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Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way. Professionals know what is important to them and work toward it with purpose; amateurs get pulled off course by the urgencies of life.
There have been a lot of sets that I haven’t felt like finishing, but I’ve never regretted doing the workout.
There have been a lot of days I’ve felt like relaxing, but I’ve never regretted showing up and working on something that was important to me.
The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.
the benefits of habits come at a cost. At first, each repetition develops fluency, speed, and skill. But then, as a habit becomes automatic, you become less sensitive to feedback.
You fall into mindless repetition. It becomes easier to let mistakes slide.
When you can do it “good enough” on autopilot, you stop thinking abou...
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You assume you’re getting better because you’re gaining experience. In reality, you are merely reinforcing your current habits—not improving them.
Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
Mastery is the process of narrowing your focus to a tiny element of success, repeating it until you have internalized the skill, and then using this new habit as the foundation to advance to the next frontier of your development.
Although habits are powerful, what you need is a way to remain conscious of your performance over time, so you can continue to refine and improve.
right when things are starting to feel automatic and you are becoming comfortable—that you must avoid slipping into the trap of complacency.
Establish a system for reflection...
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Reflection and review enables the long-term improvement of all habits because it makes you aware of your mistakes and helps you consider possible paths for improvement.
Without reflection, we can make excuses, create rationalizations, and lie to ourselves.
Reflection and review ensures that you spend your time on the right things and make course corrections whenever necessary—
never reviewing your habits is like never looking in the mirror. You aren’t aware of easily fixable flaws
When working against you, your identity creates a kind of “pride” that encourages you to deny your weak spots and prevents you from truly growing.
The more sacred an idea is to us—that is, the more deeply it is tied to our identity—the more strongly we will defend it against criticism.
The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.
avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of who you are.
When you cling too tightly to one identity, you become brittle. Lose that one thing and you lose yourself.
Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail. —LAO TZU
A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.
This is a continuous process. There is no finish line. There is no permanent solution.
The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements.
Small habits don’t add up. They compound.
craving can only occur after you have noticed an opportunity.
Happiness is simply the absence of desire.
Happiness is the state you enter when you no longer want to change your state.
“Happiness is the space between one desire being fulfilled and a new desire forming.”
Peace occurs when you don’t turn your observations into problems.
Great craving can power great action
It is desire, not intelligence, that prompts behavior.
Every decision is an emotional decision at some level.
We can only be rational and logical after we have been emotional.
Suffering drives progress.
With craving, we are dissatisfied but driven. Without craving, we are satisfied but lack ambition.
Response (sacrifice of energy) always precedes reward (the collection of resources).
Self-control is difficult because it is not satisfying.
Resisting temptation does not satisfy your craving; it just ignores it. It creates space for the craving to pass.
Satisfaction = Liking – Wanting
“Being poor is not having too little, it is wanting more.”
Failing to attain something you want hurts more than failing to attain something you didn’t think much about in the first place.
Hope declines with experience and is replaced by acceptance.
The second time around, your expectation is grounded in reality. You begin to understand how the process works and your hope is gradually traded for a more accurate prediction and acceptance of the likely outcome.
“Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.”
There is no experience to root the expectation in.
