Top 10 Big Ideas 1Know Thyself First 2Use Your Generational Wisdom 3Do Your Research 4Gut Check 5Build Trust 6Watch, Look & Listen 7Quiet Time 8Community 9Forgiveness 10Just Be Yourself

Bit different? Speak with a lisp, or like to read? Long nose, big lips, small ears, weird name, wrong shoes, no dad, no fun, too serious, too dumb, too tall, too short too, too, too- just too something. There is always Something. too loud, too popular, too shy too, too healthy. Can you sing? Shut it. Run fast, row fast, swim fast? Slow down. Create? Destroy. Make a difference? Forget it. Sensitive? Toughen up, you must be gay. Keep your head down, and smile, but not too much. Be fun, but not a clown Stand up, but not too tall. Fake it-make it believable Don’t be a try hard. Try quiet Yes Quietly in your room In tears with the door shut shut to the world shut to the bullies shut to yourself all day long. That part that hurts- the part you’ve kept together now splinters, shatters and breaks into a thousand sharp pieces. Jagged and dangerous. Pieces that can cut, and hurt another with just a swipe or a lashing out. You stare at yourself all smashed apart a mess, a scary mess. Yet slumped on the floor through teary eyes you see yourself like never before. In pieces sharp vivid and distinct, irreplaceable reflecting your eyes, your life your heart. You see pain, but more - The light, the strength, your heart wide open right there in beautiful unique patterns Your pain, arranging the pieces in ways that only you could create. Yes, a jagged and magnificent mess. And then you know there is no “too” anything. There is only You.

Take a compassion and altruism check-up today. Are you involved with any cause but your own? Cultivating the ability to branch outside of ourselves and feel into others and even take action to support them (for them, not for us) can have wonderful effects on our mood, self-esteem and pure joy in this world.

How to Overcome Plateaus Take risks. Growth comes when we stretch past our comfort zone. The big reason many people (especially high-achievers) plateau is because they don’t like to fail. Instead of taking on challenges that will help us grow, we stick with routines that we know we can successfully do. To protect our ego, we’d rather do the wrong things correctly, than do the right things wrongly. This aversion to risk is a recipe for plateauing. Embrace the suck. To overcome your aversion to risk, you have to give yourself permission to fail and be mediocre. Instead of avoiding the things that are hardest for them, the greats of the world specifically focus on those things; they purposefully concentrate on the areas in which they make the most mistakes. This keeps them from getting stuck in the autonomous phase and propels their progress. So instead of seeing failure as a negative thing, think of your failures as steps to success. If you choose to learn from your failures, they can bring you closer to your goal; when you cut a string and then tie it back together, it’s shorter than it once was. Step out of the echo chamber. Another reason we plateau is because everyone around us is telling us everything is gravy. We often confide in people who tell us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear. I know I’m guilty of doing this. I’ll finish a project and take it to somebody for some “constructive criticism,” when really I just want some positive affirmation on what I did. If you feel stuck in an area of your life, seek out mentors who won’t pull any punches and will give you the honest criticism you need to improve. Yes, your ego will get bruised, but that’s the price one must pay for personal and professional growth. Learning to accept criticism is something that simply takes discipline and practice. First you work on taking the criticism into consideration at all. Then you work on shortening the time period between your initial reaction of “What?! There’s nothing wrong with what I did you noodle-brain knucklehead!” and the time later when you’re able to calmly reflect and see if there’s value in the criticism. I suppose the next stage is to skip that momentary urge to punch the criticizer in the throat altogether, but I’m not there yet myself! Practice deliberately. Fitts and Posner discovered three keys to breaking through your plateau: 1) focus on technique, 2) stay goal oriented, and 3) and get immediate feedback on the performance. In other words, you need to practice deliberately to break through plateaus. When Joshua Foer was trying to improve his memory in preparation for the United States Memory Championship, he hit a plateau where he stopped progressing. Despite a strict training regimen in which he looked at flash cards during his spare moments and constantly memorized things wherever he went, he couldn’t seem to get any better. To bust through this plateau, he had to deliberately push himself harder than before: “To improve, we have to be constantly pushing ourselves beyond where we think our limits lie and then pay attention to how and why we fail. That’s what I needed to do if I was going to improve my memory. With typing, it’s relatively easy to get past the O.K. plateau. Psychologists have discovered that the most efficient method is to force yourself to type 10 to 20 percent faster than your comfort pace and to allow yourself to make mistakes. Only by watching yourself mistype at that faster speed can you figure out the obstacles that are slowing you down and overcome them. Ericsson suggested that I try the same thing with cards. He told me to find a metronome and to try to memorize a card every time it clicked. Once I figured out my limits, he instructed me to set the metronome 10 to 20 percent faster and keep trying at the quicker pace until I stopped making mistakes. Whenever I came across a card that was particularly troublesome, I was supposed to make a note of it and see if I could figure out why it was giving me cognitive hiccups. The technique worked, and within a couple days I was off the O.K. plateau, and my card times began falling again at a steady clip. Before long, I was committing entire decks to memory in just a few minutes.” After a year of practice, Foer was able to memorize the order of a shuffled deck of cards in under two minutes. Get back to basics. Whenever I hit plateaus in my life, my first response is to look for something new I can do to get me out of it. I think, “If I only find the right workout or the right planning system, my life will change and I can start making progress again.” Sometimes changing things up can help us break through a plateau, but in my experience, I just waste more time searching for that new, magic thing that will change my life for the better. So instead of spending time on searching for the new, I start focusing on the basics. When I hit a plateau with my writing, I’ll review my composition skills by doing some exercises from a book. When I hit a plateau with my weight lifting, I’ll reduce the weight, focus on my form, and slowly start adding weight again. On numerous occasions, I’ve found that even when you’re advanced at something, delving back into the basics can actually give you fresh insights that help you progress even further. Think long term. When we think short-term, we have a tendency to feel that plateaus are permanent. But when we take the big picture view of things, we start to see plateaus as temporary way stations that we’ll eventually get past with a bit of hard work. Moreover, by thinking long term, we give ourselves more latitude to take risks and fail because we see that missteps are just momentary setbacks in the long journey of life.

he Key to Being Clutch When Using Your Procedural Memory To excel under pressure and be clutch with tasks that require procedural memory, you must distract yourself from the task at hand. Instead of over-thinking what you’re doing or are about to do, you must trust that the hours of training and practice you’ve put in before that moment won’t let you down. Distract yourself. If you’re lining up for a golf putt, distract yourself from the mechanics of your putt by counting backwards or singing. Our guitarist above can close his eyes when he starts to feel nervous when playing in front of an audience (as an added bonus, scrunching his eyes shut will make the girls think he’s deep). Develop a mantra. Sports psychologists often counsel their athletes to develop a mantra they can repeat when the pressure is on. Mantras are just another way to keep you from over-thinking what you’re doing in a high-pressure situation. Baseball Hall of Famer George Brett’s mantra when he was up at bat was “Try easier.” A basketball player could use a mantra like “Relaxed and smooth,” for when he steps up to the free throw line. When you’re on the putting green, use the immortal mantra of Chevy Chase in Caddyshack: “Be the ball.” Focus on the target, not your mechanics. Another tactic you can use to avoid paralysis by analysis is to focus on your target, instead of your mechanics. For example, when you’re trying to bowl a strike, you don’t want to think about your approach, so you should focus and aim at an arrow on the lane instead. When firing a gun, focus on getting a clear sight, not on your trigger pull. Don’t slow down. Remember how with tasks that require working memory you should slow down? Well, forget that bit of advice for tasks that require procedural memory. Studies show that the faster you get going, the better you do. Football coaches understand this and will often try to throw off opposing kickers by calling a time-out right before they kick the ball. This technique is called “icing the kicker.” The idea is that giving the kicker more time to think about the kick will increase his analysis and anxiety, thus blocking his procedural memory from guiding the ball through the uprights. If you’ve ever mountain biked, you’ve probably witnessed the truth in this. If you see an obstacle up ahead on the trail and cautiously slow down in anticipation, you will often awkwardly hit the obstacle and fall over. But, if you swallow your fear and keep up a quick pace, more often than not the bike will sail right over the obstacle. High Pressure Tactics for Both Working and Procedural Memory Tasks So we’ve talked about tactics tailored for situations that involve your working memory and for those that engage your procedural memory. But there are also things you can do that can help you no matter the high-pressure mission you’re trying to accomplish. Practice tactical breathing. Tactical breathing was developed by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. It’s a technique that soldiers and police officers use to quickly calm down and stay focused in high-pressure situations like firefights. Here’s how to do it: Slowly inhale a deep breath for 4 seconds. Hold the breath in for 4 seconds. Slowly exhale the breath out for 4 seconds. Hold the empty breath for 4 seconds. Repeat until your breathing is under control. Simple. What’s hard is having the discipline to do this when you start feeling stressed out. Before delivering that big sales pitch or negotiating your new raise, take a few minutes to do some tactical breathing to clear your mind and keep yourself calm, cool, and collected. Practice under pressure. Practice under the same conditions that you’ll face when you have to perform for real. While you can’t replicate the stress level of real-world situations in a practice setting, even training under mild stress can improve a person’s ability to thrive in clutch situations. A great example of the power of practicing under pressure comes from Southern Utah University’s basketball team. Before coach Roger Reid arrived in 2007, the team ranked 217th in free throw percentage. By 2009, the team was ranked number one. What did Reid do to help his players thrive in the often high-pressure stakes of free-throw shooting? During practice, Reid would randomly stop everything and bring his players to the free throw line. If the player made the shot, he got to take a breather. If he missed, he had to sprint around the court. By putting something on the line for failing to miss a practice free throw, Reid was able to help his players better handle game-on-the-line free throws. If you’re preparing for a test, do your practice exams under the same time limit you’ll have on test day and without the use of study aids. If possible, practice in the same room in which you’ll be taking the actual test. If you’re preparing for a speech, practice in front of a friend or even a camera. Studies have shown that athletes or performers who practice in front of the watchful gaze of the lens perform better than those who practice in isolation. Stay active and outwardly focused. In the book War, by Sebastian Junger (which I highly recommend), he shares an interesting study done on a Special Forces team during the Vietnam War. The team was stationed at an isolated base along the Cambodian border and knew there was a good chance of the base being completely overrun by a force of Vietcong. Surprisingly, researchers found that in contrast to the officers, the stress levels of the enlisted men actually dropped before an expected attack, and rose when the attack failed to materialize. Researchers offered this explanation: “The members of this Special Forces team…were action-oriented individuals who characteristically spent little time in introspection. Their response to any environmental threat was to engage in a furor of activity which rapidly dissipated the developing tension.” This activity included laying C-wire and mines around the base, which as Junger notes, “was something they knew how to do and were good at, and the very act of doing it calmed their nerves.” When you’re facing a threat of a less deadly variety, take a cue from the men of the Special Forces; instead of sitting around navel-gazing, bouncing your leg up and down, and working yourself into a ball of nerves, keep yourself occupied with preparations. Read over your notes again, shine your shoes, take some practice shots… Stay humble. Remember, “Pride goeth before a fall.” We’ve all seen examples where over-confidence in sports resulted in choking when the pressure was on (cough, Miami Heat, cough). Over-confidence can kill your performance because it keeps you from striving to improve. If you want to be clutch, you need to strengthen your skills and prepare every day for those

Hacking the Habit Loop to Change Bad Habits

The Habit Loop is sort of like a computer program — a very simple one, albeit — consisting of three parts: Cue. According to Duhigg, a cue is “a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use.” For the mice in the MIT experiment, the cue was a “click” sound; for us a cue could be “sitting down at the computer,” or “boredom,” or “lunch time.” Routine. The routine is the activity that you perform almost automatically after you encounter the cue. A routine can be physical, mental, or emotional. Reward. The reward is what helps our “brain figure out if [a] particular loop is worth remembering for the future.” A reward can be anything. For the mice in the MIT experiment the reward was chocolate. For us it could be the feeling we get after eating a Five Guys burger, smoking a cigarette, or watching porn. Hacking the Habit Loop to Change Bad Habits While habits never really disappear, we don’t have to be slaves to them. Research has shown that by becoming aware of the Habit Loop in our lives and making simple tweaks to it, we can change bad habits to good ones. To change a habit, you must simply follow the Golden Rule of Habit Change: Keep the Cue and Reward; Change the Routine. That’s it. “It seems ridiculously simple, but once you’re aware of how your habit works, once you recognize the cues and rewards, you’re halfway to changing it,” said Nathan Azrin, a habit researcher Charles Duhigg interviewed for The Power of Habit. “It seems like it should be more complex. The truth is, the brain can be reprogrammed. You just have to be deliberate about it.” Below is a step-by-step guide that Charles Duhigg suggests using to identify the component parts of the Habit Loop in your life so that you can begin taking deliberate action to change how it runs. Step 1: Identify the Routine The first step is to identify the routine you want to change in your life. Do you want to stop checking your email incessantly? Do you want to stop watching porn every night? How about quitting your caffeine habit? Or maybe you want to quit playing video games all weekend and start working out? This is the part of the Habit Loop that we’ll be tweaking in order to change our undesirable habits. Step 2: Experiment with the Reward “Rewards are powerful because they satisfy cravings. But we’re often not conscious of the cravings that drive our behaviors,” says Duhigg. It’s easy to identity our rewards – pizza, orgasm, drinking – but what are we really craving when we go after those things? And is there a different reward that will satisfy the true craving, but in a more positive way? To answer those questions, you need to conduct a series of experiments designed to test various hypotheses. Don’t get frustrated during this process if it takes too long or doesn’t have the results you had predicted – think of yourself like a scientist who is led by curiosity and dispassionately seeks to uncover the truth. For example, let’s say you have a habit Routine of going to the vending machine to get a Diet Mountain Dew every day. You want to change it because it’s costing you money and Diet Dew isn’t very good for you, so you need to figure out the craving that’s driving you to seek that Reward, and whether a different Reward might satisfy it equally well. To begin your experiments, the next time you feel that all-too-familiar pull towards getting that delicious neon nectar, adjust your Routine so you get a different Reward. On the first day of your experiment, buy a 7-Up instead; on the second day just drink water from the water fountain; on another day simply surf the web or take a walk outside. When you commence the substitute activity (or after say, drinking the 7-Up), set a fifteen-minute alarm on your watch or computer. Then when the fifteen minutes is up, ask yourself: “Do I still feel the urge for Diet Mountain Dew?” Evaluate the state of your craving. If you still feel an urge to do the Dew after surfing the web, then you’ve discovered that your habit isn’t motivated by a craving for distraction. On the other hand, if the craving for Dew disappears after taking a walk outside, then perhaps your Dew habit was being driven by a craving for a quick energy boost. By substituting the soda-Routine for the walk-Routine, you can satisfy your craving for a pick-me-up-Reward, but do it in a healthier, more positive way. Step 3: Identify the Cue Once you identify the reward, it’s time to identify the cue: the thing that triggers the craving. Habit researchers have shown that almost all habit cues fall into one of five categories: Location Time Emotional State Other People Immediately-preceding action Whenever you get the urge for a Mountain Dew, write down answers that correspond to the five possible cue categories. Do this for an entire week. After a while, you should be noticing a reoccurring cue. For example, you might get the craving for a Diet Mountain Dew at a certain time of day or maybe whenever you feel tired and bored. Make note of what you believe your Diet Mountain Dew Habit Cue is. Step 4: Create a Plan After you identify the Cue and Reward, you can start making plans to change your routine. According to researchers, the best way to plan your habit change is through implementation intentions. We wrote about these earlier this year. In a nutshell, an implementation intention is an “if-then” phrase that links a situational cue to a specific action. So let’s use our Diet Mountain Dew example to create an implementation intention to help us kick the habit. Through days of experimenting you discovered that you get the urge to drink a Diet Mountain Dew right around 2PM. You also uncovered by experimenting with different rewards that it wasn’t really the Diet Dew you craved, you were just craving an energy boost. Fortunately, you found that walking outside for 15 minutes gave you the same boost as chugging the sweet stuff. So you could create an implementation intention that looked like this: When I feel tired at 2PM, I will get up and walk around outside for 15 minutes. You’ll need to be methodical about actually implementing your implementation intention. You can’t half-ass it. The goal is to associate taking a walk with your tiredness-energy boost cue/reward combo. Depending on how entrenched your bad habit was, overriding it with your new good habit could take a few weeks. Be patient, stick to your implementation intention, and change will come. Step 5: Believe You Can Change A final ingredient necessary for lasting habit change is to believe that change is possible. Researchers have found that the best way to foster that belief in yourself is to surround yourself with a supportive group of people. According to psychologist Todd Heatherton, “Change occurs among other people. It seems real when we can see it in other people’s eyes.” The ability of groups to encourage belief that change is possible is one of the reasons researchers believe Alcoholics Anonymous has been so successful with helping people beat their alcohol habit. Every week they go to a meeting where everyone believes that they can change. Your group doesn’t have to be as large as an AA meeting. In fact, just having one other person to turn to as you change your habit can foster the belief that you can change your bad habit. Find an accountability partner that you can meet with on a regular basis to report on your progress and get encouragement. Ideally your partner would be somebody that you can meet with face-to-face, but even virtual check-ins can work. How to Form a New Habit Using the Habit Loop Understanding how the Habit Loop works can also help you create new habits that you’ve been meaning to establish, but never had the wherewithal to follow through on. You just need to design a cue-routine-reward loop and work through it until a craving is created that drives the loop. It may take some tinkering and experimentation, but with enough patience and diligence, you’ll strike on something that works

how to Develop a Habit

how to Develop a Habit 1. One thing at a time. Many men I know never change because they always try to improve everything about themselves at the same time. I do this too-you start feeling unhappy about your life and so you make a list of all the things you need to change, believing that starting the next day you’re going to totally transform yourself! It makes you feel really pumped. But changing one habit is hard enough; changing five at the same time is usually impossible. You’re juggling a bunch of balls and eventually you get tired and they all fall to the floor. And there you are, back at square one. Dave Ramsey has a snowball debt plan in which he recommends paying off your smallest debt first. The idea behind the plan is twofold, that one, once the first debt is paid, you can take the money you were paying towards it and start using it to pay off the next debt, and two, that the satisfaction you’ll get from knocking out the first little one will keep you motivated to wipe out the rest. Cultivating new habits works in the same way. Start with the habit that will be easiest to gain; the confidence you garner from mastering it will carry over to your next hardest habit. Your confidence will keep snowballing; when you reach that hardest habit, you’ll finally have enough mojo built up to attain it. It can be hard to place something you really need to tackle on the back burner, but you have to realize that doing so is the only way to ensure that you’ll finally be able to pursue it with success. Patience, young Padawan. 2. Launch your habit with as strong an initiative as possible. Just as a rocket needs a huge burst of energy to escape earth’s gravitational pull, man needs to exert a massive amount of energy in the beginning to break or create a habit. When developing a new habit or breaking an old one, we need to do something that shakes up our current mentality and makes us receptive to change. So go full-tilt in the beginning. Kiss your soul-sucking friends goodbye, pack up the car and move, sign a year contract with a gym, throw away all the cigarettes (or in my case, the Diet Mountain Dew) in your house; whatever. Just make a big deal out of it. 3. Make a 60-day goal. That “21 days to develop a habit” theory you may have heard is probably bunk. The theory was created by a plastic surgeon turned self-proclaimed psychologist who wrote a book called Pyscho-Cybernetics. (The book is the 1960s version of the The Secret.) There’s no hard scientific evidence to back the claim. In fact, a recent study done by actual scientists suggests that it takes on average 66 days to form a habit. The number of days depends on the type of habit you’re trying to form. Easy things like drinking a glass of water in the morning took less time compared to hard things like daily exercise. So give yourself 60 days to form your new habit. 2 months is a long time to stick with something, but you’re a man-you’re up for the challenge! 4. Don’t break the chain! Once you resolve to form/break a habit, it’s imperative that you don’t make any exceptions for yourself. We don’t want to be like the drunken Rip van Winkle who excuses himself with every fresh dereliction by saying “It won’t count this time!” You might rationalize your “slip” to yourself and others, but deep down a record of it is etched into your brain, sending a message to your man spirit that you don’t really have the gumption to stick with your principles. Over time, these failures dull your motivation and sap your confidence. Skipping one day makes it easier to skip the next and we soon find ourselves back where we started and frustrated with ourselves. Every single day counts. Any excuse will fracture your integrity (and thus your self-worth) and put you on the path to ultimate failure. One way to motivate yourself through the excuses is to create a “Habit Chain.” As a young comic, Jerry Seinfeld made it a goal to write new jokes every day. To get himself into the writing habit, Seinfeld created a simple calendar system that pressured him to write. Seinfeld would hang up a big yearly calendar on the wall. Every day he sat down to write, he would make a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.” I’ve used this system myself a few times and can testify that it works. There’s just something about seeing that chain of X’s on a calendar that both motivates you to keep going and makes you scared to break it. A few sites on the web have popped up that have created online tracking systems like Seinfeld’s. Dontbreakthechain.com and Joe’s Goals both allow you to track your habit-forming progress online. Best of all, they’re free. Sign up with an account today and start tracking. And remember, “Never break the chain!” 5. Keep yourself accountable. Even more motivating than a calendar full of X’s is an accountability partner. It’s easy to fall off the wagon when no one will ever find out about our failures. An accountability partner is someone who can ask how you’re doing and demand honesty. And the thought of having to tell them about your slip up can motivate you to stay on track. Accountability partners can take many forms; you can ask a friend or mentor to check in on you daily or weekly, you can make a pledge on your blog (provided people read it!) and provide regular updates on your progress, you can make a bet with your friends, or you could start a group in the Community to work on the habit with other men. If you’re trying to quit the porn, check out this site to download software that will send a weekly report on all the websites you visit to whomever you choose. 6. Replace a bad habit with a good habit. In my experience, it seems the only way to kill a bad habit is to replace it with a good one. Nature abhors a vacuum; if you create a hole in your life and don’t actively fill it with something good, it’s going to follow the path of least resistance and fill with whatever is most handy-yup, your old bad habit. For example, for a few years now I’ve been trying to kick a Diet Mountain Dew habit that started while I was an undergrad and only intensified during law school. I want to stop the habit because a) aspartame sort of freaks me out and b) I could spend $5 on something better than a 12 pack of soda. Every time I would resolve to stop drinking the stuff, I’d do alright for a week or two, only to eventually end up at QuikTrip with my mouth over the Dew dispenser. Looking back at all my failures, I can see I went wrong by never replacing the Diet Mountain Dew habit with a better one. So, I end up returning to it, like a dog to its neon yellow vomit. This time around I’ve decided to drink a cup of yerba mate or a big glass of water when I get the urge to pop a can of Dew. Your habits, both bad and good, create deep neural pathways in your brain. Think of it like hacking through a forest-the first time is rough because you’re blazing a new trail, the second time is much easier, and then it gets easier and easier on each successive trip as you turn the pathway into a well-worn trail. Your brain wants to follow these pre-blazed paths because they’re already laid out. This is why habits are so hard to break. You can’t just erase the pathways. Instead, you must start hacking a path that runs parallel to and bypasses the old trail. It will be tough going at first, but eventually the good habit will become the clear, go-to path, while the old habit path becomes overgrown with vegetation from disuse. 7. Just do it, dammit! It doesn’t matter how inspired or motivated we are, if we don’t take advantage of every opportunity to act on those sentiments, our goal of forming a habit will end in failure. The key to success is consistent action. Personally, my biggest challenge is getting stuck in the “strong initiative” phase. Everybody loves the idea of turning over a new leaf; it’s easy to get excited about getting a fresh start and changing your life. Purging the house of junk, buying a new planner or self-help book is fun. It’s when two weeks have gone by and the excitement wears off that the men are separated from the boys. The realization sinks in that forming this habit is going to take unglamorous work every damn day, that like straight razor shaving, you have to sharpen and hone your razor over and over. It becomes a test of endurance. The key is not to give up what you ultimately want, for what you feel in the moment. Don’t let your brain tell you that you current discomfort will last indefinitely. It won’t. Eventually you’ll have carved out that new pathway, things will become easier, almost automatic, and you’ll see how good it feels to get literally in the groove. So, let’s quit the navel gazing, roll up our sleeves, and get to work on forging habits that will turn us into the men we want to be!

12 bad work habit u should quit 1) Never Feeling Good Enough 2) Seeing The World In Black And White 3: Doing Too Much, Pushing Too Hard Do you often find yourself frustrated with the lack of effort of others, feeling that they’re simply not pulling as much weight as you do? 4: Avoiding Conflict At Any Cost 5: Running Roughshod Over The Opposition 6: Rebel Looking for a Cause 7: Always Swinging for the Fence The title here refers to a person who is always striving for massive and immediate success - and nothing less than that will do at all. Instead of being satisfied with small successes, he or she always wants to accomplish something incredible, whether it’s realistic or not. 8: When Fear Is in the Driver’s Seat Every organization has an Eeyore, a person who fears all change great or small. It gnaws at them constantly, driving their actions in countless ways 9: Emotionally Tone-Deaf I have a professional relationship with a certain individual who may be the most emotionally tone-deaf person I have ever met. This person reads others so poorly that it is almost comical, often turning ordinary human interactions into inexplicable events. 10: When No Job Is Good Enough 11: Lacking a Sense of Boundaries 12: Losing the Path This was perhaps the most interesting of the twelve, because it basically speaks to the quarterlife and midlife crisis that most people feel at some point. I’ve been through this myself, wondering whether or not what I’m doing is the right thing and feeling a general lethargy about my professional life. I got uninterested in taking on projects, networking with others, and following up on leads. Basically, I felt like I had lost the path that had filled me with such excitement not all that long ago

“I believe that a life of integrity is the most fundamental source of personal worth. I do not agree with the popular success literature that says that self-esteem is primarily a matter of mind set, of attitude—that you can psych yourself into peace of mind. Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with true principles and values and in no other way.“ - Stephen Covey

Here are five limiting beliefs about life that are worth losing, pronto: 1. Life is fair Living life trying to secure justice never pays off. Well, unless you’re an attorney, then maybe. There will be lots of times when life is unfair. It sucks but “it is what it is.” The sooner you accept that and stop wasting your energy wishing it wasn’t, the more of your life you’ll actually participate in. There are plenty of things in life that are fair too. Your new assignment is to seek them out. 2. Suffering is bad Suffering just feels bad while it’s happening. But, suffering also has a silver lining that never gets the credit it deserves. Suffering helps us grow and get to the next place in life. Let’s face it, if not for suffering, we’d never stop our busy lives to expand in ways that make our lives better. Suffering is almost always a stepping stone to somewhere better. Failed relationships get us to the successful ones; illness helps us examine who we are and what matters; grief reminds us we are human and we can survive after inevitable loss; and the list goes on and on. 3. You are in control Although you are responsible for your own life and your decisions, there is much more that goes into the synchronicity of life for which you’re obsessively planning and preparing. “Bad” things will happen; plans will get changed at the last minute. Life will play out differently than you want it to and the more you expect that, the better off you’ll be. Being in control is an illusion that drains your energy, puts you on edge and makes you miss all the good stuff. 4. People are obligated to love you a specific way People love you in the way they know how. You can always focus on why they’re not supportive enough or compassionate enough or why they always say the wrong thing at the wrong time. But, the fact is, you don’t get to make that call. We all have the ability to love, but our capacity to do so is unique. So stop demanding people love you how you think they should and start focusing on the fact that they do love you. 5. Keeping the peace actually keeps the peace Keeping quiet or trying not to hurt someone at the expense of you own happiness is outdated. Not only does holding back put a serious stress on our physical bodies, we aren’t doing a service to those we are trying to save either.

The fear of screwing up rarely goes away forever, but you have to find a way to separate it from your ability to make progress. You create the right product or service. You find a market of people, even a small one, that wants to pay for it. I always tell people who are beginning a creative career to go back and look at the early work of people they admire. If you come across a successful blogger, designer, or artist, especially one who's been able to generate a full-time income from their creative work, it's easy to be intimidated. That's why you should go back to the beginning--see where they started, and see how it all began. When you do that, you'll be able to see the progress along the way, most likely including a few mistakes. In my case, the compass points are independence and gratitude. Much of AONC has been built on an anti-authority construct, the idea of being "self-employed for life" and answering to no one. I still believe in this value. There are far too many people who feel trapped in dumb jobs. They need to escape! But I've also tried to branch beyond "anti-authority" to being for something. I want to contribute something. I want my life and work to matter. Forward, Onward The other part of obtaining creative freedom is sheer perseverance. Just kept going! Seth Godin once talked about his failures in the context of eventual success: "If I fail more often than you, I win." That's how I feel. Failure sucks but failing to try is far worse. The life of creative freedom is worth fighting for.

REAL REWARD

What is the Real Reward? For the weightlifter, the reward is not losing weight or gaining muscle. The reward is the chance to wrap your hands around the iron and to sweat and train. The reward is every moment that you choose to live a physical life. For the author, the reward is not having a best-selling book. The reward is the act of writing. The reward is every moment that you battle to string ...words together and craft a story that takes on a life of it’s own. For the athlete, the reward is not winning a championship. The reward is the opportunity to compete and to fight for something you care about. The reward is every moment that you step between the lines and test your physical abilities. For the entrepreneur, the reward is not owning a million-dollar business. The reward is building something of value where nothing existed previously. The reward is every moment that you choose to bet on yourself rather playing it safe. For the artist, the reward is not showing your work in a top gallery or hearing the praise of critics. The reward is the act of creating something new. The reward is every moment that you struggle to overcome procrastination and resistance, and fight to express your vision. You can’t guarantee the results, so don’t tie your happiness up in them. To struggle for something meaningful, that is success — regardless of the result. The chance to compete for something you care about. The opportunity to work hard. The time and space to make something of value. Those acts and those moments are the real prize, not the result that comes afterward. The fight is the reward.

we can win the world: What is the Real Reward?

we can win the world: What is the Real Reward?: What is the Real Reward? For the weightlifter, the reward is not losing weight or gaining muscle. The reward is the chance to wrap your h...

we can win the world: self confidence is very important. If you don't th...

we can win the world: self confidence is very important. If you don't th...: self confidence is very important. If you don't think you can win, you will take cowardly decisions in crucial moments, out of sheer res...

we can win the world: self confidence is very important. If you don't th...

we can win the world: self confidence is very important. If you don't th...: self confidence is very important. If you don't think you can win, you will take cowardly decisions in crucial moments, out of sheer res...

OBAMA'S ROUTINE

Although his presidency is barely a week old, some of Mr. Obama’s work habits are already becoming clear. He shows up at the Oval Office shortly before 9 in the morning, roughly two hours later than his early-to-bed, early-to-rise predecessor. Mr. Obama likes to have his workout — weights and cardio — first thing in the morning, at 6:45. (Mr. Bush slipped away to exercise midday.) He reads several papers, eats breakfast with his family and helps pack his daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, off to school before making the 30-second commute downstairs — a definite perk for a man trying to balance work and family life. He eats dinner with his family, then often returns to work; aides have seen him in the Oval Office as late as 10 p.m., reading briefing papers for the next day. “Even as he is sober about these challenges, I have never seen him happier,” Mr. Axelrod said. “The chance to be under the same roof with his kids, essentially to live over the store, to be able to see them whenever he wants, to wake up with them, have breakfast and dinner with them — that has made him a very happy man.”

MORNING AND EVENING RUOTINE

Morning Routine 5:30 AM: Arise Put on gym clothes, contacts, and stumble to kitchen Drink a glass of ice cold water and protein shake 5:40 AM: Out the door for workout (Monday/Wednesday/Friday: Weights; Tuesday/Thursday: Interval Cardio; Saturday/Sunday: Walk) 6:40 AM: Return home and shower, brush teeth, etc. 6:55 AM: 20 minutes of meditation, prayer, and scripture study 7:15-ish AM: Review my goals and day’s schedule Evening Routine My goal is to have lights out at 11PM. With that as my deadline, here’s what I like to get done before then: 9:30 PM: Review day’s work, review goals (long term and short term), plan tomorrow’s schedule 10:00 PM: Get ready for bed; take vitamins. 10:15 PM: Write in journal 10:30 PM: Read a book 11:00 PM: Lights out.

if we wish to be our best and make the most of our lives. Quadrant 1: Urgent and Important Tasks Quadrant 1 tasks are both urgent and important. They’re tasks that require our immediate attention and also work towards fulfilling our long-term goals and missions in life. Quadrant 1 tasks typically consist of crises, problems, or deadlines. Here are a few specific examples of Urgent and Important tasks: ■Certain emails (could be a job offer, an email for a new business opportunity that requires immediate action, etc.) ■Term paper deadline ■Tax deadline ■Wife in emergency room ■Car engine goes out ■Household chores ■You have a heart attack and end up in the hospital ■You get a call from your kid’s principal saying you need to come in for a meeting about his behavior With a bit of planning and organization, many Q1 tasks can be made more efficient or even eliminated outright. For example, instead of waiting until the last minute to work on a term paper (thus turning it into an urgent task), you could schedule your time so that you’re done with your paper a week in advance. Or instead of waiting for something in your house to fall apart and need fixing, you can follow a schedule of regular maintenance. While we’ll never be able to completely eliminate urgent and important tasks, we can significantly reduce them with a bit of proactivity and by spending more time in Quadrant 2. Which of course brings us to… Quadrant 2: Not Urgent but Important Tasks Quadrant 2 tasks are the activities that don’t have a pressing deadline, but nonetheless help you achieve your important personal, school, and work goals as well as help you fulfill your overall mission as a man. Q2 tasks are typically centered around strengthening relationships, planning for the future, and improving yourself. Here are some specific examples of Not Urgent but Important Tasks: ■Weekly planning ■Long-term planning ■Exercising ■Family time ■Reading life-enriching books ■Journaling ■Taking a class to improve a skill ■Spending time with a rewarding hobby ■Studying ■Meditating ■Service ■Car and home maintenance ■Date night with wife ■Creating a budget and savings plan According to Covey, we should seek to spend most of our time on Q2 activities, as they’re the ones that provide us lasting happiness, fulfillment, and success. Unfortunately, there are a couple key challenges that keep us from investing enough time and energy into Q2 tasks: ■You don’t know what’s truly important to you. If you don’t have any idea what values and goals matter most to you, you obviously won’t know what things you should be spending your time on to reach those aims! Instead, you’ll latch on to whatever stimuli and to-dos are most urgent. If you feel like you’re lacking a life’s mission or aren’t sure what your core values are, I highly recommend reading our articles on developing a life plan as well as defining your core values. ■Present bias. As just discussed, we all have an inclination to focus on whatever is most pressing at the moment. Doing so is our default mode. It’s hard to get motivated to do something when there isn’t a deadline looming over our head. Departing from this fallback position takes willpower and self-discipline – qualities that don’t come naturally and must be actively cultivated and expressed. Because Q2 activities aren’t pressing for our attention, we typically keep them forever on the backburner of our lives and tell ourselves, “I’ll get to those things ‘someday’ after I’ve taken care of this urgent stuff.” We even put off figuring out what’s most important in life, which of course only perpetuates a cycle where all we ever take care of are the most urgent to-dos on our list. But “someday” will never come; if you’re waiting to do the important stuff until your schedule clears up a little, trust me when I say that it won’t. You’ll always feel about as busy as you are now, and if anything, life just gets busier as you get older (at least until you retire). To overcome our inherent present-bias that prevents us from focusing on Quadrant 2 activities, we must live our lives intentionally and proactively. You can’t run your life in default mode. You have to consciously decide, “I’m going to make time for these things come hell or high water.” Quadrant 3: Urgent and Not Important Tasks Quadrant 3 tasks are activities that require our attention now (urgent), but don’t help us achieve our goals or fulfill our mission (not important). Most Q3 tasks are interruptions from other people and often involve helping them meet their own goals and fulfill their own priorities. Here are some specific examples of Quadrant 3 activities: ■Phone calls ■Text messages ■Most emails (some emails could be urgent and important) ■Co-worker who comes by your desk during your prime working time to ask a favor ■Request from a former employee to write a letter of recommendation on his behalf (it’s probably important to him, but let’s face it, it’s probably not that important to you) ■Mom drops in unannounced and wants your help with a chore According to Covey, many people spend most of their time on Q3 tasks, all the while thinking they’re working in Q1. Because Q3 tasks do help others out, they definitely feel important. Plus they’re also usually tangible tasks, the completion of which gives you that sense of satisfaction that comes from checking something off your list. But while Q3 tasks may be important to others, they’re not important to you. They’re not necessarily bad, but they need to be balanced with your Q2 activities. Otherwise, you’ll end up feeling like you’re getting a lot done from day-to-day, while eventually realizing that you’re not actually making any progress in your own long-term goals. That’s a recipe for personal frustration and resentment towards other people. Men who spend most of their time working on Urgent but Not Important Tasks often suffer from “Nice Guy Syndrome,” and want to constantly please others at the expense of their own happiness. If that’s you, the solution is simple: Become more assertive and start to firmly (but politely) say no to most requests. Quadrant 4: Not Urgent and Not Important Tasks Quadrant 4 activities aren’t urgent and aren’t important. They’re what I like to call “dicking around” activities. Q4 activities aren’t pressing nor do they help you achieve long-term goals or fulfill your mission as a man. They’re primarily distractions. Specific examples of Not Urgent and Not Important Tasks include: ■Watching TV ■Mindlessly surfing the web ■Playing video games ■Scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram ■Gambling ■Shopping sprees I think if most of us did a time audit on ourselves, we’d find that we spend an inordinate amount of time on Q4 activities. I’m sure most of us have those “I’m wasting my life” moments after we’ve spent hours surfing the web and realize we could have used that time to pursue our more ennobling life goals. No? That’s just me? Dang. As a pragmatist, I don’t think you need to eliminate Q4 activities altogether from your life. After a particularly hectic and busy day, randomly browsing the internet or watching a favorite TV show for a half hour is exactly what my brain needs to decompress. Instead of aiming to completely rid yourself of Not Urgent and Not Important tasks, try to only spend a very limited amount of time on them. 5% or less of your waking hours is a good goal. Be Like Ike; Spend More Time on Important Tasks

Narrow Your Focus Use lists, outlines, and categories. When we categorize, use lists, or create outlines, our attention narrows in order to pinpoint any missing information. If you’re working on a task in which getting details right is vital, write out all the steps or even use a checklist. Focus on a goal. The fact that having a clear goal can narrow one’s focus is perfectly displayed in the Invisible Gorilla Experiment. When the experiment’s participants were told to watch a video and given a goal to count how many times a basketball was passed around, they became so narrowly focused on the ball that they failed to see a man dressed in a gorilla suit stroll casually among the players and dance in the middle of the court. While a goal is an effective attention narrower, there’s a risk of suffering tunnel vision and missing out on more rewarding opportunities. Always employ your practical wisdom. Take it slow. When you think, read, or observe your surroundings slowly, your attention narrows. You’ll spend more time homing in on and examining the objects in your environment that catch your involuntary attention and use your voluntary attention to ponder and analyze single words and sentences within a large piece of literature. Broaden Your Focus Stay optimistic. Research has shown that positive emotions give us a more open attention. When we’re optimistic, we’re relaxed and thus more likely to see new connections and opportunities. This is one reason why it’s so important that leaders remain upbeat; a sense of realistic optimism is essential in crafting and maintaining a strategic big-picture vision. Focus on others. Another way to broaden your attention is to shift your focus from yourself and onto others. Studies show that being “other directed” or thinking in terms of “we” and not “me” opens up attention. The best way to make that shift is to simply help another person with a problem. You can also try doing some “compassionate meditation.” Scan. When we quickly scan our environment (or even a book), our attention widens in order to take in as much information as possible, which in turn allows us to get a quick and dirty overview of the situation or text. Gather contrary evidence. Once we decide that someone has an inherent flaw and we label them with it – they’re stupid, crazy, useless, selfish, immature, bitchy, evil, lazy, etc. – a narrow focus tends to set in. You experience the Velcro/Teflon effect: you notice everything the person does that confirms your conclusion, but overlook any conflicting evidence. If you find yourself only being able to see a loved one through the lens of a negative label, it can help to actively look for things they do that run contrary to it, and even write those things down. While lists can narrow your focus in some cases, they can also be used to produce a broader, more balanced picture in others. Think for example of keeping a gratitude journal; if you find yourself narrowly attuned to what’s wrong with your life, making a list of the good things can greatly broaden your perspective

How to Manage Your Voluntary and Involuntary Attention

How to Manage Your Voluntary and Involuntary Attention Our involuntary attention is unconsciously activated by stimuli in our environment – it comes online when we hear a dog bark or see an email land in our inbox. Voluntary attention is consciously controlled – we use it when we deliberately try to ignore these competing stimuli in order to concentrate on a single task. Distractions are like guerilla warriors that attack your voluntary attention units on the way to the battlefront, weakening the troops and diverting resources before they can be put to work where they’re really needed. The trick then, is learning to protect your voluntary attention so it’s at full strength and ready to fight, as well as giving these troops ample rest once they’ve seen combat, so they can be returned to the frontlines ready for action. Know your attention’s “circadian rhythms.” Attention — like its closely related brother, willpower — ebbs and flows throughout the day in ways that are unique to each individual. I tend to have a more focused, sustained attention level at the beginning of the day. That’s why I try to do my narrow-focused attention work (like writing) first thing in the morning. As the day progresses, my ability for narrow-focused attention wanes so I shift my attention to tasks that require a more open focus like research, podcasting, brainstorming ideas, or answering email. Everyone’s attentional circadian rhythm is different. Find yours and plan your day around it. Take attention breaks. Your voluntary attention is much like a muscle. It needs breaks every now and then after a sustained focus session. How often should you take an attention break? Well, that’s hard to say. Several lifehack and productivity blogs say that it’s best to work in 45-minute focused sessions and then take a 15-minute break, but I wasn’t able to find any research that backs up those specific numbers. Experiment and see what works for you. Get out into nature for an attention reset. Sometimes just taking a break to goof off on the internet or chat by the water cooler isn’t enough to completely refresh our attention. Instead, we need to get in touch with our inner wild man by getting out into nature. In a 2008 study, participants were divided into two groups and both performed a 35-minute task that fatigued their focus. The two groups then went for a 50-minute walk — one group in a park, another in a busy city. When they returned, the participants had the strength of their voluntary attention tested. The group who took a walk in the park performed much better than the group who took a walk in an urban environment. The city-walkers’ involuntary attention was bombarded by stimuli (honking cars, billboards, people talking), and this in turn taxed their voluntary attention, which had to decide which of the stimuli to pay attention to and which to ignore. The involuntary attention of those who took a stroll in the woods, on the other hand, encountered only very mild stimulation (“Oh look, a squirrel.”), and this gave their voluntary attention a real rest, so that it was ready for another round of cognitive challenges back at the lab. Mildly activating your involuntary attention with soothing stimuli while giving your voluntary attention a breather allows us to enter a state of “soft fascination” that truly feels great. I find it interesting that giving your voluntary attention a little something to feed on works better for refreshing your mind than, say, just sitting in a completely empty and quiet room. I think you can compare it to the idea of taking an “active rest” day after a hard workout that’s left you sore; lying on the couch all day to recover leaves you tight, while doing a little light activity like walking or swimming actually loosens you up. Remove distractions. Unlike the mild stimulation of nature, noises in our everyday life – television, smartphone pings, crying babies – make a more “violent” grab at our involuntary attention; if you’re passing a flashing billboard along the road, you’re much more likely to instinctively turn to look at it than you are a stately oak. Working to ignore these plays for your involuntary attention in order to focus on the task at hand fatigues your voluntary attention, leaving you feeling scatter-brained, frazzled, and distracted. Instead of forcing your voluntary attention to battle an onslaught of distracting invaders, beat them back with minimal effort by building a fort around your involuntary attention. Remove distractions from your environment: work in a quiet setting, don’t leave the TV on in the background, and turn off your smartphone notifications. If the limitless possibilities of the internet are ever attempting to scale your attention’s walls, dump pots of hot oil on them by implementing the distraction-destroying tips in this post

distratction

•Make sure your principles and goals are crystal-clear. When a man lacks guiding principles, his attention mindlessly pivots to whatever the world tells him is important, and typically what the world tells him is important is corrosive to a truly flourishing life. Knowing your core values and having a blueprint for your goals creates focusing lenses that help direct your attention to what matters most, while cropping out the superfluous and distracting. •Use the Eisenhower Decision Matrix to get your priorities in line. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and unfortunately, seemingly urgent tasks make the most noisy grabs for our attention, even though they may not actually be important. Assigning your tasks to the different quadrants of the Eisenhower Decision Matrix can help you concentrate on what really needs to get done, instead of using up your attention in putting out little fires. •Plan out your day and week. While we typically think of planning as time management, at its core, planning is attention management. Every time you sit down to plan out your day you’re essentially deciding what you’re going to pay attention to that day. Without planning, you end up spending your attention on whatever unforeseen distractions pop up and make a play for it. •Conduct an audit to see how you currently spend your time. Even if you say you know what’s important to you, do you really put your “money” where your mouth is? Paying attention takes time — figure out how you spend the latter, and you’ll know how you’re directing the former. •Generously embed moral reminders into your life. Moral reminders are things like posters or personal manifestos that contain or symbolize your values and goals. Whenever you see these prompts, your drifting attention will be brought to heel.

12 Strategies for living

12 Strategies for living. 36.20 1. Increase your clarity to lifetime ideals that are larger than yourself. 38.00 2. Increase your ability to establish and achieve goals and then to acknowledge and celebrate your progress. 41.40 range the measurement of achievement The world belongs to the conscious goal setter. Write down your five achievements for the day. 3. create a unique ability organization. 44.25 4. ??? The man who was looking for the perfect woman, then he found her, but unfortunately she was looking for the perfect man. 5. 50.10 develop a central value system compartmentalization - people can be different in different situations. not good have different value systems for different situations. 6. increase your ability to create value. 54.50 provides you with a sense of relationship 7. Increase your personal and your organizational referability. 58.05 -referability - good people are saying good things about you. Four habits for referability: a. showing up on time b. doing what you say you're going to do. c. finishing what you start. d. saying please and thank you. Strategy: 8. Increase your ability to transform your obstacles into creative solutions. 1.01.30 an obstacle - your brains way of telling you what you need to do in order to grow. 9. Increase your ability to differentiate yourself personally and organizationally. 1.06.00 10. productivity. 1.09.35 -getting more done with less time 11. be autonomous of bureaucratic control. 1.12.05 -self-law, live by your own laws an unconscious measuring stick called perfection risk aversion 12. take advantage of the entrepreneurial global world. 1.16.20

Who is waiting at the finish line, and who will be cheering for you at the final banquet, even when you don't win? Especially when you don't win... I'm not talking about the sometime fan who rewards the winner, or the logo-wearing baseball fan who shows up when the team is in contention... I'm wondering about the person that is in it for your effort and your passion and your tears. Almost nothing is more important to the artist who dares to leap

The four horsemen of mediocrity Deniability--"They decided, created, commanded or blocked. Not my fault." Helplessness--"My boss won't let me." Contempt--"They don't pay me enough to put up with the likes of these customers." Fear--"It's good enough, it's not worth the risk, people will talk, this might not work..." The industrial age brought compliance and compliance brought fear and fear brought us mediocrity. The good news about fear is that once you see it, feel it and dance with it, you have a huge opportunity, the chance to make it better

Defining Heart-Felt, Personal Success For YOU! 2 Claim Your Passions! 3 Follow Your Fascinations 4 Identifiy What Kind Of Lifestyle You Want 5 Do Work You Love 6 How Much Money Do You Really Need/Want? 7 Subract The Serenity Stealers In Your Life 8 Honor Your Creative Inspirations 9 Keep Your Promises To Yourself 10 Celebrate Your Personal Positive Outcomes Along The Way

Fall in love with the process, not the result – If your job is drudgery now, then there’s no reason to suspect it won’t still be drudgery when you make partner or when you’re managing your own division. We live in a results-based society, and unfortunately this gets most of us (70% by some surveys) onto the wrong pursuits and career paths. What’s motivating you? – Take a long, hard look at what’s really driving you. Is it some compensation for an unmet need? Or is it a genuine expression of enthusiasm and joy? The fact that I fantasized about being on stage in front of thousands of screaming fans and didn’t fantasize about writing or playing new songs is telling. Does this mean you shouldn’t pursue your dreams? Is this some kind of nihilistic screed against how the world is shit and we should all waste away and nothing matters anyway?

I will use is someone who wishes he could be a professional musician, but you can apply these principles to just about anything. 1. Self-Skepticism – Since we all believe that we’re always right, and since we know that we’re all sometimes wrong, let’s go ahead and err on the side of being wrong and question everything we believe. Go ahead and assume that everything you know and think is likely wrong or incomplete. This will require a great deal of humility and uncertainty, which is not easy for many to stomach, but it’s necessary. A man who believes he knows everything is a man who learns nothing. What’s more important: being right, or changing your life? Our friend who wants to become a professional musician has the following beliefs: that he does not have enough time to practice to play in a band regularly; that he needs to buy some high-quality gear if he’s ever going to attract good people to play with; that he hasn’t written a song in nearly a decade and fears he’s forgotten how; that he’s not a talented singer and can’t be very good at it. Once he stops and considers (or perhaps assumes) that all of these beliefs are incorrect — that he does have enough time to practice and play in a band, that he’s just not making the time; that he doesn’t need high quality gear right now, he can always buy it later; that if he could do it before he can do it again; that anyone can sing, it simply takes practice — it now not only removes his excuses for failure, but presents him routes to accomplish his goal. 2. Collect Evidence to the Contrary – The second step is to counter-act our subjective validation bias, and instead of recognizing what supports our belief, to consciously look for what goes against our limiting belief. This is particularly easy if you have beliefs about large populations of people — i.e., women never date a guy shorter than them — if you start looking, you’ll find plenty of couples where the guy is shorter. Sure, it’s a minority, but there are millions of men in the world dating women taller than them (I know probably half a dozen myself). Start looking for them. Chances are they’re out there, you were just choosing not to notice them before. For our musician friend, it’s time for him to start paying attention to evidence that contradicts his beliefs. Perhaps meeting and recognizing gigging musicians who have a day job or who don’t have great equipment, or realizing that a lot of history’s great songwriters didn’t begin composing until their mid-20′s or even early-30′s. 3. Plan on Being the Exception – If you’ve done step two well enough, it will be undeniable to you that there are at least exceptions to your limiting belief. It may not be normal, but women will date a shorter guy. It may not be typical but white women will date minority men. It may not be expected, but a guy with no high school education can get a job at a financial firm. The next step is to plan on being the exception. Ask yourself what this would take? In the cases of height and race with women in the above situation, it probably simply means approaching more women than the next guy and not letting yourself get discouraged. That’s not too hard. For our musician friend, it would be challenging himself to join a gigging band without the extra time and gear he believes he needs first. 4. Take Full Responsibility for Failures – The most important step to not falling back into your past belief patterns is to take full responsibility for your results. If women who are taller than you or of a different race reject you, don’t blame it on your height or your race, blame it on things you have control of: your style, your ability to connect with them, your nervousness when meeting them. If our musician friend auditions for a few bands and it doesn’t work out, he should not blame his lack of equipment or his lack of talent, but focus on what he can do better — learn the songs better beforehand, try to relate to the band-members better, display his passion and excitement more, and yes, practice more.

limiting beliefs

limiting beliefs are beliefs that something we wish to accomplish is not possible for some reason, and therefore they prevent us from taking action or responsibility towards that goal. The elephants believing they were stuck to the ropes was their limiting belief. An example is someone believing he can’t get a job in finance without an Ivy League degree, so he doesn’t even bother applying. Another is the belief that women are only attracted to men of their own race, so a guy doesn’t put in the effort required to find a girl who does like him. But sometimes limiting beliefs don’t even need to have a reason for them. For instance, someone may believe that he’s simply not talented enough to become a professional musician. Why? Just because. Or someone may believe that he’s unattractive and no woman would ever date him. Why? Just because. Limiting beliefs are born from rationalizations of previous painful experiences. They’re an adaptive measure by our mind — earlier experiences cause us pain, so we construct beliefs in which to avoid those experiences in the future. Limiting beliefs are also designed to remove responsibility from ourselves. That way we’ll never hurt ourselves again by thinking we can change our situation. It’s not that the elephants believe they’re too weak, it’s that the rope is too strong and therefore they believe there’s nothing they can do about it. We all get hurt when we’re younger. We all experience some degree of trauma. And to explain away the pain, we construct rationalizations to protect ourselves. If these rationalizations are reinforced enough, they become permanent beliefs.

12 Stupid Things People Care Too Much About. Now shut up and go share it on Facebook or something. ♦◊♦ 1. Whose Fault it is Imagine this. You’re babysitting two kids. Hell, maybe it’s your own kids. And they’re running around shoving each other and doing usual obnoxious kid things. Then suddenly you hear a crash. You run into the room, and the super sacred $5 billion dollar vase that Grandma made with her bare hands during the holocaust was knocked off a table and broke into a thousand pieces. What happens? The two kids immediately point to each other and blame the other. They present their cases. They start whining and cutting each other off. Now, let’s say one of them seems to have a more likely story. Let’s say one of them is a little violent shithead and you have a hunch that it’s probably his fault anyway. What do you do? Nothing. You either punish them both, or do nothing. None of this changes the fact that both of them were running around and being reckless around nice, precious objects. None of this changes the fact that theoretically, both were behaving negligently enough to cause destruction. It also doesn’t change the fact that the vase is broken and is never coming back. One could even argue that it’s your fault for putting such a valuable item in a vulnerable place around kids (idiot.) We spend a lot of our time and effort looking for whose fault something is, even when it doesn’t matter. You order a cod at a nice restaurant that is undercooked and sucks. You want to blame the chef so you call the manager over and go on a tirade. But who knows, maybe the cod was poorly prepared by the sous chef, or the manager himself didn’t store the cod correctly the night before. Or maybe they tried buying from a shitty supplier. Or maybe there’s a poor system of communication in the restaurant and so misunderstandings are prevalent and this affects how the food is prepared. But no, the chef sucks, fuck him. Fire him. As humans we all enjoy a scapegoat; we need a scapegoat. You see this most often with government. An entire bureaucratic system may be fucked up, causing continuous waste and inefficiency. So what happens? A few people get blamed and fired and the system continues. The public is satisfied. Someone is blamed and punished, so everything must be right again? Wrong. There are times when it’s important to know whose fault it is. Like when engaging in chemical warfare. Or finding out who pissed on the toilet seat. But in most of the cases of our lives, it’s an inconsequential distraction. And it’s based largely on ego gratification and little on actual life improvement. What’s done is done. Accept it and move on. 2. Celebrity and Sports Gossip These people directly affect your life in absolutely no way whatsoever. Your obsession and investment in them is worse than harmless entertainment, it is a way to live vicariously through the idealizations of who you wish you could be — if only you weren’t so afraid to get off the couch and actually do something. Yeah, there, I said it. Or as Lil’ Wayne once said, when asked if he was concerned that people may look to him on how to live: “If you need a rapper to tell you how to live your life, then maybe you ain’t got no life.” 3. Sexual Jealousy A lot of people get jealous and possessive in relationships. They don’t like their partner talking with someone else, or hanging out with members of the opposite sex without them. Some people get even crazier. They get jealous about things that happened before they met their partner. They get jealous about things that might happen in the future. Hell, they get jealous about things that didn’t happen but could have happened. Sexual jealousy is a waste of energy and toxic for your relationship. It’s really simple: either you trust your partner or you don’t. If you trust your partner, then shut your mouth. If you don’t trust your partner, do everyone a favor and dump them. “Well, what if I trust them but they lie to me anyway?” Then trust that one day you will find out. Dishonest people cannot hide their dishonesty forever. Eventually it will surface and be obvious. And on that day, dump them. The worst part of sexual jealousy is that it drives your partner to commit the exact actions in which you’re trying to prevent them from doing in the first place. Imagine you’re dating somebody and this person is insanely jealous. Everything you do they accuse you of lying to them or sneaking around behind their back. Every person of the opposite sex you speak to they accuse you of flirting or freak out that you’re sleeping with 10 other people. What’s stopping you from actually cheating then? I mean, you’re going to get yelled at whether you’re honest or not. Apparently they believe you’re a dishonest person anyway, so you may as well get the benefits from being dishonest, right? What’s stopping you from cheating? Not much. 4. Being Right There’s an old saying, “The man who knows everything learns nothing.” Let go of the need to always be right. This one is really simple. How do you learn and improve and become a better person? That’s right, by being wrong about stuff. So try to be wrong about stuff a little more often. Besides, nothing’s more annoying than somebody who will argue to the death over some inane detail that doesn’t matter anyway. I like to punch those people. (OK, I don’t really, but it sounded cool to write that. Don’t forget to share this article onFacebook and tell all your friends how this one dude punches people who annoy him and how awesome that is.) 5. National Politics Pop quiz: name your town’s mayor and one representative to the state legislature. No? Then please shut up about Bush and/or Obama. Our lives are more directly affected by the results of local politics, yet nobody cares except old people, religious nuts and conspiracy theorists. Instead, we all want to focus on the big stage. In the US, there’s particular weight and importance placed on the US President, someone who ultimately wields less power than Congress, the Federal Reserve, or in some cases, the Supreme Court. But the president is an easily consumable personality. He’s easy to argue about and to blame for everything (see #1), when really the fucked up roads by your house, the poor medical funding, the zoning laws that are screwing up your neighborhood, the education crisis and the disaster relief are all city and state issues that you’re all but ignoring. flip-flopping-obama-from-trekbbs-thanks-obama-meme-lol-wtf National politics matter, but they are given a disproportionate amount of attention and importance. National politics drive profits for the national media markets, therefore they get the air play. Since they get the air play, everyone loses their shit over them. 6. Trying to Impress Other People If you’ve read this site at all in the last two years, you know how far this doesn’t get you. Take a moment and think back to the three most embarrassing moments in recent memory. Let me guess, at least two of them happened while trying to impress someone. Funny how that works. Trying to impress other people is a natural human trait. We all want to put our best foot forward. The reason trying to impress people rarely works out very well is because human beings are wired to not simply look at surface-level behaviors when judging another person’s character, but to also look at their intentions and motivations for each behavior. So you can do a cool action, but if you’re doing it because you’re insecure and want people to like you, people will see through it and find you annoying. See: Bono from U2. This is why one-uppers — people who take what you say and then tell you how they’ve done something bigger or better than that — are so annoying. They’re trying to impress us, to dominate us, to show superiority over us. And the fact that they’re trying to be superior proves to us that they’re not. 8. Being Offended There are some people in this world who seem to believe that they have the right to never be offended, ever. This drives me crazy. Part of freedom of expression is that some people, some times, are going to annoy you or offend you. That’s part of life. And unless you’re inciting people to commit acts of violence, then you really can’t tell them not to. Being offended is a choice. It’s the difference between getting upset about an insult and simply laughing it off. It’s the difference between trying to silence somebody else and simply acknowledging that they have different values than you do, even if those values are really fucked up. I get comments on this blog all the time that I find offensive. I almost never delete them. Recently, I had a guy who made a sexist comment about women (the comment was to an article about dating, what a coincidence.) Instead of getting up in arms about it, I simply informed him that I thought he was an idiot. I probably offended him back. And now we’re not friends. It’s amazing how a free society works. 9. The Fact that I skipped Number 7 on this list Get over it. 10. Buying a Bunch of “Nice” Stuff I’ll spare you the Fight Club spiel. I’ve already written at length about how owning more possessions can limit your identity and happiness, and how wealth is determined by the quality of your experiences and not your assets. But let’s look at this from a more practical point of view. What’s the point of buying a bunch of nice crap? 1) To impress other people. 2) To feel better about yourself. We’ve already covered how well impressing people goes over. (Spoiler Alert: Not well.) Not to mention, what you’re also concurrently inspiring jealousy from other people, which just turns nice people into assholes. And then you might get offended! So that’s no good. But let’s look at feeling better about yourself. There’s mounds of psychological research showing that materialism leads to greater rates of depression and less happiness in people. There’s a reason the US has some of the highest rates of depression and anxiety disorders in the developed world. That dependence on external validation to feel good about one’s self causes low self esteem and makes you miserable. So let’s just leave it at that. Sure, buying luxury items can be cool and enjoyable. If you’ve got the money to throw around, there’s nothing wrong with it. But basing your identity and self-worth on the quality of your possessions and how those possessions stack up to others is a losing battle. Even if you win and have the biggest toys, you lose. 11. Waiting in line for 36 hours to buy some new product the day it’s released Seriously, don’t you have something better to do? And if not, isn’t that a problem? Go home, the iPhone 5 will still be there tomorrow. 12. Hiding Your Flaws People fall in love with each other’s rough edges. Paradoxically, it’s our flaws and vulnerabilities that make us unique and endearing towards others. The more we’re willing to reveal where we come up short, the more intimacy and connection we’ll generate in our personal lives, and the happier and healthier we’ll be in the long run. I’ve written at length on vulnerability, and a few years ago I based an entire book on the idea. But it really is amazing how our culture encourages more and more to live up to some impossible ideal, some empty vessel of perfection. Of all people Mike Tyson recently said, “Just because you’re famous doesn’t mean you’re successful.” You could replace “famous” in that sentence with “rich,” “beautiful,” “popular,” “intelligent” or a myriad of other adjectives. Where does real success come from? It comes from being satisfied — not because you’ve reached some pinnacle or final destination of success — but satisfied with that constant process of improvement. It’s recognizing that life is riddled with faults and mistakes and appreciating them as much as the successes. Because when you appreciate your faults, they lose their power over you. Instead of your weakness they become your strength. And ironically, they’ll draw other people into you more than ever before

ere are some lessons I hope you can take with you, and remember. 1. The stuff that used to work, doesn’t work for you anymore. Gone are the days when you used to be able to use your looks, status, cool car, money, job title or charm to get by. You are now being called to find new strengths, new avenues to be your best. You’re being asked to go deeper, to evolve; to find out what you’ve got going for you that has nothing to do with anything external. This will become apparent in your relationships and maybe your careers as well. The old “standby” doesn’t hold water for you now. It’s like the things that you could depend on to get you what you wanted, they just don’t work anymore. So you’re left feeling like, “WTH? Now how do I handle this?” You WILL figure it out. It WILL be ok. I promise. Have I ever lied to you? No. It’s just gonna take a little time and a little leaning into those feelings you’d rather avoid. You’ll find your strengths again, and they may be new and different strengths. You just need to work through this to get to the other side. 2. It’s not easy to evolve. I get it. It’s tough. Evolving means you have a great chance to figure out why you suddenly feel so much, and so often. It’s like the things that used to roll off your back can now leave you wondering, drained, or sad. You don’t have the thick skin you used to have and it’s tough to deal. I know that there will be times when you feel wounded. That you feel like a chick who’s over emotional and can’t just turn on the game and zone out. You find your thoughts spiraling negatively and can’t stop them. It’s a process, it’s something your sisters have been doing so we get it! Looking at any of this isn’t easy. Bravo for you, taking it on. Learning to become self aware means you get to look at yourself. All of yourself, especially the parts that got buried. Maybe they weren’t “man” enough so you shied away from feelings. Well, guess what brother? Your feelings are real. 3. You take everything personally. You used to be able to move past anything you didn’t like. People. Jobs. Situations. A woman didn’t call you back, you didn’t care. You didn’t think about it and talk about it for days—you just moved on. Now things are different. Every setback feels personal, both in business and in relationships, and right now you are facing some of the most important fears you could have: the “what if’s.” “What if its about me? What if I suck?” “What if I’m a failure?” “What if it means I’m a horrible person destined to die old and alone?” 4. Vulnerability is tough. Hey I’m a good mix of masculine and feminine, I can be a girl when I want to, lthough much of my day job is about my masculine strengths (martial arts, running a business, being a boss, etc). But that’s not enough anymore. We are all being pushed and prodded to get vulnerable. To find ourselves in the midst of pain and say, “This freaking hurts!” We are all being asked to drop the masks we wear and to put down our shields and armor to get real. To find our authentic means getting through all the stuff that kept you safe. It’s not easy either, but being okay with admitting that: a) You don’t have it all together b) You don’t know what to do c) You’re scared or nervous d) All of the above 5. Judgement sucks. Remember all those people you’ve judged in your life, the ones who didn’t have it all figured out or looked like they were struggling, or worse, failures? You now get a chance to release all the judgements you held against others. Why? Because those are the same things you’re judging yourself with, you’re making yourself into That Guy. Who’s That Guy? He’s the one who struggled with girls, or in school. He’s the one who was hung up, down, depressed, worried, analytical, financially challenged, or not good at something. That Guy is all of us. We all have those places where we aren’t talented, and we are all doing the best we can with what we’ve got. So release the judgements you’ve held and realize that there is no That Guy. It’s just another human being. What I really want you to take away from this, what I really want you to understand is that I’m proud of you…and all the awake women on the planet understand what this process feels like. We’ve been through it all. We need you. We need you to step up your game, to get real, to care, and to be able to own your stuff. We need you to see us for all that we are, not just the parts you like. We need your humor, your vulnerability, your strengths, and your gifts. We need you to understand what really matters, and we need you to be able to connect with us.

here are 10 Ways to Find Peace In Stressful Situations:

here are 10 Ways to Find Peace In Stressful Situations: 1) Calm and center yourself. In other words, find your happy-place. Even if it means taking 10 minutes to sit down and bring awareness into your body, or listening to the soothing sound of rain, this will have a major impact on your stress levels and on the situation as a whole. 2) Don’t bring the ‘I’ into it…AKA Don’t make it about you. Oftentimes, the thing that causes the most stress is when we take things personally. Most upsets are simple miscommunications or misunderstandings and when we bring the ‘I’ into it, or when we start thinking about how it is affecting us we get caught in a downward spiral of undesired emotions and stress. Even if it APPEARS to be about you, it doesn’t. That may sound strange but it is true. Even if you hear that someone was gossiping about you, it has nothing to do with you. That is a reflection of them and their behavior~ and even if they think it is personal…it isn’t. It never is. =) 3) Express and exhaust the Stress if needed. Sometimes we catch ourselves a little late in the stress game. It could be we didn’t even noticed we were stressed until we are feeling really emotional or our bodies are shaking. If this is the case, take 10 to 20 minutes to sit down and feel it all the way through. Once our experience of a problem becomes denser and emerges as emotions, the best we can do is ride it out. Feel them, express and exhaust them until you notice that the emotions are a subtle level 1 or level 2 intensity (as opposed to level 10 code red). From here, you can begin calming and centering yourself so that you can focus on the solutions instead of the problem. 4) Remind yourself that this too shall pass. In the end, this won’t last forever. Some of the most stressful situations we have been through we end up laughing about later in Life. Keep this in mind; whether you do something about it or not, it will change. There is only one permanent thing in the Universe, and that is that everything changes. With this in mind, a person can breathe a little easier and relax into the situation. Think of a problem like a really hot bath. You don’t have to jump in immediately~ you can ease your way in little-by-little until you are comfortable. And without even trying, you notice after a little bit of time that the water cools down on its’ own. =) 5) Talk it up: find the good in it. It can be difficult to see the blessings in the issues that bother us the most, but there is always a good reason for it. Sometimes we need to have a breakdown in order to have a breakthrough. This is nature’s way of clearing out what is no longer working for us, or that which we have grown out of. Find something to laugh about in the situation or remember that we need upsets in order to find the gifts in it. Often these gifts are lessons of forgiveness, compassion, understanding or defining boundaries. A butterfly struggles for hours in order to free itself from the cocoon; but without the struggle, the butterfly would not build the muscles necessary for it to be able to fly. 6) Remind yourself that there is always an upside to pain. Pain always is a calling for us to rise to something greater than we already are. As many masters have said, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. If we can look at pain in a way that we don’t resist it, but praise its’ presence in our life, now we can change our experience of it completely. This is why some people experience a lot of pain and suffering in divorce, and others experience freedom and joy in it. It is all in how you look at it. 7) Remember that with a problem there is always a solution available. Problems cannot exist without a solution. Black cannot exist without the other colors, up cannot exist without down and so the relations in the Universe are. In fact, to find a point in 3 dimensional space we need 6 other points; 7 points to chart a course. With this in mind, we cannot have a problem without one or more solutions. All that is needed is for us to make ourselves available for the solution and to tap into it. =) 8) BREEAATTHHHEEEE and meditate on it. Meditation is something that does so much for us. It teaches us to slow down, to be mindful, to be aware of ourselves and our environment, and it teaches us to focus. These are just a few of the countless benefits of meditation, but it also does another thing~ it is a stress-reliever. Our brain, as dynamic and complex as it is, has trouble focusing on more than one thing. Granted there are a few things we do out of our subconscious such as driving, showering, brushing our teeth and so on, but when it comes to the conscious level, it can be very difficult for us to focus on more than one thing for an extended period of time. So meditate! Bring all your focus to your breathing and just sit and be for a little while. Then re-enter the situation with renewed energy.peace 9) Exercise and disperse the energy. Stress can build up in the body, so it is important to again express and exhaust whatever nervous energy is making itself aware to you. Do some yoga, go for a run, walk around the block a few times or do jumping jacks for 5 or 10 minutes. What usually happens is after this energy is exhausted, we don’t have a lot of energy left over to be upset about. We can more easily relax, and when we relax into a problem this is usually when a solution makes itself known. 10) Remember to shine in a crisis. A good reminder would be this: we are born problem-solvers. As humans, our creative capability is endless. There is usually not just one solution to a problem, but many MANY solutions to a problem. Some people can get into this zone when they are under stress~ a sort of grace under pressure. If you can access this space and become the excellent problem-solver you were born to be, there isn’t a problem in the world that you can’t solve.

avoid self sabotage

1) Observe yourself Forget justifying why you did (or didn't do) this or that; just watch yourself. The adage "don't listen to what people say, but watch what they do" to see what they're really like can be applied to yourself equally well. Imagine you're someone else whose behaviour you're watching. Ask yourself: "What did I do there?" and "What was driving it?" Was it fear, spite, the need to be in control (even if that control is related to making things fail), the need for excitement through conflict, or the desire for attention through sympathy? One client who did this realized that he had been unconsciously reluctant to earn more than his (bullying) father had done when he was alive: "As if I couldn't betray him by being better off than he had been." This realization helped him overcome this limiting belief once he had observed it operating within himself. He decided to actually ignore it until the old compulsion not to succeed became a faint whisper, then died away all together. What do you sabotage and how? Get to 'know the machine'. Seeing your own behaviour more clearly has nothing to do with over-applied self-blame, but rather being more objective. 2) Remember that success isn't black or white Strongly imagine (and get into the habit of strongly imagining) what true success will be like, because it may be different from what you'd been unconsciously assuming. Successful relationships, for example, don't work well all of the time; earning good money doesn't solve all problems. Success isn't black or white; it's all relative. So remember that becoming successful (in whatever way) won't feel so strange when it happens, because it is a natural part of being human - but the idea of success may feel strange. 3) Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater People often self-sabotage because of perfectionism - if it isn't perfect, then what's the point? You may have heard about recent research (1) which showed that people on strict diets, trying to lose weight, will more likely overeat if they feel they have veered off their diet even slightly: "What the hell, I've blown it now. I might as well completely binge!" People not on diets don't do this so much. So if you have a little setback or mini-failure, consciously stop yourself from throwing it all away and seeing the 'whole thing as just ruined' and then really ruining it. 4) Think beyond yourself Most of us don't like to consider ourselves as selfish, but it is also true to say (not from a judgemental perspective; more of an observational one) that self-sabotage ruins stuff for others and is therefore a selfish behaviour. People so often deny they are behaving selfishly because they don't intend to be selfish. But behaviour is behaviour. So the lover who feels compelled to end a great relationship hurts another, the co-worker who sabotages a project scuppers it for everyone else, the father who sabotages financial opportunities spoils the chance of a better standard of living for his family, and so on. Once we get into the habit of seeing the needs of the wider group rather than just our own emotional impulses, it actually becomes harder to sabotage situations. 5) Explore life All of life is an exploration. Imagine if Cinderella had decided she really couldn't go to the ball, even when she had the opportunity; or if the ugly duckling had concluded it wasn't 'good enough' to fly high with the swans. Being open to life means seeing where certain experiences will take you and accepting openly the good as well as the bad. Of course, if something really isn't working or it genuinely isn't for you, that's fine; but if it's really a reluctance to explore life and to experience the good and healthy, then it is an area that needs some self-work.

job

Treat every job you take on as a form of paid business school, and you’ll find tremendous learnings within each environment you encounter. It’s important to remember that the job that you don’t necessarily like right now is a necessary step to one day landing the career you love

chuck cheat codes

So stop looking for the cheatcodes and shortcuts to life. Enjoy the ride, use a turbo boost here and there, and beat each level as it comes.

compassion

A study conducted at the Princeton Theological Seminary examined why at times we help those in need and why at other times we do not. The student participants were told that they had to give a practice sermon: half the students read the Parable of the Good Samaritan, where a man stops to help a stranger at the end of the road; the other half were given different Bible stories. Unbeknownst to the students, a man who appeared in need was designed to be present on their walk home. Did those who read the Parable of the Good Samaritan have more active compassion and stop to help more than the others? The answer ... no. So what was it that mattered on their walk home? It seemed to be more about how much of a hurry the students were in ... were they late for their next class? What are the consequences of our living up in our heads or often thinking we're in a hurry? How might we be missing out on a strength that could support ourselves or others when struggling? Consider slowing down today; where are the opportunities to practice compassion?

. The more daring entrepreneurs take calculated risk to leap into the unknown believing there is a good chance that the new route will be well worthwhile. Although negative others may try to dissuade, the risk-taking entrepreneur is driven to make a success of her vision. For example, when the market bottomed out and business was not to be found, I chose to learn what the new social media idea was all about. Dire warnings were heard, but I remained steadfast with conviction that this was the right direction. Taking the leap of faith and with dedicated learning, I was ahead of most. As the economy improved, the education allowed me to redirect back to services offered in a bigger and bolder style. My company name became known worldwide. The question becomes, how does one formulate a vision, know which direction to begin, or get the experience that is required?

paul coelho at his best

“Our true friends are those who are with us when the good things happen. They cheer us on and are pleased by our triumphs. False friends only appear at difficult times, with their sad, supportive faces, when, in fact, our suffering is serving to console them for their miserable lives Tragedy always brings about radical change in our lives, a change that is associated with the same principle: loss. When faced by any loss, there’s no point in trying to recover what has been; it’s best to take advantage of the large space that opens up before us and fill it with something new.” “When I had nothing more to lose, I was given everything. When I ceased to be who I am, I found myself. When I experienced humiliation and yet kept on walking, I understood that I was free to choose my destiny.”