More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Amy Morin
Read between
December 13 - December 24, 2024
if you keep doing the bad habits alongside the good ones, you’ll struggle to reach your goals. Think of it this way: you’re only as good as your worst habits.
We work hard to do the things that we think will make us better, but we forget to focus on the things that might be sabotaging our efforts.
We make our best decisions in life when we balance our emotions with rational thinking.
It’s about growing, improving, and striving to become a little better than you were yesterday.
Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality. —john gardner
focus on what Jack could still accomplish in life, not what the accident would prevent him from
As long as you feel sorry for yourself, you can delay any circumstances that will bring you face-to-face with your real fears, and you can avoid taking any responsibility for your actions.
It’s a waste of time. Feeling sorry for yourself requires a lot of mental energy and does nothing to change the situation.
A victim mentality is not an attractive characteristic. Complaining about how bad your life is will likely wear on people rather quickly. No one ever says, “What I really like about her is the fact that she always feels sorry for herself.”
Instead of pitying ourselves for what we lost, we choose to feel grateful for what we had. When you notice self-pity creeping into your life, make a conscious effort to do something contrary to how you feel.
If you don’t like the way someone treats you, yet you don’t stand up for yourself, you give that person power over your life.
You ruin relationships. If you don’t speak up when people hurt your feelings or you allow them to infringe on your life in an unwelcomed manner, you’ll likely grow resentful toward them.
Choosing to forgive someone who has hurt you, either emotionally or physically, doesn’t mean you have to excuse the other person’s behavior, but letting go of your anger frees you to focus your energy on a more worthwhile cause.
“My boss makes me so mad.” You may not like your boss’s behavior, but does he really make you feel angry? Perhaps your boss behaves in a manner that you don’t like and it may influence how you feel, but he’s not forcing you to feel anything.
Just because one person thinks something, it doesn’t make it true. Don’t give one person’s opinion of you the power to determine who you are.
If someone says something you don’t like, and you yell or begin to argue, you give those words you don’t like even more power. Make a conscious choice to think about how you want to behave before you react to other people.
successful people don’t allow one person’s opinion to define them.
**
Retaining your power is about evaluating feedback to determine if it has any validity.
Keep in mind that one person’s opinion of you doesn’t make it true. You can respectfully choose to disagree and move on without devoting time and energy into trying to change the other person’s mind.
Simply reminding yourself that you have a choice in everything you do, think, and feel can be very freeing.
Many people shy away from change because they think that doing something different is too risky or uncomfortable.
You won’t learn new things. The world will change with or without you. Don’t think that your choice not to change will prevent anyone else from embracing change. You’ll risk being left in the dust if you choose to keep doing everything the same for the rest of your life.
If you start by changing your life, you can begin to make a difference in the lives of other people.
So often I hear, “I wish I could have more friends.” Don’t wait for friends to come to you; start acting like a friendly person now and you can develop new friendships.
Embracing change is a two-way street.
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. —maya angelou
When you learn to let go of the details you can’t control, the amount of time and energy you’ll be able to devote to the things you can control will give you the ability to accomplish incredible feats.
role. If you grew up in a family where hard work was valued, you may lean more toward an internal locus of control, because you’ll believe that hard work can pay off. If however, you grew up with parents who drilled into you things such as, “Your vote doesn’t matter in this world,” or “No matter what you do, the world will always keep you down,” you may have developed an external locus of control.
Those who strike the right balance of control recognize how their behaviors can affect their chances of success, but they also identify how external factors, such as being in the right place at the right time, can play a role. Researchers found that these people have a bi-locus of control, as opposed to a complete internal or external locus of control.
When you give up your desire to control everything, you’ll be more willing to look around and you may recognize good fortune that comes your way even if it isn’t directly related to your behavior.
Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner. —lao tzu
!!
People pleasers may also fear rejection or abandonment. If I don’t make you happy, you won’t like me. They thrive on praise and reassurance from others, and if they’re not receiving enough positive reinforcement, they change their behavior to try and make people feel happy.
But when you think about it, always trying to please people isn’t a selfless act. It’s actually quite self-centered. It assumes that everyone cares about your every move. It also assumes you think you have the power to control how other people feel.
If you truly care about someone and you believe the person cares about you, you’d have to be willing to tell that individual the truth. You recognize that even if that person doesn’t like something you say or do, he or she can still enjoy your company.
Ever met someone who behaves like a martyr? Such individuals’ attempts to please others actually becomes a turnoff. They’re constantly saying things like “I do everything around here” or “If I don’t do it, no one will.” Martyrs risk becoming angry, bitter people, as their attempts to make others happy backfire.
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying,
4 ref
Your words and your behavior must be in line with your beliefs before you can begin to enjoy a truly authentic life.
Thinking about the concept of cognitive dissonance,
Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. —ralph waldo emerson
The truth is, most of us don’t really invest much time calculating which risks to take and which risks to avoid. Instead, we base our decisions on emotions or habit. If it sounds too scary, we avoid the risk. If we’re excited about the possible benefits, we’re more likely to overlook the risk.
time you grieve over someone is directly proportional to the amount of love you had for someone.
But the truth is, there isn’t a right amount of time to grieve. In fact, you may grieve for years, or even forever, but the amount of sadness you feel doesn’t equate to the amount of love you had for that person.
But you can choose to accept it. If you’ve made mistakes, you can’t go back and fix them or erase them. You may be able to try and take steps to repair some of the damage you’ve caused, but it won’t make everything better.
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. —john powell
Your motivation to do things differently disappears as soon as you begin to feel uncomfortable or upset.
And when we deny our mistakes, we are less likely to examine them and gain any true understanding or lessons from them, making us more susceptible to repeating them in the future.
But once he stopped competing with his neighbors and he began focusing on the things that were really important to him, he felt a lot less resentment toward others. He also became a lot less irritable.
Resentment of others’ success is also a result of deep-rooted insecurities. It’s hard to be happy about a friend’s accomplishments when you feel bad about yourself. When you’re insecure, someone else’s success will seem to magnify your shortcomings. You might also become bitter when you wrongfully assume that good fortune comes more easily to others when you’re the more deserving one.
It’s easy to resent what others have when you don’t even know what you want yourself.
Knowing yourself (values, morals, goals) is the root to curing feeling lack or shortcomings.
Animosity over someone else’s achievements only serves as a distraction that will slow down your progress.
You’ll never be content with what you have. If you’re always trying to keep up with other people, you’ll never feel a sense of peace with what you have.
