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Life Purpose
What is Life Purpose?
An overarching mission in life. Your life's work. Something important enough, noble
enough, beautiful enough for you to die for. Something you choose to completely
commit yourself to.
Why is it Important?
Having a life purpose grounds you, maximizes your chances for career/business
success, and gives you opportunities for a high-quality satisfaction that comes from
having a great career that has a meaningful impact on the world. Increased flow
experiences. Mastery. Money. Autonomy.
Life Purpose: Key Points

Find something outside yourself that you can commit to. If you aren't sure of what
that could possibly be, commit right now to do whatever it takes to find it.
Your purpose should be about the positive, creative impact you want to have on the
world. What do you want to create? What do you want to express? Who do you want to
help? What wrongs do you want to right in society? How do you want to change
humanity?
"The ignorant work for their own profit while the wise work for the welfare of the
world, without thought for themselves." Bhagavad Gita
It's not about how much money you want to make or who you want to please. It's
about being passionate, expressive, and useful to society.
What are you willing to die for? If you're not willing to die for anything, A) How will
you out-compete someone who is? and B) You will not do what is necessary to be
great. Being great takes too much work.
What is the most meaningful thing in life? That should be your purpose. It's actually
very easy to dig out, but being honest with yourself about it is anything but easy. Your
mind with create excuse after excuse about why you can't do that. Why you can't
make money doing the thing that you find most meaningful.
Purpose is completely personal. There is no right meaning. Different people
completely committed will have completely different purposes and meanings, and
that's okay. Ultimately, nothing is more meaningful than anything else, it's just a
matter of what resonates with you.
There should be no other alternative out there that's more meaningful to you than
the path you're on, otherwise you will always second-guess yourself and pine for that
alternative. As soon as you see such an alternative, that now becomes your purpose
and you must have the courage to undertake any necessary realignment.
You've found your purpose when you've to a path of mastery in domain of life. You
need to see it in your mind: "Wow!
This field is soooo cool! I am going to master it."
Your purpose will take time to grow into. Even once you've got the core it of it
defined, it will start to evolve and specialize as you go deeper into it. You will start to
notice that some aspects of the domain appeal to you more than others. Don't get
complacent, you will have to keep working hard to make small realignments.
As David Deida says, life purpose is like an onion and keeps evolves forever. With
every layer you peal back, you are getting closer and closer to your true self.
Sometimes a particular purpose can be completely outgrown.
That's why you should have two purposes: a general purpose and a specific
purpose. The specific purpose may totally change in a few years, but your general
purpose should stay constant throughout your life. It should reflect your deepest
values without particulars to any job or business. Example, "To create amazing
things that improve society."
Life purpose applies equally well to working for someone else or running your own
business. If you're running a business, purpose is even more important because it's
harder, persistence is more important, and nobody else will be there to motivate you.
Most people fail to live with their true purpose because it takes discipline and hard
work to shift from the wrong path to the right path. Unless you were very luck and
started on the right path early in life, you are probably not on track with your purpose
now. It takes some trial and error to discover what work resonates with you. It takes
time and effort to discover your values and what is most meaningful for you. But then
the real work begins of changing your life to align with your purpose. This is where
people fail. Alignment takes vision, strategy, effort, persistence, courage, learning new
skills, developing yourself, and simply working your way out of the circumstances
you're in. It's much easier to settle for the life you happened to fall into than
redesigning the whole thing. For some people, this redesign is more drastic than
others.
Your purpose should resonate with your on a emotional level because it's the
most meaningful area of life to you. Your purpose should make you cry when you think
about it. Seriously!
When you're on purpose a lot of other issues fade away. Going to the gym becomes
easy. Overeating becomes a non-issue. Negative thoughts disappear. Focus becomes
easier. Sleepiness becomes less of an issue. Loneliness is not an issue.
Attacking the small issues in your life when the big issue (of being off purpose) isn't
resolved, doesn't increase fulfillment significantly and creates distress because the
fixes are temporary and diversionary.
Your family and kids are not a life purpose. Starting a family and raising kids is
great, and challenging, but it is not a substitute for doing work you love. Your kids will
leave the nest at 18 or 22, or you might have a falling out with your kids. Where will
you be then? No. You need something in your life that you can own, that you are
developing mastery in. And that pays the bills.
Strategic Thinking
What is Strategic Thinking?
A methodical way of running your life by looking at the ultimate, big picture, and
devising a plan of action that will make it come about. Good strategy involves
collecting information, analysis, planning, execution, and feedback.
A happy, successful life must be methodically designed. It's silly to expect this to
happen spontaneously. Don't be afraid to get strategic. You have to study, plan, and
analyze for years into the future.
Strategic Thinking: Key Points

"Most people do not engage in: a methodical process of questioning, evaluation of
assumptions, investigation, information gathering, analysis, planning, and finally,
action. Most people function in routines they don't question. Living life day to day.
Facing the same problems every day:"
Always
Always
Always
Unable
losing their keys

getting caught in traffic
dealing with the same bottlenecks at work
to communicate or cooperate
"Strategic thinking is about setting goals and developing flexible, long-range plans
to reach those goals based on the careful analysis of internal and external
environments."
"Strategic thinking involving thinking logically and deeply about the future. It means
that where you want to be 5 years from now, 5 months from now, should inform what
you do today."
"Strategy has to inspire. An uninspiring strategy is really no strategy at all."

Mintzberg
You need to start taking the unfolding of your life seriously. Stop letting things just
unfold. Decide to take full control and responsibility for the process. If you were a
general leading an army to defend your country, and failure meant death and rape of
all citizens, you would be very strategic. You would have an ultimate objective in mind,
carefully weigh every single factor at hand, and plan for how to best marshal your
resources.
Personal develop is military campaigning applied to ones life. Most people don't to
personal development at all. And those few that do, do it haphazardly, on a lark,
without a serious, deliberate, long-term plan. Why do most peoples lives suck?
Because they do not thinking strategically about how their lives will unfold. Strategic
thinking takes energy and effort. Living a routine takes no effort and is the default
position.
Must have strategic intent! It informs everything. Strategic intent "A compelling
vision of the future that motivates action. This is what elevates a technique to a
strategy. Essential to any effective strategy."
"Strategy a way of dealing with a constantly changing environment, both
responding to that environment to achieve your goals and attempting where possible
to change the environment to your benefit."
"Strategic thinking is about laying out a solid plan, but also being flexible when the
unexpected inevitably occurs."
"A static plan or thoughtless check-list is a bad strategy. Strategy is not a formula or
a manual. Many people look for a secret strategy when the real secret is thinking
strategically."
Are you the General of your own life? What kind of general are you? Would people
say you're a solid, effective general or a lame, incompetent general?
Every action you take must advance your strategic intent. That means you must
have a clearly articulated strategic intent and you must keep it at the top of your mind
constantly.
"Strategic intent is the articulation of a powerful, achievable, and motivating

stretch goal."
"It means reaching for something beyond your current capabilities and developing
resources to accomplish that goal."
"A good strategic intent alone is not enough. Strategic intent must also align with
certain realities."
"Build up strategic reserves through preparation. Your maneuvers will be limited if

you have no reserves. Therefore you must prepare. Strategic preparation:"
Thorough training
Hard work
Strong discipline
Sound planning
"Since you can't predict what fortune will hand you, you must develop yourself
internally to handle the external circumstances."
"Concentration of force at the decisive point is the key to all strategy. It's all about
directing as much force to one point as possible given your resources. This applies to
war as much as it applies to career development and business."
"Regardless of how chaotic a situation may be, there are principles that can give
shape to your thinking about the situation. Immersion in such principles allows for
genius flashes of insight."
"Strategic thinking:
Preparation of unique capabilities

Understanding of general principles
Detailed tactical follow-through"
A good strategy looks 10 years ahead.

A key to understand about strategic thinking is that strategy is right or wrong
regardless of outcome. The goal is not to guarantee the best outcome. The goal is to
do everything in your power to increase the odds of the best outcome coming about.
You can never guarantee the result. And getting the best outcome by luck is no virtue.
It is better to have used the right strategy and gotten an unfortunate outcome than to
use the wrong strategy and happen to be lucky.
Mastery
What is Mastery?
The entire process of learning a new skill, or developing expertise in some area of
life. Mastery specifically refers to the psychological challenges of building expertise.
Failure to understand how mastery works leads to dabbling and impatience, and
ultimately frustration and failure. Set proper expectations for how to achieve massive
success in business, career, hobbies, and sports.
Mastery: Key Points

Mastery is the process of learning a new skill. You underestimate the importance
skills play in the quality of your life. Man is a learning animal. We have the ability to
expand our abilities through conscious effort, like no other animal. Mastery is the
process by which you become great and success. What is difficult and painful at first
becomes effortless and pleasurable after you've mastered it.
Choose 1 or 2 things that you are mastering over the next 10 years. What are you
mastering? Make sure you are on a path of mastery in your career/work. Do not slack
off in your career too many bad things will happen. You want to become so good at
what you do for a living that you provide exceptional value. Mastery is how you
differentiate yourself from the rabble. Mastery is how to make the big bucks and
amazing art.
Mastery is counter-intuitive is several ways. First, mastery is not about experiencing
endless climax. Most of the mastery process is spent engrossed in bland, diligent work.
To be a rockstar, you first have to learn to play the guitar, and that's not as glamorous
as you'd think. Second, mastery is very difficult because of resistance and
homeostasis. You will come up with excuses to keep yourself at the place you're at
right now. Third, your skills don't progress evenly with time or effort. Sometimes you
put in lots of effort without any noticeable improvement.
Mastery is ultimately important because your strategy should be to be the best in
the world. Being the best in the world is highly desirable because the rewards are
skewed towards being #1. If it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing it at a world-class
level.2
The mastery curve a few peaks, but mostly plateaus. Most of the time you're
working without seeing any results. Are you prepared for that? Or will you give up?
Pop-culture and media aren't helping. An anti-mastery mindset pervades. Discipline
and diligence are not valued. Instead, an expectation is set that we should be
experiencing, quick, effortless results and enjoying endless climax. But that is not how
life works. The reality is, you need to put in your hours. There is nothing glamorous
about creating a 6-pack, getting good at the fundamentals of your job, learning to play
tennis, or getting a college education. There are exciting moments, but most of the
time is spent immersed in uneventful work.
Love the plateau. Since most of your time will be spent working, and not even
seeing much improvement in your skills, you have to appreciate being on the plateau.
Stop expecting climaxes, and start appreciating the subtle joy of diligent practice. Your
goal is to develop a love to practice just for the sake of practice. And don't be attached
to the results. Masters do not chase peak experiences or results.
Consistent practice creates a foundation for your life. It creates a sense of order and
stability. The biggest benefit doesn't even come from the external results you will
eventually get, but the way you feel when you're engrossed fully in mastery. It's an
inner game thing. You feel grounded and you're in flow. Most people don't have that so
they aren't happy.
3 common ways to screw it up:
Being a dabbler always starting things and never finishing them because the
initial excitement wears off.
Being obsessive trying to bull your way through by force. It just backfires and
leads to spectacular failure.
Being a hack getting complacent and only doing enough to get by, without
challenging yourself.
Talent becomes irrelevant when you consider the amount of training necessary. The
hard-working student will always outperform the talented student. This is actually
good news, because it means you can learn whatever you want. Your genes don't shut
you off from any opportunities.
You must be prepared for serious negotiation with your resistance. You cannot slack
off, or bull your way though. You need to walk the tight-rope. Sometimes you will have
to take a step back for every two steps forward. Also be prepared for backsliding.
The plateau or the Dip is actually good. Appreciate it because it's what makes your
skills/career valuable. If there wasn't a long, tough learning curve then it wouldn't be a
scarce skill, and it wouldn't be valuable. So don't be bitter about it. Instead, enjoy
knowing that the long struggle is what sets you apart from the rest.
Just Do It
What is Just Do It?
The idea that action trumps theory by a huge margin. Thinking, talking, and
planning are good, but the greatest point of leverage for getting results is just doing it.
Without action you will not get any results. The reason you don't have what you
want is probably because you aren't taking enough action.
Just Do It: Key Points

You are not taking enough action. No service or product can take the action for you.
Are you doing it? Are you ACTUALLY doing it? It's very easy to fool yourself into
thinking that you're following advice. Let's say you read a book that tells you to set
goals, write them down, and review them every day. Or to write down 5 minutes of
gratitude every morning. Sounds, good, but are you actually doing that? Are you
following the advice to a T? Probably not. It's easy to tell yourself that you're taking
action when in fact you ignore the action or act inconsistently.
In a sense, all of self-help can be boiled down to, Just do it. Taking action is the
single greatest leverage point. Just do is a way to short-circuit the need to study selfhelp, but this is dangerous to say because taking action is exactly where most people
fail and they need improvement in inner resources to make them better action-takers.
But if you can just will yourself into action, go for it. These are the "natural" type-A,
proactive people who would probably have figured it out anyways. Be warned, it's like
trying to unscrew a screw using your bare hands. You can probably do it, but wouldn't
your rather have the leverage of a screwdriver?
Inner game is important, but without action there is nothing. Inner game is only
important in so far as you make it so. If you could just take right action all the time,
you won't need a lot of inner game techniques they are just helpful. The techniques
work, but they are not necessary. That is why many successful, self-made people do
not use or even know about the techniques. They just are intuitive action-takers.
Action is always harder than idle talk, reading, studying, theorizing, and debating.
The people who take action are the ones who learn the fastest and are the most
valuable because they generate results. It's more likely the case that you are
theorizing too much and acting not enough. Stop planning to start a business or to
write that book, and actually do it. No one can do it for you.
On the other hand, some people may have the problem of acting without any
strategy, or they may be using a poor strategy. This is a much easier problem to fix.
Just read up on theory and spend a bit of time each week on strategic planning,
writing out goals, etc.
Happiness
What is Happiness?
A feeling of satisfaction or joy, more even-keeled than pleasure. Happiness is what
we all want to feel and what we ultimately aim for with every one of our actions.
Happiness is what you ultimately want. It's not money or fame, it's happiness. But
happiness is a psychological state. It helps to understand which things are effective at
increasing happiness and which things aren't.
We care about creating strategies that maximize long-term, sustainable happiness.
It's easy to get a quick hit of happiness. The trick is maintaining consistently high
levels of happiness independent of external circumstances.
Happiness: Key Points

Definition of happiness: "the experience of joy, contentment, and positive wellbeing, combined with a sense that one's life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile." 1
Happiness is counter-intuitive. We tend to pursue things that can't make us
sustainably happy and we over-estimate how much happiness achievements like
money, fame, and beauty will bring. Happiness needs to be pursued more subtly. It's
not about acquisition of bling, or even achievement of goals. Happiness is living your
day to day in alignment with your deepest values.
Happiness does NOT equal success, and success does NOT equal happiness. We
want both, but too little of one will limit the other. Happiness and success need to be
brought up together. You should specify for yourself how the two relate for you. Define
what success means to you, but make sure it's linked to your happiness.
Happiness is a set of habits, not a destination. When planning out how you will
increase your happiness, consider the crux of the problem: "Hedonic adaptation The
human tendency to become rapidly accustomed to sensory or physiological changes."
1 You become accustomed to new stimuli, hot/cold, marriage, divorce, promotion, and
even death. A strategy that takes hedonic adaptation into account will focus more on
"soft" forms of happiness like cultivating good habits, personal development, making
deep social connections, gratitude journaling, finding more fulfillment at work, etc.
Being happy is ultimately just experiencing a consistent string of happiness hits
throughout your day, your week, your month, your life. If you buy a new Jaguar, that is
one hit of happiness. If you meditate every day, that is a hit of happiness. If you could
generate big hits all the time, that would be great, but in practice you can't, so the
better strategy is to focus on small, steady hits of happiness. And that's why
happiness activities need to be habitualized. The key question is, what things are you
doing on a regular basis that give you hits of the happiness drug? Working your ass off
towards one grand goal that will takes years to complete just to get one big hit of
happiness is poor strategy because no matter how big the hit is, it will wear off within
weeks, and then you'll be back at your baseline.
Identify your values, identify how you want to feel on a consistent basis, and then
come up with practical ways to honor your values every day. For example, if you value
knowledge, you should be learning something every day. Create a habit of reading one
book a week. Or, if you value love, you should be expressing love every day. Create a
habit of holding a dinner with your best friends once a week. Or, if you value
excellence, you should be acting on it every day. Create a habit of giving your work
everything you've got. Or, if you value health, you should be acting on it every day.
Create a habit of going to the gym.
Happy people tend to:1
Devote a lot of time to family and friends, building great relationships.

Comfortable expressing gratitude for all they have.
Yearn to help others
Optimistic about their futures
Savor life's pleasures and live in the moment
Exercises weekly or daily.
Deeply committed to lifelong goals and ambitions
The foundation for happiness is pretty basic, even in our advanced modern society.
If you ace the following 4 areas of your life, it's really hard to be unhappy:
Career: Have an awesome career that's really meaningful for you. Make it your life
calling. This will handle your finances automatically.
Love: Have a high-quality intimate relationship
Connection: Have 5-7 high-quality friends who to converse with frequently
Health: Take care of your body with proper diet and workouts.
In addition to the core pillars of happiness, you could work on the following areas:
Family
Personal growth, education, spiritual development

Environment
Hobbies and recreation
According to Sonja, happiness is determined by: 50% biological set point, 40%
intentional activity, 10% circumstances. But this is deceptive. The biological set point
is irrelevant because you have no control over that. So that means, in practice, 80%
intentional activity, 20% circumstances. This sounds about right. Intentional activity
means how you think and how you behave. And the key here is behaving in alignment
with your values.
Techniques for increasing happiness from Sonja. Make sure you pick ones that fit
your lifestyle and personality:
Practice gratitude
Practice optimism
Stop overthinking
Practice acts of kindness
Cultivate social relationships
Practice forgiveness
Increase flow experiences
Savor life's joys
Work on your goals
Practice religion/spirituality
Practice meditation
Exercise
Strive to be the source of your own happiness. Don't rely on external circumstances,
stimuli, or people to make you happy. You should be fairly happy simply being by
yourself, running your regular routine. Then everything else added on top of that is a
bonus. Food, drugs, sex, TV, gossip, etc. should not be the foundation of your
happiness. Nor should adventure-seeking. You should be relatively happy sitting by
yourself, alone, in an empty room. If you can't do that, something is wrong.
Happiness Minutes. If you want to be happy you have to invest your daily minutes
into activities that make you happy.4
Be Patient
What is Patience?
The idea that you need to have massive patience when pursuing large life goals.
There is a tendency to expect too much too fast.
If you lack patience, like most of us do, then you will doubt yourself and quit
projects prematurely, leaving a lot of success on the table. Just understanding that big
things take lots of time can make you feel much better about your current situation.
Be Patient: Key Points

Learn to be patient. Sometimes the only thing that leads you to self-doubt and
quitting, is expecting something grand to happen too fast. The mind is very bad at
working with large numbers and planning in time-scales of years. Even if you logically
know that a project should take 2 years to complete, you will tend to stress about not
seeing it progress faster. The mind finds it difficult to see how all the baby-steps you're
taking every day over the span of 2 years will add up to the final result.
Understand that progress doesn't come linearly. If you're undertaking mastery, you
already know that progress comes in spikes. If you're working on a big project, realize
that starting up the project is often the hardest part and takes up a disproportionate
amount of time. Once you get your bearings straight, create a plan, and up build
macro-momentum, you will be shocked how quickly the results come.
The level of patience you afford a project should be proportional to how meaningful
and significant the result will be once realized. So, if the book you're writing has the
potential to change the world, don't get too frustrated if it takes you 2 years to write
instead of 1.
Hofstadter's Law: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into
account Hofstadter's Law."
Motivation
What is Motivation?
The idea that there are different types of motivation (some good, some bad) and
that you can control how motivated you feel.
Imagine being able to generate fresh motivation for anything that you ever wanted
to do. That's powerful! You can actually build the drive to take massive action.
Motivation: Key Points

What is motivation? Simply a drive to act. When you feel motivated, you feel
excited and ready to tackle obstacles.
Motivation = vision = excitement. If you want to feel excited about your life, have a
grand, detailed vision of what your life will look like in the future.
Two types of motivation: extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation is garbage. It's
too shallow to generate massive long-term results. Extrinsic motivation doesn't even
deserve to be called motivation. Remove all extrinsic motivation from you life and
focus entirely on building intrinsic motivation.
Two more types of motivation: positive and negative. Negative motivation is
garbage. It cannot sustain the creation of anything great. Negative motivation peters
out as you get closer to completing your goal, while positive motivation keeps
building. Eliminate all forms of negative motivation from your life.
Two more types of motivation: needs and growth. Needs motivation is about
satisfying your basis needs like food, shelter, friendship, sex, employment, etc. Needs
motivation diminishes as you fulfill the need. Growth motivation is about satisfying
your more noble, growth needs like education, mastery, building deep relationships,
pursuing ideals like justice, equality, or excellence. 3 Growth motivation stays strong
even as you get closer to your goals. Goals like understand and mastery don't really
have a ceiling.
Positive, intrinsic motivation can be created. Vision creates true motivation. A vision
is a grand, detailed mental picture of how you want the future to be. Sometimes
visions come about accidentally, without any deliberate intent on your part. These are
the cases where you find yourself naturally motivated. Other times, you will want to
create motivation for a project or endeavor from scratch. In this case you need to
create a compelling vision deliberately.
What do you really want?

What could you accomplish?
What does the greatest potential of this project look like?
What does your personal greatest potential look like?
What is the ideal?
How could this be more awesome?
How much would others benefit from this?
How much would society and humanity benefit from this?
If you're not motivated and you want to be, sit down and start imagining what the
future could look like for you. Don't pull your punches. Imagine without worrying about
how you'll make it happen. Imagine, visualize, and write down your vision. Examples:
How
How
How
How
How
How
would
would
would
would
would
would
you
you
you
you
you
you
feel
feel
feel
feel
feel
feel
if
if
if
if
if
if
you
you
you
you
you
you
looked ripped, with a 6-pack?

had a business you really loved?
had that awesome career?
were in a perfect marriage?
published a book?
lived on a tropical island?
Creating motivation from scratch is an involved process. You don't just sit down and
write out your vision once. That might give a nice short-term burst of excitement, but
it won't last. You need think about your vision consistently over the course of weeks
and months. The more you visualize it, the more concrete you make it, the more you
repeat it and fuse your identity with it, the more motivated you will get. You should be
thinking about your vision every day.
Your vision must be:
Stated in the positive Think and write about what you want to create, not what
you don't want.
Grand If your vision is too small, it won't be exciting. Come up with an ambitious
vision that scares you and requires you to set up.
Aligned with your highest values Don't create a vision that conflicts with your
values.
Feel intuitively right The vision should make logical sense, but more importantly
is should be a path with heart. It should resonate with your body, not just your
mind.
Once you've defined your vision, keep stoking it as much as you can so it doesn't
die out. Ways to stoke a vision:
Write it down in your Mission Statement and read it every day

Journal about it consistently
Do affirmations on it
Do visualization and seeding on it
Create a vision board
Brainstorm new ways you can bring it to life
Think about it throughout your day, while you're in the shower, driving, eating, etc.
Talk about it with friends, family, and colleagues
Take action towards it every day, even if its just a baby step.
Think about the impact your vision will have on others. Who else besides yourself
will benefit? How are you going to improve the world or people's lives by doing this?
Make sure your vision is creative, not merely attempting to solve a problem. Robert
Fritz makes an important distinction between oscillating structures and creative
structures. An oscillating structure gets set up whenever you're taking action to avoid
a problem. A creative structure gets set up whenever you're taking action simply
because you desire creation to exist. 1 Only creative structures can advance you.
Oscillating structures will keep you stuck at about the same level of success.
Emotional Awareness
What is Emotional Awareness?
The idea that you can learn from your emotions by understanding how to identify
them and deciphering what they are telling you.
Why it is Important?
Emotions control your behavior. Your behavior determines your success and
happiness. In the end, what you're after is a certain set of positive emotions (to be
happy) and avoiding certain negative emotions.
Understanding emotions will help you understand and interact with people.
Emotional Awareness: Key Points

We are all driven by 4 core desires:2
Desire
Desire
Desire
Desire
for
for
for
for
control
security
approval
uniqueness and/or oneness
All emotions fall into the following basic categories: apathy, grief, fear, lust, anger,
pride, courage, acceptance, peace.2
Thoughts >> Emotions >> Actions
What your negative emotions mean:1
Discomfort: Something isn't quite right. Get clear about what you want and try
something new.
Fear: Anticipation that something bad might happen. Need to prepare.
Hurt: Sense of loss. Realize that really nothing has been lost, or talk it out.
Anger: A boundary has been violated. Realize that your rule isn't necessarily the
absolute rule. Communicate your rules more clearly.
Frustration: You could be doing better than you currently are. Find a better way.
Disappointment: An expectation of yours isn't likely to get met. Set a new,
empowering goal.
Guilt: You have violated your own standard. Commit to never violating this
standard again.
Inadequacy: You don't currently have the skills or knowledge that you need.
Commit to learning and improving.
Overwhelm: You are overcommitted. Need to reevaluate your priorities and take a
baby step.
Loneliness: You desire to reach out and connect with someone. Need to create a
connection.
Be Proactive
What is it to Be Proactive?
The idea that you need to take full ownership of every aspect of your life and get
excited about your power to improve. Never play the victim.
If you don't strive to maximize long-term control over your life, you will lose control
until you paint yourself into a corner. Being a victim is a sure-fire way to be miserable
and unsuccessful.
Be Proactive: Key Points

Make choices based on how much they empower you. You want to maximize your
control over your life. Sometimes you will face a choice between tolerating a situation
or taking things into your own hands, often while incurring a temporary hit. For
example, you can tolerate the financial troubles your company is facing, feeling
insecure about the future of your position and paycheck, or you can make the hard
choice of taking control. Control in this case might mean changing companies, or
starting your own business. Choosing to tolerate something will eventually come back
to bite you in the ass. Ideally avoid it altogether or do it only for a short time.
Tolerating things long-term is a horrible strategy that will lead to depression, misery,
development of neuroses, and ruin your chances for success.
Don't let other people or circumstances control your life if you can avoid it.
Obviously you can't control everything, nor should you be an obsessive control freak,
but you should take actions that maximize your long-term control over life. Aim to be
in control of every part of your life that's central to your happiness: your career, your
intimate relationship, your health, your social life, your family, your personal
development, and your finances. The best way to control is not to dictate terms or use
excessive force, but simply position yourself to have options. The worst thing in the
world is leaving yourself with no options in your career, relationship, social life, health,
etc. When you have no options you tend to become desperate and do stupid things.
Don't ever give up agency to another person, thinking that they will look out for
you. For example, if you girlfriend says she's staying on top of her birth control, there's
a tendency to want to be believe, but this will get you into big trouble. It's not that she
might be lying, it's that not even she has 100% control, and in this case you have to
trust her to have self-control and consistency. The same goes for putting your full trust
into your attorney, business partner, clients, accountant, etc. You need to maintain an
active eye on your interests. You need to stay proactive in all these situations.
Take Responsibility
What is Take Responsibilty?
The idea that you need to take complete responsibility for everything that happens
in your life, even the things that seem out of your control. Your life is a perfect
reflection of your thoughts.
You have way more control over your life than you give yourself credit for. You
cannot a create a high-quality life while stuck in victim-thinking. Stop making excuses
and blaming others for what you ultimately control.
Take Reponsibility: Key Points

Take complete responsibility for everything that happens in your life. Even stuff that
you think isn't caused by you take responsibility for it.
Realize that you can change everything about yourself and your life, far more than
you think possible. It's really amazing that this is the case.
Especially in situations where you feel you don't have control, like your boss treating
you badly, or your spouse abusing you, you need to take responsibility. The fact is, you
still have some control in those situations. There are always alternatives you haven't
considered yet.
If you believe that you have no power to change something that's it, you're stuck
forever. This tends to be a self fulfilling prophecy. As soon as you start to think that you
can't change, you can't change. And once you start thinking you can change, you are
able to. Funny how that works. It's tragic when you are the cause of your own
suffering.
Especially take responsibility for you how much time you have in the day and you
schedule! You ultimate control your entire schedule. If you feel overwhelmed, like
there's not enough time in the day, that's not an external problem, that's an internal
problem.
Normalize Expectations
What is Normalize Expectations?
The idea that you should normalize your expectations when working on an
important project. Expectations control how you feel you are doing and when you feel
like quitting.
Unrealistic expectations make you feel like you're failing, making you more likely to
quit.
Normalize Expectations: Key Points

Your performance and your ability to perform consistently over long periods of time
is greatly influenced by how well you think you're performing, and that depends on the
expectation you set for yourself. It's very possible to set yourself up for failure right
from the get-go by setting unrealistic expectations. If you expect to become a doctor
after 1 year of college, you've as good as failed. If you expect to single-handedly build
a 100-story skyscraper, you've as good as failed. If you expect to become a good
pianist after 1 year of practice, you've as good as failed. If you set such unrealistic
expectations, you will inevitably quit a few months down the line as you start to see
how impossible your expectations are too meet. Or you will put more and more
pressure on yourself to increase the pace until you burn out.
Setting proper expectations is tricky because it is certainly possible to be too
conservative. You need to strike a balance between optimism and realism. There's
nothing wrong setting an optimistic goal like, "I will be the best basketball player in the
world." Statistically, this is very unlikely. Chances are you won't be the best basketball
player in the world, or even in the top 100, but it's okay because this goal has heart
and is in fact possible if you're willing to do the work. And even if you fail, you will can
still do very well because you show a willingness to work for it. But there is a huge
problem with setting a goal with a totally unrealistic timeframe like, "I will become
Look around you to see roughly how much time and how much work it takes other
people to accomplish what you've set yourself out to accomplish. Don't let that limit
you, but be informed about what it takes. Most people underestimate the work
involved in achieving something. If it takes 8 years of medical school for the average
doctors, that's probably how long it will take you, unless you've got some ace up your
sleeve.
Don't attach time limits to large goals. You simply can't know how long it will take
you to achieve something large that hasn't been done before. The key is to make your
goal so meaningful and important that it will be worth accomplishing even if you're
two or three times behind schedule. If you goal is big enough, like to become an A-list
Hollywood actor, it doesn't really matter if you accomplish it in 3 years or 10 years. It
would be great no matter how long it took to accomplish. Be aware of goals that are
only worthwhile to you if you accomplish them within a certain narrow time limit.
Contemplate this: a major goal will take 5 months to 6 years to accomplish. 1 How
does that change your expectations? How does that change the pressure you're
putting on yourself? How does that can you thinking about pacing and the need for
persistence? We are not very good at thinking in time spans of over 1 year, but that's
critical to your success.
Principle of Right Action

What is the Principle of Right Action?
The idea that you need to always be doing the right thing even when you don't feel
like it.
Imagine how awesome your life would be right now if you took right action all the
time. Doing the things you have to do even when you don't feel like it builds willpower
and creates a habit of success. Right action is necessary to succeed in business,
career, relationships, fitness, parenting, school, etc.
Principle of Right Action: Key Points

Definition: doing what is necessary even when you don't feel like it.
Must obey the principle of right action at all times. Imagine how awesome you
would be if you always took right action. You would be a rock star! The problem is that
it's really hard to do, especially if you're not in the habit of doing it, or operating out of
lower-consciousness.
There is no magic pill that will let you get around this. No product, no service, no
coach, no doctor, no therapist, no amount of love or money. Your success and
happiness is directly proportional to how well you obey the principle of right action:
Are you doing the things you know you need to be doing? It's never going to be 100%,
but it should be 70% at least. Less than 70% will make you miserable.
How do you take right action? You just force yourself to do it. There are no tricks.
Sometimes it just takes a lot of screwing up to generate the emotional leverage you
need to take more right action. Sometimes you can just will yourself to do it because
your vision is compelling enough.
Extrinsic Motivation
Extrinsic motivation isn't reliable or strong enough to create anything great. You
won't deeply fulfilled if your life is a game of chasing carrots and avoiding sticks.
Extrinsic Motivation: Key Points

As a long-term strategy, seek to identify and convert all externally motivated
activities in your life into internally motivated ones. Do things because you want to,
not because you have to. Do things that are deeply meaningful for you, regardless of
who it fits others.
For example, if you are only motivated to go to work because it pays your bills,
identify that as a source of extrinsic motivation and make plans to change it. If you're
sticking in your marriage just to please the kids, but you no longer want it any more,
makes plans to change. Everything you do should be driven from you own internal
energies, not from society, friends, family, or life circumstances. You need to position
yourself to be driven from the inside, not the outside. This is important because
outside drives can't get you very far. The only thing extrinsic motivation can do is
drive you to serve other people's agendas and create an average existence for
yourself. But that's not living your own life, that's living a half-life. You cannot be in
your Zone of Genius while driven by external rewards and punishments.
If you're doing something right now for extrinsic reasons, and yet you feel its
important for you to keep doing it because it also satisfies intrinsic value, drop all the
extrinsic reasons and only do it for the intrinsic ones. This is not mere semantics. It's
often the case that we do things that we truly value, but as we do them we are driven
by extrinsic motives. For example, you might be in school earning good grades
because you really like the approval of the teachers and your parents. But deep down
you also value learning and knowledge. However, you are actively driven by the
external validation you parents give you. The solution is to do some soul-searching
and connect with your intrinsic desires, cutting off the external validation. This is an
internal shift, but it's not trivial. Do this in all parts of your life.
80/20 Rule
We are all busy doing the wrong things. Stop wasting time on activities that aren't
actually making you happier or more successful. The 80/20 rule is the ultimate timemanagement technique, reducing feelings of stress and overwhelm.
80/20 Rule: Key Points

It's a rule of thumb in nature that 80% of the results comes from 20% of the effort.
The other 80% of the effort is only producing 20% of the results. This is true in
business, your work life, your relationship, your gym routine, your diet, you parenting
everything. Unless you've gone through a done an 80/20 analysis of your life, you
are wasting a ton of time and energy doing things that are not effective.
Pick an area of your life and go through it, asking the question: Which 20% of my
effort is producing 80% of the results? Once you find it, do more of that and less of the
stuff that's ineffective.
Learn to apply it to all parts of your life. Eliminate all the shit you do that isn't core
to your purpose in life.
It's a great relief that I don't have to complete everything I come up with.
Comprehensiveness is not an effective way to get things done because then 80% of
what you are implementing is only producing 20% of the results, wasting time and
energy. I don't have to beat myself up over not doing everything as long as I do the
high-impact stuff.
Buying a MacBook Air was a really great idea. I thought it might just be an impulse
buy because it was just a gadget, but it moving all of my notes to it turned out to have
huge benefit. Seeing the power of this single decision now I have the urge to double
down and buy an even better MacBook Air, with more hard drive space, more RAM,
and faster CPU. But will that upgrade get me meaningful results? Perhaps hard drive
space will as I run out, but I really don't have an issue with RAM or CPU. The limiting
factor right now is how much time and effort I put into taking notes, not my PC's
performance. Acting on this poses two problems: 1) money could be invested more
effectively, 2) deluding myself into thinking this is an improvement, 3) time and
energy will be spent purchasing and upgrading.
Invest in Yourself
Big, stable success is built by continually investing in yourself. You are your own
greatest asset and source of success.
Invest in Yourself: Key Points

Your best investment is yourself. The only thing that you're guaranteed to stay with
you throughout your life is YOU. You are your most important asset because you can
generate assesses. Live your life as though this was true for you.
Forget the bling, forget the stock market. It's not about immediate cash, it's about
long-term ROI. You can't lose the money you put into yourself, for example, education
and personal development. You get at least a tiny positive ROI. And that compounds
over time. Invest in intangibles like skills, workshops, seminars, books, education,
coaching, therapy, travel, etc. Don't worry too much about investing in tangible things
like gadgets, stocks, gold, toys, house, car, real estate, etc.
Provide Value
Solid financial and career success comes from providing massive value to others. If
you skirt this principle, you will end up in a world of pain, with unsatisfying or
ephemeral successes. People are attracted to those who they perceive as give out lots
of value.
Provide Value: Key Points

In your business, career, and relationships, focus on providing the other party with
as much value as possible. Counter-intuitively, the more you focus on giving others
something good, the less you will have to worry about taking care of yourself, because
the value you provide will make you valuable. The mindset to extract maximum value
is backwards and will limit your potential. People will shun you once they see that
you're trying to take more than you give. People will love you once they see that you
give more than you take.
If you don't have sufficient value to give away right now, focus on how to generate
massive value, rather than looking for more effective methods of leeching value from
others. Yes, you can learn to become a every efficient leech, but this will backfire in
the long-run.
How can you give more in your business? How can you give more in your job? How
can you give more in you relationship? How can you give more to your friends? Start
seeing yourself as a giver. Develop a love for generous giving without expecting
anything in return.
Sedona Method
The Sedona Method is extremely effective at managing negative emotions that
make you unhappy and tend to derail your goals.
Sedona Method: Key Points

The Sedona Method is a very simple but powerful mental tool for releasing negative
emotions. It's also a framework for understanding what emotions are and how they
control your life.
Sedona emotions framework:
All negative emotions are useless and can be released at any time, with your
choosing. 1
Even positive emotions can be a hurdle and should be released. 1
All emotions fall into the following basic categories: apathy, grief, fear, lust, anger,
pride, courage, acceptance, peace. 1
In the end, all emotions boil down to 5 basic human needs: 1
o Need for control
o Need for love
o Need for approval
o Need for uniqueness
o Need for oneness
You create resistance to anything whenever you tell yourself that you "must",
"should", or "have to" do it. Resistance can be released just like any other
emotion. 1
Sedona Method for releasing emotions:
Step #1: Allow yourself to feel the emotion and label it.
Step #2: Ask yourself, "Could I let it go?"
Step #3: Ask yourself, "Would I let it go?"
Step #4: Ask yourself, "When would let it go?"
Step #5: repeat steps 1-4 at least 3 or 4 times, or until you can't feel the emotion
any more.
So what's the catch? Is the Sedona Method too good to be true? It definitely works,
but you have to actually use it. The catch is that you will either be too lazy to use it for
minor emotional annoyances, or you will be so triggered during a major emotional
upset that you won't have the consciousness to run Sedona. But if you really want to
master it, you can, and it will remove a lot of needless pain from your life.
Counter-intuitively, positive emotions should also be released because they can
keep you from achieving your goals. For example, you can be so excited about starting
a new project that you never start. Releasing the emotion of lust, in this case, would
free you up to start the project. Releasing a "positive" emotion like lust will not
eliminate your motivation. What you're actually doing is just releasing the emotional
attachment to the outcome, freeing yourself to pursue your goals in a detached, evenkeeled way.
Shadow Work
Shadow work gets you to release old childhood blocks that hold you back from
happiness and success.
Shadow Work: Key Points

Clearing up past traumatic events is important for moving forward. If you don't clear
them up, you'll be stuck in the past and repeatedly frustrated.
What elements of yourself are you keeping caged up and locked away? What
aspects of yourself are you denying?
Exercise: Who are the 3 people you despise the most? What 3 character traits make
each of these people so despicable? Now, in what parts of your life do you act the
same way? 1
Meditation
What is Meditation?
The idea that you should develop a habit of daily meditation as a way to calm and
discipline your mind. Mediate for 20 minutes every day and the quality of your life will
dramatically improve after a few months.
Meditation solves so many problems at once: it builds discipline and willpower, it
eliminates stress and negative thinking, it makes you present and happy without
external stimulation, it cures loneliness, it improves work performance, and it can lead
to enlightenment.
Meditation: Key Points

Biggest reason to meditate is get control over your automatic negative thoughts.
Your mind is like a drunken monkey stung by a scorpion, and it's keeping you for
success and happiness. 2
How to meditate: there's a lot of needlessly complex theory floating around. In fact,
meditation is the simplest thing in the world:
Sit in a chair in an quiet room all by yourself, away from distracting images or
scenes. Sit with a relaxed upright posture. Breath slowly, deeply, and consistently
using your stomach. Keep your eyes open. Quiet your mind and try not to think
about anything at all. Sit perfectly still. Be totally present. As soon as a thought
comes up, notice it and release it, clearing your mind once again. Keep doing this
every time you notice a new thought come up. Do not fall asleep. Do this for 20
minutes straight. Do it daily, without ever missing a day.
Meditation must be made into a daily habit. There is no point in meditating if you
skip days all the time. It takes weeks and months of consistency to start getting the
real benefits. It's vital that you do it every day.
Although meditation is extremely simple, it is not easy. In fact, it's extremely
difficult, especially at first, because your mind is out of control. You cannot maintain
control over your mind for probably more than 5 seconds. That's okay, are just now
been humbled and are starting to realize what it will take to develop true self-control.
Raise the priority of meditation relative to everything else in your life. The hard part
about doing meditation is blocking out the time. You will never do it unless you put
meditation ahead of work, and other "urgent" things. Schedule a fixed time when you
can meditate. Morning or night works best because you have less distractions.
Common doubts about meditation:
Thinking that missing a day is okay. No, it's absolutely not! If you miss a day, you
might as well not start, because you will never be able to keep it up.
Thinking that it's not as important as work. It amplifies your work. It makes you
focused and clear-minded to do great work.
Thinking that you need special pillows, a special seating position, a special
breathing technique, or a special guided meditation CD. You don't need anything
but a chair.
Thinking that because you're doing it wrong, it's okay to quit. You aren't doing it
wrong.
Wondering if you're doing it wrong. Am I just supposed to sit here and not think of
anything? Yes! Exactly! It will be very hard. Your mind will wander. Don't judge
yourself, just notice it as soon as you can and empty your mind.
Wondering if it should be this hard. Yes! It should be extremely hard. Cool, huh?
Thinking that you need to take a class or read a book on meditation. No. You are
procrastinating. Just meditate.
Thinking that there is something specific you ought to be thinking about while
meditating. No! The point is to clear your mind of all thought. If you are
contemplating the meaning of life, who you are, etc. that is a totally different form
of meditation. Don't use that as an excuse. The point is to clear your time.
Finishing a 20 minute session and thinking that you've failed. You can't fail. Stop
judging yourself. The point of meditation is to do a daily activity that has no
immediate benefit.
Thinking that because you are having an especially rough or busy day, you can
skip meditation. On this day you especially need to make sure you meditate.
All the power of meditation is in the exercise of disciplining your mind. That is the
only point. Rituals, theory, dogma, pillows, correct posture, group classes, etc. is not
necessary at all, and often counter-productive. You can meditate on the couch, in your
bed, on the toilet doesn't matter. Don't get distracted by the ritualistic side of
meditation. Those are just distractions.
The real reason why you don't meditate is that you lack discipline. You are lazy.
That's it.
Law of Attraction
Law of attraction gets you to think constructively about your goals, eliminating toxic
victim-thinking. Law of attraction helps you realize your goals and eliminate worry.
Law of Attraction: Key Points

There is a lot of miss-information and pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo out there
about what the law of attraction. The metaphysics behind it is usually completely
screwed up. Regardless, the law of attraction is a very useful principle if understood
and applied properly.
Definition: focus on what you want rather than on what you don't want. Make a
small mental note of the things you don't want, but don't spend your time and
willpower ruminating about them. That's it, not a complicated idea.
Law of attraction is about making a distinction in your mind about the quality of
your thoughts. Are your thoughts constructive or destructive? (positive or negative)
Constructive thoughts are much more powerful than destructive ones.
On a fundamental level, what you think about affects how you behave and how you
feel. And your feelings affect your behavior as well. If you are constantly thinking
about the things you don't want in your life, you are perpetuating victim-thinking,
which makes you not take the actions you need to be successful. You are also playing
defensively and making yourself feel bad by focusing on the negative. To be
successful, you need vision. Vision is positive, not negative. No one has ever
accomplished anything grand by acting out of fear. You want to feel inspired, not
threatened.
Any at given time, the way the world appears to you, and makes you feel, is a
function of where you direct your focus and the thoughts you have. There are many
great things right now in your life that you could be focused on. There are many bad
things right now in your life that you could be focused on. If you have a mental habit
and that's just what it is of focusing on the negatives in your life, you will be
unnecessarily unhappy and resourceful. More than that, your unhappiness, anxiety,
doubt, and unresourcefullness, will create a self-fulfilling prophecy effect! Fear and
worry attracts failure, and more fear and worry into your life. Confidence attracts
success, which creates more confidence.
Counter-intuitively, there is no need to focus on the negative. Worrying about a
problem seems like it will lead to a solution, and sometimes it does, but many times it
just makes the problem worse. Rather, let go of the problem and focus only on the
solution. This can be difficult to do if you've been problem-focused your whole life. You
need to un-train your negative thought habits.
Imagine this real-world scenario: you're about to go give a speech in front of a large
audience. Your job depends on it, so of course you start paint gloomy scenarios in your
head of how it could go wrong: What if I forget my lines? What if I run out of time?
What if I freeze? Your defacto intention becomes: Please, Don't screw up this speech.
But all this negative thinking has made you feel anxious now and full of doubt. So
when you do get up on stage, your performance will be negatively affected by your
thoughts and feelings, and you will tragically attract the very thing you wanted to
avoid. You have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Alternatively, if you focused on all the
ways you will ace the speech, you will walk on stage with confidence and your chances
of delivering a good performance will have improved. This is why world-class, Olympic
athletes visualize successful performance right before they go out to perform. It helps
them create a positive self-fulfilling prophecy.
Law of attraction applies to goal-setting: always set your goals in the positive. What
is it you want? Forget what you don't want. Any negative goal can be easily flipped
into a positive one. So do it! Catch yourself making negative goals and immediately
flip them around.
Law of Attraction myths:
That thoughts directly attract external, material things to you. E.g., that thinking
about a new BMW is the mechanism by which you get it.
That thoughts have direct influence on the world around you through some
mystical, force-like properties of the natural world.
Demystifying the law of attraction: things don't just get attracted to your thoughts
by some magical cosmic force. Strip all the new-age garbage out of concept and you
get:
Thinking constructively puts your focus on the things you have control over.
Thinking constructively gets you to take more positive action.
It feels better to dwell on the positive, and feeling good makes you more
resourceful.
Thinking about what you want forces clarity, which is an important first step in
getting it.
Try going one full week only thinking about the things you want, and never the
things you don't want. Monitor your thought patterns and see which negative
circumstances tend to trigger you the most.
Just notice how much better you feel when you are always thinking about the things
you want versus the things you don't want. Which would you rather do?
Relationship Abundance
Relationships fail when either party is in scarcity, feeling like they have no other
options. The healthiest relationships are inter-dependent, without any neediness from
both sides.
Relationship Abundance: Key Points

Most relationship problems stem from the more fundamental problem of scarcity. If
you feel like you can't find love with anyone else, you will give up all your power in the
relationship, tolerate all sorts of abuse, lower your standards, feel powerless, and
behave in needy ways that will eventually sabotage the relationship.
The solution is to have more opportunities to meet new people. If you lack these
opportunities right now, it's time to redesign your life. This applies equally to men and
women. Both men and women have problems meeting, new, high-quality dating
candidates. Yet there are millions of sexy people out there. The problem is that you are
not coming into frequent enough contact with them.
Ideally you want to design your life in such a way that when you're in an intimate
relationship you never think, "If I lost this person, it would be really hard or impossible
to find a replacement." As cold as it sounds, your partner must be replaceable. This is
far preferable to the alternative. If you think he or she is irreplaceable, you are firstly
flat out wrong because your judgment is clouded with emotion, and secondly, you will
become needy and likely sabotage the relationship. It's tragic and very predictable.
Stop fixing the symptoms and address the real problem: your own insecurity.
A high-quality relationship is based on independence, not neediness. The two

partners like each other, but are comfortable being alone and in fact need their space.
Neediness is a plague that can be cured, but you have to recognize it first and be
willing to work for the cure.
Failure to cure neediness results in: consistent inability to maintain a relationship,
abusive relationships, co-dependent relationships, feeling lonely and unsatisfied and
unloved, no sex, low-quality partners.
You can sit around on your ass and mope, and hope for the best, or you can fix the
scarcity problem for real. Fake solutions to the scarcity problem include: getting
another date, affirmations, reading a book, complaining to your friends, losing faith in
the other sex, blaming the other person.
Ways to fix the scarcity problem for real:
Go out to bars and clubs much more often

Join meet-up groups where you can meet new people
Go to more social events: church, team sports, school events, networking events,
even Starbucks
Online dating: POF, Match.com, OkCupid, etc. Do it proactively.
Expand your social circle: build more friends, deepen friendships. Get proactive
about it.
Make yourself more attractive:
o Lose weight
o Stop drinking and smoking
o Get a good job
o Address any psychological baggage from your past
o Create an active lifestyle where you are busy with your own things
o Improve your hygiene and wardrobe. Get a makeover.
o Have a life purpose and goals that you're working on
o Read and learn new things
o Take an improv class, improve your charisma and energy
The best ways to make yourself attractive to the opposite sex:
For girls: lose weight, look sexy for your guy >> clean up your diet, go to the gym
For guys: develop the ability to talk with emotion, humor, and charisma >> talk to
lots of girls, improv class
Money
Lack of money, and misunderstand of money, can lead to great misery, from broken
marriages, to heart-attacks, to suicides. Most people have dysfunctional thinking
about money.
Money: Key Points

Make an effort to learn how money work, how it's acquired, how it's wasted, and
what it can and cannot do for you. Popular culture and media does a terrible job of
teaching us about the realities of money. People make catastrophic life mistakes when
they're nave about money.
If you refuse to exercise self-control, no amount of money will be enough. If you
don't understand the basics of how to manage money, you will lose it all, even if you
have a lot right now.
Money is not good or bad. Money is a neutral tool that can be used for good or for
bad, just like any other tool.
Money is important, but it will not make you sustainably happy. Money should be
used to create a baseline level of comfort and security, but it cannot allow you to
attain the highest levels of happiness and satisfaction in life. Money cannot replace
the need for personal growth.
It's hard to be happy if you have no money at all because you'll be frustrated
struggling just to get your most basic needs met like food, water, shelter, electricity,
and healthcare. Getting your basic needs completely out of the way is the best
strategy for self-actualization. You simply won't have the discipline to care about truth,
beauty, justice, or contribution when you can't afford your electric bill.
It's very dangerous to fall into the money trap, where you use money to create an
artificial high, making you lazy and slug-like, and low-consciousness. This is how
rockstars, actors, athletes, celebrities, and lottery winners ruin their lives.
The right money strategy is to make enough to meet your all your basic needs and
basic luxuries, then save the rest for something important. Don't use money to buy
stupid shit because it won't make you substaintially happier. After you've attained a
baseline level of security, use self-development to make yourself happy.
Eliminate the most common limiting beliefs about money:
Money is bad or evil.

Making money is hard.
There is not enough money in the world to go around.
Stupid things to spend money on:
Fancy or additional cars

Fancy or additional houses
Parties
Liquor, drugs, opulent food
Toys and gadgets
Expensive antiques/collectables/art
Expensive fashion
Lavish hotels
Speculative investments
Smart things to spend money on:
Books, seminars, coaching, training, education

Your primary house, basic home furnishings
Your primary car
Utilities
Household supplies and necessities
Travel, holidays, vacations
Productivity technology like: smartphone, PC, laptop, software, LCD screen
High quality whole/organic food
Medical treatment, medicine, vitamins
Starting a business
Professional services: lawyer, accountant, physician, physical trainer, coach, etc.
Hobbies like: sports, musical instruments, fishing, hunting, etc.
Family, children
Entertainment: movies, games, books, dates, restaurants, etc.
Savings, non-speculative investments, 401k, IRA, CDs, bonds, gold, real estate,
etc.
In general, if you're not going to be using it on a daily basis, don't buy it. The
functional things you use frequently are the ones that increase your happiness. Oneoff toys, gadgets, or status symbols will not make you happy.
Do NOT lend money to friends, family, or strangers!!! Money lending is a dirty
business. You are not in the business of lending money. It will only sour your relations.
Contemplate Death
Having a sense that you life is short will give you direction and drive. If you take it
for granted, as a logical fact, then your life will be aimless.
Fear of death is natural and you will face it many times in your life. You will
inevitably fear regretting how you lived your life, and aging, and the loneliness of
death. Better to prepare yourself, so you can die at peace. If you could live out your
life so that you die happy on your deathbed, without any regrets, would you?
Contemplate Death: Key Points

It's one thing to know that you are going to die logically. You already know this. But
consider right now how close you are to death. You can die in 5 minutes by just closing
your nose and mouth. The world could be destroyed by a meteor impact or a nuclear
war tomorrow. Or you can die in a car accident or get diagnosed with terminal cancer.
When you die, in effect, all your experiences, memories, friends, family, and
achievements die with you. In a sense, the universe will end with your death. There
will be nothing more and you will never get another chance. You won't even know you
are dead. Just blackness and void.
When you take a moment to soak this in, you realize that you need to get your
priorities straight and stop slacking off. Start living a virtuous life. Live your life with
integrity. Define the morals by which you will live. Not someone else's morals, but your
own morals:
Don't
Don't
Don't
Don't
Don't
Don't
Don't
do harm to others
do thing thoughtlessly
be moved by pain or pleasure
fear death
concern yourself with the thoughts of others
lie
be lazy
Accept that your life is short. You will be dead very soon, and so will everyone you
know and everyone they know. That means that what they think of you isn't too
important. What matters is what you think about your own life before you die.
There is no inherent meaningfulness to life. You exist for a split cosmological
second, and then you don't. What you did or thought really didn't matter. Stop looking
for meaning out in the external world via fame, recognition, love, money, success, or
friends. You can have those things, but be honest with yourself: these things will not
give you lasting peace. There really is no meaning out there. And the closest thing to it
is the pride of living your life virtuously, with integrity.
Even though life is very short, death is not to be feared. Death is natural. Death is
not bad. Death is not evil.
"Death should not be feared because in the final analysis it is an operation of

nature no different than any other." 1 Marcus Aurelius
When you look at the fact that you will be dead soon, consider what isn't important:
Any sort of fame you've developed

The amount of money in your bank account
Any petty arguments or debates you're having with colleagues, friends, or family
Any sort of social status or external "success" you've built up
How much knowledge you've accumulated
How did you feel throughout your life?

Did you experience the richness of life?
Did you live your personal best? Did you give your all?
Did you contribute something meaningful to the world?
Did you appreciate and understand a piece of the world?
Did I live?
Did I love?
Did I matter?
The point is to live such a meaningful, exciting life that you have no regrets and
your fear of death melts away. Does the fear really melt away? Not entirely, but it's a
lot better than living a small life and fearing death because you know you lived way
short of your full potential.
What are you going to regret the most on your deathbed? You don't regret the
things you did, you regret the things you didn't do. What in life do you want to
experience?
Contemplate about your death every few months. Think about how soon you will die
and how final death is. This is not morose, it is very healthy. It clears out the pettiness
in your life and grounds you. It reminds you be your best self. It reminds you to
appreciate experience for its own sake.
"A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear. The idea of death is
the only thing that tempers our spirit." 3
Meaning of Life
Because you are likely to make the mistake of looking for meaning out in the
external world, where none exists. Save yourself this wild-goose chase by
understanding how meaning works.
Meaning of Life: Key Points

What is the meaning of life? Who said there should be a meaning? There is no deep,
ultimate meaning. It makes no sense that there would be. The fact is that life the
universe doesn't care about you. It's entirely neutral to your aims. You can save the
world, destroy the world, or sit around watching TV your whole life and the universe
won't care. None of those alternatives is absolutely better than the other. Meaning
only exists in your mind. If you do not accept this, you will run around in delusion,
creating a mirage of meaning so that you feel safe and significant. This is not
necessary. Yes, it can be painful to accept that life is completely open-ended, but this
is what makes it so awesome. You are free to create your own meaning.
We all want life to be meaningful. A common mistake is to ground yourself in a
meaning like work, family, religion, pleasure-seeking, travel, etc. But there is no
meaning! It's important to say this because you are likely using these outlets to avoid
having to face the prospect of your own death, and the void of death. Death is real.
The void of death is real. Once you accept this, you can then move on and create a
pseudo-meaning for yourself by commiting to a life purpose, but always realize that it
will never be a true meaning.
Carlos Castaneda:
"A warrior must know first that his acts are useless, and yet, he must proceed as if
he didn't know it. That's a shaman's controlled folly." 1
"Nothing being more important than anything else, a warrior chooses any act, and
acts it out as if it mattered to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he
does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn't; so
when he fulfills his acts, he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or
bad, or worked or didn't, is no way part of his concern." 1
"Only the idea of death makes a warrior sufficiently detached so that he is capable
of abandoning himself to anything. He knows his death is stalking him and won't
give him time to cling to anything, so he tries without craving, all of everything." 1
Outcome-Independence
Attachment to the outcome leads to self-sabotage, disappointment, and frustration.
You cannot guarantee the outcome anyways. Attachment makes you desperate and
reactive. Outcome-independence makes you attractive.
Outcome-Independence: Key Points

Be outcome-independent in your activities, especially work. Counter-intuitively, the
more invested you are in getting the result, the more attached you become, the less
likely you are to get it.
You will keep this book for the rest of your life, building up an ever-large repository
of information and insights. The beauty of the commonplace book is that it's your
personal compilation. The best of the best for you! It organized your mind.
The only thing in your control is how diligently you work. You cannot guarantee the
end result because of external factors outside your control. Stop worrying about the
things you can't control and focus on the things that you can your behavior.
"You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of that work." 1
"Perform work without selfish attachments, alike in success and defeat." 1
"Those who are motivated only by their desire for the fruits of action are
miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do." 1
"Nothing being more important than anything else, a warrior chooses any act, and
acts it out as if it mattered to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he
does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn't; so
when he fulfills his acts, he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or
bad, or worked or didn't, is no way part of his concern." 3
"The spirit of the warrior is not geared to indulging or complaining, nor is it geared
to winning or losing. The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every
struggle is a warrior's last battle on earth. Thus the outcome matters very little to
him." 3
"If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great
deal of effort but with no stress or obsession." 3
By worrying about the outcome, you waste valuable mental resources on something
outside your control, denying those mental resource to very thing that needs them
your work effort. This creates self-sabotage. Wanting something too badly leads to
needy, desperate behavior and rash decisions that undermine your very goal. If you
are outcome-dependent, you are much more likely to quit half-way through a project
when you don't get the results you expected as soon as you expected.
Examples of outcome independence:
When selling your house, focus your attention on the process of selling, not the
final sale price. You have no control over the final sale price, but you do control
how many ads you run.
When losing weight, focus your attention on the process of going to the gym, not
your weight. You have no control over how many pounds you shed, but you do
control how consistently you go to the gym.
When writing a book, focus on your writing, not the amount of copies you'll sell.
You have no control over how many books you'll sell, but you do control the depth
of your research.
Don't start an endeavor or project attached to a particular outcome. You cannot

directly control how many units you'll sell, how much weight you'll lose, what ranking
you'll get, how much money you'll earn, how many clients you'll attract, or how
popular you'll become. Don't even try to worry about these things. Instead, accept that
you can only control how hard you work.
Use Sedona Method to release your craving for the outcome. Don't worry, you'll still
be motivated to pursue it, you just won't be crazed. It's better to pursue your goal in a
steady, even-keeled way.
John Wooden is an amazing example of outcome-independence. He never cared
about the scoreboard. All his energy went into improving seemingly trivial aspects of
his practice sessions. The high scores and championship wins came out of that. He
never encouraged his players to worry about the scoreboard. 4
Try to only take on projects that you would enjoy doing regardless of the outcome.
Journey vs Destination. Enjoy the process of what you're doing.
Career
If you don't understand how a career is built, you'll end up with a dead-end job that
makes you miserable and financially stuck.
Career: Key Points

There is a difference between a job, a career, and a calling. Job = a way to pay the
bills. Career = a path towards increasingly better work. Calling = work that is central
to your life and identity. 1 Since you'll be spending at least 40 hours/week working, for
most of your life, make sure your work is your calling.
It is a huge strategic blunder to look at work as merely a way to pay the bills and
advance recreation and hobbies. If your work doesn't make you thrilled, you are
missing out on a huge chunk of happiness time.
Think at the career-level, not the job-level. No particular job you have is as
important as your overall career arch. Choose a field/niche/market that you will build
your career in. If the niche is aligned with you, stick with it no matter what. You can
change jobs, but work on mastering one niche. Switching niches is not good because
you have to rebuild your expertise.
Money = value = scarcity = difficulty. If you want to earn more money, have more
perks, and have strong positioning in the workplace, you need to actively develop your
value. Value in the workplace comes from skills, perceived authority, experience, and
demonstrated results. You should be developing these areas constantly, even if you
already have a decent position.
You do not want to position yourself as a commodity worker. Factory workers get
treated like shit and have boring jobs. You want to position yourself as a linchpin
someone who is unique and indispensable to the company. Indispensable means that
you can do something that few other people can do. A linchpin is really an artist,
abstract work that hard to quantify and mechanize. Build up your abilities to this point.
Success in your personal life is about being well-rounded. Success in career and
business is about being specialized. No one wants to hire a generalist. People hire you
to solve specific problems, and they want to hire someone who's the best in the world
and fits their budget. Develop deep expertise in at least one thing. How are you going
to be more knowledgeable and skillful than everyone else in your niche?
If you come to the realization that your current job isn't your calling, don't quit
immediately. Career alignment takes time and careful planning because your
livelihood is at stake. Jumping on a far-fetched plan for your dream career is not smart.
You want to run the numbers and test the waters before jumping into a new niche. If
you're going to quit your job to start a business, make sure you've tested your
business idea first. Don't assume that things will work out just because you have
passion for your new venture.
Unique, interesting careers are developed over time. You don't just create a dream
career from scratch. You test out the waters, build experience, build expertise, build
relationships, and refine your specialty. It can take 5 or 10 years of groping around in
the dark before you hone in on your ideal niche. Have lots of patience.
It doesn't matter what you do, strive to be the best in the world. Life is too short to
be mediocre and the marketplace won't reward you well. If you can't be the best in
your niche, then quit and go into a market that you can dominate. There is nothing
wrong with quitting a niche that you don't have passion or talent for.
Don't expect immediate happiness from your job, even if it's your dream job. Career
happiness comes not only from alignment but largely from mastery. As you get better
at what you do, you will get more satisfaction from doing it. If you're only a few years
into a career, you are still a newbie. You will not be getting the kind of satisfaction that
a 10 or 20-year veteran would get.
Developing a great career takes hard work. You need to get really good. To do that,
you need to put in a lot of hours of dedicated practice. Be so good that people simply
can't ignore you. 1
In today's marketplace, the safe bet the layup is not safe at all. It just
guarantees that you'll be average. If you're average, you're invisible. If you're average,
you can be easily replaced by someone willing to do your job for less. If you're average
you will have to compete on price. Strive to be remarkable. Remarkable is what makes
you valuable, visible, and sought-after.
When choosing a career, make sure the minute-to-minute work is something you
enjoy. If the minute-to-minute feels like a grind, then not matter how prestigious or
well-paying the job, you won't.
To be competitive in today's marketplace, you must be passionate. The ultimate

strategy is to test out different niches until you find one that you're more passionate
about then anyone else. When you're the most passionate, you will be the best.
Do not dabble. Find one niche and dominate it. Every time you switch niches you
waste a lot of resources.
Always be exploring the periphery of your niche. What is the next evolution for you?
Just because you've settled on a niche doesn't mean it can't evolve or become even
more specialized. Schedule time to explore the periphery so that you're slowly getting
new ideas for which direction to advance.
Come up with research missions. 1

Expose yourself to new information from books, seminars, studies, industry
reports, etc. 1
Make small bets with small, exploratory projects. 1
Your career must align with your highest values AND be enjoyable in the moment. If
you want to be a surgeon, you must like working with patients, cutting skin, and
studying medicine. Watch out for careers chosen in the abstract, just because they
appeal to you in theory. Find a way to get a taste of what the day-to-day work will be
like before you commit to the field.
The most valuable work is abstract, where no roadmap exists. If there's a manual
for how to do it, it won't pay well because it can be easily commoditized. Valuable
work requires thought, judgment, accurate perception, creativity, responsibility, and
emotional labor.
You can build passion and motivation for a new career with conscious effort by using
techniques like journaling, contemplation, affirmations, visualization, and seeding.
Just because you love your career doesn't mean it won't be extremely difficult at
times, or that you won't ever want to quit. In fact, you'll come up with plenty of
excuses to quit once your on your ideal career track. This is natural. A strong career
track will be arduous and require personal growth to achieve.
Results sell the best. Experience, a resume, certifications, formal education, and
reference letters are all trumped by results. If you can show someone the great results
you've produced in the past, they will want to hire you even if you don't have formal
training, certification, or a cover letter. The people hiring your are extremely selfish.
They want solutions to their problems. The best jobs aren't filled through resumes
letters and never show up on Monster
Social Conditioning
Social conditioning keeps you from following your heart. Right what you think are
your values might not be your own but those of society, media, or other people. You
cannot be happy living someone else's values.
Social conditioning limits your options in career, business, and relationships.
Social Conditioning: Key Points

Social conditioning is 3rd person knowledge that you've accepted as true based on
hearsay. It's impossible to avoid 3rd hand knowledge you can't test everything 1st
hand but you should try, as much as possible, to verify your knowledge and beliefs
personally. It's very easy to absorb false or limiting information from the media,
friends, and family.
It's incredible how much social conditioning is holding you back from living your
dreams. We are like fish in water, not realizing the effect that social condition has.
Every time you peal back a layer of social conditioning you actually see it you
have an Ah-ha moment. The problem is, most people have too few of them.
High-achievers are iconoclasts that aren't bound up in social conditioning. If you
happen to value what society values, that's fine, but ground it internally, not
externally. There is a big difference between believing that there is a God because
someone planted the idea in your head versus you deriving the idea independently.
Many people have destroyed their lives by getting caught up in false or negative
social conditioning. Fix all of the following bad social conditioning:
Religious indoctrination Watch out for silly, outdated notions about science,
history, politics, human behavior, and morality. Not everything religious is bad, but
even a good idea adopted thoughtlessly, dogmatically, becomes a liability.
Pseudo-science Watch out for conspiracy theories, UFOs, miracles, paranormal,
ESP, telepathy, clairvoyance, creationism, alternative medicine, fad diets and
nutrition advice, psychoanalysis, detoxing, astrology, cryptozoology, dream
interpretation, etc.
School Watch out for false/outdated knowledge, partial knowledge, ineffective
learning techniques, misguided values, government propaganda, etc.
Popular culture Watch out for cultural myths, over-simplifications, two-party
system, stories, news reports, cultural values, being normal, ideas of right/wrong,
heroes, villains, social goals, social priorities, judgments, taboos, etiquette,
government propaganda, military propaganda, standards for behavior, fairy tales
about sex and relationships, etc.
Popular science Watch out for old theories of psychology, entrenched medical
treatments, etc.
Parents Identify and deal with disempowering thinking that your parents might
have instilled in you.
Friends Watch out for peer pressure, upholding a false image, loyalty to
negative or abuse people, etc.

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ACTUALIZED

Life Purpose: Key Points

Strategic Thinking: Key Points

losing their keys

"Strategy has to inspire. An uninspiring strategy is really no strategy at all."

"Strategic intent is the articulation of a powerful, achievable, and motivating

"Build up strategic reserves through preparation. Your maneuvers will be limited if

Preparation of unique capabilities

A good strategy looks 10 years ahead.

Mastery: Key Points

Just Do It: Key Points

Happiness: Key Points

Devote a lot of time to family and friends, building great relationships.

Personal growth, education, spiritual development

Be Patient: Key Points

Motivation: Key Points

What do you really want?

looked ripped, with a 6-pack?

Write it down in your Mission Statement and read it every day

Emotional Awareness: Key Points

Be Proactive: Key Points

Take Reponsibility: Key Points

Normalize Expectations: Key Points

Principle of Right Action

Principle of Right Action: Key Points

Extrinsic Motivation: Key Points

80/20 Rule: Key Points

Invest in Yourself: Key Points

Provide Value: Key Points

Sedona Method: Key Points

Sedona Method for releasing emotions:

Shadow Work: Key Points

Meditation: Key Points

Law of Attraction: Key Points

Relationship Abundance: Key Points

A high-quality relationship is based on independence, not neediness. The two

Go out to bars and clubs much more often

The best ways to make yourself attractive to the opposite sex:

Money: Key Points

Money is bad or evil.

Stupid things to spend money on:

Fancy or additional cars

Smart things to spend money on:

Books, seminars, coaching, training, education

Contemplate Death: Key Points

"Death should not be feared because in the final analysis it is an operation of

Any sort of fame you've developed

How did you feel throughout your life?

Meaning of Life: Key Points

Outcome-Independence: Key Points

Don't start an endeavor or project attached to a particular outcome. You cannot

Career: Key Points

To be competitive in today's marketplace, you must be passionate. The ultimate

Come up with research missions. 1

Social Conditioning: Key Points

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