Life rewards courage

The person who is brave enough to bet on something or someone—as long as they avoid irreversible mistakes like running out of cash or going to jail—is in a position to win.

No act is ever too small

When you create a difference in someone's life, you not only impact their life, you impact everyone influenced by them throughout their entire lifetime.

Once you have learned to ask questions

Once you have learned to ask questions – relevant and appropriate and substantial questions – you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.

Keep track of what's important

When you keep everything in your head, you’re bound to forget something sooner or later. By documenting what’s most important, you are making sure nothing slips through the cracks.

Where am I going?

There is a difference between speed and velocity. With speed, you move, but with velocity, you move somewhere. You have direction. There is no doubt that you move with considerable speed throughout your day. But it’s useful to sometimes ask, ‘Where am I going?’ Take a moment to make sure it’s not all speed and no direction.

You can't outwork someone who is enjoying themselves

When you find something that intrigues you, and you step out of the way - and you allow yourself to enjoy the process. The enjoyment picks up, expands and lights up the path ahead. You can’t outwork someone who’s tapped into this natural energy at the root. You can’t outwork someone who’s found a way to enjoy it.

Judge less, observe more

Many of us spend our days judging and applying meaning to everything. ‘He’s a fool.’ ‘That coffee is too strong,’ etc. When we judge, we are closing our minds to insight - those ideas that come through when we are willing to simply observe the world around us.

Have more experiences

The best writing reflects a writer’s real-life experiences. There’s only so much we can write about if we haven’t gone out into the world and picked up stories and sensory details. Readers know when your words are rooted to the real. You must live a life outside your writer’s cabin, so you can return with the scars of action, so you can tell fresh, helpful stories through which your reader can live vicariously. Book that trip. Arrange that interview. Go on that urban adventure. Take on that challenge, and report back.

Satisfaction = What you have ÷ What you want

The natural human tendency is to focus on the numerator in this equation—to continuously increase what we have in order to increase satisfaction. The secret is to focus on the denominator instead—to manage and maintain reasonable wants.

Habits = Faith + Family + Friends + Work

The controllable portion of the happiness equation. Faith isn’t necessarily about religion—it refers to a broader ability to think about life beyond yourself. Family and friends refer to deep, meaningful relationships. Work refers to finding productive activities that provide contentment or allow you to experience your life more comprehensively in the other areas.

Humans are animals

Humans are animals. The word “animal” is important because animals are biologically wired to be hierarchical. I believe that we often unconsciously rearrange the world into arbitrary hierarchies to make sense of the world, maintain our beliefs, and feel better.

When life gets scary and difficult

When life gets scary and difficult, we tend to look for solutions in places where it is easy or at least familiar to do so, and not in the dark, uncomfortable places where real solutions might lie.

Our mind is a network of complex systems

Our mind is a network of complex systems that have been conditioned over time through positive and negative feedback. That's how systems work, right? If you receive negative feedback, you won't do that again. If you receive positive feedback, you will do that again. If you consistently receive positive feedback for doing one specific thing, it becomes engrained in your psyche. The action, belief, or thought pattern become habitual. They happen on autopilot.

Simple financial advice

When you buy something cheap and bad, the best you’re going to feel about it is when you buy it. When you buy something expensive and good, the worst you’re going to feel about it is when you buy it.

Next play mentality

A surefire way to make a bad situation worse is to continue replaying it in your mind. The damage is done. The only thing that matters now is making the best choice given your current position.

Quick Marketing Tip

Don't give your audience too many options. Most people don't like making choices. The fewer options you offer, the easier to decision. The easier the decision, the more they'll buy. 

This works in other domain of life too.

When you become fed up with your current situation

When you become fed up with your current situation starting over can be the best thing for you. But starting over means letting go of what was, what didn’t work and confronting those fears that don’t deserve to rule your life anymore.

Find a way to enjoy things

Find a way to enjoy things. It's not about thinking positive - it's about acting with less of the burden of negative thoughts that hold us back. We gain an unfair advantage when we become intolerant of doubtful thoughts and instead turn to the present. Those who can find a way to enjoy even the most menial of tasks have the advantage. Confucius encapsulated the idea well:

'Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.'

If you have the final say on whether you'll enjoy something or not, you can't lose.

Don’t play life hard

Don’t play life hard, but smart. Be soft! It’s ok to be in your comfort zone! The fire of passion is fluctuating; don’t give up on your dreams. Life is too short and it matters.

Dear Younger Me

Never allow words hinder you more than it should uplift you. Don't focus more on your errors when you can focus on your strengths. Keep being you.

Fear of the unknown

The unknown is only the unknown because you refuse to discover what can be known. If you never allow yourself to fail you also never allow yourself to succeed. It may be hard at first but get rid of this mindset at all costs.

Often we are ourselves struck at the strange differences

Often we are ourselves struck at the strange differences in our successive views of the same thing. We wonder how we ever could have opined as we did last month about a certain matter. We have outgrown the possibility of that state of mind, we know not how. From one year to another we see things in new lights. What was unreal has grown real, and what was exciting is insipid.

Life is about habits that you pick up

Life is about habits that you pick up, even when you're not looking to. It's the choices you make every day that set the cow paths and cut the grooves in the road of your life. I get asked a lot about how I find the time, but we make time for the things that we care about. Anyone can find 30 minutes somewhere, and it is really about prioritization and focusing on what you want to ingrain in your life.

We know more than we’re able to explain that we know

We know more than we’re able to explain that we know. And I call this inarticulate knowledge — the knowledge that I’m not able to articulate to somebody. And I have inarticulate knowledge about a lot of things, including other people. I could have tacit knowledge of why I trust somebody that I couldn’t explain to you. If you asked me to give you specific things, I wouldn’t be able to point to that, “Oh, there’s that one time when we were hanging out together,” because it’s probably not any one particular thing. It’s probably a series of things, call it a gut feeling. I just have that. And I have the same thing for mistrust. Right? And I think that this kind of tacit knowledge and articulate knowledge is undervalued in our society. It’s undervalued because we always want to be able to explain the science and give the hard reasons for it. But a lot of life doesn’t work like that.

Work is a remedy for worry

You ideally never want to be bored. Transmute boredom into exceptionalism…what better do you have to do? Instead of decaying and doing nothing in the purgatory of boredom invest your time into doing something.

Reality operates on an as-needed basis

Reality operates on an as-needed basis. We are in a cause & effect world. You don’t get surplus oxygen and blood flow until you make the demand for supply. You don’t start the digestive process until there is a demand seen from the supply of food. You don’t unlock your best self until there is a demand for the supply of your best self. It is through doing more we make this demand for more supply.

When you give more

When you give more you’ll get more. You get what you give. When you give a lot you’ll get a lot. When you give the bare minimum you’ll get the bare minimum.

When things go wrong in your life

When things go wrong in your life, nobody cares. All the mental energy that you use to elaborate on your misery would be far better used trying to find the one, seemingly impossible way out of your current mess. It’s best to spend zero time on what you could have done and all of your time on what you might do.

One of the most valuable skills you can adopt

One of the most valuable skills you can adopt in life is doing things when you don’t feel like doing them. The person who carefully designs their daily routine goes further than the person that negotiates with themselves every day.

If you ever find yourself stressed

If you ever find yourself stressed, overwhelmed, sinking into stasis despite wanting to change, or frustrated when you can’t respond to new opportunities, you need more slack in your life. You’re efficient when you do something with minimum waste. And you’re effective when you’re doing the right something.