Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers

by Timothy Ferriss

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage . . .” — Lao Tzu

But . . . that’s the entire point. It’s easy to blow things out of proportion, to get lost in the story you tell yourself, and to think that your entire life hinges on one thing you’ll barely remember 5 or 10 years later.

If you’re outside of the U.S., check suicide.org for a list of international hotlines.

Make it a “mutual non-self-hurt” vow with a friend who beats himself or herself up. Make it about them as much as you. If you don’t care about yourself, make it about other people.

If you can’t seem to make yourself happy, do little things to make other people happy.

“I wrote everything around what we had, so you never had to go search, and you never had to spend anything on the movie.

But lack of resources is often one of the critical ingredients for greatness.

I want all of them to not have enough money, not enough time, so that we’re forced to be more creative.

[I decided to] own a network. You know how many people are trying to own a network? Nobody.

That was the idea—I’m there to learn. I’m not there to win; I’m there to learn, because then I’ll win, eventually. . .

“The technical part of any job is 10%. 90% is creativity. If you already know how to be creative, you’ve kind of got the battle half beat, [because] you don’t need to know. You don’t need to know what note specifically you’re going to play when you get on stage and do your solo.

Even if I didn’t know what to do, I just had to begin. For a lot of people, that’s the part that keeps them back the most. They think, ‘Well, I don’t have an idea, so I can’t start.’ I know you’ll only get the idea once you start.

And if you say you’re not creative, look at how much you’re missing out on just because you’ve told yourself that.

said, ‘I’m going to tell you a secret in life: You never have to be upset about anything. Everything is for a purpose.

If you can have a positive attitude, look at it, and say, “Let me see, what I can learn from this?” . . . Why would you ever get upset about anything?’

So I explained to him that when things are going bad, there’s going to be some good that will come from it.

I’m not trying to sound like Mr. Smiley Positive Guy. That guy ignores the hard truth. That guy thinks a positive attitude will solve problems. It won’t. But neither will dwelling on the problem. No. Accept reality, but focus on the solution.

“You must want to be a butterfly so badly, you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”