What you expect tends to be realized more often than you might think.
Resourceful people have different beliefs from those who are not resourceful. Resourceful people expect to be able to find a way to achieve their outcome. They expect to be able to easily and naturally form a rapport with anyone they meet. When they want something to happen, they often go for it; and if they make a mistake, they learn from the feedback. These expectations tend to influence a resourceful person's outcome. Believing the following ideas will increase your interpersonal skills and personal effectiveness. When you meet people and you want to create rapport, remember these beliefs: People automatically like you because you are a good person. You can easily and naturally meet anyone you choose. You can have instant rapport with anyone you choose using these techniques. You have a lot in common with any person you meet. You can learn something from each and every person you speak with. You may be thinking that these beliefs are not necessarily true, and if so, you would be correct. However, we're out to get a result, not to logically prove what is and isn't true. Unstoppable Confidence: How to Use the Power of NLP to Be More Dynamic and Successfule by Kent Sayre James Altucher's Daily Practice helps keep your life balanced when you need it to succeed11/29/2013
When I look back at these times now I realize there was a common thread.
EACH TIME THERE WERE FOUR THINGS, AND ONLY FOUR THINGS, THAT WERE ALWAYS IN PLACE IN ORDER FOR ME TO BOUNCE BACK. Now I try to incorporate these four things into a Daily Practice The key is: every day try to make some improvement in the following areas: PHYSICAL, EMOTIONAL, MENTAL, SPIRITUAL. PHYSICAL – being in shape. Doing some form of exercise. In 2003 I woke up at 5am every day and from 5-6am I played “Round the World” on a basketball court overlooking the Hudson River. Every day (except when it rained). Trains would pass and people at 5:30am would wave to me out the window. Now, I try to do yoga every day. But it’s hard. All you need to do, minimally, is exercise enough to break a sweat for 10 minutes. So about 20-30 minutes worth of exercise a day. This is not to get “ripped” or “shredded.” But just to be healthy. You can’t be happy if you aren’t healthy. Also, spending this time helps your mind better deal with it’s daily anxieties. If you can breathe easy when your body is in pain then it’s easier to breathe during difficult situations. Here are other things that are a part of this but a little bit harder: • Wake up by 4-5am every day. • Go to sleep by 8:30-9. (Good to sleep 8 hours a night!) • No eating after 5:30pm. Can’t be happy if indigested at night. But the most important side effect of being healthy is that sickness will not get in the way of your freedom. It won’t get in the way of mental vitality, emotional health, and ultimately spiritual health. And will allow you to enjoy high quality of life in your later years. So find even the 10 minute routine that resonates with you. Don’t depend on the late night infomercials with their false dreams and promises. The cemetery of dead exercise machines in basements is an enormous graveyard. EMOTIONAL – If someone is a drag on me, I cut them out. If someone lifts me up, I bring them closer. Nobody is sacred here. When the plane is going down, put the oxygen mask on your face first. Family, friends, people I love – I always try to be there for them and help. But I don’t get close to anyone bringing me down. This rule can’t be broken. Energy leaks out of you if someone is draining you. And I never owe anyone an explanation. Explaining is draining. MENTAL – Every day I write down ideas. I write down so many ideas that it hurts my head to come up with one more. Then I try to write down five more. The other day I tried to write 100 alternatives kids can do other than go to college. I wrote down eight, which I wrote about here. I couldn’t come up with anymore. Then the next day I came up with another 40. It definitely stretched my head. No ideas today? Memorize all the legal 2 letter words for Scrabble. Translate the Tao Te Ching into Spanish. Need ideas for lists of ideas? Come up with 30 separate chapters for an “autobiography.” Try to think of 10 businesses you can start from home (and be realistic how you can execute them)? Give me 10 ideas of directions this blog can go in. Think of 20 ways Obama can improve the country. List every productive thing you did yesterday (this improves memory also and gives you ideas for today). SPIRITUAL – I feel that most people don’t like the word “spiritual.” They think it means “god.” Or “religion.” But it doesn’t. I don’t know what it means actually. But I feel like I have a spiritual practice when I do one of the following:
The Results • Within about one month, I’d notice coincidences start to happen. I’d start to feel lucky. People would smile at me more. • Within three months the ideas would really start flowing, to the point where I felt overwhelming urges to execute the ideas. • Within six months, good ideas would start flowing, I’d begin executing them, and everyone around me would help me put everything together. WITHIN A YEAR MY LIFE WAS ALWAYS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. 100% I Was Blind But Now I See: Time to Be Happy by James Altucher We are all artists. If you don't give yourself permission to share your gifts and talents with the world, you are never going to be truly fulfilled. You will always live with some sort of regret. It will be a waste of your potential if you don't share with other people your unique gifts to the world. Be a nurturer, an artist, a businessman, a wonderful friend, a great father, a fantastic lover, a spiritual teacher or an architect; it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you listen to what your gut is telling you and do what you are meant to do. Doing this will make sense on the very deepest level of your being because it is so much easier to be who you ARE and always have been, instead of trying to live up to a superficial picture you picked up along the way.
If you are not failing, it doesn't mean you are just THAT good, it simply means you have grown stagnant and you are not pushing yourself anymore. Never failing simply means you are playing it a little too safe. The Mind-Made Prison: Radical Self Help and Personal Transformation by Mateo Tabatabai Most of us know exactly what we need and want to do in our lives and, in most cases, not knowing isn't the challenge at hand.
The real challenge is usually not having enough trust and belief in ourselves to actually go out and get started. Most people become programmed to ignore their inner knowing because they associate it with risk and potential failure. Your soul is always talking to you and guiding you, the question is whether you trust its higher wisdom or not. Even when it comes to self-improvement we will feel more inclined to seek out the most popular methods simply because that is what everyone else is doing. This is fine, and completely natural to begin with, but in order to fully grow into the potential that is unique to you, there comes a time where you need to surrender to your intuition and follow it wherever it takes you. This can be very scary because most people have been programmed to do the exact opposite and follow the herd their entire lives. They have been taught that the most stable and secure way in life is to simply do what everyone else is doing. You really need to let yourself free from the herd mentality and start disconnecting from what everyone else is doing and do what you want to do instead. In a world where the majority of people are asleep, it is simply irresponsible to look to others for instructions on how to live your life. Sure, you should listen to as many people as you can, but in the end it is up to you and you alone to make the decisions that are best for you. Just look around you with awareness and you will understand why. If you are not failing, it doesn't mean you are just THAT good, it simply means you have grown stagnant and you are not pushing yourself anymore. Never failing simply means you are playing it a little too safe. Why is it important to listen to your inner knowing? The Mind-Made Prison: Radical Self Help and Personal Transformation by Mateo Tabatabai Your task as a creative thinker is to actively explore the unconscious and contradictory parts of your personality, and to examine similar contradictions and tensions in the world at large. Expressing these tensions within your work in any medium will create a powerful effect on others, making them sense unconscious truths or feelings that have been obscured or repressed. You look at society at large and the various contradictions that are rampant—for instance, the way in which a culture that espouses the ideal of free expression is charged with an oppressive code of political correctness that tamps free expression down.
In science, you look for ideas that go against the existing paradigm, or that seem inexplicable because they are so contradictory. All of these contradictions contain a rich mine of information about a reality that is deeper and more complex than the one immediately perceived. By delving into the chaotic and fluid zone below the level of consciousness where opposites meet, you will be surprised at the exciting and fertile ideas that will come bubbling up to the surface. Mastery by Robert Greene The key difference in starting a Freedom Business over a standard business is a shift in what kind of value it produces for the entrepreneur who starts it (you). Rather than producing value in exchange for money, you build something that creates more personal freedom for yourself. In most cases, this means you earn money and time. It may also mean you earn connections and prestige.
I haven’t set an alarm in years. Hell, I haven’t even kept a calendar since I started traveling in 2009. I’ll generally sit down for a nice, slow breakfast while checking my email, reading the news, catching up on what’s happened in the world since I closed my eyes the night before. Then I’ll think through my day; should I grab lunch downtown? Maybe go and have the final fitting for some shirts I’m having tailored? Meet up with some friends and explore the local museum? Take in a movie? Just sit around and read? Every option is on the table, and it can be tricky sometimes to decide what to do as a result, but this is a good problem to have. Often I’ll take a walk around the neighborhood, exploring the nooks and crannies I haven’t yet seen and then head back home to write when I have a few new ideas and directions I think might be fun to explore. Each afternoon I head over to the gym (if I have one where I’m living at the time) or go for a run or work out a bit at home, and then it’s free time again. I’ll finish a book or Skype with a friend or just lay perfectly still and think. Dinner and my evening are the same, with the option to go out and party or stay in and work on my personal projects usually seeming equally appealing, and both are also equally likely to get my attention for the night. If you’re working a job that you need in order to continue paying the bills, work out a financial plan that will set you on a course to pay off your bills while building up a buffer fund (so that when you start your Freedom Business, you’ll have at least a few months’ worth of expenses in the bank for the transition). If you’re still learning a particular skill set you’ll need to make it all happen, work on supplementary skill sets at the same time, so that when you’re ready, you’ll be more than ready. Most Freedom Entrepreneurs eliminate the need for a balance altogether, however, by integrating their work into their life. Rather than doing their best to segregate the disparate aspects of their life, they aim to unify them. Start a Freedom Business by Colin Wright Schedule Time for Writing
Hopefully by now you’ve figured out that you need to make time to write instead of winging it. That means you’ll choose a specific time to write each day and then commit to it. This daily time commitment is the first of the building blocks to creating a successful writing routine. I like to write in the morning, a half hour after I wake up. I devote an hour to writing, five days a week, taking weekends off. This works for me. You will want to play around with times of day until you figure out what works best for you. You’ll want to try writing at different times of day. Later on, we’ll talk about the importance of tracking how much you got done and how you felt about your writing. This will help you determine what time works for you. You may have to work around your work and personal schedule (kids, relationship), carving out time that works with the other demands in your life. This requirement may override your personal preference for writing. Take all of these factors into account as you choose a time . Once you’ve determined what time of day works best for you, you will need to set aside a specific time slot for writing each day. I suggest you reserve an hour each day, but you may need to set aside more or less time, depending on how much time it takes you to achieve your daily word count goal. Once you’ve determined how much you can achieve in a set amount of time, you will want to add this to your daily schedule. Habit 4: Track Your Writing Routine Good writers work in blocks of time, refusing to be distracted while they are “on the clock.” They also carefully track their time, occasionally evaluating what environmental changes influence their ability to produce quality material at top speed. To do this, you will want to master two writing habits: Writing in blocks of time and daily tracking your writing word count. Writing Habit Mastery - How to Write 2,000 Words a Day and Forever Cure Writer's Block by S.J. Scott When our mind ''knows'' something, it doesn't see the need to focus a lot of attention on it anymore. If you have had certain beliefs for a long period of time, you have grown so accustomed to them running your life that you don't even register they are there anymore. This is great if all of your beliefs are completely empowering and are continuously improving the quality of your life. In my experience however, everyone, and that includes some of the most successful people in the world, have beliefs they can change or tweak in order to improve their lives. Most people have a lot of negative and self-defeating beliefs they are completely unaware of, and because self-mastery is a continuous process and not a destination, there are always positive changes to make. We are constantly thinking the same thoughts and entertaining the same beliefs. As a result, we are manifesting the same experience of life again and again. Studies show that up to 90% of what we say, think and do is the same that we have said, thought and done the day before. The Mind-Made Prison: Radical Self Help and Personal Transformation by Mateo Tabatabai I have only written, in every line I have composed in my professional life, about things I have done, and the risks I have recommended that others take or avoid were risks I have been taking or avoiding myself. I will be the first to be hurt if I am wrong. When I warned about the fragility of the banking system in The Black Swan, I was betting on its collapse (particularly when my message went unheeded); otherwise I felt it would not have been ethical to write about it. That personal stricture applies to every domain, including medicine, technical innovation, and simple matters in life. It does not mean that one’s personal experiences constitute a sufficient sample to derive a conclusion about an idea; it is just that one’s personal experience gives the stamp of authenticity and sincerity of opinion. Experience is devoid of the cherry-picking that we find in studies, particularly those called “observational,” ones in which the researcher finds past patterns, and, thanks to the sheer amount of data, can therefore fall into the trap of an invented narrative. Further, in writing, I feel corrupt and unethical if I have to look up a subject in a library as part of the writing itself. This acts as a filter—it is the only filter. If the subject is not interesting enough for me to look it up independently, for my own curiosity or purposes, and I have not done so before, then I should not be writing about it at all, period. It does not mean that libraries (physical and virtual) are not acceptable; it means that they should not be the source of any idea. Students pay to write essays on topics for which they have to derive knowledge from a library as a self-enhancement exercise; a professional who is compensated to write and is taken seriously by others should use a more potent filter. Only distilled ideas, ones that sit in us for a long time, are acceptable—and those that come from reality. It is time to revive the not well-known philosophical notion of doxastic commitment, a class of beliefs that go beyond talk, and to which we are committed enough to take personal risks. Compromising is condoning. The only modern dictum I follow is one by George Santayana: A man is morally free when … he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. This is not just an aim but an obligation. Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb CHANGE UP, DON’T GIVE UP.
I was the guy who “gave up” on the thirty-ninth try when trying to sell a novel I had written. Sometimes the odds are just too stacked against you. Maybe it would’ve worked on the fortieth try. I don’t know. But I’m glad I gave up; I “changed up” instead. Rather than focusing on fiction as the only creative medium, I started looking at both TV and the brand-new World Wide Web as creative media. Which led to a job at HBO. Which led to my first company focusing on building content-heavy websites for entertainment companies. I didn’t give up on being creative. I expanded the power of my creativity by not limiting myself to one domain, and vowing to return to book-writing later, ultimately to fiction-writing. Maybe I’ll do it, maybe I won’t. But the “Change Up” certainly released me creatively, and I was able to use it to build both my financial life and creative life. We’ll see if it ever comes full circle. Choose Yourself! by James Altucher (Just finished this book - its great, make sure you get it.) |
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