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 Journaling is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to discover new truths. By getting your thoughts out of your head and putting them down in writing, you’ll gain insights you’d otherwise miss. While some people use journaling merely to record their thoughts and experiences in a “Dear Diary” fashion, the real power of journaling lies in its ability to help you move beyond sequential thinking and examine your thoughts from a holistic, bird’s-eye view. Use this tool to solve tricky problems, brainstorm new ideas, bring clarity to fuzzy situations, and evaluate progress toward your goals. Instead of a mere record-keeping tool, your journal can vastly accelerate your personal development if you devote it to that purpose.
Many people use paper journals, others prefer a word processor, and some like special journaling software. I used paper journals for many years, but in 2002 I switched to journaling software and never went back. The advantages are numerous. Typing is faster than writing; your entries are stored in a secure, private database; you can use the built-in search feature to instantly find old entries; you can assign entries to categories for better organization; and you can easily make secure backups. The more robust programs even allow you to insert images, audio recordings, videos, spreadsheets, files, Web links, and more. Once you try journaling software, you’ll never want to go back to pen and paper. Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth by Steve Pavlina If you frame ideas as experiments, you can’t technically fail at anything. You're just going to prove or disprove a theory you've arrived at through experimenting. And if it doesn't work the first time, you can iterate and try something different. It doesn't work until it does. There's no formula that will ensure successful work. All you can do is generate ideas and test them. Succeed or fail, at least you’ve done the necessary work. Persistence is the most important trait of successful people. Hardly anyone is successful right from the start. Most try, fail, try again, fail, try again. Their backstories are full of errors, almosts and rejections – until they’re not. They picked up the puzzle box one more time. They kept choosing a new path until it led somewhere good. If the result isn't what you intended or doesn’t make you happy, you're now free. When you're working on an idea, you get caught up in making it work. There's vested interest in thinking, “I've come too far to fail now!” But if it does fail, lay all the puzzle pieces out and start from scratch. Try different pieces in unique ways. Go back to the start of the book and pick a new path. Avoid the dragon this time, since there's a road that bypasses him.
How I experiment I focus on the task at hand, not the end result. Focusing on the process allows serendipity and personal exploration to take over. Otherwise, I might inadvertently apply a subjective idea of how I want something to turn out, rather than what would be best for long-term discovery. I try not to create and judge at the same time. Creation and judgment are very different thought processes and can interfere with each other, so they must be done separately. I experiment and explore every idea first (writing it down, drawing it out, actually trying to do it). Only then do I move into editing, curating, and judging to improve and refine the idea. I break the experiment down into the smallest tasks possible. Then, I work completely on each small task. Only at the end do I tie all those tasks together. This prevents me from feeling overwhelmed or scared about tackling such a big project. I remember that these are experiments. They’re not full-time business ideas. First, I figure out how to run the experiment using the least resources possible. What is the core or essence of my idea that I can quickly prototype? Then I get that prototype in front of as many people as possible before pursuing it further. I fail fast. I don’t repeat myself. The same experiment can’t have a different result unless I change the variables. If I experiment with an idea and it doesn’t work, I either change things up or move onto a new idea. There’s no point doing the same experiment over and over, hoping for something new to happen. If I want a different outcome, I have to change the experiment up a little — refocus for a new audience, try a different medium, or experiment with a completely new idea. Everything I Know by Paul Jarvis We can’t deactivate our biases, but we can counteract them with the right discipline.
1. You encounter a choice. But narrow framing makes you miss options. So Widen Your Options How can you expand your set of choices? We’ll study the habits of people who are expert at uncovering new options, including a college-selection adviser, some executives whose businesses survived (and even thrived) during global recessions, and a boutique firm that has named some of the world’s top brands, including BlackBerry and Pentium. 2. You analyze your options. But the confirmation bias leads you to gather self-serving info. So Reality-Test Your Assumptions. How can you get outside your head and collect information that you can trust? We’ll learn how to ask craftier questions, how to turn a contentious meeting into a productive one in 30 seconds, and what kind of expert advice should make you suspicious. 3. You make a choice. But short-term emotion will often tempt you to make the wrong one. So Attain Distance Before Deciding. How can you overcome short-term emotion and conflicted feelings to make the best choice? We’ll discover how to triumph over manipulative car salesmen, why losing $50 is more painful than gaining $50 is pleasurable, and what simple question often makes agonizing decisions perfectly easy. 4. Then you live with it. But you’ll often be overconfident about how the future will unfold. So Prepare to Be Wrong. How can we plan for an uncertain future so that we give our decisions the best chance to succeed? We’ll show you how one woman scored a raise by mentally simulating the negotiation in advance, how you can rein in your spouse’s crazy business idea, and why it can be smart to warn new employees about how lousy their jobs will be. Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath, Dan Heath The first step on your path of personal growth must be to recognize that your life as it stands right now isn’t how you want it to be. It’s perfectly okay to be in this position. It’s okay to want something and have no idea how to get it, but it’s not okay to lie to yourself and pretend everything is perfect when you know it isn’t. The closest you’ll get to perfection will be to enjoy the experience of lifelong growth, including all its temporary flaws.
It’s easy for me to say that you should face the truth about your life, but in practice this can be very difficult to do. It’s hard to admit that you’ve become dissatisfied with your relationship. It’s hard to accept that you made the wrong career choice. It’s hard to look at yourself in the mirror and realize that you don’t like the person you’ve become. But despite how difficult this is, it’s still necessary. You can’t get from point A to point B if you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that you’re at point A. Denying A, fighting A, or otherwise resisting A only keeps you stuck at A. What do you perceive about your life that you’d like to change? Are there any addictions or destructive habits you’d like to break? Would you find more fulfillment in a new career? Would you rather be living somewhere else? Open your eyes. Look around you and notice what you like and dislike about your life. Don’t worry about setting specific goals just yet; just become aware of what you perceive and how you react to those perceptions Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina |
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