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daily sadhana (meditation/spiritual) practice,
Wim Hof Method of breathing.
That’s why I ask, “What will these particular thoughts, words, or actions do for me and how will they get me to where I want to be?” And if I realize I’m going nowhere, I stop those particular thoughts, words, or actions and change course.
Point blank, when you see people with an attitude like that at their job, I can guarantee with 100 percent certainty that it will carry over to their career. If they ever do manage to land a role, the director will likely throw their ass off his set.
All the hard work I’ve done for decades is beginning to pay off career-wise, but to get to this point I had to push on and have PMA in my “jobs.”
So whatever your passion project is, push through and arm yourself with the knowledge of this book and others like The Four Agreements and Bhagavad Gita As It Is.
If I have an issue with someone I deal with it head-on. It’s the best way to do it. Don’t hold a grudge—clear the air and your mind. Be tactful; don’t be rude.
I learned a very important lesson from a yoga master: “Always take the humble position.”
Look, if things aren’t happening the way we want them to, it’s no one else’s fault but our own. We have to fix them. No one will do it for us, so stop passing the buck and playing the victim. Do the work and man up, as they say on the streets. That goes for you ladies as well.
by expecting a particular result, more than likely you’ll be let down. That’s why you always have to act just for the sake of the act itself and not its result.
You can’t expect overnight success because it doesn’t work that way. We are so hard-headed and stuck in our ways, our conditioning runs so deep, that it just takes time to change—perhaps even an entire lifetime.
we must gain access to sadhus—people with first-class intelligence and knowledge in order to cut the ropes of our own ignorance. Actually, the Sanskrit word sadhu literally means “one who cuts.”
In Steven Pressfield’s amazing book Do The Work, he writes, “A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.”
Bottom line is, you can’t please everyone, so don’t even try. Just go about your business, stick to your morals, and stay honest in all your dealings.
Trinad api sunichena... Google that. Stay humble, my friends.
Take action every single day to better yourself and then use respect, humility, and integrity in your dealings with others.
There’s a term in bhakti yoga that says, “True devotional service must be unmotivated and uninterrupted.”
“When the diet is wrong, medicine is of no use; when the diet is correct, there is no need for medicine.” —Ayurvedic proverb
“For the mind is restless, turbulent, obstinate, and very strong, O Krishna, and to subdue it is, it seems to me, more difficult than controlling the wind.” What did Krishna tell Arjuna to do about that?
On that note I’ll leave you with a great example of what I’m getting at from the timeless classic, Bhagavad Gita As It Is, by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada: “The chariot stands for the human body. The five horses which draw the chariot are the five sense organs. The reins stand for the mind, and the charioteer stands for the intellect. The rider here is the individual jiva [you, the soul]. If the charioteer falls asleep or is not alert, then the reins which are to be controlled by the charioteer will become loose and then the horses will go out of control. This then ends up in the
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Well-disciplined people are also perseverant. They have self-control and are not easily allured by distractions that draw them away from what they’re trying to achieve.
Five Tips for Developing Discipline 1. Set goals and know what they’ll achieve. 2. Have a clear strategy. 3. Identify possible obstacles. 4. Always remain willing to change behaviors (learn new ways). 5. Stay focused.
There’s a Sanskrit word, dridha-vrata. It means “single-minded determination.” You must develop dridha-vrata and then take action.
When the deck is stacked against you, you still have to keep yourself in the game.
Heidi Reeder, PhD, author of Commit to Win, writes, “Research shows that on average, negative events impact people five times as much as positive events do. Resilient people, however, keep the negative from having such a powerful impact by focusing on what’s positive in the situation (e.g., “I made a fool of myself in front of the whole team”), or just the upside (e.g., “The team got to see that I am human, which will deepen our relationship”), they are able to hold both the positive and negative equally. This kind of emotional balance allows you to move forward with more confidence and less
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There are also many lessons in terms of resilience to be learned from our failures.
author and motivational speaker Jean Chatzky: “Resilience isn’t a single skill. It’s a variety of skills and coping mechanisms. To bounce back from bumps in the road as well as failures, you should focus on emphasizing the positive.”
Mediocrity will always give you mediocre results.
I find that when I fight the desire to cut corners, regardless of whether I’m doing something grand or minute, I become a positive person in other areas of my life as well.
“You don’t need to take a course or buy a product. All you have to do is change your mind. Turning pro is free, but it’s not easy. When we turn pro, we give up a life that we may have become extremely comfortable with. We give up a self that we have come to identify with and to call our own. Turning pro is free, but it demands sacrifice.”
I recently heard David Goggins on Rich Roll’s podcast. His is one of my favorite episodes. Goggins is a badass former Navy SEAL, the kind of SEAL other SEALs look up to.
Developing a hack’s mindset works against your turning pro. It makes you complacent. It stops your selfimprovement. It destroys your PMA.
When the only reason we’re doing something is to stroke our ego—because we’re hoping for fame, adoration, and distinction—then we have the wrong mindset.
Another one of the dirty little tricks the Enemy Mind uses to con us is expecting perfection right out of the box.
It’s not enough to be passionate. You’ve got to want something so badly that you are uncomfortable when you’re not getting it.
In Sanskrit, the phrase athato brahma jijnasa means, “Now is the time to inquire about self-realization.”
You can’t buy your way out of the blues. We’re not born happy; happiness comes through our unique set of experiences and how we choose to respond to them. I’ve experienced more happiness meditating and chanting at sunrise than chasing down some materialistic mirage.
The nature of anything nonpermanent is it causes hankering and lamentation.
It’s not about what you’re giving but what you’re holding back.
This is because there is a code stamped into our soul’s DNA, where our inherent nature is, called ananda, bliss.
It’s right next to another code called sat, “truth.” Sat also means “eternal.”
Renunciation and sadhana (spiritual practice) have their rewards. There are amazing levels of happiness and bliss to be found in the realm of spirit.
A man recently asked me what the catalyst was for my change. I replied that somehow I had had enough sense to know that acquiring material shit wasn’t going to make me happy, but I was frustrated and suffering like hell, mentally. I knew I had to change or die (or be in prison for the rest of my life), because my anger and drug use was way out of control. I remember not even knowing how to pray or who to pray to, but I prayed anyway. I asked for a roadmap out of my suffering and it came in the form of jnana, knowledge, which I then applied. Guess what happened? Change.
In my years on this planet I’ve noticed that those who help and encourage others are some of the happiest people I’ve ever met. They exude PMA—matter of fact, it’s dripping out of every cell in their body.
Before reading Don Ruiz’s The Four Agreements, when people talked crap or spread lies, I straight up wanted to beat the shit out of them. Then I got Agreements. One of the agreements is “Don’t take things personally.”
“A great man never ignores the simplicity of a child.” — Chinese proverb
Stay childlike and approach everything you do with the eyes of a child.
What we are is of a divine, spiritual nature. That truth is called sanatana-dharma, or universal, eternal truth. Our only occupation is service, and that service has to be unconditional, unmotivated, uninterrupted, and loving.
Maybe those con artists need to read this: “In the minds of those who are too attached to sense enjoyment and material opulence, and who are bewildered by such things, the resolute determination for devotional service to the Supreme Lord does not take place.” (Bhagavad-gita As It Is, 2.44)
To exploit and take advantage of people who are at the end of their rope and looking for a way out of hell is the lowest thing you can do. Such exploiters are sahajiyas. That’s a Sanskrit word that means “Those who take things cheaply.”
