If there’s a definition of freedom, I think it’s this: living life on your terms. And Werner was the freest man I’ve known. I miss him terribly. Outside the cottage, rain. I close my eyes, listen to it, and imagine him sitting across from me. “I’m sorry, man,” I say.
“Ah,” he waves his hand at me. Smiling. “Let it go.” We’re both quiet for a little bit. “Reach out to Siv once in a while,” he says, “and Ice.” Siv, his wife. Ice, his dog. Rain picks up, drums on the roof. He smiles, slow. “But they’ll be gone too.” Long pause. “And you. Life, it is quick.” Life is long, a chain of intertwining moments, looping round and round. But life is short. Blinks. Memories. Connections. Then you’re gone. The truth: I live my days as if I will live forever. Putting off so much, expecting there to be more time, another chance. If I accepted my mortality to my core, never knowing when the chain snaps, then how would I live? More on my terms. A free man. I’d write more, I’d love more, I’d laugh more. Can I succeed at it, this way of living? I don’t know. But I will remind myself daily: I am mortal. I will feel gratitude for it. For another opportunity to be here, to live and love and hurt and play and create and make good and bad decisions. Life. I have a hunch that my journey, however long it plays out, shall be better for it. Thank you, Werner Live Your Truth Each day, I meditate for seven minutes. Why seven minutes? Because I put on a piece of music that I like, one that is soothing and calm, piano and flute, one that I associate good feelings with, and it happens to be seven minutes long.
I sit with my back against a wall, put on my headphones, listen to the music, and imagine galaxies and stars and the Universe above, and I imagine all the light from space flowing into my head and down into my body, going wherever it needs to go. I breathe slowly, naturally. As I inhale, I think, I love myself. Then I exhale and let out whatever the response in my mind and body is, whether there is one or not. That's it. Simple. Instructions Step 1: Put on music. Something soothing, gentle, preferably instrumental. A piece you have positive associations with. Step 2: Sit with back against wall or window. Cross legs or stretch them out, whatever feels natural. Step 3: Close eyes. Smile slowly. Imagine a beam of light pouring into your head from above. Step 4: Breathe in, say to yourself in your mind, I love myself. Slowly. Be gentle with yourself. Step 5: Breathe out and along with it, anything that arises. Any thoughts, emotions, feelings, memories, fears, hopes, desires. Or nothing. Breathe it out. No judgment, no attachment to anything. Be kind to yourself. Step 6: Repeat 4 and 5 until the music ends. (When your attention wanders, notice it and smile. Smile at it as if it's a child doing what a child does. And with that smile, return to your breath. Step 4, step 5. Mind wanders, notice, smile kindly, return to step 4, step 5). Step 7: When music ends, open your eyes slowly. Smile. Do it from the inside out. This is your time. This is purely yours. Why music? Since I listen to the same piece each time, it now acts as an anchor, easily pulling me into a meditative state. A crutch perhaps, but a nice one. Do this meditation consistently. Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It Here’s the truth: You will work harder at something you love than at something you like. You will work harder than you have ever worked when you start chasing a dream. You will hustle and grind and sweat and push and pull. You will get up earlier and go to bed later. But that’s okay. Know why? Joy is an incredible alarm clock. It will wake you up and keep you up and pick you up and gently pull you through a thousand rejections along the way. If your goal is to work less, stay on the road to average. Do something you just kind of like. Settle into life like a long winter’s nap and coast on through to your 80s. But if you want to dream—if you want to live out some unique talent you’ve been given to steward during your time on this planet—get used to 4 a.m. alarms. Get going. Get up.
Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters Success and failure come and go but don’t let them define you. It’s who you are that matters. And if the outcome doesn’t match your desire, you won’t crash in the process. Instead, you’ll walk away with the lessons learned and go on to create far greater things. Each time, giving your effort. Each time, being your true self.
The secret is this: pick something that is important to you. One thing. Look at your belief on it, what you know to be true. Then, as if diving off a board, your feet already in the air, you commit. The commitment is the most important part. Not a promise, but deep and from the heart, there is no going back. You have burned the bridges, sunk the ships behind you. This is the only true thing that matters. Do the work. Do the work. Do the work. Do the work. Do the work. Do. The. Work. This will transform your life. Do this for fitness, for example, going all in, working out and eating healthy daily and a month later, you’ll be amazed at the person in the mirror. Do this for your truth, and you will be so amazing that the world will open doors to you that you never knew existed. This is the simple secret. Pick something you truly want. Commit. Commit on paper. To yourself. Dive in, do the work. You’ll leave the board, falling and falling…until you notice gravity lessen, your rate of descent slowing until it reverses and then…and then, you’re flying Live Your Truth by Kamal Ravikant Success and failure come and go but don’t let them define you. It’s who you are that matters. And if the outcome doesn’t match your desire, you won’t crash in the process. Instead, you’ll walk away with the lessons learned and go on to create far greater things. Each time, giving your effort. Each time, being your true self.
The secret is this: pick something that is important to you. One thing. Look at your belief on it, what you know to be true. Then, as if diving off a board, your feet already in the air, you commit. The commitment is the most important part. Not a promise, but deep and from the heart, there is no going back. You have burned the bridges, sunk the ships behind you. This is the only true thing that matters. Do the work. Do the work. Do the work. Do the work. Do the work. Do. The. Work. This will transform your life. Do this for fitness, for example, going all in, working out and eating healthy daily and a month later, you’ll be amazed at the person in the mirror. Do this for your truth, and you will be so amazing that the world will open doors to you that you never knew existed. This is the simple secret. Pick something you truly want. Commit. Commit on paper. To yourself. Dive in, do the work. You’ll leave the board, falling and falling…until you notice gravity lessen, your rate of descent slowing until it reverses and then…and then, you’re flying. Live Your Truth by Kamal Ravikant Hemingway, whenever he was stuck in his writing, would tell himself to write one true thing.1/9/2014
Hemingway, whenever he was stuck in his writing, would tell himself to write one true thing. A true sentence. Then, he would write another. And another. It is the best rule I’ve ever found for writing. Write a true sentence. Something that is real for me. No showing off, no extrapolation, just a simple string of words that equal what I know to be true. It can apply to anything. Any decision, any fear, any point where we are stuck. Say one true thing to ourselves. And then another. And another. This dislodges the mind unlike anything else. It’s not comfortable, mind you. Truth isn’t always. It requires facing fears, standing up to dragons. They are illusions — all fear is — but the only way to overcome them is to face them, say to ourselves: this is what I know to be true. And list it.
I do this sometimes. If I’m stuck, unable to figure out or let go of something, I sit down and write a true sentence after true sentence after true sentence. The beginning is usually messy, as if you’re unclogging, but it starts to smoothen, and the truth comes out. Whatever I’m avoiding, whatever I didn’t want to admit or was afraid of, it’s right there, staring at me in my own handwriting. The simple act of putting your truth on paper, only you and your thoughts, it is one of the most powerful exercises you can do. Resist nothing. Like the Tibetan monk who once told me that he found peace by saying yes to all that happened. I met him again years later and reminded him of what he’d said. He laughed. Live Your Truth - Kamal Ravikant The Time-Travel Meditation
This is one of my favorite meditation exercises, and I think you’ll really enjoy it, too. First, go to a place where you can physically relax. Lie down or sit comfortably, close your eyes, and breathe deeply for a few minutes. Imagine a special room in your mind’s eye, one with two comfortable chairs facing each other. You’re sitting in one chair, and in the other chair is your future self—the person you’ll become five years from now. Your future self knows everything you know, as well as everything that will happen to you during the next five years. Now imagine having a conversation with this person. Ask anything you want, and listen for the answers. When you’re ready, ask your future self to get up and leave the room, and imagine that your past self from five years ago walks in and sits down. You are this person’s future self. Take a moment to recall what your past self has been going through. What was your life like exactly five years ago? Imagine your past self asking you questions about how your life turned out; and see yourself answering with empathy, understanding, and reassurance. Tell your past self about some of the challenges that will be coming up in the years ahead, challenges that you’ve already faced. When you’re finished connecting with your past self, imagine that your future self reenters the room and all three of you stand up. Your bodies begin to glow and become translucent. You float toward each other and merge into a single being of light. When this happens, you may experience an intense release of emotion. The three of you are now an integrated whole, a single being who exists outside of time. This being is the real you. I encourage you to try this meditation at least once, even if you’ve never meditated before. It will help you recognize that there’s a time-less nature to your existence, that you’re more than just a physical being moving forward through time. In the presence of this aware-ness, your momentary worries will shrink, replaced by feelings of expansiveness and connectedness. Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth In order to learn and grow, you must have the freedom to connect with what you want and to disconnect from what you don’t want. No one can give you that freedom. It’s your birthright as a human being. You don’t need anyone’s permission to decide which connections are best for you. It’s up to you to take the initiative to connect with what you want and to disconnect from what you don’t want. By consciously making connections that feel intuitively correct to you, you bring yourself into alignment with the principle of love.
When you understand that there’s no such thing as an external relationship and that all such connections exist solely in your mind, you’ll become aware that the true purpose of relationships is self- exploration. Whenever you communicate in any fashion, you are in truth exploring different aspects of yourself. When you feel a deep sense of communion with another person, you’re actually connecting deeply with an important part of yourself. By communing with others, you learn to love yourself more fully. The irony is that when you’re feeling disconnected, connecting with people is the cure. If you spend more time with positive, upbeat, interesting people, it’s unlikely you’ll be feeling down in the first place. In truth, your disconnection from other people is a sign that you’ve disconnected from the best parts of yourself. You’re a worthy human being. When you hold back from connecting due to fear of rejection, you rob other people of the chance to get to know you. Many people would love the chance to connect with you. They want someone to understand them, someone who can remind them that they aren’t alone. When you connect with people, you’re giving them exactly what they want. Reaching out socially does entail some minor risk, but the long-term benefits are so enormous that the only way to fail is to refuse to try. In Chapters 3 and 6, you’ll learn to build your power and courage in order to overcome this common block. When you want to enrich your life with new connections, it’s wise to seek out people with whom you’re compatible, notably in terms of character qualities, values, and attitude. As you continue to grow, your compatibility preferences will surely shift. This is no one’s fault. Allow yourself to let go of any group, person, career, or activity that no longer resonates with you, and you’ll soon attract more compatible opportunities into your life. The process of letting go can be very difficult, but it’s an essential part of personal growth. When you fail to release incompatibilities from your life, you settle for mere tolerance and prevent compatible new connections from forming. Moreover, you create an even bigger disconnect within yourself. Tolerance is not an act of love—it is resistance to love. Something very powerful occurs when you fill your life with compatible connections. First, you’ll feel lovingly supported and encouraged to express yourself authentically. Second, you’ll find it easier to connect with people who’d otherwise be totally incompatible with you, since you know you have that stable base to return to. Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth by Steve Pavlina Experiment. That’s it. That’s the action you have to embrace in the land of Learning. Because scientists don’t fail; they experiment. They blow things up. They burn things down. They tinker. They smash. They mix. And when an experiment doesn’t go the right way, they don’t call it a failure. They say, “Look what we learned. We thought it would go one way and it went the opposite! What can we take away from this that will help us with our next experiment?” That’s why James Dyson had 5,126 prototypes before completing his industry-changing vacuum cleaner. It’s why Angry Birds, the wildly popular app, was Rovio’s fifty-second attempt at a game. It’s why WD-40 had thirty-nine other formulas that came before it. Everyone who succeeds learns through experimentation.4
Start today, regardless of your age. Turn off the fog machine. Acting on the dreams you learned about in your previous destination is not complicated. Walking deeper into the land of Editing is not as complex as fear and doubt are trying to tell you it is. In fact, it starts with just one question. examples. Those are real people I know who all dared to ask that question, “What gives me the most joy?” I dare you to ask it too. Be brave enough to have fun with whatever you whittle down in your life. Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters by Jon Acuff Many of my best growth experiences came about when I decided to connect with something that was important to me even when others disagreed with my choice—going vegetarian is a good example. One day I decided to try eating vegetarian for a month just because it seemed interesting to me. I liked it so much that I never went back, and four years later, I progressed to a fully vegan diet. This decision to connect with something I found attractive opened up a new wave of connections with other people who shared similar values, and it allowed me to leave behind a way of eating that didn’t resonate with my true self. Some people resisted my decision, but it was the right choice for me.
In order to learn and grow, you must have the freedom to connect with what you want and to disconnect from what you don’t want. No one can give you that freedom. It’s your birthright as a human being. You don’t need anyone’s permission to decide which connections are best for you. It’s up to you to take the initiative to connect with what you want and to disconnect from what you don’t want. By consciously making connections that feel intuitively correct to you, you bring yourself into alignment with the principle of love. Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth by Steve Pavlina |
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