May 2021

When you care more about getting things right than being right, you get better outcomes and you save time and energy.

“A year from now you will wish you had started today.” — Karen Lamb

In reality, addiction can form to just about anything. We attach moral reasoning to it after the fact. The key to solving addiction is to remove stigma and shame, not drown people in it.

People like to use their moral reasoning in order to inflict pain and suffering on everyone else. They see it as imperative to impose their own beliefs on others. They think by cleansing the world, then they’ll cleanse themselves.

Instead of focusing on their own actions and behaviours, they identify the root cause in something outside themselves — an exterior enemy that has to be eradicated in order for them to feel wholesome. They project this hate toward anyone who’s not like them.

In reality, they love sin.

They hate the sinner.

The fastest learners are young children because they don’t care what other people think about them. When they fall, they pull themselves right back up – hundreds of times – because they want to walk and don’t care who is watching them fall in the process. As we grow older, we are not only ashamed when we fall, we are afraid before we even try something new that someone will criticize us.

Learning is a lifelong process as we fall and pull ourselves up, sometimes hundreds of times. But like children who are determined to walk, we can keep uncovering the limiting beliefs that block us from moving forward and change them, one truth and one step at a time.

“The more I know - the more I know that I don’t know.” - Richard Feynman

Being bored takes courage.

Most of us would rather occupy ourselves with our phone, a book, or even the back of a cereal box rather than sit still with no distractions. But this reluctance to be alone with ourselves comes at a cost.

It means we may never discover what boredom actually is: a diving board into the deep end of our mind—and a gateway to something bigger and more profound.

The truth is, there are many astonishing insights waiting for us on the other side of boredom. But to access these insights, we first need to set aside our comforting distractions, if only for a moment at a time.

Being busy isn’t the same thing as adding value.

“Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.” — H. L. Hunt

“If we see someone throwing money away, we call that person crazy. Money has value. Wasting it seems nuts. And yet we see others—and ourselves—throw away something far more valuable every day: Time.”

— The Shortness of Time

“The flaws you see in others are actually a reflection of yourself.” — Eve Branson

Coming to terms with this requires you to drop your ego and be humble, but when you do, you can get to the root of the trouble and start working on yourself.

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?” — George Eliot

You see the world through your perspective, just as everyone else views it through theirs.

People often form assumptions about others’ behaviour based on their own. If they don’t trust others, chances are it’s because they know others can’t trust them.

Nowadays, a person who is listening without his phone and focuses on what you say with intentions — is a blessing. If we start to think about it is even depressing. How have we changed over time?

Few people are listeners because of their busy life. Nobody even has the necessity to talk and opt for scrolling their phones to check their social media instead. Finally, you make that choice to spend more time focusing on that rather than have a real interaction with a real person.

The person who cares for you is the person who is taking the time to listen and understand your needs.

“If I had an hour to save the world, I’d spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.” - Einstein

The act of analyzing and examining assumptions is what makes solutions appear in plain sight.

Stay in search of the clearest definition of your life’s problems.

I’ve found that there is no running from who you are. When things don’t feel right, it reflects a lack of alignment in your life. Who you are and what you are doing is no longer compatible.

Time spent unhappy is an abject waste. Never stop searching for your true path. Even if you never find it, it’s better to die searching than to have never looked at all.

Don’t become a “spiritual person.”

There are many good reasons why a person might choose to meditate—the classic reason being to reduce psychological suffering. Paradoxically, this is accomplished not by trying to avoid or improve one’s experience, but by clearly observing how thoughts and emotions arise, proliferate, and become enshrined in behaviour.

Seeing the whole apparatus at work can be incredibly freeing.

So, seeking to get rid of suffering—whether it’s anxiety, fear, anger, or any other negative emotion—is what brings most people to the practice. And there’s nothing wrong with that starting point.

But there are some misguided reasons to practice meditation. And chief among them is seeking to become a spiritual person. To become a “good meditator.” It’s all too easy to grow more and more precious with your new spiritual ideas and beliefs, and to begin annoying everyone around you.

To be clear, the mistake isn’t in being excited about the benefits of meditation. It’s natural to feel good that you’re training your mind in this way, and to want to share your experience with others.

The mistake lies in forming a new identity out of spiritual life. And then failing to see it.

There is only one way to achieve any goal - fall in love with the journey. And when you reach the goal, you might realize that the journey was way more fun than winning the trophy.

If you are not going to have the courage to take the path you wish to take, despite what the world thinks of you, despite what the world tells you to do, despite all the obstacles that you can foresee, only because it makes you truly happy

No one is going to do it for you.

What society wants for you, may not always be good for you. Society is a large group. And groups search for consensus, individuals search for truth.

It is not acceptable for society to tell you the truth in many things. There are many things that society throws at you all day long, even if you are a smart and critical person, you just believe. But you may be forced and dive deep down, you will find that those are not true.

“I said: what about my eyes? He said: Keep them on the road.

I said: What about my passion? He said: Keep it burning.

I said: What about my heart? He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?

I said: Pain and sorrow. He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ― Attributed to Rumi

Our lives aren’t measured by how many people inspire us, but rather how many people we inspire. Just do yourself a favour and don’t overthink what and how you can begin to best support your target.

If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that big gestures aren’t always what leads to people’s breakthroughs. In fact, for me personally, it was “little” words and actions from people whom I respected that ultimately sparked my fight.

Figuring out what you want to do with your life is a massive question. It’s easy to understand why people feel like they’re behind, as social media paints a picture that everyone is living their best lives but us.

But I don’t know about you, I’d rather support someone’s uncurated picture of them giving training to a group of kids over them talking about how warm the water is in Barbados.

So if you want to be truly rich, don’t get distracted by the big noise — and instead, go small by getting clear on what you can do with what you have to positively impact the people in front of you.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented.

Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-top you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices.

Become more comfortable with being bored. Instead of grabbing your smartphone whenever you have nothing to do, just allow yourself to be bored and present at the moment.

By being present in the moment you train your mind to focus, contrasted with the distracted mindset you foster when constantly distracting yourself with the torrent of information available on social media and the like.

The world is designed to make our lives comfortable. So it tricks us into believing that life’s purpose is to chase comfort.

And therein lies the contradiction.

Avoiding the comfort trap is the difference between who you are and who you could have been.

“Like our stomachs, our minds are hurt more often by overeating than by hunger.”