The Everyday Hero Manifesto: Activate Your Positivity, Maximize Your Productivity, Serve The World

By Robin Sharma

Also checkout 

The Greatness Guide: One of the World’s Most Successful Coaches Shares His Secrets for Personal and Business Mastery By Robin Sharma

The Greatness Guide Book 2: 101 More Insights to Get You to World Class

 

1. A Manifesto for the Everyday Hero within You “If you have not discovered something you would die for,” said Martin Luther King, Jr., “you are not fit to live.”

• As a citizen of the earth, you have been called to harness your primal power to do amazing things, to make astonishing progress and to uplift the lives of your brothers and sisters with whom you caretake the planet.
• Tomorrow can always be made into something better than today. You are human. And this is what humans are able to do.
• Starting today, declare your devotion to remembering the sublime soul, brave warrior and undefeatable creator that your natural wisdom is calling on you to be.
• The former limits that have shackled you and the “failures” that have hurt you have been necessary for the realization of your mastery.

When no one believes in you is when you most need to believe in you. Those committed to the fullest expression of their native genius know that self-faith and staying true to yourself and your mighty mission—especially in the face of ridicule and uncertainty, attack and adversity—is the gateway into legendary.

• Dedicating yourself to inhabiting your greatness, generating a vast barrage of beautiful results and doing your part to build a brighter world will be the wisest and best ride you’ll ever take.

Dedicate Yourself to Personal Growth 

• Success without self-respect is an empty victory, isn’t it? And so, I decided to remake myself. To get to know a truer, happier, more peaceful and better version of the person I was. By starting a campaign of massive personal growth, profound emotional healing and deep spiritual progress. *Anyone has the power to do this.
• Genius has far less to do with your genetics and much more to do with your habits. Stepping into the person you’ve always imagined you could be is a trained result—available to anyone willing to open themselves up, do the work and run the practices that make magic real.
• Fundamental personal change is often painful because it is so very transformational. And we cannot become everything we are meant to be without leaving behind who we once were.
• The weaker “you” must experience a death of sorts before the strongest “you” can know a rebirth. If improvement doesn’t feel difficult, it’s not real improvement, is it?

What I didn’t know, I could learn. The skills I lacked, I could build. And the results anyone else created, I, too, could forge—with focus, strong effort, superb information and good teachers.

I guess my faith was larger than my fears. And my daring was stronger than my doubts. I pray you always trust your intuition over the cool and practical reasoning of your intellect. Your possibility, mastery and genius do not live there.

• “People living deeply have no fear of dying,” wrote Anaïs Nin. Norman Cousins observed that “the great tragedy of life is not death but what we allow to die inside of us while we live.”
• I share these quotes to remind you of the shortness and frailty of life. Too many of us postpone doing those things that make our soul come alive until some imaginary ideal time arrives. It never comes.

There’s no better time to become the human being you know you can be and handcraft the life of your most exuberant desires than now. The world could completely change tomorrow. History has shown this to be true. Don’t live your finest hours in the waiting room of life. Please.

• It’s wiser to take a chance and risk looking foolish (yet know that you did it) than miss the opportunity and end up empty and heartbroken, on your last day.
• Life really does favor the obsessed. Great fortune truly does shine on those mesmerized by their gorgeous ambitions. And the universe most definitely supports the human being unwilling to surrender to the forces of fear, rejection and self-doubt.

Robin’s 1st book deal 

• He looked at me. He studied me. He waited for what seemed a long time. Then he pulled out his wallet and handed me his business card. On it were these words: Edward Carson. President. HarperCollins Publishers. Synchronicity is destiny’s way of staying silent, right? Three weeks later, HarperCollins bought the world rights to The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. For $7,500.

I invite you to go to the threshold of the fears that chain you, explore the boundaries that bind you and notice all the past hurts that now stop you—and rise above it all. For this day presents your new dawn. And our world awaits your everyday heroism.

• To feel more optimism, be more daring and know greater purpose while understanding what it truly means to feel supremely inspired, living in the moment instead of scarred from the past or frightened for the future. . . . To reclaim a relationship with their truest virtues, grandest potential and most vivid ambitions.
• And to pass through each day with enough wakefulness to savor life’s simplest pleasures, without the burden of worry.
• You appreciate that the closer you get to your fortune, the louder your fears will scream.

Make your start today. . . . Develop the guts to play out on the edges of your powers. Because as you visit your limits, those limits will expand. . . . Activate the childlike part of you that was once wildly curious and constantly learning.. And remember that the easiest path is generally the poorest route. And that action delayed is greatness betrayed.

Here’s what I’ve learned: an intensely lived life requires getting into the arena, taking multiple risks, pursuing numerous paths, getting knocked around a fair amount and dealing with the stormy gales of treacherous seas more than makes rational sense. These words by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw offer me, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

• Yet I’ve learned that not feeling absolutely okay is absolutely okay.
• A difficult day for the ego is a splendid day for the soul. And setback, struggle and being stuck in confusion are part of being a human—never to be judged as “bad” and “wrong.” It’s just a necessary pit stop on the journey that we’re meant to experience. During this ride we call a lifetime.
• I’ve discovered that all that I’m living during an uncomfortable season is serving the acceleration of my wisdom, forging priceless strength and unmasking human powers in the hot coals of crisis.
• What if the real endeavor is simply to remember what you once were, before a cold culture encouraged you to cover your light with the armor of doubt, disbelief and false reasons about why you cannot express your primal genius. And make your life a monument. To mastery, productivity and sincere service to humanity.

World Class Vocabulary

• All world-builders and change-leaders are experts at using the language of hope, the vocabulary of execution and the dialect of freedom. They avoid being infected with can’t.
• In my own life, I regularly use the technique of autosuggestion to re-order my vocabulary toward greater positivity and creativity. Very early in the morning, while my subconscious mind is most available to receiving instructions, I’ll recite mantras such as “Today I am showing up with enthusiasm, excellence and kindness” or “I am so very grateful for the day ahead and all its beauty, joys and excitements.”
• I pay such attention to the words I speak. I don’t even call autumn “fall” because the word “fall” has negative implications in my philosophy. I love autumn. I have no interest in a fall. Those things hurt. Sometimes badly.

Please don’t confuse being busy with being productive. And definitely don’t assume movement equals progress. A packed schedule doesn’t mean you’re getting marvelous things done.

• Listen not to the wisdom of the status quo, which says that success means “winner takes all.” Rather than taking from the world, make it your consistent enthusiasm to give to the world. And to behave in a way that serves all citizens.
• “the one who enriches the most people wins.”

Golda Meir once wrote: “Trust yourself. Create the kind of self you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of higher achievement.”

Spring has passed. Summer has gone. And Winter is here. And the song that I meant to sing remains unsung. For I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument. To me, this verse reminds us that life’s too short not to go all in. That each of us has music that must not be stifled within us. And that becoming busy just being busy and allowing your hours to be consumed by unimportant pursuits is violently disrespectful to your natural genius. The words also make me think of the duty each of us carries within us to be of service.

• When you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice.

Imperfection

• You won’t find anything that is absolutely perfect. Ever. And once you accept this, you’ll find the way things are a whole lot easier to manage.
• But here’s the wonderful thing . . . . . . the more you embrace this understanding around The Imperfection of All Things, the more you will pretty nearly automatically start to see the magic within the messy.

“I have had dreams and I’ve had nightmares. I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams,” said Jonas Salk

Which brings me to The IPOP Principle: Input Positivity and You’ll Output Positivity.

• To increase your inspiration, you need to do the things that increase your inspiration.
• My suggestion is that you build a moat around your most hope-filled mindset and a wall around the exuberance of your most exalted aspirations. Allow across the chasm only those influences that fuel your enthusiasm, optimize your inherent genius, maximize your performance and glorify your native giftedness.

The discomfort of growth is always better than the illusion of safety.

• Your advancement as a leader and your optimization as a person are built around the doing of difficult things. What is easiest to do is generally what is least valuable to do. Lasting transformation happens during our stormy seasons, never during the days of our ease.

The great saints, sages and spiritual geniuses all understood that a main aim on the path to awakening was to stand in any mess that life sends and remain contented, courageous, serene and free. To stay tranquil while all appears to be falling apart. To construct an inner axis of power so strong, and yet so flexible, that nothing on the outside could shake its roots.

• Imagine this: making an interior life that stays graceful, quiet and grateful, regardless of what is happening outside of you.

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly,” the aviator and author Richard Bach

Friedrich Nietzsche observed, “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

You’re Absolutely More than Enough Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

• Understand—once and for all—that there’s no one exactly like you alive on the planet today. No one. Since the beginning of the human empire, only one of you has been made.

The Starter’s Activation Declaration

• So what if I looked silly? Life’s greatest risk is taking no risks, right?

Étienne de Grellet, a Quaker missionary, wrote of our duty to be considerate to others in the following terms: “I shall pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do, let me do it now: let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

We humans are astounding creatures. Totally designed to adapt, flourish and advance.

• Yet everything that you now find easy you once found hard, right? Masterwork is created in a state of wild abandon, not cold reason. Focus on the what and the how will reveal itself.
• Be not average. Ever. When you produce work that makes your soul sing, you’ll make our tired world come a little more alive.
• My strongly held belief is this: Exponential creativity demands abnormality. And requires us to deviate from ordinary company.
• To reveal your imaginative nobility and perform at the razor’s edge of your talent, it becomes a necessity to be an activist against the status quo, operate within another orbit of inventiveness and bend the rules that existed before you entered the field to your own mystifying, mysterious and miraculous vision of a vastly more interesting tomorrow.
• Without a high grade of self-confidence, you’ll never have the resolve to translate your silent fantasies into everyday reality.

Suffering is a school. And trauma is a teacher.

• Trauma has been my greatest teacher. It has blessed me with the ability to navigate adversity elegantly, helped me to access forgotten creativity that has infused my craft, moved me to become more relatable and humble, and torn down the shield that once protected my tender heart.
• Exploit your accumulated trauma for your artistic advancement, emotional growth and spiritual liberty, it’ll be your greatest academy. Trauma truly happens in your favor, never for your failure.
• Note that the more severe the wounding of the past, the more intense will be the present-day response when an old wound is activated. You can always tell the size of your trauma (or someone else’s) by the degree of the overreaction. If it’s hysterical, it’s historical.
• For now, simply remember that trauma—wisely used—can become the doorway into your most authentic, creative and heroic self.

And being an everyday hero begins with having a conversation with yourself, about who you wish to be and what you promise to do for the world. Lose the conversation with your finest you and you’ll lose the intimacy with your authenticity.

Leaving everyone you meet better than you found them and feeling bigger than when they first met you is just a fantastic way to roll.

The 7 Threats to World-Class

The real aim of mastery is not reaching legendary but sustaining legendary.

• Threat #1: The Threat of Talent Erosion
• Threat #2: The Threat of Energetic Diversion
• Threat #3: The Threat of Lifestyle Complexity
  • one of the largest of all snares of superstardom is the belief that “once successful, always successful.”

• Threat #4: The Threat of Success-Fed Hubris- Gross inflation of the human ego is the largest occupational hazard of the world-class leader, whether they operate in business, sports, the arts and sciences, or politics.
• Threat #5: The Threat of Reaching Good Enough
  • To have what only 5% of the population have, you must be willing to do what 95% of the population is unwilling to do.) Extremely hard work (an unforgettable work ethic beats natural talent every day of the week), tons of sacrifices (which really don’t feel like sacrifices because you love what you do so much), installing exceptional habits, dealing with detractors and constantly having to find solutions to problems are the fees you must pay to gain admission into the very quiet (and mostly empty) halls of domain dominance.

• Threat #6: The Threat of Reputation Deterioration

• Threat #7: The Threat of Human Mortality

TheEverydayHeroManifesto.com/7ThreatsWorksheet

Expect Ingratitude

• Norman Vincent Peale’s positive thinking classic called, well, The Power of Positive Thinking, this ceaselessly optimistic minister encourages us to “expect ingratitude.” As I understand it, his point is that most people will never truly appreciate your goodness and gentleness. It’s just not generally human nature (at this stage of our species’ evolution). So why lose peace of mind and valuable creative energy hoping to receive it?
• Accept the fact that the majority of people concentrate on what they didn’t get versus all you gave and remember what you didn’t do for them rather than the wealth of generosity you showered upon them. And remember that someone else’s lack of appreciation or good manners or grace or compassion or sense of fairness really has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. People treat other people the way they treat themselves. So why make it about you?

Growth

• Life, I’ve discovered, sometimes (always) sends you scenarios perfectly designed to teach you the lessons you most need to learn to get to the next grade of your growth.
• We are most alive when we are closest to our fears. Confronted with our doubt that we can get through a difficulty, we are pushed to own gifts we never knew we had. And once we are introduced to these special powers, we can choose to associate with them for the remainder of our days. And thereby eventually know the fullness of our human greatness.
• I was offered an opportunity. I gave it my best. I looked foolish. I grew in wisdom, toughness and acumen. And I made it back to my apartment.

The Triad of Productivity Principles. 

• Principle #1: Cognitive Bandwidth Deserves a Fortress around It “Cognitive bandwidth” is a term used by Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir to describe the limited amount of attention the human brain has available each day. His research has found that people dealing with poverty, for example, experience “tunneling” such that their worries and stress consume much of their cognitive power, leaving little for other tasks. This, in turn, causes them to access less of their native intellectual brilliance and connect with lower amounts of their natural ingenuity (to solve problems, seize opportunities and materialize the wholeness of their inherent productivity that would raise them into greater prosperity).
• Principle #2: Attention Residue Must Be Managed for Mastery
  • Essentially, attention residue speaks to the molecules of your focus that you leave on one activity when you shift to another one. Every single move you make carries a creative cost with it. People who are constantly checking their devices, for example, soon suffer from digital dementia because each time they check for a message or look for a like, they leave a fraction of their valuable cognitive bandwidth on that activity. Do this daily (as many do) and you’ll be installing Fragmented Attention Disorder as your general way of being. You’ll never get anything sensational done.

• Principle #3: Productive Exhaustion Requires Scheduled Renewal “Productive exhaustion” is a phrase from my coaching curriculum that explains what happens when an advanced performer works intensely for long periods of time. Specifically, as you elevate your productivity and the expertise you bring to your arena, you will regularly experience cycles of vigorous intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual fatigue.
• When you’re showing up with incendiary passion and fiery commitment to produce nothing less than masterwork, you’ll often be left depleted because you are fully using your capacities, gifts and primal assets. This will cause productive exhaustion. The solution? Regularly scheduled rest and refueling cycles.

Strategy #1: The Lifetime Big 5

• “What are my Big 5?” In other words, what are the top five priorities that I needed to commit to spending the rest of my life hunting down.
  • Life changing exercise to get clarity around these. 

• Clarity breeds mastery, right? You’ll never hit high-value targets that you don’t even know about. Recording the five central aims to which you’ll devote the remainder of your days will bring extreme purity of focus to your hours, days, weeks, months, quarters and years
• The foundation of exceptionalism is harnessing your genius around only a few things—so you get strikingly good at them.

Strategy #2: The Deep 5 Values 

• I know it seems obvious, but your most closely cherished values define what you most value. And knowing them intimately is completely essential to an existence of maximum authenticity and elite productivity.

Strategy #3: The Heavyweight 6

• Extraordinary performance really is fairly easy to realize because so few are doing the things that extraordinary performance requires. There’s just not a lot of competition in the rare air of virtuosity.
• Here are the six daily routines that have given the luminaries I mentor the greatest productive results: 
  • 1. Joining The 5 AM Club and spending a Victory Hour upgrading your Mindset, purifying your Heartset, optimizing your Healthset and escalating your Soulset. The way you start your day really does have an outsized impact on each of the remaining hours. Begin your mornings with sixty minutes of self-strengthening
  • 2. Writing for at least ten minutes every day in a gratitude journal so as to crowd out the negativity bias of the human brain and make soaring thankfulness your automatic default.
  • 3. Doing The Second Wind Workout (2WW)—ideally, a nature walk—that I mentioned in the chapter “Guard Good Health like a Pro Athlete.” I personally find that my life works a whole lot better when I train myself to be a whole lot fitter.
  • 4. Running The 60 Minute Student Regime, which means that you do not go to sleep unless you’ve spent at least an hour during the day immersed in study, such as reading a book that promotes your leadership growth, listening to an audiobook on relationship-building or empire-making, or taking an online course that enriches your domain knowledge so you have the ability to produce rich streams of reward for the customers you serve.
  • 5. The 90/90/1 Rule, which is a habit I originally set up to help my mastermind participants block out the relentless distractions they were facing each morning. Essentially, for the next ninety days, create an ironclad and uninterruptible ritual such that the first ninety minutes of your work morning is monomaniacally focused on your single finest opportunity to lead your field.

The Weekly Design System,

• simply know that the tasks that you schedule are the tasks that get done.

Strategy #4: The Expert Support Team

• Don’t be afraid to spend on expert help or coaching. I learned this from Warren Buffett—while the average performers get stuck on the cost of something, superproducers focus on the return on investment that will flow from the spending. Going for what’s cheapest will turn out to be very expensive. Or as Aldo Gucci said sagely: “Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten.”

Strategy #5: The Forced Optimization Strategy (FOS) Life Structure

• Force the optimization of the routine that you want to integrate into your lifestyle. Just go ahead and FOS it.

Strategy #6: The Tight Bubble of Total Focus (TBTF) Concept

• billionaires, excellent athletes and world-champion scientists all have the same allotment of twenty-four hours each day as you and I. Yet the way they interact with these hours is diametrically different from how the majority manage themselves… essentially do Deep Work 
• The TBTF Concept encourages you to build a metaphorical wall around what I call in my work “The 5 Assets of Genius.” These are: your mental focus, your physical energy, your personal willpower, your daily time and your primal gifts.
• A giant key to exponential productivity is battle proofing your focus. This powerful strategy helps you do it. You’ll become fanatically and prodigiously focused around the few major priorities that will allow you to make the whispers of your heart, the longings of your wisdom and the callings of your everyday heroism come true—before this precious window of opportunity closes (and it will). Once inside this figurative work pocket, your TBTF will make sure things that don’t matter never begin to matter.
• One of the secrets of the immortal geniuses is seclusion. And the discipline of retreating from the world by placing themselves in a form of solitary confinement so they could produce their magic. All of history’s great makers had this habit in common.

Strategy #7: The 5 Great Hours Promise

• They are professionals, not dabblers. Specialists instead of generalists. They go super-deep versus really wide when they work. When they sit down to produce, they bring the fullness of their human genius to the table and spend it all on their occupation.
• And so, I recommend that my clients work only five hours a day (to me, five hours of undisturbed, fierce, steady and exquisite work is ideal) on those days reserved for work. Anything more is completely unnecessary and actually leads to diminishing returns because you’re tired (so you won’t produce anything substantial, so why waste the time?).

World-class is very much a game of confidence. And becoming a sensation in your arena begins by strengthening the trust you have in yourself. The quickest—and most sustainable—technique for building such psychological undefeatability and emotional hardiness is to behave as the person that you most seek to become.

• As esteemed psychologists suggest: It’s easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than to think yourself into a new way of acting.
• You’ll build your own confidence through relentless practice rather than mere hopefulness. . . . The smallest of actions is always better than the noblest of intentions. . . . Ideation without execution is the doorway into delusion. . . . And a breathtaking vision not backed up by pristine daily implementation is the primary mistake of promise neglected.

Reading

• Our home is filled with books. I really don’t know of any investment with the same yield as a book. For a small amount of money, you are granted access to the world’s most valuable ideas and the planet’s wisest minds.
• Francis Bacon once wrote: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius- I invest in that same book every time because I’ve learned that wisdom meets you where you’re at. You won’t understand anything above your current level of comprehension. And you and I can’t appreciate any work that’s beyond our immediate understanding.
• When I first read The Alchemist, I didn’t get what all the fuss was about. Now I read it and I see the spiritual genius that’s embedded within it. The book didn’t change. But over time, I grew. And with more knowledge and experience I became able to see and embrace the knowledge and experience with which Paulo Coelho wrote.

Become a poet-warrior is what I’m suggesting. Live quietly and gently. Show tenderness to all. Cherish simple graces, know when enough is enough and enjoy the hypnotizing enchantments of a spartan, minimalist and creative lifestyle. Just as a sincere poet would.

•  And yet, when it comes to taking difficult action to materialize your mighty mission and showing ferocious dedication to delivering on your dreams, never give in. Live by a warrior creed, always staying faithful to your vision, crusade and self-promises, while remembering that tiny triumphs made with sincere regularity stack into heroic transformations when done with consistency over a lifetime. You will get to where you aspire to be. With resolve and patience.
• Just because you can’t see a solution doesn’t mean a solution doesn’t exist.

Hug the Monster

• Fear works like this, I have found. Run from it and it will come closer to you, with even more force. Go directly toward it and it will turn to go, like an uninvited guest who realizes they should not have shown up. What I’m encouraging, with much respect for your highest heroism, is that you hug your monsters, as regularly as possible. Keep them in the basement and they’ll brainwash (and heart-wash) you into thinking (and feeling) that they are really vicious. But go down the steps, turn on the lights and look them in the eye.
• I had great dreams and mighty ambitions that I refused to allow my insecurities to rule. I wanted to make a better life for myself and to take as many people as possible on the ride with me. And so I made a decision to no longer operate as a victim. In a single moment, I made a life-changing choice.
• Frank Herbert in Dune that makes the point so eloquently: I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Ben Franklin’s 13-Virtue Habit Installer 

• Superb daily habits will get you so much further than exceptional natural talent.
• It’s far easier to maintain an excellent habit than to restart it after you’ve stopped.
  • Temperance. 
  • Carefulness in food and drink. 
  • Silence. 
  • Avoid trivial conversations and using words that are harmful. 
  • Order. 
  • Practice austerity in physical spaces and perform each pursuit precisely. 
  • Resolution. 
  • Do what you promise yourself you’ll do, without fail. 
  • Frugality. 
  • Be cautious with your expenses and avoid waste. 
  • Industry. 
  • Manage your time well and avoid unnecessary activities. 
  • Sincerity. 
  • Never deceive anybody and be yourself under all conditions. 
  • Justice. 
  • Treat everyone equally and do nothing wrong. 
  • Moderation. 
  • Avoid the extremes of both sloth and asceticism. 
  • Cleanliness. 
  • Keep your body, living space and environment immaculate. 
  • Tranquility. 
  • Maintain inner peace and do not ruminate over small matters. 
  • Chastity. 
  • Don’t participate in meaningless sexual pursuits. 
  • Humility. 
  • Model the great saints, sages and seers.

• Every night, before sleep, he’d measure his behavior during the day against his commitment to embody the habit he was working on integrating by doing some focused reflection on how he had conducted himself. Franklin would concentrate on one virtue per week and in this way could “complete a full course of the program in thirteen weeks and four courses a year.” Also know that Franklin believed that the thirteen virtues are progressive.

My dearest artistic rules: 

1. It’s because I deeply respect my readers and so must give them the best I can possibly make, because this is what they deserve. 
2. It’s because pushing my craft on a new work beyond what I’ve produced in the past, out onto the jagged edges of its limits, expands those limits. And increases my game.
3. I must never rest on my laurels, for this would be the beginning of the end. To repeat what worked in my last bestseller without venturing into the danger and glory of my next level of performance would be a formula for irrelevance. 
4. My family name is on the front cover, so I mustn’t send anything out into the world that doesn’t represent the result of one going all in.
5. Karma is real and our higher power watches all we do. By working under the intention of love for my readers and the spirit of sincere helpfulness to make their lives better, my personal dreams will become real and great things will happen for my loved ones. 
6. Our civilization needs more truth and beauty, so if I am able to pour more of these into the world, I have a duty to do it.

“Kill Your Darlings.”

• The phrase, to me, means that mastery demands that we remove what we believe is good or even magnificent yet not absolutely necessary to the magic of a project, for the greater good of that work.
• Doing your masterwork really is, in many ways, a lot more about what you have the guts to leave out than all you allow to stay in. Making something look simple often takes ages to do. A measure of genuine expertise is removing all except what matters. Because it takes tremendous acumen, knowledge, courage and skill to only include what’s essential.

Avoid the Third Reward 

• Giving a gift and expecting a return is not a gift at all. It’s an exchange. What makes giving an act so blissful that it borders on the mystical is the intention with which you give. And if you want something back, you corrode the splendor of the present you are delivering.
• To be a benevolent person (or leader, creator, maker) is to do what you do in purity. For the right reasons. In complete integrity. Mostly for the good of other people.

• “When you have done a good act and another has fared well by it, why seek a third reward, as fools do, be it the reputation for having done a good act or getting something in return?”

Unexpressed Emotions 

• Sigmund Freud wrote to this very point even more directly: “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”
• All of that suppressed micro-trauma—and possibly macrotrauma—that you probably aren’t even aware of because it’s lodged so completely inside your subconscious—is the real reason you might not be awake to your gifts, intimate with your talents and fully alive to your potential to cast stardust into the world.
• That Field of Hurt, trapped within your psyche, is the main reason you are procrastinating on producing your magnum opus, resisting the installation of virtuoso-grade habits, sabotaging healthy relationships (or attracted to toxic ones, because traumatized people don’t know what healthy looks like—and, incredibly, a drama-soaked lifestyle seems safer to them than a peaceful one, because it’s so much more familiar), or increasing addictions that range from too much time on social media to too much time shopping or drinking or complaining and basically missing out on the opportunities right in front of you to realize your giant promise, lead a phenomenal life and serve many people in the process.

The AFRA Tool. 

• The A stands for awareness. 
• The F stands for feel. 
• The R stands for release. 
• And the second A stands for ascend. 

Let’s look at the learning framework related to it:

• “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves,” said Carl Jung.
• If you didn’t have pre-existing anger within you, nothing could ever make you angry, right?

Step #1: Awareness 

• Begin building awareness around the inner wound by locating the feeling in your body. The original hurt is trapped in there because you were taught not to feel through it to completion (most people were told as children that feelings are wrong or for weaklings).
• Place all of your attention on the feeling within your body. This will automatically bring you into the present and out of any worrying and intellectualizing. Do your best to stay out of your head and remain with the actual sensation that has been lodged in your body. Note its texture and sense its color. Be one with it.

Step #2: Feel 

• The fact that you’re now feeling the old, once-repressed emotion that the current scenario has activated is not bad at all and completely good.
• To be a fully alive human is to experience a range of emotions. To repeat to reinforce: the fact that you’re feeling an unpleasant emotion means that it has surfaced from your unconscious and is now within the conscious part of you. Fantastic! It no longer secretly owns you, running and mostly ruining your creativity, productivity and happiness. So at this step of the process, the goal is to stay with the sensation. Don’t run from it. Don’t escape by distracting yourself with a device.

Step #3: Release 

• I know this seems vague, yet at this point in implementing The AFRA Tool all you need to do is set the intention to let go of the old wound. By feeling the buried emotion fully and by then desiring to release it from your system, you dislodge the frozen pain. And it will start to leave your body. Leaving you freer. Sometimes the release will take a few minutes or a couple of hours.

Step #4: Ascend

What I Learned from Leonardo’s Private Notebooks

• One insight became strikingly clear: his so-called “genius” was less a genetic blessing and more the result of self-teaching. And continuous daily improvements. And enormous degrees of discipline, devotion and training.
• Supreme artists, architects, inventors and leaders are not born into their skill. Their mastery truly is self-made
• He understood that pre-eminent creative leadership requires careful focus, workhorse-like effort and uncommon tenacity. Not good genes, a famous school and the right social connections.
• Leonardo worked utterly tirelessly when he worked. He also wasted a ton of time as all creatives do (this isn’t a misuse of the resource—it’s incubation of your next grade of ideas). Real professionals trust their natural rhythms of productivity, alternating stunning intensity with deep recovery so that their prowess expands over a lifetime instead of experiencing a bright and quick flameout.

Leonardo’s 6 Daily Habits

 Habit #1. 

• He Wrote Things Down That which you write down is amplified within your mental clarity. And clarity of thinking breeds mastery of production.

Habit #2. 

• He Mined His Natural Curiosity
• “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child,” observed Pablo Picasso.

Habit #3. 

• He Was Ridiculously Patient 
• Vigorous patience is one of the behaviors of all world-class performers. When Leonardo was creating The Last Supper, his ritual was to sit in front of the canvas for long periods of time, simply looking at the painting—studying the piece as a whole, along with the intricate nuances. Then, he would get up, make a single stroke and walk away.

Habit #4. 

• He Blended Multiple Disciplines

Habit #5. 

• He Took Time Off “Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work the least,” Leonardo once wrote.

Habit #6. 

• He Adored Natural BeautyYellow highlight | Location: 2,373

• Leonardo da Vinci that I’d like to leave you with: I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. ’Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

Such a simple insight: You won’t win if you don’t even try.

• Nothing happens until you move. You’ll never become a headliner if you wait. Destiny awards the starters. Fortune rewards the driven. And you’ll never know victory if you allow yourself to be paralyzed by apathy.
• I never leave the site of a great idea without taking some action to make it real. . . . always remember that it never hurts to ask (the worst thing that will happen is you’ll hear a sound called “no,” which is just a “maybe” in the making). . . . not lose your nerve when the thinking and feeling of defeat show up.
• I know and trust that rejection is the tuition demanded of everyday heroes to remain honest to their gifts and greatness. And that if you wait until you’re qualified enough and skillful enough and confident enough to go for what you want, you might be waiting a long, long time. Perfect conditions don’t exist and waiting for them is often simply an excuse because you’re really, really scared to begin.
• You might say: “But Robin, what if I try and fail?” I’d gently reply: “What if you don’t try? And then spend the rest of your life in regret, smoldering over all that could have been, should have been, and failing to catch a glimpse of who you truly are?”
• “We know ourselves only as far as we’ve been tested,” wrote Polish Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska.
• You really can’t lose when you lean into your heart’s desires and luminous dreams, you know. If you get what you want, you win. And if what you desire doesn’t happen, you grow.

Intentionality for Mastery

• The lesson for us? Let us not confuse mileage with mastery. And time invested with skill optimized. The real principle? Training that’s not intentionally programmed to make you better won’t make you any better.
• When advanced performers show up to capitalize on their talent, the session is precisely designed to improve their skill. They train with the clear intention of getting incrementally better. And each practice matters, as it’s a stepping stone to their vividly imagined ideal of becoming legendary at what they do.

The Dark Sides of Your Upsides 

• Every gift carries with it a curse of sorts. Every heroic character of Shakespeare’s tragedies possessed both a special talent that made them great as well as a tragic flaw that led to their downfall. The very blessings that make us amazing are the same qualities that can cause us grief. Every single one of your strengths also contains an associated weakness.
• *Bring these to the surface and get to know them. 

The 3 Step Success Formula is this: Better awareness breeds the better choices that deliver better results. 

• The more you learn and thereby increase your awareness, the greater wisdom you’ll have to become the kind of person who makes smarter decisions. And enhanced decision-making guarantees more exceptional outcomes.

By thawing the broccoli and then sprinkling mustard seeds over it or mixing some Dijon mustard into it, the enzyme of myrosinase is produced. Which then sets off a chemical reaction that increases the bioavailability of sulforaphane.

What I Think About When I Think About Difficulty

Belief #1: This, Too, Shall Pass

Belief #2: Every Seemingly Terrible Situation Inevitably Ends Well

• The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote to this principle when he suggested that life must be lived with foresight, yet can only be understood in hindsight. It’s only when we look back on our lives that we can connect the dots and see how everything that happened was for our highest good. And finest growth. What we saw as a burden—in the heat of the difficulty—through the passage of time turns out to be a blessing. That makes our lives vastly better.

Belief #3: If It Helps You Grow, It’s Not a Problem, but a Reward 

• To me, the primary purpose of a life lived fully is healing our ancient wounds, fully stepping into our native talent and ascending into all that we were built to be, while being helpful to as many human souls as possible.
• Yet I’ve grown the most when my life has looked its worst. It’s been thanks to my troubles that I’ve been introduced to my virtues. Misery is the very fire that forged courage and persistency, patience and gentleness, the optimism to forgive and the devotion to work for the world.
• These priceless benefits were developed not in the days of ease, but in the seasons of my deepest suffering. They have been the rewards Fortune has sent me for remaining present to the difficulty and for converting hardship into healing, purification and spiritual ascension.
• Everything that the ego claims is “negative” and “a problem” is in your life for a highly positive and awesomely helpful reason. You just can’t see the payoff yet. Because you’re not supposed to. You’re meant to fully experience what you’re enduring. Then the boundless blessings will flood into your days. “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” wrote Nietzsche.

Belief #4: Adversity Shows Up to Test How Much We Desire Our Dreams “When life seems tough and you wonder why, please remember,

Belief #5: Chaos Carries Opportunities

• “Every adversity, even failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” When things get super-hard, I encourage you to default into being an opportunity seeker. Ask yourself how you can profit from the setback to reveal the peak of your powers, turn calamity into victory, and rework the apparent failure into an even better life than you previously enjoyed.

Belief #6: Heroes Are Born in Hard Times Heroes are not made during periods of stability, but during days of discomfort. . . . Mandela became Mandela on Robben Island. . . . Rosa Parks became a legend while facing mistreatment. . . . Martin Luther King, Jr., evolved into Martin Luther King, Jr., while fighting the brutality of racism. . . . And Gandhi grew into Gandhi as he battled an empire.

Belief #7: To Live without Adventure Is to Not Really Live at All 

• A great Hollywood story needs both tragedy and triumph, loss and love, and a dark villain who ultimately loses to the flawed victor.
• The higher you reach, the harder the fall. More risks, more stumbles. More influence and impact, more stone throwers and arrow slingers. And yet I’d rather reach bravely for those ambitions—and fail—than arrive at my last day, full of regret and rage at the realization that I’d watched the game from the stands rather than playing in a championship match.
• True defeat is choosing not to go all in. And playing small with the gifts the universe has given to you. Getting bloodied is just part of winning. So wear your wounds as medals of valor.

Belief #8: Life Always Has Your Back

• When things in my life have looked like they were completely falling apart, they (and I) were simply being reassembled in what I later realized were the most wonderful (and intelligent) ways.
• I believe that life unfolds as a magical orchestration of seemingly random events that are absolutely for your greatest progress. And largest gain. So why fight it when it’s actually taking you to a better place? Simply embrace it. And enjoy the ride.

Belief #9: Life’s Too Short to Take Tragedy Too Seriously

• I still have a fire in my belly and am immensely ambitious. But I’m ambitious in a very different way now. And around very different things. . . . I’m ambitious to raise my game around self-mastery and to escalate my craft with quiet audacity. . . I’m ambitious to become less needy for approval, applause and appreciation and become more humble, steadfast and true to myself. . . . I’m ambitious to inspire, encourage and protect my family, improve the environment and give even more of myself to causes that move me, I’m ambitious to use whatever remains of my life treading the earth lightly, being considerate to all and doing all I can to be a loyal public servant to others. . . . I’m ambitious to deepen my relationship with my maker and derive more happiness and excitement through the exploration of my inner world than through my wide-ranging travels through this outer one.
• This very philosophy—which is my moral compass, my towering spiritual lighthouse—was forged by heartbreak.

Be in the world, yet not too much in the world. I love being in it, yet I don’t require its rewards to lead a satisfying life. I enjoy what I do, the benefits I have earned and the graces of my days. Yet they absolutely don’t define me. More and more, my sense of self, axis of agency and foundation of might come from what is within me rather than what is outside me. And this has brought me great tranquility.

• John Lennon: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”

Great creativity demands deep sensitivity. And deep sensitivity comes from growing intimacy with your emotionality. With your Heartset. With your feelings. No masterwork was ever produced by a craftsperson stuck in their intellect. It’s the human heart that makes wizardry real.

Fill. Your. Mind. With. Great. Dreams. So. There. Is. No. Room. For. Petty. Concerns. Think of your mind as a well. Fill it to the brim with thoughts of your noble aspirations, enchanting enthusiasms and the uplifting information that insulates your energy around your visionary ventures, the good you’ve been blessed with and the dazzling goals that speak to the possibilitarian within you. You’ll crowd out all dark and doubt-filled anxieties.

Fundamental principle for personal leadership: Human prowess is manufactured in moments of restraint. By this I mean every time you exercise your self-control muscles (no matter how weak they might currently be) to restrain an impulse you know doesn’t serve you, your willpower grows stronger.

Do that which is right over that which is easy.

I take “wisdom walks,” because over the course of two or sometimes even three hours, under the stars and in the dark, I reflect on who I’m becoming, what I’m learning, ideas I’m finding fascinating and those elements of my professional and private realm that I wish to improve.

Tactic #1: The Inspirational Index Card Technique 

• Write those quotes that most uplift you—whether from holy books, heroic autobiographies or marvelous poetry—onto a series of 3 x 5 cards that you carry with you everywhere.

Tactic #2: Implement The 3 S’s: Silence, Solitude and Stillness 

• These three potent influences provide the kind of ecosystem that quiets a worried mind and a turbulent heart. Noisy surroundings create a noisy psychology as well as a fear-filled emotionality.
• TheEverydayHeroManifesto.com/PositivityMeditations

Tactic #3: Deploy Value Chain Gratitude 

• Reflecting on your blessings instead of your burdens alters your neurochemistry, which in turn elevates your moods. Remember that brain cells that fire together wire together, so actively seeking out things you can appreciate in your life will create stronger neural pathways around gratefulness. And the more appreciative you become, the more there will be no space for discouragement to show up and distort reality toward the perception of negativity.

Tactic #4: Become a Solution Noticer

• Make the commitment to improve your acuity as a problem solver and your worries will vanish, allowing you to express your highest gifts to a welcoming world.

Resolution, meditation, clear thinking enhance one’s happy treasures in life. Self-doubt, weak will, lethargy, lack of discipline, lack of purpose and immorality are sure ways to diminish life strength. Character, honesty, strong will, consideration, resolute in decision and forthrightness is a golden road to a golden life.

The Big Lie of Positive Thinking

• If you’re going through a messy time in your life, restructuring your thinking to spot all the benefits and highlight all the positives ignores all of the emotional realities that have naturally come up.
• To run to positive thinking without performing emotional healing is to make things worse. This sets up a wall between you and the wisdom, vitality, creativity, productivity, compassion and courage that is your truest nature. (The word “courage” is derived from the Old French word cuer, which means “heart,” by the way.)
• “So is positive thinking a waste of time, Robin?” you ask. My reply? “It’s a superb use of your time—once you’ve worked through the natural emotions and physical sensations that arise in a crisis. Otherwise, you’ll simply add more trauma to your emotional system, weighing down your optimism, performance, impact and essential caring for humanity, via the Field of Hurt and all of its heavy energy that will radiate through your body and into your mind to degrade its native power.”

“Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul,”

The 13 Hidden Traits of the Billionaires I’ve Advised

Trait #1: A Foolhardy Degree of Self-Faith

Trait #2: A Blinding Vision of a Brighter Future

• Entrepreneurial masters to see magnificent possibilities where the majority incorrectly thinks that the only things that can happen are the things that have already happened. The very nature of invention and innovation is that it decimates the normal. And degrades the status quo.

Trait #3: A Terrific Thirst for Rebellion

• They have the brazen bravado to bend their world to the vision that they’ve set for it. And the endurance to do whatever it takes to make their vision real.

Trait #4: A Childlike Level of Curiosity

Trait #5: An Acute Carelessness about the Opinions of Critics

• Someone’s opinion is just their statement about what they think is possible, based on their entrenched belief system and past experiences. It’s really none of your concern, so don’t let it sabotage your success. And don’t allow the limited perceptions (and jealousies) of those who feel threatened by your radiance to rent space (for free) within your mind, heart and spirit.

Trait #6: A Gargantuan Commitment to Consistency and Persistency

Trait #7: A High Love of Winning and Being Best in World

Trait #8: A Deeply Trained Ability to Resist Instant Pleasure 

• Nearly every billionaire I’ve ever worked with has had otherworldly-grade personal discipline. Their self-control capacity is pristine. Herculean, even.
• I call this way of being “sustained incrementalism.” Economic superstars play the long game. While the lightweight wants the win in a moment.

Trait #9: A Learned Skill of Multiplying Wealth

• My clients enjoy unusual fortune because they focus on the generation of both passive income (where their money is made to work for them, rather than working for their money and trading labor for cash) and active income (money made by contributing rich streams of value to their marketplace).

Trait #10: A Refusal to Be around Negative People 

• The great visionaries armor-plate their optimistic energy. Every inspirational achievement was created by a wildly inspired human being. Lose that state and you’ll lose the fire that makes your stardust real.

Trait #11: A Near-Infinite Sense of Agency over Accomplishment

• The visionary leader owns their human power to execute around their aspirations and has a sense of agency that makes them sure of their abilities. They have the wisdom, courage and creativity to know that the true axis of power of a fully alive human being comes from within, never from some outside force.
• These types understand that the more you deliver on what you promised to yourself, the more your confidence will grow to realize even more challenging enterprises. And that being monomaniacally focused on one’s priorities, out-innovating everyone in your field, producing goods and services that are distinctive and precious, working harder than anyone you’ve ever met, and doing all this with lavish integrity will get you into the Hall of Fame of Prosperity a whole lot easier than hoping for a handout ever will.

Trait #12: An Application of the Asymmetric Risk-Reward Paradigm (ARRP)

• The possible rewards have absolutely no symmetry or proportion to the risks if the venture or investment

Trait #13: A Contrarian Mode of Deploying Capital

• “maverick investing calculus.” Essentially, this describes their rare (yet earned and developed, not innate and gifted) ability to spot hidden value.

The 8 Forms of Wealth

• Clarity precedes mastery. You can’t remedy a problem that you have no awareness about. So much of elite performance and handcrafting a gorgeous life is about building intimacy with your blind spots. And ending the hypnosis of self-deception.

Form of Wealth #1: Self-Mastery + Sincere Heroism

• Personal mastery is about calibrating your Mindset, purifying your Heartset, optimizing your Healthset and escalating your Soulset—maximizing The 4 Interior Empires

Form of Wealth #2: Physical Fitness + Longevity 

• This life dimension relates to all aspects of your physical status, including brain health, personal energy, stamina, the ability to recover quickly, the quality of your immunity, sleep hygiene and longevity. Giving the time and resources needed to flourish in this segment of your life will cost you, I agree. Disease (or death) will cost you more.

Form of Wealth #3: Family + Friendships

Form of Wealth #4: Craft + Career

Form of Wealth #5: Money + Net Worth

• Your annual and monthly inflow matters a lot less than how much you have left over to save and invest, once expenses and taxes are paid. Don’t confuse gross income with net profit.

Form of Wealth #6: Mentors + Influencers 

• We do rise to the level of our conversations, associations and relationships. Your inner circle absolutely drives your external mastery.

Form of Wealth #7: Adventure + Lifestyle

• Nourishing your inner explorer on a regular basis will fuel your inspiration and upgrade your creativity.

Form of Wealth #8: Impact + Contribution

The Algorithm for a Beautifully Balanced Life

1. The things that get scheduled are the things that get done. 
2. Vague plans produce vague goals. 
3. World-class weeks soon morph into the sensational quarters that lead into the spectacular years that generate sublime decades.

Step #1: Go Macro + Connect to Your Vision 

• Your starting point is to fast forward and think about what you will have wished your life stood for and what you need to have achieved by the time you become old in order to feel satisfied that you were true to your ideals. This will ensure that the week ahead is strategic rather than reactive, intentional rather than automatic.
• I ask them to create their Tombstone Statement—four paragraphs detailing what they hope their family, friends and colleagues will say about them after they die. This is based on their Lifetime Big 5 targets, a concept I walked you through in the chapter on The Peak Productivity Strategies Pyramid. Then I have them write out their Top 10 Daily Devotions—those habits and daily routines that, when routinized, cause them to perform at their best.

Step #2: Reflection on Your Weekly Story

• The practice of reviewing your entire week in fine detail will identify which opportunities for improvement are most available to you.

Step #3: Celebrate Your Weekly Exceptionals

• Your goals and three truly exceptional personal outcomes that you fully commit to accomplishing by the end of the coming week.

Step #4: The Weekly Rating and Measurement

Step #5: The Coming Week’s Truly Exceptionals

Step #6: Best Human Practices and Prioritization 

• Next, you quickly look at the inventory of best practices in each of The 8 Forms of Wealth that you’ll record when you first set up the system. This will allow you, before your week begins, to remember those behaviors in the eight key areas of your life that, when you do them, cause your life to operate at its finest.
• It’s such a simple insight, isn’t it? To enjoy more success and happiness, schedule and then do the activities that experience has shown will bring you success and happiness.

Step #7: Integration and Building Your Template (for a Beautiful Week) 

• Using the one-page scheduler I’m sharing with you online at TheEverydayHeroManifesto.com/Scheduler,

Step #8: Execute on + Live the Template 

• The final step in The Weekly Design System is to take a few moments each morning of the new week to revisit your Truly Exceptionals and your written schedule—time blocks and all—for the day ahead of you. This will promote clarity and activate your ability to say no to distractions,
• “Let planning be your springboard so spontaneity can be your splash.”

The thing about a master is that they never think they are a master.

Hard Winter Training 

• To do towering work that stands the test of time and builds a life that you’ll be ever so proud of demands that you place yourself in harsh places. And force yourself to do difficult things. So that the struggle introduces you to your hidden strength. And confidence. And brilliance.
• Epictetus: “But neither a bull nor a noble-spirited man comes to be what he is all at once; he must undertake hard winter training and prepare himself and not propel himself rashly into what is not appropriate to him.”

Life works in oscillation 

• This is the seasonal or cyclical way of running a day and then a week and then a month and then your years, where you work with the sweatiest of passion and then pull back and fully recover. So you restore your assets of genius back up to their highest capacity for another excellent round of magnificently creative, focused, inspired work.
• Our culture trains us to feel shame if we’re not “hustle and grinding” by working most of the time. But working most of the time leaves you and me exhausted, cranky and empty. It erodes our energy.

Chisel Your Statue Daily

• • Small, daily, seemingly insignificant improvements, when done consistently over time, lead to stunning results.
  • Don’t just get fit to look really good. Get strong to lift the world. Get physically strong to have greater concentration. To extend your stamina when you sit down to create. To toughen your body so you maximize your ability to generate the big ideas that solve enormous problems. Exercise regularly so you become a better artist. Work out harder so you become a better leader.

• If you don’t see yourself as the kind of person who has what it takes to accomplish world-class results, you won’t even start to do the work required to achieve world-class results. What would be the point?

• This way of operating—and this is really important to know—creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your perception of your capacity actively creates your reality. Your false psychological, emotional, physical and spiritual programs are the very roadblocks that prevent you from entering the highway toward your grandest desires.

While we think we see reality each day, what we are really viewing is our perception of reality. We process all that’s outside us—all events, conditions and experiences—through our own unique filter. Our own personal lens. A “stained glass window” of sorts, to use mythologist Joseph Campbell’s term.

• Remake and refine your private story and you’ll begin to perceive a whole new world, the kind that members of the majority almost never see, keeping them stuck in pessimism, scarcity and ongoing insecurity—rarely catching glimpses of the ocean of possibility and opportunity that is right in front of their eyes.

• Upgrade your self-identity consistently and your behavior will transform to match your new understanding about what’s possible for you to create, achieve and become.
• In order to restructure a completely new personal story that will elegantly rework your personal identity are these: your thoughts, your emotions, your words, your deeds and your influences. These are the forces that have, over time, created the filter through which you process the world,
• And heroically get introduced to previously undiscovered sides of your most amazing self. Because life’s greatest sadness is never getting to know all you truly are.

My cheerful suggestion is to let your things be your servant, never your master. We are born with nothing and we exit with nothing. Between those two states we are mere caretakers of whatever we are blessed to enjoy through the fruits of our labor, along with Fortune’s goodwill. Hold what you have with a very loose grip. Don’t let material goods form the basis of your identity (or your self-worth). Ironically, when you develop the power to stay cool—even if you were to lose everything—life celebrates your sentiments of abundance by sending you even more.

• They know that nature always unfolds for one’s favor. And they abide by the spiritual law that once you reach a place of inner freedom and everyday heroism, where you’re unafraid to lose everything, you will not be scared of anything.

Stop rehearsing your limitations. Start exporting your magic. You’ve been granted the chance of a lifetime! Alternate chapter content: Dream big. Start small. Act now.

• When I work, I work swiftly, intensely and with a focus that is far beyond fierce. I hold myself to the highest of standards and aim for the inspiration of a man haunted by the ghosts of geniuses that history has long since forgotten.
• George Bernard Shaw wrote: I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for life’s own sake. Life is no “brief candle” to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold on for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations.

The 4 Major Communication Practices of Movement-Makers

• Practice #1: Deep Listening
  • Second, the person asking the questions is the one in control of the conversation. Get great at deploying brilliant questions,
  • Being flawlessly present and genuinely engaged

• Practice #2: Raw Vulnerability
  • Your being real and exercising the bravery to “do you” gives everyone around you permission to also be real. Create a culture of human beings who feel it’s fine to be their true selves as they work together around an emotionally compelling crusade and you’ll activate the alchemy that makes world-changing movements.

• Practice #3: Promise-Keeping So simple. So transformational. So unusual, these days.
• Practice #4: Truth-Telling

We are encouraged to learn the highest of all spiritual lessons . . . . . . to let go. . . . to detach. . . . to welcome whatever comes. . . . to surrender and embrace the intelligent unfolding of life. To accept all experiences as blessings designed to realize my promise.

• Roll with instead of fighting the lessons life is sending you and everything starts to work better for you. Fighting change is asking for trouble. Resisting your new normal is a recipe for misery.

Your Standards

• The standards you hold your life to are profound indicators of the levels of success, influence and everyday heroism you’ll reach. Here’s a valuable rule to play with: We get in life not what we wish for but that which we settle on. 
• In all that you do, hold yourself to the highest of ideals and codes of performance. Never do anything that demeans the person of ironclad excellence, unchangeable nobility and unmessable-with-integrity that you’ve promised your finest self you’ll become.

Presence 

• Oh, what an important word is “presence” in our age of endless technological interruption.
• the wholeness of your attention. The largest present you can give a loved one is the treasure of your aliveness—being completely there when you are with them. Listening gloriously. Being sincere and interested. And engaging with them totally. Rare these days. And yet essential to a world-class life that soars with happiness, impact and contribution.

No excuses. No escapes. No postponements.

• I am certain that your past has no power over your future unless you decide to let it.

Today is a bonus of sorts, overflowing with prized bounty, worth celebrating. It’s a gift of pure opportunity. To consider the ideals you’ve never envisioned and to take risks you’ve not taken. To give the compassion you know should be given. And to take a valiant stand for an exalted way of thinking, feeling, doing and being.

When scared, ask: 

• What would heroism do? When worried, wonder: How would confidence behave? When angry, question: Where can understanding be given? When hurting, go where optimism lives. When insecure, follow where self-love leads. All is unfolding for your benefit. Nothing is against your happiness. Your tests will yield triumphs. Your good deeds will produce noble success. Great rewards are on the way. Trust in your process. Don’t lose your nerve. Compare your journey to none other. You are flawlessly protected. And richly guided. By the force that rules the world.

I take my personal inspiration very, very seriously. It’s a core tool of my trade.

Creativity and Inspiration

• As a creative worker, I trust the seasons. I truly do. And when I’m de-inspired and have zero game, I see it as the Muse leading me into an off-season. And my better instincts welcome me to take a break

• Here’s my reality: the Muse doesn’t visit me every morning or tuck me in every night, with a fairy tale and a sweet kiss. Some days complete paragraphs download with such miraculous spontaneity that I struggle to capture them. And on other days I simply stare at the wall.

• I’ve come to understand that this is all just fine. It’s my personal process. To resist it is to demean it. The universe is leading me and it’s to my advantage to work with it, versus fight it. I guess what I’m saying is that I rarely force my creativity. When I do, what I make is mediocre at best. So why even bother?

• Inspiration. How I adore this word! It’s so essential to protect it, so you do work that makes a difference. The word itself is derived from the Latin root inspirare, you know? It actually means “to be breathed into” . . . “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music,” wrote Nietzsche.

Just imagine. For only a second. That you had merely six months left to live. If you had just six months left to live, what would you simply stop doing? Maybe you’d list items like . . . . . . refusing to overidentify yourself with your work. . . . being busy being busy with digital distractions. . . . spending too much time with entertainment and not enough time on your education. . . . getting angry over needless things and irritated by trifling matters like noisy neighbors, terrible drivers and frustrating family members. . . . putting yourself down by listening to the voices of criticism and self-loathing in your head. . . . beating yourself up for your misdeeds, forgetting that you did the best you knew how to do. . . . constantly rehearsing the past so one disappointing experience gets relived a million times in your mind. And what things would you have the weighty wisdom and charismatic strength to begin doing? . . . like writing of and thereby re-experiencing the most spectacular meals you’ve ever had and reflecting on the majestic moments you’ve been blessed to enjoy. . . . like bellowing a loud “I love you” to all the people whom you’ve never felt safe enough to say this to (but who need to hear the extent of your love for them before you return to the great wide-open space from which you came). like treating everyone you meet like you might never get to see them again. Because a human life is so delicate. And someone can die completely unexpectedly.. . because thinking about death refocuses our priorities, recalibrates our thinking, animates our emotions and re-orders our routines. Considering my own death isn’t something depressing. Not at all. It’s actually inspiring. Building greater awareness and intimacy with the fact my days are numbered—no matter how long Nature allows me to live—injects an exuberance, appreciation and sense of urgency into me to represent my best within each of my days. Connecting to my mortality is a potent way to stay centered around all that’s most essential to conducting a thoughtful, creative, valuable and jubilant life.

The antidote to arrogance is humility. Practice “The Anti-Irrelevance Rule”: as you rise in domain dominance, fight even harder to avoid the pull of becoming smug, prideful and conceited.

I strongly encourage you to ensure that your finest work is always ahead of you rather than taking the easy road and making your current work a mere forgery of the success that made you great.

• Your job—as an everyday hero and artistic leader within your domain—is to have enough faith in your abilities and valor in your heart to do that which you know you must do to honor the honesty of your most original self.

Anyone who provokes your insecurity and incites that part of you that doubts your mastery is a helper. Their mean behavior brings up your weakness. So you can notice it and then process through it into healing. Wonderful. Thank them. For they’ve made you healthier, purer and better. They’ve served your ascent toward your inherent greatness.

As far as I can tell, what matters most isn’t how you’ll be remembered by those you leave behind but how you decide to live while you get to be alive.

. . . Did you have the conviction to be yourself when society pushed you to be like everyone else, as well as the sensibility to make others feel more hopeful when they were with you? . . . Did you use the years of your life to grow in humility, gain in knowledge and learn to tread the planet more lightly than when you arrived? . . . And did you learn to not take yourself too seriously, understanding that most of the troubles we worry about really don’t ever happen, so it’s best to remain joyful, grateful and relaxed?

Being a courteous, masterful, steadfast and noble human being while your tender and brave heart still beats is the way of real heroism.

• The way you become special and great is by practicing being special and great so often that all un-specialness and anti-greatness is cleansed out of you, like the sunshine of spring washes away all hints of a cold and cruel winter.

The Life Regrets of People on Their Deathbeds

• Deathbed Regret #1: They Wish They Had Kept Greater Perspective Human beings really do spend too much time worrying about things that will never happen. And even when hardship appears, we forget that difficulties always end.
• Deathbed Regret #2: They Wish They Hadn’t Worried So Much about What Other People Think Oscar Wilde said: “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”
  • Oh, how many heartbeats we misspend in caring too much about how we look!
  • We fail to take the chances that would materialize our primal genius because we don’t wish to be rejected, dislike being embarrassed and desire to look cool. We’ve become a culture of attention seekers versus magic workers, donating our greatest days to the needless pursuit of approval. I gently urge you to keep in mind that in one hundred years everyone alive today will be gone. Why hold back on the realization of your promise and the following of your enthusiasms to be pleasers to people who won’t be here in the future?
  • Your life will rise or fall depending on your willingness to appear foolish. And your interest in respecting your authenticity. By embracing the dreams that matter most to you. Even (especially) when no one else gets you.

• Deathbed Regret #3: They Wish They Hadn’t Wasted So Much Time
  • Use your precious hours responsibly. Defend yourself against any occupation that is unworthy of your noble gifts and human talents. Chase not the petty interests that enchant the crowd. Your leadership, mastery, happiness and serenity cannot be found there.
  • We have become masters of minor things and experts of trivial pursuits.
  • We all will be dead, sometime. “How did it get so late so soon?” wondered Dr. Seuss.

• Deathbed Regret #4: They Wish They Had Enjoyed the Pilgrimage of Life More
• Deathbed Regret #5: They Wish They Had Been More Kind and Loving 
  • The final regret of those at their end is that they feel remorse over the harmful acts they did to others (it’s interesting how common it is for people to mistreat the humans they most love, isn’t it?). Failing to practice the virtue of kindness on a daily basis not only makes our world a darker, more miserable place, it corrodes your conscience—which destroys your happiness and tranquility.

Don’t hold back on being the most loving person you’ve ever met.

• Jimi Hendrix observed: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”
• “It takes so little to make someone happy,
• His eyes would sparkle. His smile would broaden. Each time he saw someone. It was astounding to see. “You really seem to like people,” I said. “I’ve seen a lot of dead people,” he replied softly. “So when I see a live person, it makes me very happy.”

Just imagine how our world would look if we adopted his philosophy. Putting down our devices, being less affected by selfishness and busyness and increasing our decency. By paying more attention to our collective humanity. And each person in front of us, friend or stranger. Just imagine coming alive every time we spotted human life. Or any life, for that matter.

This is what I seek to know. Can you be true? To you?

• On our deathbeds it truly is what we didn’t do—the people we didn’t meet, the potential we didn’t express, the projects we didn’t finish, the enchantments we didn’t chase and the love we failed to deliver—that floods us with regret . . .
• When a window of opportunity shows up, open the frame even more and jump right in, as quickly as you can, before the villains of your genius and the enemies of your greatness start telling you why you can’t. Reason destroys what could have been many life-changing experiences. Trust your heart. It really is so much wiser than your head.
• Don’t put off your heart’s most precious dreams. Know that it’s smarter to look foolish in the moment by doing what you know you need to do to have the life you seek rather than dishonor your urge by doing nothing. And ending up heartbroken on your last mile. Who knows what tomorrow brings? Don’t assume the future will be a place where everything you’ve put off because you’re really busy right now can happen easily, effortlessly and excellently.

Do you really want to postpone what you most want to do until a time when it may be too late to do it? Life’s meant to be lived right now. The future’s just a sprinkling of fantasy. . .  Go out into this beautiful and sometimes cruel world with a heart full of heroism and eyes set to embrace the glory of your fullest powers.