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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jay Shetty
Read between
January 2 - August 3, 2024
When we make forgiveness a regular part of our spiritual practice, we start to notice all of our relationships blossoming.
Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life. —Buddha
The Gift of Fear calls it “a brilliant internal guardian that stands ready to warn you of hazards and guide you through risky situations.” Often, we notice fear’s warning but ignore its guidance.
The process of learning to work with fear isn’t just about doing a few exercises that solve everything, it’s about changing your attitude toward fear, understanding that it has something to offer, then committing
to doing the work of identifying and trying to shift out of your pattern of distraction every time it appears.
“Our fears are more numerous than our dangers, and we suffer more in our imagination than reality.”
Instead of judging the moment, he needed to accept his situation and whatever came of it, focusing on what he could control.
Time is another form of wealth. He realized that while he had lost his job, he had gained something else very valuable.
Inhale slowly to a count of 4. Hold for a count of 4. Exhale slowly to a count of 4 or more. Repeat until you feel your heart rate slow down.
When you are hired for a job, take a moment to reflect on all the lost jobs and/or failed interviews that led to this victory. You can think of them as necessary challenges along the way. When we learn to stop segmenting experiences and periods of our life and instead see them as scenes and acts in a larger narrative, we gain perspective that helps us deal with fear.
Open yourself to the idea that perhaps what happened during the challenging time was actually clearing the way for what you’re now celebrating, or made you feel even happier about the experience that came after it. Now take a moment to express gratitude for those challenges and weave them into the story of your life.
Panic and freezing can be dealt with using breath and by reframing the circumstances, but these are short-term fear responses. It is much harder to control the two long-term strategies we use to distract us from fear: burying and running away.
What you
run from only stays with you longer,”
When there is harmony between the mind, heart, and resolution then nothing is impossible
“As long as we keep attaching our happiness to the external events of our lives, which are ever changing, we’ll always be left waiting for it.”
Because our search is never for a thing, but for the feeling we think the thing will give us.
But we can survive the worst tragedies by looking for meaning in
the loss.
Purpose and meaning, not success, lead to true contentment.
When we live intentionally—with a clear sense of why what we do matters—life has meaning and brings fulfillment. Intention fills the car with gas.
Fear, desire, duty, and love are the roots of all intentions.
if our intentions are vengeful or self-motivated, we grow weeds. Weeds usually grow from ego, greed, envy, anger, pride, competition, or stress.
Aspects of Love, “Everything you do in the day from washing to eating breakfast, having meetings, driving to work … watching television or deciding instead to read … everything you do is your spiritual life. It is only a matter of how consciously you do these ordinary things …”
life is more meaningful when we define ourselves by our intentions rather than our achievements.
If you truly define yourself by your job, then what happens when you lose your job? If you define yourself as an athlete, then an injury ends your career, you don’t know who you are.
Losing a job shouldn’t destroy our identities, but often it does. Instead, if we live intentionally, we sustain a sense of purpose and meaning that isn’t...
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If the changes you make are internal, you’ll feel better about yourself and you’ll be a better person. If your relationship doesn’t improve, you’ll still be the better for it.
If you don’t care deeply, you can’t go all in on the process. You’re not doing it for the right reasons. You can reach your goals, get everything you ever wanted, be successful by anyone’s terms, only to discover you still feel lost and disconnected.
if you’re in love with the day-to-day process, then you do it with depth, authenticity, and a desire to make an impact. You might be equally successful either way, but if you’re driven by intention, you will feel joy.
Satisfaction comes from believing in the value of what you do.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with cloudy or multifaceted intentions. We just need to remember that the less pure they are, the less likely they are to make us happy, even if they make us successful.
Generous intentions radiate from people, and it’s a beautiful thing. Time and again we see that if we’re doing it for the external result, we won’t be happy. With the right intention, to serve, we can feel meaning and purpose every day.
But the point of meditation is to examine what makes it challenging. There is more to it than closing your eyes for fifteen minutes a day. It is the practice of giving yourself space to reflect and evaluate.
In fact, the asceticism was less a goal than it was a
means to an end. Letting go opened our minds.
When your natural talents and passions (your varna) connect with what the universe needs (seva) and become your purpose, you are living in your dharma.
When you spend your time and energy living in your dharma, you have
the satisfaction of using your best abilities and doing something that matters to the world. Living in your dharma i...
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You can’t be anything you want. But you can be everything you are. A monk is a traveler, but the journey is inward, bringing us ever closer to our most authentic, confident, powerful self. There is no need to embark
When we get in the habit of identifying what empowers us, we have a better understanding of ourselves and what we want in life.
Did I enjoy the process?
Did I enjoy the process? Did other people enjoy
Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.
“We tend to wear our ability to get by on little sleep as some sort of badge of honor that validates our work ethic. But what it is is a profound failure of self-respect and of priorities.”
Every night when I’m falling asleep, I say to myself, “I am relaxed, energized, and focused. I am calm, enthusiastic, and productive.”
The emotion you fall asleep with
at night is most likely the emotion you’ll wake up with in the morning.
But if we look for small joys, we don’t have to wait for them to come up on the calendar. Instead they await us every day if we take the time to look for them.
“To my mind, the idea that doing dishes is unpleasant can occur only when you aren’t doing them. … If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have dessert or a cup
