More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Once you decide on it, the requirement is a commitment to live it fully. Not hope. Hope may get us out of a rut, but it will not transform. Only fierce action, doing whatever it takes. Knowing that we will fall often, but we will pick ourselves up, move forward, keep our commitment to ourselves because it is the most important one there is.
The good news: it gets easier a...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
The bad news: you must continue to do it. Even when you don’t want...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
No matter how smart we may think we are, no matter how committed we are to our truth, we can lose our way. We’re human. Made of flesh and feelings, not armor. And knowing that, there is something we can do to let in the light when we’re fighting it the most.
Set the ego aside. Reach out, share your truth, tell someone, “This is who I am. This is what I stand for. Hold me to it.” Be accountable.
My truth. That you will read it is a gift to me. I may never meet you, but that’s ok. I smile, knowing that we are links in a beautiful chain connected in ways deeper than we can imagine.
Whatever you experience in your life, choose for it to make you grow in amazing and unbelievable ways. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to those who came before you. You owe it to those connected to you who you’ll never meet. You owe it to those who have yet to come into your life.
If my company had not failed, the book would not have been written. And if the book had not been written, one of those lives might have gone.
Now I know what success is: living your truth, sharing it. Whether through a book, raising a child, building a company, creating art, or a conversation. Whatever human endeavor we choose, as long as we live our truth, it is success.
Our minds are creatures of habit. Conditioned patterns, loops upon loops. Most, ironically, seemingly mindless. Most, not helpful.
This is why an anchor is a powerful tool.
That is the reason why I listen to the same music when I meditate.
I have positive associations to this piece.
I’ve noticed that all I have to do is go outside with my coffee and my mind naturally shifts to love.
ONE TRUE THING
This is most significant practice. If in stuck, Write a true sentence. Something that is real for me. No showing off, no extrapolation, just a simple string of words that equal what I know to be true.
Hemingway, whenever he was stuck in his writing, would tell himself to write one true thing. A true sentence. Then, he would write another. And another.
Write a true sentence. Something that is real for me. No showing off, no extrapolation, just a simple string of words that equal what I know to be true.
Say one true thing to ourselves. And then another. And another. This dislodges the mind unlike anything else.
It’s not comfortable, mind you. Truth isn’t always. It requires facing fears, standing up to dragons. They are illusions — all fear is — but the only way to overcome them is to face them, say to ourselves: this is what I know to be true. And list it.
Whatever I’m avoiding, whatever I didn’t want to admit or was afraid of, it’s right there, staring at me in my own handwriting.
The simple act of putting your truth on paper, only you and your thoughts, it is one of the most powerful exercises you can do.
This is the most powerful fact
RESISTANCE
Resist nothing, accept everything, let life flow.
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
“resist nothing.”
If you think about it, how much time do we spend in our heads wishing things were another way, beating ourselves up, beating others up, crafting a different past, wishing for a different future? All of that is resistance. All of that is pain.
Peace is letting it be. Letting life flow, letting emotions flow through you. If you don’t fight them, they pass through quickly and you feel better.
“That’s impossible,” the teacher said. “If you really sit with it, it will pass through you in minutes.”
Peace is saying to yourself, “it’s ok.” Peace is knowing that the maze the mind plays in is not the truth. Peace is knowing that life is. Just is. How we choose to react to it determines our reality.
There is something magical about creating.
As an author once said, you cut open a vein, bleed. The more you do it, the more you open yourself, the more you trust the process.
As we trust the process, answers to questions, deep ones, those we never even knew we had or were afraid to ask, they come naturally.
I wasn’t crafting a story. I was experiencing it and trying to write down what was happening in the moment.
In the process came a question — the question — and without pause, the answer. It was so simple, so true. But that’s the gift of any art. When we go all in, we find the answers. They’re in us.
Interestingly enough, we often feel that something has to happen for us to give ourselves permission to be happy. A “when I hit this goal, I’ll be happy,” or “when I have this thing or that person or that level of success, I’ll be happy.” I’ve done so much of this. And looking back, I can’t think of a less effective way to be.
I think perhaps a better thing to want is fulfillment. A deeper state, one that comes from within, from being your best self. From living life the way you really wish to live it. Then, happiness emanates from within as a byproduct. Naturally.
And how does one live a fulfilled life? By deciding for themselves what is true — whether it’s love, faith, commitment to family, a missio...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
It’s that simple. Decide what your truth is. Then live it.
“Life is emotion,” he said, “life is feeling. If you’re not feeling, you’re dead.” He paused. “Suffering is in the resistance. When we resist the moment.” Suffering is when we resist the moment.
All suffering is when we say “no,” when we say, “I want it another way,” when there is no surrender to the present.
“Freedom,”
“is when we fully open ourselves. To the moment. Experience the mom...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
There is no should. There only is.
And when you accept that, letting the emotion rise, the feeling crest and crash, say to it, “it’s ok. I accept you.” Even say to it, “I love you.” There is power there. There is freedom.
No matter how intelligent you were in your corner of the world, you will find individuals here far smarter than you building companies, coding, slipping you term sheets between drinks.
“if I only stuck with what I was qualified for, I’d be pushing a broom somewhere.”
Important
Many, if you corner them, will admit that they wonder if they’re good enough. But what separates them from the rest is that they jump off the cliff anyway. Sprout wings on the way down.
It’s the knowledge — or confidence or hope or sheer stupidity; the word doesn’t matter — that they will figure it out. That’s it. The only qualification you need to create anything.
First, the desire. Next, the belief that you’ll figure it out as you go along. That’s what it takes to make the jump. Even if you have to fake it, that’s fine.
Important
I am not the outcome. I am never the result. I am only the effort.
Right or wrong is a gift of hindsight, and even then there are biases.
