mastery.fm – Page 22 – caffeine for the mind & spirit

Break the Chain

What’s the most important thing you want to do before you die?

Consider beginning sooner than you think is possible. If you delay for another day, you’ll very likely delay for another after that… and another… and another. You’ll reinforce the habit of delaying indefinitely, and your desire will probably never happen.

Break that chain by starting today. Just lean into the new possibility space with one 5-minute action. Then repeat the next day… and the next… and the next. Otherwise if you establish the pattern of delay, it will very likely stack right up to the moment of death.

If what’s most important to you has no actionable presence in your reality today, then it has no presence in your reality, not even in your future. That’s not entirely accurate of course since you always could do something later, but the bigger risk is conditioning the mental habit of telling yourself that you could do something later… right up to the point of death. It’s safer to begin stacking the important patterns into your life today.

Death can be one of life’s greatest teachers if you take it seriously. It’s one of reality’s best mechanisms for reminding us not to delay what matters to us.

Steve Jobs:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

(…)

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Loading Likes...

Your Best Self

Steve Pavlina:

I often like to do a simple meditation where I visualize a room with two chairs facing each other. I imagine myself sitting in one chair, and I invite my highest and best self to sit in the other chair. Sometimes I invite my future self, the version of me that’s 5 years older. This works well either way, but lately I’ve been getting the best results by tuning into an alternate-reality version of my present self. His reality is the one in which I’m the happiest and most fulfilled. The most important element of this meditation is that I’m consulting with another version of myself that I feel is wiser in some way.

Then I imagine having a chat with my other self.

The main value in this exercise isn’t about getting specific answers to questions. The value lies in connecting with my true self and getting a better sense of who he really is. What kind of a man is he? What does he value most?

When I understand who my best self is, then I have a clearer sense of the man I wish to become. This understanding makes it easier to set good goals and intentions. When I set goals with this level of understanding, I’m more likely to follow through on them because they’re well aligned with the kind of man I most desire to be. They may be very difficult goals, but I’m less likely to experience self-doubt about my desire for them. I just know they’re right for me.

And:

My lower self likes to ask What should I do? But each time I ask that question, I get different answers, depending on which external influences happen to be the loudest or most infectious at that time.

I find that a better question to ask is: What would he do? where “he” refers to my best self.

When considering different possible paths, I can ask myself, Does this help me align more closely with my best self? If the answer is no or probably not, then I know it’s a path I should reject. If I pursue such a path, I won’t feel good about it, I’ll doubt myself often, and I’ll encounter a lot of resistance along the way. But if it’s a path that does align well with my higher self, then I tend to experience wonderful flow and fulfillment.

The key idea here is to set goals and intentions very carefully. You can waste a lot of time and suffer unnecessary frustration if you try to pursue a path that doesn’t align with the person you most desire to be.

Loading Likes...

What Story Are You Living?

Jen Sincero / You Are a Badass audiobook

Jen Sincero, from You Are a Badass:

We pretty much don’t ever do anything that we don’t benefit from in some way, be it in a healthy way or an unhealthy way. If you’re perpetuating something dismal in your life because of some dopey story, there’s definitely something about it that you’re getting off on.

Let’s say, for example, that your story is that you’re depressed. Chances are pretty good that even though it feels awful, when you feel awful you don’t have to work hard or do the laundry or go to the gym. It also feels very familiar and cozy and comfortable. It gets you attention. People come in and check on you and sometimes bring food. It gives you something to talk about. It allows you to not try too hard or move forward and face possible failure. It lets you drink beer for breakfast.

Let’s say your story is that you can’t make money. By staying broke, you get to be right. You get to be a victim, which makes you dependent on other people and gets you attention. Other people will offer to pay. You don’t have to take responsibility. You get to give up before you start and avoid possible failure. If things in your life fall far below the mediocre scale, you get to blame other people and circumstances instead of taking risks to change it because you can’t afford to take risks.

Let’s say your story is that you stink at relationships. You get your freedom. You don’t have to commit and can keep looking for the greener grass on the other side. You don’t have to risk getting hurt by being vulnerable. You get to complain about always being single and get sympathy. You get the whole bed to yourself, never have to compromise, and don’t have to shave unless it’s summer.

We don’t realize it, but we’re making the perks we get from perpetuating our stories more important than getting the things we really want because it’s familiar territory, it’s what we’re comfy with and we’re scared to let it go. If we’ve been depressed or victimized or whatever since childhood, we trick ourselves into believing that it’s really who we are as adults in order to continue reaping “the rewards.” It’s how we survived as kids, but it doesn’t serve us anymore so we need to get rid of it or we’ll just keep creating more of it.

Loading Likes...

Success & Service

Derek Sivers, on the James Altucher podcast:

When I look back at my life, and what was successful and what wasn’t, it seems that whenever I was focused on me, me, me, me… All my years making music. It’s me up on stage, singing my thoughts into a microphone. Spotlight’s on me. I’m out there promoting me. It’s all about me. I did that for 15 years, and it was hard. It just felt like always an uphill battle. I had some success, but for the most part, it was hard.

On the other hand, as soon as I turned my attention 100% to others, I said, “Okay. Forget me. How can I help you?” That was like the big idea behind CD Baby. When it was just completely putting myself into the service of others and just completely forgetting myself, I ceased to exist, “I am here solely for your service” — then boom! That’s where all the successes seems to happen repeatedly in my life.

Loading Likes...

How to Get Out of a Funk

How do you get out of a funk?

What do you do when you feel stuck, apathetic, or depressed? You may even know what you should be doing to improve your life, but you have no energy or motivation to do it.

Being in a funk is a bit of a catch 22, because the very things that might help you get out of it — daily cardio, a morning routine, social support — are the very things you don’t have any desire to engage in when you’re feeling depressed.

For example, if I stop exercising, I soon end up in a funk. And then, I can’t get myself to exercise, because… I’m in a funk!

How do we get out of this treacherous loop?

The Solution

Here’s what worked for me: daily audio conditioning.

I started listening to hours upon hours of motivational, inspirational audio every day. Podcasts, audiobooks — anything that was related to personal growth & self-improvement.

Within a few days, almost unconsciously, I started taking new actions. My mood started lifting. I started feeling more motivated and productive. I had the urge to start exercising. I began to install new habits and started following through on my decisions, even though days before I had no motivation whatsoever!

Daily conditioning works.

The key is to do it daily, so as to condition your mind with the attitudes and the vibes of the audio you’re listening to, over and over. In truth, you do this every day. Your brain is already receiving and processing input from everything you read, hear, and think about.

Instead of deliberately conditioning yourself with positive audio, you might be listening to media, news, Facebook, negative people, and your own mental loops. The conditioning is still working, but it’s not serving you.

By listening to positive audio every day, you steal airtime from your own thought patterns and feed your brain new mental patterns to chew on.

The Process

You can start with 1 hour of audio a day, but if you really want to shift your mental & emotional state, try listening to 2-3 hours of audio every day for the next 7 days.

Rewire your brain by feeding it an overabundance of new thought patterns.

These could be podcasts on success, self-improvement audiobooks, or motivational audio from YouTube. Anything personal growth-related will work, as long as you’re feeding your brain new ideas & new thought patterns.

You don’t have to take notes or take any action steps from the audio. Not yet. Just put on the headphones, listen, and absorb. Give your brain new input for one hour each day. Then see what that does to your funk.

Listen to the James Altucher podcast. Listen to the Good Life Project podcast. Listen to the Tim Ferriss podcast. Go on a binge and listen to all three.

Listen EVERY DAY for at least one hour.

You don’t even have to be in a low-energy state to benefit from this process.

Try listening to these recordings in a row, and see what that does to you:

Tony Robbins – Ultimate Edge – Disc 2

Tony Robbins – Awaken the Giant Within

(I’m singling out Tony Robbins in particular, because I was surprised at how much energy he has in his recordings, and how amped up he made me feel. Give him a listen.)

The Results

Within a few days, you’ll begin feeling different. You’ll suddenly feel more motivated, and start taking little steps here and there.

Before you even know what’s happening, your mood will begin to lift, fresh ideas will start flowing to you, and you’ll be inspired to all kinds of new actions.

This process works. It worked for me, and it’ll work for you.

Best of all, it requires zero action. You can do the whole thing lying on your bed.

Try it for the next seven days, and let me know how you feel.

Loading Likes...

One Fun Step

Derek Sivers:

If we hate doing something, we imagine it as hard. We think of it as broken into many pain-in-the-ass steps.

If we love something, it seems easy. We imagine it as one fun step.

If you ask someone who hates running how to do it, they’ll say, “Ugh… First you have to stretch. Then you put on running clothes. Then you get the right shoes. Then you have to tie your laces. Then you have to go outside. Then you get all sweaty. Then you have to cool down. Then you have to shower. Then you have to change. Who has the time?”

If you ask someone who loves running how to do it, they’ll say, “It’s easy! You just put on your shoes and go!”

Loading Likes...

Obsession Is Your Only Option

James Altucher:

The obsessed person will beat out the non-obsessed person 100% of the time.

How come?

Because when you are obsessed you see every nuance. You learn from hundreds of mentors, real and virtual, you read every book, watch every video, you remember everything, you compare notes with everyone.

You are a cosmic sponge, soaking up all the information that others don’t see.

Steve Pavlina:

In a given week, where is your attention going? If you aren’t habitually obsessing over your goals, then what are you obsessing over instead?

Grant Cardone:

Your obsession is the most valuable tool you have to build the life you deserve and dream of.

Unfortunately, most people never figure out what they are really obsessed with, because they’ve been taught to deny their obsessions. Don’t let that be you. Find something, anything, that you are obsessed with. It doesn’t matter what it is right now, because you are just going to take the urges, momentum, and fixation on that thing and redirect them.

(…)

What matters at first is realizing you have the capacity to be obsessed.

And:

To have what you want in life, you must give yourself permission to throw yourself all in on your dreams. Make it clear to others that you are obsessed and that, though you would like their support, any expectations they may have of your staying where you are, settling for less than you dream, or being average will have to take a backseat.

Ask yourself, How far up can I go? How much more can I do? And most important, What do I want to become completely obsessed with that will lead to success?

Photo credit: ‘Mad Musk’ illustration by American AF

Loading Likes...

Make Your Bed

Navy SEAL Admiral William H. McRaven:

It was a simple task — mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle-hardened SEALs, but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

James Clear:

For two and a half decades during her adult life, starting when she left for college and extending into her 40s, Lee never made her bed except for when her mother or guests dropped by the house.

At some point, she decided to give it another try and managed to make her bed four days in a row—a seemingly trivial feat. However, on the morning of that fourth day, when she finished making the bed, she also picked up a sock and folded a few clothes lying around the bedroom. Next, she found herself in the kitchen, pulling the dirty dishes out of the sink and loading them into the dishwasher, then reorganizing the Tupperware in a cupboard and placing an ornamental pig on the counter as a centerpiece.

She later explained, “My act of bed-making had set off a chain of small household tasks… I felt like a grown-up—a happy, legit grown-up with a made bed, a clean sink, one decluttered cupboard, and a pig on the counter. I felt like a woman who had miraculously pulled herself up from the energy-sucking Bermuda Triangle of Household Chaos.”

She was experiencing the Domino Effect.

Loading Likes...

The Chestnut Tree

From Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl:

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.

And:

This young woman knew she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, “This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through the window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me. I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here – I am here – I am life, eternal life.’”

Loading Likes...

Read Read Read

James Altucher:

I dive into a book and it breathes life into me. I’m a vampire who sucks the words out of the author until I have absorbed his or her life.

Now I have lived my life and the author’s life.

I live more and more lives. I absorb them and become them, even for a moment, but that moment turns into a memory, turns into knowledge, turns into tools I can use to make my life better.

And:

Here are reasons I read:

– To be inspired. Sometimes I forget that the key to life is to revolve your days and moments around MEANING. That meaning is the fuel of myth and story. Meaning creates The Hero. Meaning is the call to action that drives the hero from a normal person to one who surpasses all his prior abilities and achieves immortality.

– To learn facts. I never argue with people. Most people learn their opinions from their culture, from their parents or friends, from the location they grew up in. I like to learn facts from books. If I want to understand the effect of tariffs on the economy, I read the history of economies. If I want to understand how my favorite comedians succeeded against all odds, I read their biographies. If I want to learn about the effect sugar has on the body I read books about sugar. If I want to learn what radiation leaves a black hole when even gravity can’t leave a black hole I read books about physics.

– To get better at something I love. If I love chess, I read books about chess. If I love investing, I read books about the best investors and the best investment strategies. If I love psychology I read books by the best psychologists.

– To get smarter. After EVERY single book I read in the below list, I felt as if my intelligence was higher, if even for a day.

– To be a better person. What is the role of habits in success? What are the common qualities of people who are happier than others? How have my favorite authors dealt with sorrow and loss and fear?

I want to close a book at the end and immediately want to re-read it. I want to close a book at the end and say, “I am a better person because I have read this book.”

Not “better” than anyone else. Better than the person I was yesterday.

This post makes me want to go out and read every book on the planet.

I also loved this bit between James Altucher and Derek Sivers:

Derek: In one of your books, you said something like, “Pick a subject that you would read a hundred books on that subject.”

James: Yeah. So I say, “Go into the bookstore, which section will you read the entire section of? And then that’s what your — that can help you find out what you’re interested in.”

Derek: So have you actually read a hundred books on a single subject?

James: Oh, yeah.

Derek: Really?

James: I’ve read like a thousand books on a single subject.

Derek: Come on, no exaggeration? Really, a thousand books?

James: Yeah. Like for instance, I love games. So I’ll read – I’ve read at least a thousand books on chess, for instance.

Derek: Really?

James: Yeah.

Derek: A thousand? You’re not exaggerating? You’re not going to look back, ‘Okay. Well, it’s actually 180, but it felt like a thousand?’ It was really a thousand?

James: No, no, no. Ever since I was 18; I’m 48 now. I read you know, a hundred books a year on chess, maybe more.

Derek: Wow! All right. Well, I will just leave my jaw over there on the ground and I’ll try to keep talking.

Loading Likes...