / everything else will be easier or unnecessary?
“The common denominator of success – secret of success of every individual who has ever been successful – lies in the fact that he or she formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.”- Albert E. N. Gray
The answer to life is more life. You must seek the limits of the possible and then go beyond. Guilt is the unlived life.
A Note on Taking a Week to Slow Down
I have the tendency to push myself to the extreme which has been a blessing and a curse throughout my life. The past couple of weeks have been an all out sprint in work and I realized that it was time to down regulate and spend some time recovering and reflecting.
So this week was different…. Instead of consuming more, I changed it up and I brought clarity and stillness to my life. I held back on trying to read or listen to every last bit of content to help me develop and allowed the quiet to provide the wisdom. I put down the podcasts, books and articles and stopped looking for the next thing to advance me on my path. I enjoyed the stillness and allowed my mind to be clear. I stepped back to reflect and be fully present in each moment. I asked big questions and gave myself the time to truly reflect on them. It brought a level of tranquility and clarity that I can’t find when I’m constantly in go-go-go mode. We’re all on our own path, but I hope my week of stillness might encourage you to carve one out in your own life. Slow down this week and use the time to reflect on what’s really important for you and create a roadmap to move forward with those things.
Here are some of the things I did this week.
I thought about how I could be a more perfect instrument in this world. How I could help unleash the potential in others. I thought about my fears and realized these exist mostly in my mind. I thought about my potential and how I can step more into it. I thought about my failures and the beautiful lessons I learned from them. I thought about my hardships and how they gave me all the strength to be where I’m at today. I thought about what it looks like when I’m fully authentic in everything I do and how extraordinary that is.
I thought about the essential few things that drive my happiness and progress and eliminated the trivial many that had been taking up my time. I let strangers be seen and let them know that we are all humans struggling with something. I searched for perfect moments and tried not to let one escape me. I got lost admiring the beauty of nature we’re surrounded by everyday. I paused and felt the breath of a cool breeze blowing through my hair. I enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my face and how precious of a gift that is. I stopped trying to do more or strive and just be fully present at the amazing moment that we all have right now.
I looked my wife in the eye and let her know that I see her and appreciate all she does for our family. I watched my children sleep and admired how precious this gift is. Instead of trying to knock out something more at work, I took my son to the park and we just played. I didn’t miss a moment to hug or kiss a loved one. I held my dog Nala who’s been my shadow for the last eight years as she took her last breath. I sat in the sorrow I’m feeling from losing her.
I breathed deeply. I sat down to journal and let my thoughts pour out. I wrote out the 25 things I want to do before I die and put plans together on how I’ll be intentional about bringing these to life. I really listened to someone. I didn’t worry about what I was about to say but just sat and listened. I gave someone hope who seemed to have none. Maybe hope is the greatest gift we can give. I jumped on a call with one of my heroes.
I did something I wasn’t sure I could do and allowed that to be an insight into how much more we’re all capable of. Capable of more love, compassion, vitality, mastery, growth… I thought about the things in life that are worth doing even if I fail.
It was a great week. One that was filled with all the emotions we get to experience during our time here. It felt like a life lived in full color. I think I’ll do this more often. – 3/14/22 Sean
“If you can see your whole life’s path laid out then it’s not your life’s path.”
– Joseph Campbell
The Thing’s I’m Proudest of:
The things I’m proudest of in life and have brought the deepest meaning are the things I’ve had to work the hardest for. I wasn’t necessarily happy during the struggle but the struggle led to happiness. Happiness doesn’t just show up, it’s forged through challenge. So I’m going to keep running towards my stretch points and fear walls and creating meaning and happiness through the struggle.
“Thus the pursuit of happiness as a goal in itself is doomed to failure; happiness can be achieved only as a by-product of other activities. By the same token, aiming for pleasure without thinking about meaning is less likely to lead to fulfillment than aiming for meaning to begin with: Meaning does not follow pleasure, whereas pleasure does follow meaning. Viktor Frankl recognized this phenomenon when he wrote: ‘Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to be happy. Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically.’- Stephen Joseph
“The world contains far more information than any single person can learn in their lifetime. The question is not whether you are ignorant, but what you choose to be ignorant about. Few topics are worth your precious time. Choose what you pay attention to with great care.”
– James Clear
“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.” —F. M. Alexander
Why Greatness Can’t be Planned
“Often, to achieve our highest aspirations, we must be willing to abandon them. As a corollary, collaboration can sometimes thwart innovation by tacitly forcing its participants into an objective-driven mindset. The moral is both sobering and liberating: we can potentially achieve more by following a non-objective yet still principled path, after throwing off the shackles of objectives, metrics, and mandated outcomes.” – Kenneth Stanley
Is today going to be the day you decide to unleash your potential and become the person you know you’re capable of being?
“There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; It all depends on how you use them.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
“Large collective events — like public sporting matches — can be highly emotional and transformative experiences. Scientific studies have noted an interesting phenomenon whereby people who encounter this type of shared arousal demonstrate an alignment in autonomic activity, such as synchronous heart rate patterns. There is also evidence that transformative experiences can activate feelings of oneness with the group, referred to as ‘identity fusion.’:
“Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of men do. More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them.“
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” —George Bernard Shaw
“Rarely is it a question of talent or technique at those levels. It’s just one of belief and the concomitant will to kind of do something that either no one’s done before, or even more, I think, to crack open the barriers that people consider impossible or un-doable.”- Rodney Mullen
Found in all successful leaders
A definite purpose, definite motive, mastermind alliance, self reliance, self discipline over head and heart, persistence, a well developed faculty of imagination, definite and prompt decisions, opinions made on fact and not hearsay, capacity to create enthusiasm at will and direct it, keen sense of fairness and justice, tolerance and open mind, going the extra mile, tactfulness and a keen sense of diplomacy, listening much and talking little, an observing nature, determination, capacity stand criticism without resentment, temperance of appetites, loyalty to all who deserve it, frankness with those who have a right to it, familiarity of men’s desires (love, sex, other motives), attractive personality, effective salesmanship, concentrate full attention on one thing at a time, learning from ones own and others mistakes, willingness to take responsibility of ones subordinates, adequately recognizing merits of others, applying golden rule to all relationships, positive mental attitudes at all times, full responsibility for all take one undertakes, keen sense of values…
“We were not created to be spectators. Not made to be on-lookers. Not born to be bystanders. You and I cannot view life as a theatergoer would, pleased or displeased by what unfolds. You, as well as I, are producer, playwright, and actor making, creating and living the drama on stage. Life must be lived. Acted out. The play we are in is our own.”
“Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.” —George Halas
“Vulnerability is courage. We were looking at data the other day — we have 200,000 pieces of data now- and I can’t find a single example or incident of courage that is not completely defined by vulnerability.”-Brené Brown
Advice from Kevin Kelly:
Don’t ever work for someone you don’t want to become.
Cultivate 12 people who love you, because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you
Life lessons will be presented to you in the order they are needed. Everything you need to master the lesson is within you. Once you have truly learned a lesson, you will be presented with the next one. If you are alive, that means you still have lessons to learn.
It is the duty of a student to get everything out of a teacher, and the duty of a teacher to get everything out of a student.
The only productive way to answer “what should I do now?” is to first tackle the question of “who should I become?”
Actual great opportunities do not have “Great Opportunities” in the subject line.
“There are no maps to guide our most important searches; we must rely on hope, chance, intuition, and a willingness to be surprised.”
– Dr. Gordon Livingston
“He had reached that moment in life, different for each one of us, when a man abandons himself to his demon or to his genius, following a mysterious law which bids him either to destroy or outdo himself.”― Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
The longest running study on happiness: Harvard’s 84 year old Study of Adult Development
Here are 7 lessons from the study to help you live a happier life:
1. A happy childhood goes a long way
A happy childhood is correlated with:
• Better physical health
• Strong relationships in later life
• Lower likelihood of depression by 50
2. But a bad childhood can be compensated in middle age
A bad childhood can undermine later happiness in life. However, people who focused on nurturing the next generation through parenting and other means had a much happier adulthood than those who didn’t.
3. Time with loved ones has strong positive effects on happiness
• Quality of relationships matters more than quantity.
• Quantity of time spent with those relationships is vital.
• Having a spouse, especially in old age, helped a lot with keeping sadness at bay.
4. Coping strategies really help
• Altruism
• Helping the disadvantaged
• Suppressing negative feelings
Effective coping strategies were a predictor for better relationships, strong social support, and sharper brains.
5. Lifestyle has a significant impact on well being
Those who aged well:
• Were physically active
• Didn’t smoke or drink much
• Had low body weight
• Enjoyed stable marriages
6. Know when to let go
• Happier adults were better at letting go of past failures and troubles.
• They spend more of their time focusing on activities and things that bring them joy.
7. The most important finding
Close relationships are the strongest predictor of happiness ― even more so than social class, IQ, fame, money, or even genes. The folks most satisfied with their relationships at 50, were also the healthiest at age 80.
It’s pretty straight forward: Define your rules. Live by them.
A few of my favorites:
✓Ask yourself, “is this essential?”
✓Don’t be afraid to ask for help
✓Study the lives of the greats
✓You are the product of your habits
✓Don’t suffer imagined troubles
✓Back up your words with meaningful action
✓Have a state of the union with yourself
✓Disconnect from distractions
✓Learn, don’t idolize
“By accident my ass.” – Estée Lauder
“After all these years and experiences, I know nothing, nothing at all, that compares to the love for another person when it comes to reaching immensity and infinity.”
This talks about a 2019 study that analyzed and identified who actually makes up the top 1% of earners in America and found it isn’t tech titans but “regional business such as an auto dealer or beverage distributor.”
Lessons on rich earners:
✓First, rich people own.
✓Second, rich people tend to own unsexy businesses
✓The third important factor is to build a local monopoly.
What Makes People Happiest
“The activities that make people happiest include sex, exercise and gardening. People get a big happiness boost from being with a romantic partner or friends but not from other people, like colleagues, children or acquaintances. Weather plays only a small role in happiness, except that people get a hearty mood boost on extraordinary days, such as those above 75 degrees and sunny. People are consistently happier when they are out in nature, particularly near a body of water, particularly when the scenery is beautiful.”
“All my dreams suddenly came together and made sense. I refined this vision until it was very specific. I was going to go for the Mr. Universe title; I was going to break records in powerlifting; I was going to Hollywood; I was going to be like Reg Park. The vision became so clear in my mind that I felt like it had to happen. There was no alternative; it was this or nothing.“- Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Risk taking is the cornerstone of empires. No one ever became a success without taking chances.“- Estée Lauder
“I couldn’t have imagined everything that has happened but dreams are like that. That’s what makes the journey so interesting.
Put all the work in, and then let the future emerge… Anything can happen if you are willing to put in the work and remain open to the possibility. Dreams are realized by effort, determination, passion and staying connected to that sense of who you are.
WHY ME?
WHY NOT ME?”
“Now, I know what you’re thinkin’. How the hell does a 52 year old, over-the-hill milkshake machine salesman… build a fast food empire with 16,000 restaurants, in 50 states, in 5 foreign countries… with an annual revenue of in the neighborhood of $700,000,000.00… One word… PERSISTENCE. Nothing in this world can take the place of good old persistence. Talent won’t. Nothing’s more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius won’t. Unrecognized genius is practically a cliche. Education won’t. Why the world is full of educated fools. Persistence and determination alone are all powerful.“- Ray Kroc
“I realized looking back at my career that the one thing that I did well is I kept showing up. I never quit. I think that mindset, and I have so many examples in my life where it would’ve made sense to quit and give up because the obstacles just appeared to be so great. And for some reason, and I wasn’t even conscious of it, I just didn’t have the ability to give up on something that maybe I should have given up.
And because I didn’t give up, I’ve ended up in a place that I couldn’t even have imagined 20 or 30, or even 40 years ago. So I tell my son, I tell my daughter, look, most of life is showing up. I think it was Woody Allen that said 95% of life is showing up. Showing up day after day after day despite obstacles, despite fears you might have going forward. That’s a mantra in our firm about everything, especially today in these markets that we’re experiencing. You’ve got to keep showing up, you’ve got to keep grinding because better days will come. If you’re not there when the better days come, you’re not going to be able to take advantage of them. So showing up, being there, longevity is huge in life, and in this business.“- Paul Black, CEO WCM
“In the battle between the river and the rock, the river will always win. Not through strength but by persistence.” Kongfuzi
“What I learned from Michael Easter’s excellent book is how our bodies are programmed to be pushed. We were made to struggle, to be uncomfortable, to do hard things beyond our perceived capabilities. When we do, our potential expands. The boundaries we thought existed before stretch out like an expanding empire.
And when we don’t? Our bodies and minds crumble. We lose the spark that tells us to stop making excuses and start making things happen.”
-Joseph Wells
“If I could sum up everything I learned reading 250 biographies of founders into a tweet it would be:
They all had a Kanye West level of self belief combined with the work ethic of Kobe Bryant”
Not All Focus is Equal – Shane Parish
“In every area of life, there is a hidden asymmetry. If you apply your focus like everyone else, you will get the same results as everyone else. Understanding where to apply your focus makes a massive difference in results.
Everyone knows that focus matters. Most people don’t know where to focus. Telling people “to focus more” is about as helpful as telling them to “make better decisions.” Common advice but useless in practice.
Not all focus is equal. Some focus is asymmetric. Knowing where to focus makes a difference.
How do you know where to focus? The answer is a deep fluency in the problem. You need to embed yourself in the problem and the details. You need to try things, reflect, and learn. Sooner or later, you start to understand the hidden asymmetry.
A lot of business people treat all decisions the same, no matter the implications. They’ll spend as much time trying to decide a trivial decision as a major one. A lot of authors focus on the work and miss that how it’s positioned for the audience matters more. A lot of people go to the gym 4 days a week only to miss that what goes into their body and the amount of sleep matter more.
The visible problem might appear to be a lack of focus, but the invisible problem is often not knowing where to focus to get the best results.
In any field, a few areas of focus make an asymmetric difference. Often they’re hiding in plain sight and ignored by most.
One place to find asymmetry is to listen to people talk about others’ success … “that book sold a lot, but did you read it, it’s not well written.” That’s an indication that the quality of writing matters less than you think and something else matters more. Or consider the person that explains another person’s success away with “luck.” There might be an element of luck to it, sure, but when you pull back the curtain, I bet you discover they’re focusing a little bit more on something different. Success leaves clues.
What looks like a lack of focus is often a lack of understanding.”
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” —Mark Twain
The 5 Regrets of the Dying
The most common regret was this: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish that I’d let myself be happier—too late they realized happiness is a choice.
I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends—too often they failed to give them the time and effort they deserved.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings—too frequently shut mouths and shuttered feelings weighed too heavy to handle.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard—too much time spent making a living over building a life caused too much remorse.
9 Elements for Creating FLOW
by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi / Heroic
“There are clear goals every step of the way.” Quite simply: You CANNOT have flow without starting with a clear goal/target/focus for your attention. Period.
“There is immediate feedback to one’s actions.”
“There is a balance between challenges and skills.” Too much challenge = anxiety. Too little challenge = boredom. Find the flow channel right at the sweet spot where challenge = skills.
“Action and awareness are merged.” In short, we’re focused. We have one-pointed attention. We’re not thinking of one thing while doing another.
“Distractions are excluded from consciousness.” We’re in DEEP WORK mode. Our attention isn’t splintered by a million distractions. We’re all in and intensely present.
“There is no worry of failure.” We’re too focused and engaged to think of failure.
“Self-consciousness disappears.” There’s no room for self-consciousness when you’re truly ALL IN. Sure sign you’re out of flow is when you’re wondering how you’re looking.
“The sense of time becomes distorted.” It can feel shorter or longer than it was but: “Clock time no longer marks equal lengths of experienced time.”
“The activity becomes autotelic.” Autotelic is Greek-speak for something that is an end in itself. Most of the time we do things as a means to an end. In flow, the activity itself is its own reward. <— Making our entire lives one little autotelic moment after another—from the most mundane dishes to the most sublime experiences = true mastery.
“Every entrepreneur knows the feeling: that moment of despair when the only thing you are aware of is the giant gap between where you find yourself and the life and business you imagine. Once you succeed, people see only the success. If you fail, they see only the failure. Rarely do they see the turning points that could have taken you in a completely different direction. But it’s at these inflection points that the most important lessons in business and life are learned.“
“You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.” — Marc Andreessen
“I believe you can speak things into existence.”― Jay-Z, Decoded
Mastery
Mastery like that takes experience, endurance, and tolerance for pain. And it yields the greatest rewards.
“Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.” –Derek Sivers
Abraham Maslow’s Characteristics of Self-actualizers
More Efficient Perception of Reality and More Comfortable Relationships With It: These individuals tend to have a “superior relationship with reality” and are “generally unthreatened and unfrightened by the unknown.” In fact, “they accept it, are comfortable with it, and, often are even more attracted by it than by the known. They not only tolerate the ambiguous and unstructured—they like it.” This capacity was noticed as an unusual ability to detect the spurious, the fake, and the dishonest in personality, and in general to judge people correctly and efficiently.
Acceptance (Self, Others, Nature): “Even the normal member of our culture feels unnecessarily guilty or ashamed about too many things and has anxiety in too many situations. Our healthy individuals find it possible to accept themselves and their own nature without chagrin or complaint or, for that matter, without even thinking about the matter that much.”
Spontaneity; Simplicity; Naturalness: The behavior of the self-actualizing individual is “marked by simplicity and naturalness, and by lack of artificiality or straining for effect.”
Problem Centering: Self-actualizers customarily have some “mission in life.”
Solitude: Self-actualizing individuals “positively like solitude and privacy to a definitely greater degree than the average person.”
Autonomy: “They have become strong enough to be independent of the good opinion of other people, or even of their affection. The honors, the status, the rewards, the popularity, the prestige, and the love they can bestow must have become less important than self-development and inner growth.”
Fresh Appreciation: “Self-actualizing people have the wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may have become to others.”
Peak Experiences: It’s been called “flow” or “being in the zone.” Whatever you want to call it, self-actualizers tend to experience it more often than average.
Human Kinship: “Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family.” “Self-actualizing individuals have a genuine desire to help the human race.”
Humility and Respect: All of Maslow’s subjects “may be said to be democratic people in the deepest sense… they can be friendly with anyone of suitable character, regardless of class, education, political belief, race or color. As a matter of fact it often seems as if they are not aware of these differences, which are for the average person so obvious and so important.”
Interpersonal Relationships: “Self-actualizing people have these especially deep ties with rather few individuals. Their circle of friends is rather small. The ones that they love profoundly are few in number.”
Ethics: “They do right and do not do wrong. Needless to say, their notions of right and wrong and of good and evil are often not the conventional ones.”
Discrimination Between Means and Ends, Good and Evil: “These individuals are strongly ethical, they have definite moral standards, they do right and do not do wrong. Needless to say, their notions of right and wrong and of good and evil are often not the conventional ones.” “They are fixed on ends rather than on means, and means are quite definitely subordinated to these ends.”
Humor: “They do not consider funny what the average person considers to be funny. Thus they do not laugh at hostile humor (making people laugh by hurting someone) or superiority humor (laughing at someone else’s inferiority) or authority-rebellion humor (the unfunny, Oedipal, or smutty joke).”
Creativity: “This is a universal characteristic of all the people studied or observed. There is no exception.”
Resistance to Enculturation: “Of all of them it may be said that in a certain profound and meaningful sense they resist enculturation and maintain a certain inner detachment from the culture in which they are immersed.”
Imperfections: Actualizers “show many of the lesser human failings. They too are equipped with silly, wasteful, or thoughtless habits. They can be boring, stubborn, irritating. They are by no means free from a rather superficial vanity, pride, partiality to their own productions, family, friends, and children. Temper outbursts are not rare.”
Values: “A firm foundation for a value system is automatically furnished to self-actualizers by their philosophic acceptance of the nature of self, of human nature, of much of social life, and of nature and physical reality.”
Resolution of Dichotomies: “The dichotomy between selfishness and unselfishness disappears altogether in healthy people because in principle every act is both selfish and unselfish.”
There’s the notion of who am I in the world? Everybody for better or worse is just making a statement to the world, about what they view as important.
“I just have to play, and invite others to play, not even necessarily with me, but in their own lives. And that is, I think the highest form of being. And if you think about it at the end of the day, what’s civilization for, to free us up so that we can play more, that ought to be the goal. People get caught up in this or that, and they’re not having fun. I just use the word fun. If one were to look at all the interviews of Warren Buffet, all of them over the decades and more in his public speaking, but also in his letters, the shareholder letters, and stuff, there’s one word that occurs more than any other, FUN.” – Adam Robinson
“For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn’t give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.”― Oliver Wendell Holmes
“I wanted to show the world what a human can do.”
“I always smiled my way through the mud.” – Nims Purja
The right thing to do when you are in moments of suffering is to stand erect in the suffering. Wait. See what it has to teach you.
“We are, each of us, a product of the stories we tell ourselves.. The good news is that we can give ourselves permission to change our story. To act differently. To remind ourselves that we are not characters in a movie based on a true story, whose personalities are clearly defined and predictable. “- Derren Brown
What made Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk succeed?
Was it their technology, connections, or intelligence?
Not exactly.
There is one characteristic that’s more important:
Mindset.
Here’s why:
Personally, I think mindset is an entrepreneur’s most critical asset. Yet few of us ever take the time to craft it — to purposefully select and sharpen the mindset we desire.
Your mindset is the filter through which you see the world. It determines how you spend your time, what decisions you make, and where you invest your resources.
Here’s how mindsets work: Let’s start with an analogy. If you’ve been following developments in Artificial Intelligence, you know that we can train neural nets to do image recognition. The challenge with these neural nets is that they’re only as good as the data you feed them.
For example, if you show the neural nets thousands of pictures of cats, and then you show them a picture of a dog, the algorithm will tell you that the dog is actually a cat. It doesn’t know any better.
The same is true for our brains, which are also neural nets.
If you constantly feed your brain with negative perspectives, your outlook will be negative. You won’t know any better.
So, how are you training your neural net?
Your life becomes what you consume and who you spend time with.
No one is born an entrepreneur. They train themselves for years to identify market opportunities, create products, and manage people.
If you want to become an entrepreneur, you need to train your brain to become one.
There are a few other mindsets that the most successful entrepreneurs have:
An abundance mindset:
They believe opportunities are abundant and efforts compound exponentially. They don’t worry for a second about missing an opportunity – they immediately seize the next one.
A Moonshot Mindset:
Average entrepreneurs try to improve their business by 10% a year.
Massively successful entrepreneurs go for massive goals.
Longevity mindset:
Nothing great is accomplished in a few months.
Entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs identified a mission and stuck with it for decades before most of the world noticed.
-Peter Diamandis
“I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart,” Vincent van Gogh
“There’s a saying in the military that if you see something below standard and do nothing, then you’ve set a new standard.” – Ben Horowitz
Sam Zell’s life lesson he wish he knew earlier:
“Patience is everything. Patience and discipline and they’re obviously connected. Those are the two primary functions that govern what I do and I think materially contribute to my success.”
Reading for 20 Minutes a Day
Since 20 minutes of reading per day equates to 1.8 million words in a year, we can easily average that out to 18 books read in a year (100,000 words per book). You can’t find 20 minutes a day to fill your mind with ideas people have spent a lifetime uncovering?
“There are limitless opportunities open to the man who appreciates the fact that his own mind is the sole key that unlocks them.”
– Robert H. Goddard
“I think every great story in human history has shown an incredible challenge that has been overcome. That’s the reality. There’s no great life that is worth living without its troubles, aches, and pains. That’s a part of the process. That is why we have this unique human experience to adapt and mold and shape our way to be who we want to be. It’s just like when you’re creating a samurai sword. The perfect sword takes so much dedication and time and many times, many failures to find the right blend of making sure that metal and the honing and the sheathing of this particular craft is done. And the same thing for the human mind, the human spirit, takes time.” Apolo Anton Ohno
Hugging The X-Axis by David Perell
“As my priorities have shifted, I’ve discovered a tradeoff between the shine of novelty and the consistency of commitment. Western culture over-indexes on novelty. It suffers from commitment phobia. I see this in our culture of digital nomadism, job-hopping among yuppies, and listening to books at 3x speed instead of reading them deeply. Anxiety is the driving force behind this game of hopscotch. The problem is that a life without commitment is a life spent hugging the X-Axis.
People think they’ll be happy if they don’t have any obligations. In actuality, total optionality is a recipe for emptiness — and hugging the X-axis — because opportunity and optionality are often inversely correlated. The challenge is that the greatest rewards generally go to people who are tied down in certain ways. A real lifelong marriage is the deepest relationship you’ll ever have because you’ve committed to a lifetime of faithfulness. Likewise, you only get to raise money for a startup when investors are confident you’re committed for the long haul. The challenge is that people who treat their lives like a game of hot potato, always moving from thing to thing, can’t take advantage of exponential curves — and climb the Y-axis.
The bottom line is commitment is undervalued. If you have commitment phobia, you’re not taking control of your own life.“
“Every so often, you meet people who radiate joy—who seem to know why they were put on this earth, who glow with a kind of inner light. Life, for these people, has often followed what we might think of as a two-mountain shape. They get out of school, they start a career, and they begin climbing the mountain they thought they were meant to climb. Their goals on this first mountain are the ones our culture endorses: to be a success, to make your mark, to experience personal happiness. But when they get to the top of that mountain, something happens. They look around and find the view . . . unsatisfying. They realize: This wasn’t my mountain after all. There’s another, bigger mountain out there that is actually my mountain.
And so they embark on a new journey. On the second mountain, life moves from self-centered to other-centered. They want the things that are truly worth wanting, not the things other people tell them to want. They embrace a life of interdependence, not independence. They surrender to a life of commitment.”
Your Daemon
The Greeks had a concept, later seized by Goethe, called the daemonic. A daemon is a calling, an obsession, a source of lasting and sometimes manic energy. Daemons are mysterious clusters of energy deep in the unconscious that were charged by some mysterious event in childhood that we imperfectly comprehend—or by some experience of trauma, or by some great love or joy or longing that we spend the rest of our lives trying to recapture. The daemon identifies itself as an obsessive interest, a feeling of being at home at a certain sort of place, doing a certain activity.
When you see an individual at the peak of her powers, it’s because she has come into contact with her daemon, that wound, that yearning, that core irresolvable tension.
Reflect on what motivates you.
Try to come up with three to five core values or things that matter most to you, the guiding principles in your life.
Think about how you can turn these core values into daily practices.
What actions work in service of your core values?
How can you adjust your life to ensure you are taking these actions regularly?
How can you incorporate these actions into your current routines?
We are what we repeatedly do. Therefore a great life is built on the daily actions that are in alignment with our guiding values.
The Maximum Marriage
A beautiful marriage is not dramatic. It is hard to depict in novel and song because the acts that define it are so small, constant, and particular. Marriage is knowing she likes to get to the airport early. Marriage is taking the time to make the bed even though you know that if you didn’t do it she probably would. At the grand level, marriage means offering love, respect, and safety, but day to day, there are never-ending small gestures of tact and consideration, in which you show you understand her moods, you cherish his presence, that this other person is the center of your world. At the end of the day there is the brutal grinding effort of surrendering the ego to the altar of marriage, giving up part of yourself, the desires you have, for the larger union.
Great marriages are measured by how much the spouses are able to take joy in each other’s victories.
In marriages that succeed, John Gottman has found, the couple experiences five toward bids for every one against or turning-away bid. The people Gottman calls “relationship masters” go out of their way to store up chits in their emotional bank account.
Divorce doesn’t generally happen when the number of conflicts increases; it happens when the number of positive things decreases. Julie Gottman, John’s wife, points out that masters of relationship are on alert for what their partner is doing right, and they are quick to compliment.
According to the Gottmans, there are four kinds of unkindness that drive couples apart:
Contempt
Criticism
Defensiveness
Stonewalling.
The rule of their research is pretty simple: If you’re tired and your partner makes a bid, turn toward in kindness. If you’re distracted, turn toward in kindness. If you’re stressed, turn toward in kindness.
When you examine the set of all people who have ever walked down the aisle versus people who never have, the health and happiness results are very different. Simply put: marriage doesn’t make you healthy and happy; a good marriage makes you healthy and happy. And a bad marriage, even one in the past, can have very (or very very very) negative effects.
What effects does marriage have on health?
Metrics for heart attacks, cancer, dementia, illness, blood pressure, or even straight-up likelihood of dying all improve. (Today’s married men enjoy an average seven-year boost in life expectancy.)
If you’re unhappily married, your health is likely to be notably worse than if you never got hitched at all.
A bad marriage makes you 35 percent more likely to fall ill and lops four years off your life.
A study of almost nine thousand people found divorced and widowed people had 20 percent more health problems (including heart disease and cancer). And most surprisingly, some of those effects never went away, even if they remarried. Folks on marriage number two had 12 percent more serious health issues than those who never split up, and divorced women were 60 percent more likely to have cardiovascular disease, even if they took another walk down the aisle.
Happiness & Marriage
If you’ve got a good marriage, getting hitched definitely provides a boost. A 2010 study from Australia even said previous research probably underestimated just how happy people in happy marriages are. But the flip side is even more damning than you may have guessed.
A study of the medical records of five thousand patients analyzed the most stressful life events people deal with. Divorce came in at #2. (Death of a spouse was number one.) Divorce even beat going to prison.
Human beings are pretty resilient. With almost all bad things that happen, your happiness levels eventually return to baseline. But not with divorce.
An eighteen year study of thirty thousand people showed that after a marriage goes splitsville, levels of subjective well-being rebound—but not completely. It seems divorce puts a permanent dent in your happiness. And when you look at everyone across the marital spectrum, nobody is more despondent than the unhappily married. If you’re going to be lonely, it’s better to do it alone.
Advice from YoYo Ma
How do you pick collaborators? First I look for generosity; second, mutual respect and admiration.
Part of being a musician is reporting on what you experience. If you deliberately limit your experiences, your reporting will be limited.
I knew how little I knew…. I left college thinking, “I know one sliver of things about playing an instrument.” So I had a hunger and a curiosity, and I still feel that way.
The main goal is to be memorable. If the next day people in the audience say to one another, “What did we do last night?” that’s utter failure.
Don’t worry about the things you can’t control. When the inevitable delays happen, when something horrible goes on, just go into neutral and choose the high road. The other way never helps.
I wanted to determine who I was. The best approach is to have a healthy confidence but also the self-knowledge to ask, “What do I and don’t I do well?” so that you can be the architect of your own life.
It’s more like information becomes knowledge becomes love. The final achievement is to say, “I truly love this, and I have enough mastery to be able to share that love with someone else.”
“I am an artist at living, and my work of art is my life.”
-Japanese philosopher Suzuki
Greatness Without Goals:
“somewhere within our culture we recognize that there’s a bit of a problem with setting goals and strictly adhering to them with this belief that that’s ultimately going to cause you to get what you want. Yet what the book is about is that we have a tendency in our culture, a strong tendency, to basically design everything that we do around exactly that archetype, which is that let’s set a goal, stay on our objective, and then let’s set some metric so we can decide how close we’re going to that goal, and then let’s put all our effort into just moving directly in the direction of the goal. We believe somehow that this is going to lead to all the things that we need and want to accomplish, keep us ahead of the curve, avoid disruption, all the things that we’re worried about, that this is the formula, basically, for everything. What the book is about is that it actually doesn’t work.”
Dream big. Start small.
Small daily victories, performed with disciplined consistency over extended periods of time, lead to extraordinary results. Great changes come when we make small adjustments with great conviction. The smallest of actions is always better than the noblest of intentions.
I have given up many things in this becoming process. None was a sacrifice.
“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”
Chinese proverb
But here’s the reality—that’s what life is.
Living is the journey from not knowing to knowing. From not understanding to understanding. From confusion to clarity. By universal design you are born into a perplexing situation, bewildered, and you have one job as a human: figure this shit out.
Life is learning. Period. Overcoming ignorance is the whole point of the journey. You’re not supposed to know at the beginning. The whole point of venturing into uncertainty is to bring light to the darkness of our ignorance.
Life is like school, with one key difference—in school you get the lesson, and then you take the test. But in life, you get the test, and it’s your job to take the lesson.
We’re all waiting until we have deep knowledge, wisdom, and a sense of certainty before we venture forth. But we’ve got it backward—venturing forth is how we gain the knowledge. The universe only teaches through experience. So, even when you haven’t the slightest clue what you’re doing, you just have to take a deep breath and get on the damn bus.
“It’s what you do before the storm comes that most determines how well you do when the storm comes.”
I accept my ups and downs, my ins and outs, my uncertain being and becoming. I do my best. I remain patient and enjoy. And most of all I make no judgments except about effort. There I demand the most and more.
I keep four questions on my whiteboard at all times:
What do I really know?
What don’t I know?
What do I really need to know that I don’t know?
How do I learn that?
Successful investing requires an insatiable desire to learn combined with the patience to do nothing. – Chris Pavese
“I have had dreams and I’ve had nightmares. I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams,” – Jonas Salk
“Don’t listen to anyone, make the things that you love, whatever they may be. Make it for an audience of one—you.” – Rick Rubin
The Habits of Sustainable Excellence
1. Focus on Process over Outcomes
Once you pick a goal, outline the steps it will take to attain it, and then do what you can to largely forget about the goal and focus on nailing those steps instead. Many people waste a lot of time and energy worrying about success or failure down the road, instead of focusing on where they are and what they can be doing (or not doing) right now.
2. Build Deep Community
Motivation is contagious. We are all mirrors reflecting onto one another. The people around you provide gravity when you soar and they provide a safety net when you fall. Nobody reaches the top alone.
3. Balance Appropriate Stress and Appropriate Rest
Stress + rest = growth. Too much of the former, not enough of the latter, and the result is illness, injury, burnout. Too much of the latter, not enough of the former, and the result is complacency and stagnation.
4. Prioritize Consistency over Intensity
If you go big or go home, you often end up home. But small steps taken regularly over time lead to big gains. Resist the urge to exert the heroic, Instagram-worthy effort that will leave you completely exhausted, or worse, later on. Instead, think about applying a sustainable level of effort that will build and compound over the long haul.
5. Learn to Have Fun While Working Hard
If you aren’t having fun along the way, then you probably won’t last very long. Not every day has to be enjoyable, the totality of the process ought to be meaningful and fulfilling, and you’ll have more staying power if you can smile often, even on the challenging days.
6. Understand that Progress is Non-Linear
People think progress is a line that goes straight up and to the right. But the truth is that it’s a zig-zag. Don’t worry about up and to the right over any given week, month, or maybe even year. Worry about up and to the right over a lifetime.
7. Take The Work Seriously — But Yourself, Not So Much
If you connect your entire identity to what you are doing, then you will be on an emotional roller coaster. The highs will be high but the lows will be low. This works for some people (think: Michael Jordan) but for most it is a path to burnout. The best way to create some space between yourself and what you are doing is to be able to laugh at the former, at least occasionally, and to diversify your sense of identity. This way, if things are going poorly in one area of your life, you can lean into another. You can be a craftsperson and an athlete and a parent and a partner and a neighbor and a dog enthusiast and so on.
8. Know That Feeling Good and Doing Good are Generally in Alignment
Your mind-body system has a wonderful feedback mechanism: how you feel. When you feel off, that usually means something is wrong. When you feel on, it means things are right. Don’t become so focused on the external that you forget to pay attention to the internal.
9. Don’t Worry About Being the Best; Worry About Being the Best at Getting Better
All you can control is your effort. Yes, learn from others, but do not become too concerned with how they are doing. Focus on making continual improvement. If you can get the most out of yourself, then you are winning the game, and the cards will fall where they may.
10. Do the Work Before Talking About the Work
Talking is easy. Action is hard. Be careful of a common trap, which is when your talking about the work replaces your doing it. My own personal rule: I don’t talk about a book with other people (outside of my small writing group) until the first draft is written.
11. Lean On Routines — But be Willing to Release from Them
Routines are great. They automate action and lend a sense of predictability to an otherwise chaotic world. However, be sure you can release from routines when you need to. If your favorite coffee shop for doing deep-focus work shuts down that may throw you off for a day, but it ought not throw you off for a week.
12. Develop a Daily Physical Practice, Which Need not be Heroic
Even thirty minutes of brisk walking a day will help to calm your mind, increase your ability to focus, and enhance creativity, problem solving, and emotional control. We are not minds and bodies. We are mind-body systems. Try to make physical activity a part of your job, whatever your job may be.
13. Cultivate Emotional Flexibility
Emotional flexibility describes the capacity to produce context-dependent responses to life events, and to respond flexibly to changing emotional circumstances. In a nutshell, emotional flexibility is about holding everything at once — happiness, joy, and enthusiasm at the same time as anger, sadness, and frustration — and being able to feel differently at various points throughout the same day and perhaps even the same hour.
14. Care Deeply
Not giving your all on something about which you care deeply can be a way of copping out. It gives you an excuse if things don’t go how you want them to. Giving your all, leaving every bit out there, exposes you. It makes you vulnerable. But that’s the point. This is what gives texture — highs, lows, and everything in between — to life. Don’t be the kid in middle school gym class who was too cool — that is, too scared — to try.
15. Accept Failure as a Part of Growth
It is a lot easier to give your all if you are okay with failing. If you are not okay with failing, you’ll protect yourself, you’ll do what the cool kids did in middle school gym class (see above!). If you are okay with failing, you’ll be more likely to put your skin in the game because your ego is safe regardless of the outcome. Herein lies a big paradox: being okay with failure makes you more likely to succeed, because being okay with failure gives you permission to not hold anything back.
16. Show Up — Even, Perhaps Especially — When You Don’t Want To
Anyone can show up and give it their all when everything is clicking. But only those serious about excellence show-up when things are not going so hot. The best performers have high ceilings, no doubt, but they are even better at raising their floors, which comes down to being able to put together a decent day when you don’t really want to.
17. Learn from Experience When to Grit and When to Quit
Sometimes the right thing to do is forge ahead and keep going; other times the right thing to do is step away. The only way to learn which to do when is by experience. Pay close attention to when you grit and when you quit, and what you get out of each. Over time, you’ll get more refined at learning which approach makes the most sense under different circumstances.
18. Don’t Forget to Experience Joy
When you attain goals along your path or notch some big wins, take the time to enjoy and celebrate them! These moments are what give you the fortitude and resilience to keep going when the going gets tough.
19. Practice your Values
Your values represent your guiding principles. They serve as your internal dashboard. Regardless of what is happening around you, you can always choose to act in alignment with your values. And if you do, then you can look yourself in the mirror and fall asleep well at night.
By Brad Stulberg
Oliver Burkeman is the author of the book, Four Thousand Weeks and provides some principles that are useful when handling stressful situations.
There will always be too much to do – and this realisation is liberating.
When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness.
The capacity to tolerate minor discomfort is a superpower.
The advice you don’t want to hear is usually the advice you need.
The future will never provide the reassurance you seek from it.
The solution to imposter syndrome is to see that you are one.
Selflessness is overrated.
Know when to move on.
You only ever get to feel certain about the future once it’s already turned into the past.
The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control—when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about. Let’s start by admitting defeat: none of this is ever going to happen.
Advice from 7 “mentally tough” people such as, David Goggins, Sara Blakely and Kobe Bryant.
Create an alter ego.
Follow the 40%rule- When your mind is telling you that you’re done, that you’re exhausted, that you cannot possibly go any further, you’re only actually 40% done.
Face the accountability mirror
Embrace the “pain cave”
Don’t mistake your reality as the only truth.
Break your patterns
Visualize a better reality
Find the good in the awful
Use mantras in times of panic
Remember that life only moves forward.
“This means that values come before goals, before strategy, before tactics, before products, before market choices, before financing, before business plans, before every decision. I gleaned from Bill the idea that a company should start not so much with a business plan, but almost with a Declaration of Independence that begins with a statement of values: We hold these truths to be self-evident. Values come first, and all else follows—in business, in career, in life.”
“The single most important skill for building a great company is making superb people decisions. Without the right people, you simply cannot build a great company, period.”- Jim Collins
“Every morning you have two options. Continue to sleep with your dreams or wake up and chase them.”- Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Books are the closest you will ever come to finding cheat codes for real life. You can access the entire learnings of someone else’s career in a few hours.”
-Tobi Lutke, Founder & CEO of Shopify
What do you believe the role of the leader is?
The process of becoming a leader is analogous to that of a musical conductor. At the start, you spend many years acquiring the knowledge and skill required to play an instrument. Perhaps you learn several instruments. You begin by playing a solo where you are the lone element. Before too long, you play with another person in a duet. The duet is still rather easy because you are close to the other player, can look into his or her eyes to keep the beat and create the harmony.
As your grasp of the music and your experience grows, you find yourself leading a quartet, then a chamber orchestra. You learn how important each and every player is. If the first violin is off key, or the French horn is off beat, the entire musical piece is affected. Instead of the audience focusing on the beauty of the music, they focus on the one weak player or the one fault in the whole. At this point, you might be able to fill in for one of the musicians, in a pinch.
Eventually you are in the position of conducting a full symphony orchestra. As you look out, you know all of the musicians want to be there. They want to perform. After all, nobody practices bass for years and doesn’t want to play. You also know that as the conductor, they are looking to you to bring them together. To bring the passion and feeling of the music together. To make each musician a part of the whole. You realize that not only can’t you dash about playing each instrument yourself, you don’t even know how to play many of them! So, you begin. You begin by pulling together everything you know, everything you’ve learned, everything you are, and you lead.
As the music ends, the musicians take in a large breath and say “WOW! I am so glad I was a part of that magnificent piece.” As you turn to the audience you see through their applause that they are also thinking “WOW, I’m so glad I was a part of this audience.”
Dark horses blaze their own trail to a life of happiness and prosperity. The secret is a mindset that can be expressed in plain English: Harness your individuality in the pursuit of fulfillment to achieve excellence.
“Learn all your life. Learn from your failures. Learn from your successes, When you hit a spell of trouble, ask “What is it trying to teach me?” The lessons aren’t always happy ones, but they keep coming. It isn’t a bad idea to pause occasionally for an inward look. By midlife, most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.”
“We want to believe that there is a point at which we can feel that we have arrived. We want a scoring system that tells us when we’ve piled up enough points to count ourselves successful.
So you scramble and sweat and climb to reach what you thought was the goal. When you get to the top you stand up and look around and chances are you feel a little empty. Maybe more than a little empty.
You wonder whether you climbed the wrong mountain.
But life isn’t a mountain that has a summit, Nor is it — as some suppose — a riddle that has an answer. Nor a game that has a final score.
Life is an endless unfolding, and if we wish it to be, an endless process of self-discovery, an endless and unpredictable dialogue between our own potentialities and the life situations in which we find ourselves.”
“For renewal, tough-minded optimism is
best. The future is not shaped by people
who don’t really believe in the future.
Men and women of vitality have always
been prepared to bet their futures, even
their lives, on ventures of unknown
outcome. If they had all looked before
they leaped, we would still be crouched in
caves sketching animal pictures on the
wall.“
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” —Bob Dylan
Lives are changed by dos, not don’ts.
“There are two pains in life. There is the pain of discipline, and the pain of disappointment. If you can handle the pain of discipline, then you’ll never have to deal with the pain of disappointment.”- Nick Saban
There is a tattoo arcing across the top of Lewis Hamilton’s chest that reads Powerful Beyond Measure. The words are taken from a longer quote by the writer Marianne Williamson: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.” “I read it, and I thought it was one of the greatest sayings ever,” Hamilton says. “We limit ourselves the majority of the time. And where it really hit me hard is: We should never have to dim our light in order to make others feel….” He pauses, gathers himself. “If anything, we should shine as bright as we can to liberate others to do the same. I live my life by that quote. For so long in my life, I felt like I was dimming my light because I felt uncomfortable.”
“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When I think of my time at Instacart, I remember desperation. It was painful. But it was also powerful. Our best moments as a company came when we shared a singular purpose. Our most fun moments as a team came when our backs were against the wall.
In my experience, desperation is the single greatest advantage you have as a startup. It takes you down to the lowest level of detail. Desperation inspires creativity and intense focus. It is an essential ingredient to building great products and services.
So, the next time you feel desperate, lean in. Embrace it. Use it as the fuel to create the next founding moment for your company.
And the next time someone tries to tell you to do something because a big company does it, be suspicious.
Don’t let them infect your company with the thing that is slowly killing theirs.” – Ravi Gupta
“What focus means is saying no to something that with every bone in your body you think is a phenomenal idea and you wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you’re focusing on something else.”
— Jony Ive
One day when I was at Fort Bragg working with Special Forces, and I asked a really simple question, which was –“If vulnerability is uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure, give me a single example of courage in your life on the field, off the field, other troops, other soldiers. Give me a single example of courage that you’ve witnessed or experienced yourself that didn’t involve vulnerability, that didn’t involve uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.”
It was kind of just silence and you could see these troops, they were just shifting in their seats and uncomfortable and a couple of them started putting their heads in their hands. Then finally one guy stood up and said, “Ma’am, there is no courage without vulnerability. Three tours, there is no courage without vulnerability.” -Brené Brown
Inscribed on five of the six pillars in the Holocaust Memorial at Quincy Market in Boston are stories that speak of the cruelty and suffering in the camps. The sixth pillar presents a tale of a different sort, about a little girl named Ilse, a childhood friend of Guerda Weissman Kline, in Auschwitz. Guerda remembers that Ilse, who was about six years old at the time, found one morning a single raspberry somewhere in the camp. Ilse carried it all day long in a protected place in her pocket, and in the evening, her eyes shining with happiness, she presented it to her friend Guerda on a leaf. “Imagine a world,” writes Guerda, “in which your entire possession is one raspberry, and you give it to your friend.”
The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks…. In a world that is filled with productivity hacks, to do lists and trying to fit more into less time I found this book to be an eye opening take on the time issues we find ourselves in. Essentially, you have to accept that there will ALWAYS be too much to do! So we might as well spend our finite time focused on the handful of things that matter to each one of us.
“Five Lessons from History”
by Morgan Housel
Lesson #1: People suffering from sudden, unexpected hardship are likely to adopt views they previously thought unthinkable.
Lesson #2: Reversion to the mean occurs because people persuasive enough to make something grow don’t have the kind of personalities that allow them to stop before pushing too far.
Lesson #3: Unsustainable things can last longer than you anticipate.
Lesson #4: Progress happens too slowly for people to notice; setbacks happen too fast for people to ignore.
Lesson #5: Wounds heal, scars last.
“Life is uncertainty, surprise, hate, wonder, speculation, love, joy, pain, mystery, beauty,
and a thousand other things, some we can’t even imagine. Control requires denial of life.
Life is not about certainty or controlling. It’s not about getting. It’s not about having. It’s
not about knowing. It’s not even about being. Life is eternal perpetual becoming or it is
nothing. Becoming is not a thing to be known, commanded, or controlled. It is a
magnificent, mysterious, odyssey to be experienced. At bottom, desire to command and
control is a deadly destructive compulsion to rob oneself and others of the joys of living.”
– Dee Hock
If you’re sailing across the ocean and your goal is to avoid weather and waves, then why the hell are you sailing?
You have to embrace that sailing means that you can’t control the elements and that there will be good days and bad days and that, whatever comes, you will deal with it because your goal is to eventually get to the other side.
You will not be able to control exactly how you get across. That’s the game you’ve decided to be in. If your goal is to make it easier and simpler, then don’t get in the boat.
“I’m often asked what my “formula for success” is, or what my road map is to becoming (at the time of this writing) the all-time most Grammy–nominated artist, but to be honest, there is no formula or road map, and if anyone tells you there is, they’re full of it.” – Quincy Jones
When I was 15 years old, I had a very important person in my life come to me and say “who’s your hero?” And I said, “I don’t know, I gotta think about that. Give me a couple of weeks.” I come back two weeks later, this person comes up and says “who’s your hero?” I said, “I thought about it. You know who it is? It’s me in 10 years.” So I turned 25. Ten years later, that same person comes to me and says, “So, are you a hero?” And I was like, “not even close. No, no, no.” She said, “Why?” I said, “Because my hero’s me at 35.” So you see every day, every week, every month and every year of my life, my heroes always 10 years away. I’m never gonna be my hero. I’m not gonna attain that. I know I’m not, and that’s just fine with me because that keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.
So, to any of us, whatever those things are, whatever it is we look up to, whatever it is we look forward to, and whoever it is we’re chasing, to that I say, “Amen.” To that I say, “Alright, alright, alright.” To that I say “just keep living.” Thank you.
Matthew McConaughey
Does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?
“The CEO is the curator of an organization’s culture. Anything is possible for a company when its culture is about listening, learning, and harnessing individual passions and talents to the company’s mission. Creating that kind of culture is my chief job as CEO.” – Satya Nadella
“Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts.”
“You either walk into your story and own your truth, or you live outside of your story, hustling for your worthiness.” -Brené Brown
Most people want to be fit, most people aren’t.
Most people want to build a successful business, most people won’t.
Most people want to be the best version of themselves, most people aren’t.
Most people have dreams they want to fulfill, most people won’t.
Everyone wants to quit something, build something, be something, do something. Most people won’t.
How many things have we wanted? How many opportunities have we craved? How many broken things have we wanted to fix?
And how many of those have we shrunk from. Hid from. Or, excused away.
We’re not alone.
Most people won’t.
But every once in a while someone puts themselves out there. Makes the leap. Faces rejection or failure or worse. And comes out the other side. Better. Changed. Bolder.
Most people won’t. Which means those that do change everything.
“Good things happen to good people.”
On Steve Jobs
“He shaped how I came to view the world. We were real strong-minded, but he had a fully formed aesthetic and I did not. It is hard enough to see what is already there, to remove the many impediments to a clear view of reality. But Steve’s gift was even greater. He saw clearly what was not there, what could be there, and what had to be there. His mind was never a captive of reality. Quite the contrary. He imagined what reality lacked and set out to remedy it. His ideas were not arguments, but intuitions born of a true inner freedom. For this reason, he possessed an uncannily large sense of possibility. An epic sense of possibility. Steve’s love of beauty and his impatience with ugliness pervaded our lives. No object was too small or insignificant to be exempt from Steve’s examination of the meaning and the quality of its form. He looked at things and then created things from the standpoint of perfection. That could be an unforgiving standpoint, but over time I came to see its reasons, to understand Steve’s unbelievable rigor, which he imposed first and most strenuous on himself. He was the most unfettered thinker I have ever known.”
Estée Lauder
“I never dreamed of success, I worked for it.”
“Risk taking is the cornerstone of empires. No one ever became a success without taking chances.”
“It’s not enough to have the most wonderful product in the world. You must be able to sell it.”
“When I thought I couldn’t go on, I forced myself to keep going. My success is based on persistence, not luck.”
Marcus Aurelius wrote that “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” That was a personal reminder to continue living a life of virtue NOW, and not wait. A simple reminder can bring us closer to living the life we want.
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it . . . but to love it.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Arthur Brooks on Happiness
The four false idols: money, power, pleasure, and fame. Like drugs, they tickle our dopamine receptors, but unlike drugs they’re socially acceptable because they’re all markers of success. Yet a success addiction, like a drug addiction, will still leave you unhappy in the long run.“Nobody is ever like, ‘Dude, you did five grams of cocaine today, congratulations on that, that’s a preternaturally high dose!’” Brooks tells me, with gusto. “But ‘You made a billion dollars!’ is sort of the same thing.”
Instead of chasing those idols, Brooks advises that we focus on what he calls the four pillars of our “happiness portfolio”: faith, family, friends, and work. The happiest people, according to Brooks, adhere to a belief system that helps them transcend their narrow perspective and “understand life’s bigger than the boring sitcom that is me, me, me.” They have deep family ties and strong friendships. And they do work that serves others and allows them to earn their success. Brooks points out that if you go back to the beginning of our national decline in happiness, in the late 1980s, you see that those pillars have generally become less central to people’s lives.
Though fifty percent of your happiness is genetic, he estimates that your circumstances are responsible for another 25 percent, and the remaining quarter is determined by your habits.
Each year, on his birthday, he makes a reverse bucket list of attachments he needs to let go of. One year, he threw out half of his political opinions.
For Brooks, happiness is a matter of awareness. In fact, he’ll say that “the secret” to happiness is metacognition, or the ability to observe your own desires, cravings, emotions, and feelings, without automatically reacting to them. “You’ve got to ask yourself: Do I want to be managed by my appetites, do I want to be managed by my emotions—or do I want to manage them?” he later asks me. Brooks says that where we often seek relief—numbing bad feelings, or satisfying cravings—we should instead seek clarity. It’s the old maxim: Know thyself.
You’re the CEO of you, no matter what else is happening.
Happiness, Brooks says, is a practice, a discipline. You have to work on it every day, because life pulls you away from it. And so your pursuit of it must be rigorous…
“You never arrive. But the key thing we can promise people is that you can be happier.”
In his quest to become happier, one finding struck Brooks as particularly important—so important that it ultimately caused him to quit his job, and provided the backbone for his book Strength to Strength. The idea is based on the research of a British psychologist named Raymond Cattell, who put forth a theory that people possess two main types of intelligence. There’s fluid intelligence, the ability to think quickly and solve novel problems. And there’s crystallized intelligence, more akin to wisdom, which puts your reservoir of accumulated knowledge to use. Fluid intelligence tends to dominate your early years, and then decline by your thirties or forties; crystallized intelligence, though, continues to accrue throughout your forties, fifties, and sixties.
One of the keys to late-in-life happiness, Brooks says, is to figure out how to make the jump from using your fluid intelligence to using your crystallized intelligence. He calls this “getting on your second curve.” Brooks was still at the American Enterprise Institute when he was doing this research, and he realized that getting on his second curve would mean leaving his position as president of the think tank behind. “I was like, I’ve got the data. Either I believe it or I don’t,” he says. So he quit.
“One of the interesting things that you might consider is if your goal might be not ‘How can I have less anxiety?’ but ‘How can I love my anxiety?’” he says. “You can actually have big breakthroughs on the basis of your discomfort. That’s one of the consolations of age, unless you fight against yourself.” If you do that, he says, “you’re running away from yourself your whole life.”
Brooks thinks this is a problem that most ambitious, conventionally successful people struggle with. They can’t ever be satisfied. And you can’t find truly successful people who are just “normal,” he says. “You’re not going to write an article on me that’s like, Brooks is the most normal guy I’ve ever met. You’ve got to do the work.”
But it takes so much work, I say.
“Yeah,” he says, “I work my ass off because I’m naturally miserable.”
It seems like the conditions that make you want to strive for happiness are the conditions that are making you unhappy.
“That’s the paradox,” he says. “That’s the riddle.”
And this, of course, is one of the things that’s so frustrating about happiness. It’s like chasing the horizon.
“The danger is believing that the mirage is actually an oasis,” says Brooks. “When your pursuit of happiness presupposes a destination of happiness, that’s a fake palm tree and a fake pool of water, and you’re in a desert. You’re not going to find it.”
And even for those with advantages, happiness remains elusive in the modern world. I’m reminded of a line by the naturalist writer Barry Lopez: “There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”
“Find the trail of something wild and dangerous and worthy of your fear and joy and focus. Live deeply on your own inner guidance. There is nothing more healing than finding your gifts and sharing them.“
“I don’t know where we are going but I know exactly how to get there,”
I know that one of the great dangers of my life would be to live without danger. In our encounters with the edges, we come to know ourselves more deeply.
People help each other grow through shared endeavor. I am traveling miles beyond where I could go alone.
We are now at an inflection point. We must leave the safety of the village and venture out onto the trail of something wild and uncertain and as yet undefined. We must live on that trail, propelled forward by a set of clues only you will recognize by the aliveness they bring out in you. You must teach yourself to see your track! You are here to live. Your life can be the beginning of a great change; and it must be.
Find the trail of something wild and dangerous and worthy of your fear and joy and focus. Live deeply on your own inner guidance. There is nothing more healing than finding your gifts and sharing them.
Anything that puts you into your essence, no matter how small, is valuable. Even if you don’t know where it’s going, play with it.
You can go only as far into the experience of creating life as the limits of your personal belief system will allow.
Don’t try to be someone, rather find the thing that is so engaging that it makes you forget yourself.
“What you have to do is you have to get them emotionally to want to be better. You want, YOU HAVE to get them to an emotional space where they wake up every morning driven to be the best version of themselves. How do you do that? In practice it was a chance to drive them, to challenge them. This is where you have to know your teammates… it’s important to know each and every one of them individually, personally. Because then you know what nerve to touch…”
What did you know and learn at the end of your career that you wish you knew at the beginning?
“Understanding empathy and compassion.” – Kobe Bryant
Perspective
Here’s a technique for getting perspective. Put your mind in outer space and realize that there’s nothing out there but 99.999 percent emptiness. There’s just empty space between all the starts. We call it interstellar space. That’s how it is between all the stars, all over the universe. How would you like to be out there and see nothing?
Because that’s what 99.999 percent of the universe is. What you get every day is a miracle! There are colors, shapes, and sounds along with all the amazing experiences you’re given with each passing moment. Yet all you do is say, “No, it’s not what I want.” Of course it’s not what you want. That’s not the point. Instead of comparing the moment in front of you against the preferences you’ve built up inside your mind, why don’t you compare it against nothing? Since that’s what makes up 99.999 percent of the universe.
If you do this, you’ll find yourself being thankful that you get to have your daily experiences. They are certainly better than empty space. That’s how a wise person lives. The alternative is to suffer because things are not the way you want.
Living Untethered by Michael Singer
“You have to live a life that, if everyone lived it, there would be peace. If you can’t do that, you are part of the problem, not the solution.”
“The highest life you can live is when every single moment that passes before you is better off because it did.”
“You may not have Einstein’s mind, but compared to any other living thing on Earth, your mind is brilliant. The question is not whether your mind is brilliant; the question is what are you doing with that brilliance?”
“One of the most amazing things you will ever realize is that the moment in front of you is not bothering you—you are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you.”
10 ways to find more awe:
Get into nature and notice.
Watch Nature programs.
Seek new music.
Observe people with unique abilities.
Move with others.
Try understanding a new concept.
Go on an awe walk.
Ask others what makes them feel awe.
Document day-to-day beauty.
When you feel awe, stay with it.
Dr. Andrew Huberman: It all seems to boil down to the same few things.
Exercise (especially outdoors plus lifting heavy things)
Nutrition
Mindfulness and Meditation-style breaks
Sleep
“These things in turn affect the plumbing and the hormones in both our bodies and brains, which in turn controls EVERYTHING – from mood and energy to body composition to the immune system and even our chances of chronic diseases – including cancer.
It sounds somewhat obvious, but I think the key is understanding this stuff down to the deepest fibers of your soul: everything affects everything. So if you want a better life, take care of every part of yourself, by making the entirety of your day something that improves you, rather than wears you down.
You don’t have to be perfect, of course. But you do have to understand which stuff is good for you, which is neutral, and which is counterproductive.”
Call To Action
The best way to live life is to combine a constant appreciation of the present moment, with a general program of consistent improvement.
General Principles:
• Find ways to seek voluntary hardship rather than avoiding it.
• Challenge your limits by walking in hot and cold weather, enduring a hot sauna, pools or lakes or streams of very cold water, and always identifying and stretching your limits in all dimensions.
• Focus on learning. Every “problem” in life is really just a sign that you have more to learn.
“Whatever success I’ve had has come more from MEDITATION than any other influence.”- Ray Dalio
How to handle stress when kicking a game winning field goal.
Face the reality and pressure, don’t avoid it.
Focus on the “nuts and bolts”
Feelings don’t matter, process does.
Teammates you can count on.
Follow the system and training.
“The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.”
~ C.S. Lewis
The Greatest Competitive Advantage by Permanent Equity
“But it’s our experience and our belief that there’s one competitive advantage that outshines the rest. It’s not a secret. It doesn’t require specific expertise or analyzing complicated metrics for incremental, interdependent gains. It’s one “do” and one “don’t”:
Do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it.
And don’t be an asshole along the way.
That’s it. It’s not complicated — but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. In fact, extreme reliability is extremely difficult. But the more people know you’re reliable, the more they trust and like you. You the person and you the business.”
“I want to have a deep command of the human experience.”
“Sometimes, you just have to present your skills and ask for the opportunities you want—you never know what can happen”- Rick Rubin
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
-Franz Kafka
Greg Isenberg asked 1 billionaire, 1 PHD math professor and one 99 year old man what self-reflection questions they asked themselves. Their list of the questions to make you feel more fulfilled in life, love & career
Ask yourselves these questions today:
If I had 50M in the bank, how would my day-to-day change?
How will being anxious about this serve me?
Do I really need to answer this text or email right now?
Am I really happy? Or am I just really comfortable?
Am I really trying my best or am I just telling myself I am?
What is it that I can think of, read, watch, listen and talk about for hours on end without tiring of it?
If I had to describe who I wanted to be in 3 words what would those words be?
What would this look like if it was fun?
What would it take to snap me out of my bad mood immediately?
What’s the first thing you think of when you wake up most days?
How do I want my life be different in one year?
Is this project making me a better person?
Am I doing this for myself or because someone
Am I doing/not doing this out of fear?
What are you in love with? Is that what/who you want to be in love with?
Would my 15 year old self think I’m the coolest?
What Gregg Popovich looks for in players
“I like to see if they participated in some function in the community, or if they’ve overcome something or had a tough injury and came back. That sort of thing tells me what kind of character they have. I think all those things together tell me about their inner fiber. When I think about character I want to know about the fiber of an individual. I want to know what, exactly, they’re made of; what’s attached to their bones and their hearts and their brains. It’s all those things that form their character to me.“
The Four Roles We Play In Life
The Victim – The character who feels they have no way out.
The Villain – The character who makes others small.
The Hero – A hero accepts their own agency. They know what they want. They face their challenges and transform.
The Guide – The character who helps the hero.
Lesson from Viktor Frankl about creating meaning for your life: Take action creating a work or performing a deed. Experience something or encounter someone that you find captivating and that pulls you out of yourself. Have an optimistic attitude toward the inevitable challenges and suffering you will experience in life.
“There is one thing every successful person has in common: They have a bias towards action.”
ur feelings are connected to old mental constructs which can be changed. “Frustration comes from what you think should be real at that moment is actually not real,” he says. He thinks that it’s better to combat negativity with breathing, sunlight, and exercise, a lesson his father taught him early on.
“I would advise anybody to look at those people who are once in a generation and find out everything you can about them. I think they’re pretty ordinary people who just really chose to live extraordinary lives.“
“So much information we are given is through someone else’s perspective. Unless you are in a situation, you just can’t know what it was really like.” Hence why the Navy SEALS trained over 600 times for Islamabad when they went to take out Osama bin Laden.
He encourages athletes and coaches to challenge belief systems-
“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.”
– Bob Marley
“Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“A lot of times they just were very passionate about the mundane. So, I think when you look at the GOATS of anything – just the structure, harmony, and the passion and probably some chip on their shoulder (because we’re human beings and that’s part of survival) Adaptation comes from that. I think when you put it all together, they were creative in how they practiced. They practiced more than most anybody. They probably had as much physical gifts as anybody, and I think they paid the biggest sacrifice.“
“We are not present . . . and so we miss out. On life. On being our best. On seeing what’s there.” – Ryan Holiday
“Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel. It’s that simple, and it’s that hard.”
-Danny Meyer
One day in 1671, Christopher Wren observed three bricklayers on a scaffold, one crouched, one half-standing and one standing tall, working very hard and fast. To the first bricklayer, Christopher Wren asked the question, “What are you doing?’ to which the bricklayer replied, “I’m a bricklayer. I’m working hard laying bricks to feed my family. The second bricklayer, responded, “I’m a builder. I’m building a wall.” But the third brick layer, the most productive of the three and the future leader of the group, when asked the question, “What are you doing?” replied with a gleam in his eye, “I’m a cathedral builder. I’m building a great cathedral to The Almighty.”
How are you going to approach your craft today? Are you going to be a “bricklayer” or a “cathedral builder”?
‘“There is no courage without vulnerability” – Brené Brown
“That’s the most important thing about the leadership team is the be and the do. Who you are and what you do.”- Alan Mulally
“So what were my dad’s good deeds?
My dad gave his family the gift of time.
It’s not the easiest gift to give. There’s nothing grand about it… It’s a gift that accumulates slowly over the years, taking shape though the steady gift of attention and devotion.
I sometimes think that my dad really could have been a minor American poet or a more renowned storywriter if he had spent less time with his children and grandchildren. The tradeoff was easy for him.
He chose us.
So If you want to honor my father’s memory, spend more time with your children. Or your parents. Or those you love. For dad, quality time demanded quantity time. It’s harder than it seems. So many things, more tangible, more alluring, with more immediate returns, call for our attention and distract us.
Spend the time. It’s more precious than rubies.”- Russ Roberts father’s eulogy
“The only way to deal with the fear is knowing that I’ve done my training and that I’m prepared, that I know different scenarios I can encounter, and that I have an instinctive response to problems that might occur. That makes me more relaxed and makes me able to focus on my performance.”
“When you get to that last drop of sand in the hourglass, everything that you own is of no comfort to you. The only thing that comforts you is the people.“- Mitch Albom
“So I’ll tell you now: bad shit is coming. It always is in a startup. The odds of getting from launch to liquidity without some kind of disaster happening are one in a thousand.
So don’t get demoralized. When the disaster strikes, just say to yourself, ok, this was what Paul was talking about. What did he say to do? Oh, yeah. Don’t give up.”
“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” – Gerard Way
Everyone looks for the miracle moment – the moment when success happens.
We are drawn to these moments because we want to know the secret. We want to know the ingredient that we are missing. The ingredient that makes the recipe.
The problem is … there is no miracle moment. If you want to understand success, you can’t focus on what’s visible.
Results are simply one more step in a long chain of steps that led to that moment.
Nature offers a great example with bamboo, which takes up to 5 years to develop its roots. For years, to the outside observer, no visible progress has been made.Meanwhile, the bamboo grows below the surface, developing its roots and storing energy. Then, all at once, it starts to grow. Years of stored energy result in exponential growth, sometimes reaching over 50 feet in a matter of weeks.
That’s how results happen. Slowly and then all at once.
Everyone wants the results. No one wants the process that leads to them. That’s boring.
There are two main lessons to take away:
Not all progress is visible. Don’t beat yourself up when things aren’t visible. One workout won’t make you fit, but it is better than no workout. A small deposit in your bank account today won’t get you to your goal, but it moves you closer. The daily grind is part of the process.
Consistently doing boring things well leads to extreme outperformance. Most of the time, we know what we need to do. The problem is because we don’t immediately see the results, we stop. It’s as if we tell ourselves, “I ate healthily and went to the gym all week, and I’m still not as fit as I want, so what’s the point?”
You have to be smart enough to know you’re making progress without any obvious signs of progress.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it was built one brick at a time.- Farnam Street
“The space agency found that pilots who slept in the cockpit for 26 minutes showed alertness improvements of up to 54 percent and job-performance improvements by 34 percent, compared to pilots who didn’t nap.
When it comes to naps, short is generally better. Unless you have 90 minutes or more to devote to making up for last night’s lost shuteye, avoid spending more than a half hour asleep or your body will enter the deeper phases of sleep, making it harder to wake up and leaving you groggier longer once you do.
In fact, even 26 minutes might be too long if you need to spring straight into action with a clear mind upon waking. NASA’s ultimate recommendation is power naps between 10 and 20 minutes long.”
Friendship & Happiness
We judge the quality of our friendships based on “availability of support”: Are you there for me when I need you?
A 2008 Journal of Socio-Economics study found that while changes in income provide only a minor increase in happiness, more time with friends boosts your smiling to the equivalent of an extra ninety-seven thousand dollars a year. Overall, friendship variables account for about 58 percent of your happiness.
Research from Notre Dame that analyzed over eight million phone calls showed touching base in some form every two weeks is a good target to shoot for. Hit that minimum frequency, and friendships are more likely to persist.
Jeff Hall’s research found that it took as many as sixty hours to develop a light friendship, sometimes one hundred hours to get to full-fledged “friend” status, and two hundred or more hours to unlock the vaunted “best friend” achievement
The Strongest Predictor of Men’s Well-Being Isn’t Family or Health”
What did the research find?
“The strongest predictor of men’s happiness and well-being is their job satisfaction, by a large margin—and the strongest predictor of job satisfaction is whether men feel they are making an impact on their companies’ success.
This measure, the study finds, is influenced by whether men feel they are using their own unique talents at work, whether they are surrounded by a diverse set of perspectives, how easily and often they can chat with co-workers, whether they feel their opinions are valued, and whether they’re inspired by the people they work with.”
A UC Berkeley study of nine thousand people found good relationships add another decade to your life span, and a 2003 review of the research said this: “Positive social relationships are second only to genetics in predicting health and longevity in humans.”
The research has shown that loneliness is the emotional equivalent of a physical assault. The elevation in stress hormones is comparable to what you would experience by someone beating you up.
Perhaps the single greatest paradigm shift I’ve had as a human is this idea: I am writing my story and I alone have the responsibility to shape it into something meaningful... If we are tired of life, what we’re really tired of is the story we are living inside of. And the great thing about being tired of our story is that stories can be edited. Stories can be fixed. Stories can go from dull to exciting, from rambling to focused, and from drudgery to read to exhilarating to live.- Donald Miller
“Everybody wants to start where they are. Nobody wants to go back down the mountain to find a path to the top. Everybody wants to stay on the path they’re on.
The hard part is not the learning, it’s the unlearning. It’s not the climbing up the mountain, it’s the going back down to the bottom of the mountain. It’s the beginner’s mind that every great artist or business person has. You have to be willing to start from scratch.”
-Naval Ravikant
Learning From Other People’s Mistakes
Learning from past experience is central to an organization’s adaptation and survival. A key dimension of prior experience is whether the outcome was successful or unsuccessful. What did the ten years of data from 71 cardiothoracic surgeons who completed over 6,500 procedures using a new technology for cardiac surgery tell us about learning from experience?
We find that individuals learn more from their own successes than from their own failures, while they learn more from the failures of others than they do from others’ successes.
We also find that individuals’ prior successes and others’ failures can help individuals to overcome their inability to learn from their own failures. Together, these findings offer both theoretical and practical insights into how individuals learn directly from their prior experience and indirectly from the experience of others.
“Neuroimaging Study Uncovers ‘Striking’ Fact About Personality and Brain Activity”
The simplest way of summarizing the work is that we learned that individuals’ way of seeing the world is driven by their personality more than other dimensions (i.e. gender, race, age, political ideology, etc.).
That is, two people who have similar personalities (i.e., both are neurotic and agreeable) are much more similar to one another in how they process the incoming stimuli than two individuals from the same gender, age, race, etc. An agreeable 50-year-old Republican Black man is more similar (in how you processes incoming natural stimuli) to an agreeable 24 years old Democratic Asian woman than to another 50-year-old disagreeable Republican Black man.”
Go unscripted, see value in everybody, figure out how to make somebody’s life better today.
How can I find more magic in the mundane today?
“High standards are contagious. Bring a new person onto a high standards team, and they will quickly adapt. The opposite is also true.”
– Jeff Bezos
Of all the things in life you might pursue, which is the one that you regard as most important?
Are you putting the necessary time, energy and effort into it then?
“My job is to seek and uncover the humanity in sport around the globe in college football season, in college football. But those words to me they’re really important, everyone of them, seek, uncover, humanity, sport, world. They have tremendous depth to what I think is my purpose at least today.” What’s your purpose, what words have tremendous depth for you?
“So I get asked a lot, ‘What’s the trait?’ And I really believe, of course you have to be a great competitor, of course you have to throw the ball, but I really think if you have to be a seeker, you have to be willing to ask questions.”- Yogi Roth
“The great victory, which appears so simple today, was the result of a series of small victories that went unnoticed.”
~ Paulo Coelho
“You cannot exhibit bravery if you aren’t first afraid. It’s the same thing with resilience. You cannot demonstrate resilience if you haven’t first failed.”- Paul Assaiante
“The days we lose are the days our competitors will regret, because we learn the most.”- Toto Wolff
Math Prodigies vs Cashier’s
“Binet gave the prodigies and the cashiers identical three-and four-digit multiplication problems and compared the time taken to solve them. What happened? You guessed it: the best cashier was faster than either prodigy for both problems. In other words, fourteen years of calculating experience had been sufficient, on its own, to bring perfectly “normal” people up to and beyond the remarkable speed of prodigies. Binet concluded that calculating ability is more about practice than talent—which means that you and I could perform lightning-quick multi-digit calculations if we had the proper training.
“Limitation is a mentality that most people practice daily until it becomes their reality.”
-Moses Njenga
The best maxim in the history of entrepreneurship is from the founder of Four Seasons, who said that “excellence is the capacity to take pain.”
How many people want to achieve greatness? Every single person that has ever lived. No one says, “Oh, I don’t want to do anything. I’m here and I’ll just die.”
Think about the difficulty of trying to create the best hotel chain in the world, and all the struggle it required. His wife would wake up in the middle of the night, and see him staring at the middle of the ceiling, just racked with guilt. Anybody that’s ever done anything difficult knows the euphoria and the terror. It’s the entrepreneurial emotional rollercoaster.
The reason that I think it’s so important to talk about is because it is supposed to be hard. There’s not a book that reads, “Hey, I had this idea. I started it. Everything went great,” and the end of the book. It doesn’t happen.
At the end of An Autobiography of James Dyson, he says, “Listen, it’s easy for me to celebrate my doggedness now. I made $300 million last year, but I’d be lying to you if there weren’t times where I went inside my house, had my wife look at me in the face like I’m a failure, and I’d cry myself to sleep, and I got up and did it again anyways. Because excellence is the capacity to take pain.
-David Senra
“To serve is to live.” “Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do.“- Frances Hesselbein
Arthur Brooks on Enjoyment
“Enjoyment and pleasure are terms often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Pleasure happens to you; enjoyment is something that you create through your own effort.”
“Enjoyment can also be ruined by a worldview that is excessively practical, in which we feel our time and energy should never be ‘wasted.’” Ever been guilty of this
“Some people ruin their enjoyment of life by using it to show others how happy they are.”
What the Navy’s TOPGUN Program Really Teaches You : TOPGUN fighter pilot Guy Snodgrass shares his 3 key leadership lessons from the cockpit.
“And whether it’s being a fighter pilot or anything else, I strongly believe that success can be generated. It’s not a passive endeavor. It’s a very active endeavor.”
“One of the best lessons I’ve learned from my time in uniform service was the importance of staying calm under pressure. There’s a U.S. Navy SEAL saying: ‘Calm is smooth, smooth is steady, and steady is fast. Sometimes your first inclination is to do a lot of things as fast as possible, try to overcome that challenge and move on.Usually it’s best just to take a quick pause, assess the situation, and then make a good plan of attack to overcome it. Einstein, if asked to save the world in 60 minutes, he said well, “I’m going to study the problem for 55 minutes and then take the last 5 minutes to actually act.” That is how successful leaders, people who are successful in their careers, behave. Emotion is the enemy of good judgment.”
“There really is no TOPGUN trophy. We don’t collect points to determine who is the best student or the best TOPGUN instructor. You want to be the best that you can be, but it’s not at the expense of the person to your left or to your right.”
It’s that willingness to say, “I’m not going to compromise. I’m going to ensure that when I do something, I’m going to do it to the best of my ability. I’m going to stretch, I’m going to grow, I’m going to learn how I can do it even better and more effectively as I move forward and rise to the top.”
“Each day presents us with 86,400 seconds, which means each day presents us with virtually countless opportunities to reset, recover our balance, and continue rehearsing our best selves.”
– Adam Robinson
Steven Pressfield: “One of the factors, one of the characteristics of a time in the wilderness in my experience is that we’re blind to its significance while we’re in it. We think it’s meaningless. We think our life is meaningless.
We’re lost, right? We don’t have any concept of why we’re doing what we’re doing, why we’re fucking up like we are. But what I’m trying to say is there is meaning to it. Again, it’s that sort of other dimension of reality that we were talking about that that dimension is wiser than we are. It has sent us on this passage, I believe, to teach us.
Every passage to the wilderness, like The Odyssey, is a journey toward home, and home meaning who we really are. We’re trying to find our authentic self where we can say, ‘Ah, this is what I should be doing that I can’t do. That I can’t do, but this is where I should be. This is the lane I should be in.’ And that’s home. And it takes a while to find it.”
36 Questions to deepen your relationships immediately
1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
Question Set II
13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people’s?
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
Question Set III
25. Make three true “we” statements each. For instance, “We are both in this room feeling…”
26. Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share…”
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for them to know.
28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met.
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
31. Tell your partner something that you like about them [already].
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how they might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.
