Religion | self help

“Have you ever been bitten by an elephant? How about a mosquito? It’s the little things in life that will bite you. For most of us, it’s the frequent, small, and seemingly inconsequential choices that are of grave concern. I’m talking about the decisions you think don’t make any difference at all. It’s the little things that inevitably and predictably derail your success. Whether they’re bone-headed maneuvers, no-biggie behaviors, or are disguised as positive choices (those are especially insidious), these seemingly insignificant decisions can completely throw you off course because you’re not mindful of them. You get overwhelmed, space out, and are unaware of the little actions that take you way off course. The Compound Effect works, all right. It always works, remember? But in this case it works against you because you’re doing… you’re sleepwalking.”

Excerpt From: Darren Hardy. “The Compound Effect.”

“Dream a little. If you have time left, spend some time dreaming a bit about what you’d like to see happen. In an ideal world, how would you spend your days, what kinds of opportunities would you have, and who would you interact with? Are there latent dreams or ambitions that you’ve allowed to fall to the side that you need to pick up, dust off, and begin acting on? Are there any items that you would add to the “before I die” wall that you’ve been neglecting because you simply didn’t know where to begin? If something comes to mind every day as you engage in this exercise, then it’s something to pay attention to.”

Excerpt From: Todd Henry. “Die Empty.”

“There is a revealing story that tells how the Buddha taught one of his followers a technique for fighting the inevitable dukkha that appears in our lives.
“If a person is walking through the forest and is shot by an arrow, is it painful?” asked the master.
“Of course,” answered his follower.
“And if he is then shot by a second arrow, is it even more painful?” the Buddha continued.
“Of course, much more than the first.”
“The first arrow represents the bad things that happen to us, which we cannot avoid,” the Buddha concluded. “Those things over which we have no control. But we are the ones who shoot the second arrow, inflicting unnecessary damage on ourselves.”
The second arrow is what, in modern times, has been termed meta-emotion: what we feel about what we have felt.”

Excerpt From: Héctor García. “The Book of Ichigo Ichie.”

“Not everyone finds themselves in a position to reveal some world-changing government secret. Not everyone is there when somebody falls into the water and can’t swim. Not everyone who gets a call to go into nursing finds the field so primitive that even a little bit of knowledge can be revolutionary. Not all of us are “lucky” enough to be of military age when Leonidas selected his three hundred, or to be a screenwriter called to testify against our colleagues in Hollywood, or to be a feminist during the suffragette movement. If that’s what you want to call luck .”

Excerpt From: Ryan Holiday. “Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave.”

“Givers are also more likely to end up at the bottom of the success ladder. Success involves more than just capitalizing on the strengths of giving; it also requires avoiding the pitfalls. If people give too much time, they end up making sacrifices for their collaborators and network ties, at the expense of their own energy. If people give away too much credit and engage in too much powerless communication, it’s all too easy for them to become pushovers and doormats, failing to advance their own interests. The consequence: givers end up exhausted and unproductive. Since the strategies that catapult givers to the top are distinct from those that sink givers to the bottom, it’s critical to understand what differentiates successful givers from failed givers. ”

Excerpt From:  Adam Grant, “Give and Take“

“In this book so far, we have explored the many ways in which conventional approaches to happiness and success seem to backfire, for the same essential reason: that there is something about trying to make ourselves happy and successful that is precisely what sabotages the attempt. But there is an even more unsettling possibility. What if the problem is not just one of technique? What if we are mistaken, not only about how to change ourselves but also about the nature of the selves we’re trying to change?”

Excerpt From: Oliver Burkeman. “The Antidote.”