Notes & Quotes: Tough by Terry Crews

The following are my favorite quotes from Terry Crews's Tough: My Journey to True Power.

1. When I promised [my wife] Rebecca to walk away from that fight, I took the first step on a road to becoming a completely different person, and to become a completely different person, you need more than a promise. You need therapy. You need mentorship. You need love and support and patience from your family and friends. More than anything, you need time.
2. Half the reason I kept chasing my football dream was to get out of Flint [Michigan] and away from the guys like Juice and the Top Dawgs. So, needless to say, I was surprised to find out that joining the NFL meant I hadn't left the streets at all. I had teammates who were gang members. And I'm not talking about "former" gang members. These were guys with active ties to the Crips and Bloods, and they brought all that macho bullshit into the locker room with them.
3. Something needed to change, but looking at yourself in the mirror and facing your demons is the hardest thing you will ever do in your life. You will duck it and avoid it--and make excuses for ducking it and avoiding it--for a long, long time.
4. The purpose of being tough is not to attack, but to protect. The purpose of being strong is not to dominate, but to support. The purpose of having power is not to rule, but to serve. What I've learned is that to be a true man is to be the ultimate servant. With any talent or advantage that life has given you, whether by birth or by circumstance, your duty is to use that advantage in the service of others.
5. Between [my dad] Big Terry and [my mom] Trish, I caught it coming and going. If my father was addicted to alcohol and anger, my mother was addicted to religion and fear. Neither of them knew how to overcome, and together they made for a toxic pair. When they went at it, it was legendary. It was always brutal, and we were always in the middle.
6. The way addiction works, whether it's alcohol or heroin or food or sex, is that you latch onto a thing or a habit or a substance that gives you a reprieve from reality. But when more problems arise from the substance you're abusing, that substance then presents itself as the solution to the same problems it has caused. And round and round you go, not even recognizing the cycle you've created for yourself. It's only looking back now that I can see the pattern.
7. HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired). If an addict is feeling any of these emotions, those are the times when he's most likely to slip. So I learned to examine my feelings and create new triggers for healthier behaviors.
8. Luck doesn't always fall from the sky. You can't just name it and claim it. Yes, it's luck, and you don't control when or where it happens--or if it's good luck or bad--but it comes only if you're working for it. It comes as the fruit of what you're putting out into the universe. For a long time, the only vibe I was giving off was arrogance, selfishness, and entitlement, and nothing came my way. After my experience at Labor Ready, I was giving off only exuberance and enthusiasm and dedication, no matter how menial the task. People noticed.
9. We always tell ourselves we don't have time to spend an hour exercising every day. We're too busy with work and with family. But the thing about the hour of exercise is that it makes you feel so much better that the other twenty-three hours of the day become that much more productive. Giving up that hour of time actually gets you more time, because it gives you better use of your time. You sleep better. You work more efficiently. You eat better, too, and not because you're forcing yourself on some diet you hate, but because your body doesn't want that unhealthy food anymore. More than anything, it forces you to manage your time to make sure you have that hour for the gym, and that fact alone ensures that you're paying attention to your days and making the most of every moment.
10. Tithing helped me understand that money doesn't really exist. It's a symbol, a representation of value given for value received.
11. The best way to become successful is to serve people. The more people you serve, the more valued you are. The more valued you are, the more you receive, which can come in the form of more money, or it can come in the form of other intangibles that are worth more than money, like happiness, respect, and a sense of purpose. Work becomes its own blessing. So now, the question I ask myself every morning is not "How do I make more money?" The question I ask myself is "How do I increase my value?"
12. Somebody's always jacked in. Which is why you always have to be cognizant of who that person is and how much power they have over you. Like my son with his iPhone, whoever's got that cord controls what you hear, which means they can set your mood. If they can set your mood, they can influence how you feel. If they can influence how you feel, they can change the way you think. And if they can change the way you think, they can control the way you behave.
13. The kids who were misbehaving, they weren't that different from me, actually. When you see poor kids in the hood acting out, a lot of them are trying to find out if anybody gives a damn about them, because their whole lives they've grown up with the feeling that nobody does.
14. We should always strive to create a world that is just and fair, but injustice and suffering will always be with us. We cannot will them out of existence, and we cannot control when or how they will be inflicted upon us. We can only control how we respond. Power and agency come from within. Dignity and self-worth come from within.
15. Letting someone else make you angry is giving them too much control over your life. You cannot control what happens to you, but you can always control how you respond. You are never powerless. You always have a choice.
16. An insult hurts only if there's a ring of truth to it; it only hurts if you believe it. My mother calling my dad a broke-ass drunk cut him to the bone, because it was true. But if you called Bill Gates broke, you wouldn't be insulting the man, because he knows he isn't broke. He'd laugh at you and shrug it off.
17. As the city started to crater, the newspapers salivated over every detail. If it bled, it led, and if a black man was responsible for it, all the better. Anytime a black man did anything, the headlines would literally read a black man killed three people today or a black man has crack den or four dead in crack den, with several black people. If it was a white man, he was just a man, but if it was a black man, his race was always called out.
18. Seventh grade was the year I went from being treated like a black boy to being treated like a black man, and the difference was stark. I noticed it the minute it happened. My mother loved going to the big department stores at the mall. As a kid, I hated it because she would spend all her time trying stuff on but then never buying anything because we didn't have any money. As an adolescent, I hated it because I had white salespeople on me all the time. "What do you want? What are you looking for? What do you need? Can I help you?" Even after they backed off, I could feel their eyes following me around the store, like I was about to steal something.
19. Every situation carries with it the potential for social miscues and misunderstanding. If you go into those interactions expecting the worst, you're going to get it. Because all you get back from any situation is what you put into it.
20. Frederick Douglass understood power and agency in the same way that Viktor Frankl understood power and agency. They come from within. We can and should protest and call out injustice in the world, but we cannot control or stamp out every injustice that exists. What we can control, what we do have power over, is ourselves. We can always choose what we say and how we respond. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and Fannie Lou Hamer and Shirley Chisholm understood that, too. Those men and women were able to endure everything from segregated rail cars to prison cells, because nothing the world threw at them could dim the light they carried inside themselves. That is true power.

Notes & Quotes: Unbreakable by Jay Glazer

The following are my favorite quotes from Jay Glazer's Unbreakable: How I Turned My Depression and Anxiety into Motivation and You Can Too.

1. Vulnerability is true strength. If I am vulnerable, it may inspire a teammate to be the same. It may help lift them out of their own pit.
2. I did everything I could to stand out! Don't just quietly go about your business. Stand the fuck out!
3. I took some advice my dad had once given me, about getting ahead by being loyal and outworking the world, and I spun it out into three mantras I would use to make me stand out: Be different. Outwork the world. Be the last one standing.
4. Trust. That's the secret ingredient to being an NFL Insider. Gain trust. And never ever, ever fuck that trust over.
5. I can give two shits about rejection. That's another superpower of mine. I don't give a fuck if you turn me down. Why? Because what good does that do me, to live in fear of something that hasn't happened yet? We can't hit a home run if we don't swing the bat. We can't win a fight if we don't throw a punch. Fuck it, teammate, might as well swing.
6. Every time you do something, however small, view it as big. Because it is. It all has a ripple effect. You may have helped someone, or you may have, without knowing it, saved someone. Maybe you did something for somebody, and because of that they had a better day, and then, they turned around and did something to life someone else, who was in their darkest place. You never fucking know!! It really and truly all helps. Suddenly, it's expanding exponentially, until hundreds, then thousands, of people are finally getting the help they need. So, love yourself up when you do something of service for others. You did good!
7. We live in a society where we are constantly comparing ourselves to someone else's "filtered" fraction of a second of their lives on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, so of course we often think our own lives suck. Or we feel left out of everyone else's "successes," many of which are full of shit, because they are filtered, edited, highlighted, or enhanced.
8. "You never know what lies around next Tuesday." As in, you'll never know when life will change for you. Some of the shittiest things that can ever happen, could, in fact, end up blessing the world. How many times have we felt despair from not getting a job or losing a relationship or having something completely shitty happen, only to one day have it all turn around? You just never know who you are going to meet that will change your life. You never know what will come into your life to suddenly empower you. You never know what lies around the corner...or next Tuesday, as I put it.
9. The team that challenges you is the one that grows you.
10. There is never an end of the road, gang. Never. But you have to decide that and follow through with conviction.
11. The 5 Pillars of the Unbreakable Mindset
1. Find out who the best is...and do more than them.
2. Be relentless. 
3. Push your breaking point, push your breaking point, push your breaking point.
4. Neutral face: don't ever show you're hurt or tired.
5. It's your honor to fight hurt.
12. Find out where you want to be in life and do more than everyone else to get there. Outwork the world. That's the big magic bullet for success.
13. When we walked inside, every single light was off...except one. Sitting alone, in a meeting room, with film on and notes in front of him was [Drew] Brees. Ten-forty-five at night. All alone. "Dude what the fuck ya doing?" I asked, shocked at what I'd stumbled upon. Brees shrugged and delivered the greatest, unintentional motivational line I've ever heard in my life: "Sometimes trying to be great is lonely."
14. Always reward and celebrate growth, teammate...always.
15. That's how you want to live your life--focused on yourself, on what you're getting out of the fight, on what you can learn. You want to grow and emerge even more badass the next time out. 
16. Every loss presents an opportunity to improve, presents an opportunity to overcome. Adversity is a gift. It's how we grow. But in order to truly do this, we need to take our ego and pride out of it. Being Unbreakable means we have been knocked down, we have taken losses, we have been hurt, but we got back up every single time.
17. Be authentic. Too many of us try to be something we are not or try to act a certain way to impress others. That's when we get into trouble, teammate. Just be authentic. We all have things that make us different, so learn to lean on what makes you, well, YOU. And then run with it. 
18. If you are loving, and stay authentic, you will attract other loving people. If you are an asshole and stay authentic, you'll probably attract other assholes.

Notes & Quotes: One Hit Away by Jordan Barnes

The following are my favorite quotes from Jordan Barnes's One Hit Away: A Memoir of Recovery. 

1. It was a realization that changed everything--if a lone wolf doesn't make the kill, he'll starve to death unless scraps are thrown his way.
2. For too long, drug dependency has robbed me of the simple things in life that make it worth living, like deep or uninterrupted sleep.
3. When he spots me shambling toward him, a smirk from Luiz says he knew I'd be back again. It's business. Bad business, but still business. We have a love-hate relationship that makes me resent the power he and every other dealer will forever reign over me.
4. I have no problem taking whatever I wanted, whenever I want to feed my habit--the irony is that charity is hard to accept.
5. The very nature of my addiction is a self-imposed imprisonment, one that requires me to return to my dealers like an animal to a watering hole .I have no control or independence regardless of how tough I act. No matter how I cut it, there is no free will here. Dependence has taken away any illusion of choice.
6. I'm overwhelmed by my first actual step, taken on my own accord, to disassociate myself from the lifestyle I have long struggled to endure. Rising to the occasion is more than just empowering--it's authentic.
7. When the desire to use instinctively crosses my mind, I have to remind myself that I'll ruin a good thing if I'm allowed to.
8. Don't let your past poison your future. 
9. There's no shortcut to any place worth going.
10. I'm looking forward to developing and renewing my faith, joining my family again as a loving son and brother, and having healthy relationships built on trust. Most importantly, I'm looking forward to loving myself, which starts with facing my hurdles and tackling them one at a time.
11. I realize that I can fight for something without ever raising a fist. I can fight for myself and my sobriety without letting others stand in my way or knock me off track. Bennett challenged me to lose my cool, and for a moment, I did. I have to work on that self-control and remember to rise above the bullshit as Mike so eloquently puts it.
12. I respect his maturity in acknowledging that waving the white flag is actually a sign of strength. There is no shame in tapping out when you know that continuing will only wreak havoc.
13. I saw enough progress in the mirror that I became a firm believer that if you do the right thing, you get the right results.
14. Remember, if you're anything like me, your best thinking probably got you to where you are, so if you don't know what to do, don't do anything at all.

Notes & Quotes: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

The following are my favorite quotes from Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.

1. The average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations.
2. We call our food animals by different names after they're dead, presumable sparing ourselves any vision of the beefs and the porks running on actual hooves.
3. We don't know beans about beans. Asparagus, potatoes, turkey drumsticks--you name it, we don't have a clue how the world makes it.
4. Obesity is generally viewed as a failure of personal resolve, with no acknowledgment of the genuine conspiracy in this historical scheme. People actually did sit in strategy meetings discussing ways to get all those surplus calories into people who neither needed nor wished to consume them. Children have been targeted especially; food companies spend over $10 billion a year selling food brands to kids, and it isn't broccoli they're pushing. Overweight children are a demographic in many ways similar to minors addicted to cigarettes, with one notable exception: their parents are usually their suppliers. We all subsidize the cheap calories with our tax dollars, the strategists make fortunes, and the overweight consumers get blamed for the violation. The perfect crime.
5. The multiple maladies caused by bad eating are taking a dire toll our health--most tragically our kids, who are predicted to be this country's first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. That alone is stunning enough fact to give us pause. So is a government policy that advises us to eat more fruits and vegetables, while doling out subsidies not to fruit and vegetable farmers, but to commodity crops destined to become soda pop and cheap burgers.
6. For most of us, if we see asparagus in any month far removed from April, we're looking at some hard traveling.
7. It's hard to reduce our modern complex of food choices to unifying principles, but this is one that generally works: eating home-cooked meals from whole, in-season ingredients obtained from the most local source available is eating well, in every sense. Good for the habitat, good for the body.
8. Modern U.S. consumers now get to taste less than 1 percent of the vegetable varieties that were grown here a century ago. Those old-timers now lurk only in backyard gardens and on farms that specialize in direct sales--if they survive at all. Many heirlooms have been lost entirely.
9. Six companies--Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Mitsui, Aventis, and Dow--now control 98 percent of the world's seed sales. These companies invest heavily in research whose purpose is to increase food production capacity only in ways that can be controlled strictly.
10. A thriving field of vegetables is as needy as a child, and similarly, the custodian's job isn't done till the goods have matured and moved out.
11. Grocery money is an odd sticking point for U.S. citizens, who on average spend a lower proportion of our income on food than people in any other country, or any heretofore in history.
12. The larger the corporation, the more distant its motives are apt to be from the original spirit of organic farming--and the farther the products will likely be shipped to buyers who will smile at the happy farm picture on the package, and never be the wiser.
13. A survey of National Merit scholars--exceptionally successful eighteen-year-olds crossing all lines of ethnicity, gender, geography, and class--turned up a common thread in their lives: the habit of sitting down to a family dinner table. It's not just the food making them brilliant. It's probably the parents--their care, priorities, and culture of support. The words: "I'll expect you home for dinner."
14. As a rule, the harder the cheese, the lower the lactose content. (Anything less than 2 percent lactose is tolerable for just about everybody.) Also, higher fat content means less lactose--butter has none.
15. Buying your goods from local businesses rather than national chains generates about three times as much money for your local economy.
16. If we draw the okay-to-kill line between "animal" and "plant," and thus exclude meat, fowl, and fish from our diet on moral grounds, we still must live with the fact that every sack of flour and every soybean-based block of tofu came from a field where countless winged and furry lives were extinguished in the plowing, cultivating, and harvest. An estimated 67 million birds die each year from pesticide exposure on U.S. farms. Butterflies, too, are universally killed on contact in larval form by the genetically modified pollen contained in most U.S. corn. Foxes, rabbits, and bobolinks are starved out of their homes or dismembered by the sickle mower. Insects are "controlled" even by organic pesticides; earthworms are cut in half by the plow. Contrary to lore, they won't grow into two; both halves die.
17. I don't want to cause any creature misery, so I won't knowingly eat anything that has stood belly deep in its own poop wishing it was dead until bam, on day it was. (In restaurants I go for the fish, or the vegetarian option.)
18. No fickle wind messes with the track of the sun. It's a crucial decision for a living thing: When, exactly, to shut down leaf growth and pull all resources down into the roots to stock up for winter? A mistake will cost a plant the chance to pass on its genes. So in temperate climates, evolution has tied such life-or-death decisions to day length. Animals use it also, to trigger mating, nesting, egg-laying, and migration.
19. It never really stops, this business of growing things--garlic goes into the ground again in October, just as other frost-killed crops are getting piled onto the compost heap. Food is not a product but a process, and it never sleeps. It just goes underground for a while.
20. Eating locally in winter is easy. But the time to think about that would be in August.
21. The great majority of modern turkeys can expect an earthly duration of only four months before meeting their processor. Free-range turkeys may take as long as six months to reach slaughter size. But any bird that lives past its first Thanksgiving inhabits a domain occupied by fewer than one-half of one percent of domestic turkeys.
22. The three basic components of responsible eating are to favor food grown in an environmentally responsible way, delivered with minimal petroleum use, in a manner that doesn't exploit the farmers.

Notes & Quotes: Ten Years a Nomad by Matt Kepnes

 The following are my favorite quotes from Matt Kepnes's Ten Years a Nomad: A Traveler's Journey Home.

1. Americans trade time for money and, although we all complain about it, it's an arrangement we've kept in place for decades. Even as traveling and career breaks have become more mainstream, this fundamental arrangement has not changed. Taking extended time off is simply not part of our cultural norms--and I don't think it ever will be.
2. Here, In Thailand, were people who didn't want to live that [American] life at all. People who were happy to be from somewhere other than America. People who believed, and acted as if, life was for living--not planning, saving, and climbing up to the next rung. It wasn't about working until you retired so you could then start your life. It was about living right now.
3. Some people travel because they have places to go. Others travel because the journey is their true home. They want to see and experience and live as much as possible in their short time on this earth.
4. Learning to go with the flow is the most important part of travel planning. Travel is about letting things unfold and happen naturally. It's better to see fewer attractions and go deeper into a city or a region than to cast a wide net and go shallow.
5. Traveling solo, you learn who you are and what you are capable of. You learn how to be comfortable with only your own thoughts for companionship. In this sense, solo travel is a wonderful teacher, because it teaches self-reliance.
6. Travel is all about seizing the opportunities in front of you--especially when they're opportunities to throw away your plans.
7. "A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." Lao Tzu
8. There's a difference between taking pleasure in spiting someone, and taking pleasure in exceeding expectations about yourself. The former is fixated on negativity, the latter is all about well-earned pride.
9. I'm not trying to avoid life, I'd tell my doubters. I'm trying to avoid your life. I'm not running away from the real world--I'm running away from your idea of what the real world is. Running away from office life, commuting, and weekend errands, and running toward everything the world has to offer. Running away from monotony, nine to five, rampant consumerism, and the conventional path.
10. A place is only as boring as you are. Adventure and activity isn't something that just happens. It is something that must be sought out.

Notes & Quotes: Living a Life that Matters by Harold S. Kushner

The following are my favorite quotes from Harold S. Kushner's Living a Life that Matters.

1. God understands that when we give in to temptation it is a temporary lapse and does not reflect our true character.
2. Much of our lives, much of our energy will be devoted to closing the gap between the longings of our soul and the scoldings of our conscience, between our too-often conflicting needs for the assurance of knowing that we are good and the satisfaction of being told that we are important. 
3. It hurts to be defeated by conscience, to feel compelled to take the more demanding high road, to resist temptation, to apologize. But I suspect it hurts more to keep winning out over conscience. Too often, we compromise our integrity, we do something we really don't believe in doing, to reach some important goal, only to find one of two frustrating things happening: Either we gain the prize and realize it wasn't worth gaining, or we end up with neither the prize nor our integrity.
4. Without a modicum of selfishness and aggression, the world could not go on. It is a part of us, a problematic but essential part of us. 
5. Like the man or woman who lifts weights at the gym to become stronger, a process know as "resistance training," we strengthen our moral fiber by the exercise of resisting temptation.
6. Good people will do good things, lots of them, because they are good people. They will do bad things because they are human. In the daily, if not hourly, wrestling matches that set the tone of our lives, sometimes the angel wins and sometimes the angel loses. With luck, we will not be overwhelmed by guilt when the egotistical impulse defeats the angel, and we will understand that the victory is temporary, not permanent, when the angel wins. We will understand that, to be human, we need them both. But we will never stop asking ourselves, What kind of person do I want to be?
7. Perhaps the instinctive desire for revenge is less about hurting the person who has hurt us and more about restoring the power balance to what it was before the crime. We don't really want to hurt our assailant so much as we want to reclaim from him the power, the sense of being in control of our lives, that he stole from us. 
8. Someone once compared getting into an argument with a boorish neighbor to wrestling in the mud with a pig: You will both get filthy, but the pig will enjoy it.
9. For the person of integrity, life may not be easy but it is simple: Figure out what is right and do it. All other considerations come in second.
10. If the words you speak are hard for you to utter and hard for others to hear, if you get no pleasure from speaking them but you feel you must, then you can believe that they come from God. On the other hand, if your words make you popular and win you easy applause, or if people don't like hearing them but you get a certain pleasure from speaking them ("I'm only telling you this for your own good"), then you may have reason to suspect that those are your own thoughts disguising themselves as the Word of God.
11. Love, expressed primarily but not exclusively in marriage and parenthood, is the most accessible way we have of being supremely important in another person's life. It not only gratifies our sex drive and reproductive impulse. It meets our need to matter, or, as one person put it, "to be somebody's somebody."
    
12. Psychologist-author Carol Gilligan has pointed out that young girls tend to latch on to best friends, as if they were rehearsing for marriage, whereas boys play competitive games with their friends, as if they were rehearsing for the business world.
13. When we worry that our lives are passing in a parade of trivialities and insignificant events, we yearn to do things that matter and feel like failures because we haven't, I have always found that an effective cure for that feeling of insignificance is simply to find someone who needs our help and reach out to that person.
14. Every life touches many other lives, and rare is the person who knows how much of a difference he or she has made.
15. I believe that ordinary people joining forces can do things that heroes acting alone can't do. 
16. The small choices and decisions we make a hundred times a day add up to determining the kind of world we live in.

Notes & Quotes: Attached by Amir Levine & Rachel Heller

The following are my favorite quotes from Amir Levine and Rachel Heller's Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment.

1. If our partner fails to reassure us, we are programmed to continue our attempts to achieve closeness until the partner does.
2. If you want to take the road to independence and happiness, find the right person to depend on and travel down it with that person.
3. Having a partner who is inconsistently available or supportive can be a truly demoralizing and debilitating experience that can literally stunt our growth and stymie our health.
4. Keep in mind that when you're excited about someone, your objectivity is compromised and you tend to create a rosy picture of him or her. Anything that doesn't fit this picture fades into the background. In the initial stages of dating, however, it's important to pay equal attention to all messages coming through and address them securely. This will help you determine if the relationship is right for you and ensure it is going in a positive direction.
5. By being someone you're not, you're allowing another to be with you on his or her own terms and come and go as s/he pleases.
6. By dividing attachment behavior along gender lines, we can fall into the common trap of equating avoidance with masculinity. Research findings, however, prove that there are many men who are far from being avoidant--they communicate freely, are loving and affectionate, do not retreat during conflict, and are consistently there for their partner. 
7. One of the most important roles we play in our partners' lives is providing a secure base: creating the conditions that enable our partners to pursue their interests and explore the world in confidence. Brooke Feeney and Roxanne Thrush, of Carnegie Mellon University, in a study published in 2010, found that three specific behaviors underlie this broad term. You too can provide a secure base by adopting the following secure behaviors:
1. Be available: Respond sensitively to their distress, allow them to be dependent on you when they feel the need, check in with them from time to time, and provide comfort when things go wrong.
2. Don't interfere: Provide behind-the-scenes support for their endeavors. Help in a way that leaves them with the initiative and the feeling of power. Allow them to do their own thing without trying to take over the situation, micromanage, or undermine their confidence and abilities.
3. Encourage: Provide encouragement and be accepting of their learning and personal growth goals. Boost their self-esteem.
8. Suzanne Phillips, coauthor of the book Healing Together, describes our connection with our pets as a source of inspiration for our romantic relationships. In her writing, she points out that we tend to perceive our pets as selfless and loving despite their many misdemeanors: They wake us up at night, destroy our valuables, and demand our undivided attention, yet we tend to overlook these behaviors and feel positively toward them. In fact, our connection with our pets is an excellent example of a secure presence in our lives. We can tap into our attitudes toward our pets as a secure resource within us--we don't assume our pets are doing things purposely to hurt us, we don't hold grudges even when they eat something they shouldn't or make a mess, we still greet them warmly when we come home (even after a rough day at the office), and we stick by them no matter what.
9. It's never too late to start using effective communication to improve your relationship. It's one of the most powerful tools secure people use in their everyday life, with their partner and kids, and at work. It can really transform the way you handle yourself with the people around you.
10. The Five Principles of Effective Communication:
1. Wear your heart on your sleeve.
2. Focus on your needs.
3. Be specific
4. Don't blame.
5. Be assertive and nonapologetic.
11. Effective communication is not about highlighting the other person's shortcomings, and making accusations will quickly lead you away from the point and into a dueling match. Make sure to find a time when you're calm to discuss things. You'll find that attempting to use effective communication when you're on the verge of exploding is a contradiction in terms--you'll most likely sound angry and judgmental.
12. Attachment theory shows us that these assumptions are unsubstantiated; all couples--even secure ones--have their fair share of fights. What does distinguish between couples and affect their satisfaction levels in their relationships is not how much they disagree, but how they disagree and what they disagree about. Attachment researchers have learned that conflicts can serve as an opportunity for couples to get closer and deeper their bond.
13. Five Secure Principles for Resolving Conflict:
1. Show basic concern for the other person's well-being.
2. Maintain focus on the problem at hand.
3. Refrain from generalizing the conflict. 
4. Be willing to engage.
5. Effectively communicate feelings and needs.
14. Attachment theory shows us that our happiness is actually dependent on our mate's and vice versa. The two are inextricable.
15. It's always more effective to assume the best in conflict situations. In fact, expecting the worst--which is typical of people with insecure attachment styles--often acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you assume your partner will act hurtfully or reject you, you automatically respond defensively--thus starting a vicious cycle of negativity.
16. Don't lose sight of these facts:
1. Your attachment needs are legitimate.
2. You shouldn't feel bad for depending on the person you are closest to--it is part of your genetic makeup.
3. A relationship, from an attachment perspective, should make you feel more self-confident and give you peace of mind. If it doesn't, this is a wake-up call!
   
4. And, above all, remain true to your authentic self--playing games will only distance you from your ultimate goal of finding true happiness, be it with your partner or with someone else.

Notes & Quotes: Karma by Sadhguru

The following are my favorite quotes from Sadhguru's Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny:

1. Karma is about becoming the source of one's own creation. In shifting responsibility from heaven to oneself, one becomes the very maker of one's destiny.
2. For every other creature on this planet, the struggles are essentially physical. If they eat well, they are just fine. But human beings are different. For humans, when the stomach is empty, there is only one problem; but when the stomach is full, there are one hundred problems!
3. It is up to us to decide the nature of our bequest to the planet. This is what the anonymous Jain monks of Velayudhampalayam did. Aware that every action has a consequence, they chose to live consciously. As a result, the achieved a certain kind of immortality that the rich and powerful in the history of the world have seldom managed to attain.
4. Karma is not a punishment or reward; it is just the process by which life tries to fulfill itself.
5. When your actions are no longer about you, when they are simply based on the demands of the situation, when narrow self-interest no longer fuels your volition, you have reached the end of karmic production. Your liberation is assured.
6. If you avoid any experience--whether pain or pleasure, sorrow or joy--it is big karma. But if you go through the experience without resisting it, the karma dissolves.
7. Your karma is not what is happening to you; your karma is in the way you respond to what is happening to you. 
8. When you involve yourself intensely in physical activity, you expend a great deal of nervous energy. But now that human beings have become so inactive, almost every person suffers from some kind of anxiety or unease. This is simply because of trapped physical energy. In comparison, you will find that those committed to some form of intense physical exercise are often at a different level of balance and peace and peace and much less entangled in sexuality and other physical drives. This is because one aspect of the person have found full expression.
9. It is impossible to perform physical activity without your thought, emotion, and energies being involved. The same activity can, of course, be performed with different levels of involvement. Those who work only for a livelihood often feel constrained and suffocated. But when you are deeply involved in your work on every level, you will find activity invigorates you; it does not exhaust you.
10. The goal for every freedom seeker is the same: to attend to your karma now rather than wait for life to throw it at you.
11. We have always had a choice: between inclusive action and paralyzed volition, between intelligent dynamism and pathetic fatalism. Why do we so often chose the latter?
12. The one thing every seeker needs to remember is that the inner journey can only be taken alone. Once this realization dawns, it marks the birth of spirituality. This realization is sometimes scary for those who are used to living in groups, to making collective life decisions. Yes, you can walk together in the outside world, but in the inner world, everybody walks alone. 
13. On a certain day, three men were working on a site. A passerby came and asked the first man, "What are you doing?" The man looked up and said, "Hey, are you blind? Can't you see I'm cutting stone?" The passerby went to the second man and asked the same question. "What do you think I'm doing?" growled the second man. "I'm trying to earn my living. I need to fill my belly." The passerby went to the third man and asked again, "What are you doing here?" The man stood up in great joy. "I'm building a glorious temple!" All three men were doing the same work. For the first man, his work was simply cutting stone. For the second, his work was simply a means to eke out a livelihood. For the third, his work was an opportunity to create something beautiful that he cared for deeply. The how is the pivotal issue.
14. It is not the content of your life that matters. It is the context of your life that does. 
15. When my daughter was twelve years of age, she came to me, a little troubled. I gave her just one guidance: "Never look up to anyone; never look down on anyone." If people practiced this simple sadhana, they would see everything just the way it is. If you look up to someone, you will exaggerate their positive qualities; if you look down on someone, you will exaggerate their negative qualities. But if you simply look--not for something, but just look--you will see things just as they are. Now your ability to navigate your way through life is greatly enhanced.
16. Karma yoga is usually interpreted as doing one's duty. This again is utterly false. Now, this may sound outrageous, but let me say it: there should be no such thing as duty in this world. Duty is tyranny. The very idea was concocted by people with vested interests.
17. You have love for something, you do it; if you have no love, it is better to simply desist from action. Doing something miserably or self-righteously is not a contribution to life.
18. You will see after rigorous, immersive work that there is suddenly no intention left in you to do anything. Now the real spiritual process unfolds. Only if you have known intense action will you know the bliss of inaction. Once your energies get to a boiling point, it is very easy to transform them and make your life happen in the most harmonious way possible. That is the whole purpose of karma yoga.
19. These are the only two things that you are suffering right now: your memory and your imagination. Nothing more.
20. This moment is all there is. Accepting this is not a formula. It is not a theory. It means seeing reality just the way it is. It means aligning yourself with the way things are, not the way you think they should be.
21. The very way in which you experience life--whether you see it as sweet or sour, beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant--is your responsibility, as your ability to respond is what determines the nature of your experience.
22. The more you start seeing that you are responsible for your life, the closer you move toward your liberation. If you try to pass the buck to somebody, you will start moving toward your entanglement.
23. Whatever you eat, drink, and breathe is energy. Whether you transform it into physical, mental, or life energy is up to you. Energy is neither created nor destroyed; it is only transformed.
24. Many choose to live their lives at this superficial level. They opt for self-improvement rather than self-transformation, hoping that a life of tepid affability and general agreeability will take them to the ultimate. They forget that the social has nothing to do with the existential.
25. Whether you smoke or drink or pray all day, your actions can still be compulsive. Whatever you do, if it is done with joy and gratitude and if it moves you toward freedom from cycles, it makes all the difference. If a certain prayerful attitude grows within you out of your joy and gratitude, that is beautiful. It is the context, not the content of your life, that determines karmic accumulation.
26. The eights limbs of yoga (ashtanga yoga, as it is known) are structured in a particular way: the first three limbs (yama, niyama, and asana) are considered to be the fire aspect are purifactory; the last four (pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi) are considered to be the light aspect and are enlightening. The fourth limb--pranayama--is considered to be the intermediate transitory step, combining both fire and light.
27. I want to invite you to that place of borderless ignorance--that the ancients have called enlightenment--and the only way to get there is to lose yourself. There is no other way.
28. A teaching, after a certain period of time, becomes a block by itself. You will twist it to your convenience. People have done this to teachings all over the world. Initially, a teaching has an impact on you because it is new and you have no clue as to how it works. But over a period of time, you will start twisting it to your convenience. You will make the teaching support you. This is counterproductive, because the teaching is not meant to support you; it is meant to demolish you!
29. The realignment of the chakras--or energy centers--in the human system can produce dramatic results. Energy interventions can completely rewire the system and alter the impact of genetic, evolutionary, and elemental memory. It is these dimensions of memory that unconsciously restrict us in many ways. To become free from their impact or to learn to disconnect from them when necessary is a very important aspect of yogic practice.
30. The longing for liberation, or mukti, is not because life is miserable. When you are miserable, you long for heaven, not liberation. The longing for liberation arises only when life is good, but you naturally want to evolve to the next dimension. You do not want to go through the tedium of the same cycles time and again.
31. If you function unconsciously, your karma rules you absolutely. As soon as you can function with some awareness, the power of karma over your life weakens. In life beyond the body, discretion does not exist, so karma rules absolutely. If you have pleasant karma within you, it gets magnified, and if you have unpleasant karma within you, it gets intensified. It is these internal conditions that are referred to as heaven and hell in many traditions.
32. It is your responsibility to exercise the choice every moment of your life: either to follow your tendency or to make a conscious decision. If you live with this sense of responsibility, your tendencies will not rule you, and your future will not mimic the past.
33. If your pursuit of external science and technology were accompanied by a pursuit of inner well-being, this would be less of an issue. But enhancing the physical without finding access to the nonphysical dimension is the fundamental problem.
34. A mirror simply reflects everything. Nothing sticks to it; no residue is left upon it, and it never makes any judgment about what it reflects. It does not discriminate between pleasant and unpleasant, beautiful and ugly. When your mind becomes like this, you are in a state of samadhi. When all these distinctions drop away, the life energy no longer clings to the body. At this point, it starts dislodging itself from the physical.
35. For the yogi, the ultimate aim is mahasamadhi, or ultimate dissolution of the limited identity. This means a voluntary relinquishment of the physical, mental, and energy bodies. There is nothing life-denying about this. It is instead about giving up the limited for the unlimited. You could think of it like this: Instead of sitting on the beach, you choose to become the ocean. You choose to move from limited pleasure to the unfathomable ecstasy of boundless existence.
36. Existentially, no distinction exists between the life of one being and that of another. But physically and mentally, there is, of course, separateness. By linking the two on an energy level, you can create a certain life support system for yourself.
37. The ultimate guidance you can offer is to help someone transcend their suffering. This is what the great sages and mystics down the ages have done. They remind the world that there is a way out of suffering. Even if there is pain, there need be no suffering. The ability to see this difference is the supreme human attainment.
38. My only aim is to help you recognize the miracle of life that you are. Everything else is a distraction.
39. Karma does not mean God is sitting up there punishing bad people and rewarding good ones. There is no such thing. But what kind of society we live in--is that not our collective karma? That we are living uninvolved in a society in which horrific things happen--is that not our karma? If all of us live without any humanity in our hearts for all the atrocities going on around us, that is our karma. We get the society we deserve.
40. If there is collective will, we can bring many things to some sense of order. With concerted and participatory action, much can be changed. But if you attribute all this to divine will, things will go on endlessly in the same way.
41. Now, suppose you were driving with a drunk friend. If he crashes his car, you might also be seriously injured. If you were to say "This is unfair--this is his karma, not mine," it would be absurd. Your karma is that you were with a drunken friend. This is the way existence works. If you are in tune with, it will not crush you. If you are not in tune with it, it will crush you. 
42. Anything that is karmic dissolves only when the discerning mind is in function. If you just leave it unexamined, it hardens into a tendency. These tendencies are working upon you all the time.
43. With children, the less you try to influence them, the more they are influenced by you. The more you try to try influence them, the less successful you will be.
44. For those who have died without living out a full life cycle, the Allotted Karma, or prarabdha, has to wear itself out. The pranic body has to come to a certain state of passivity or inertness. This happens when there is no longer any active karmic substance. Now, the new allotment, or installment of prarabdha, will begin to manifest itself. As this happens, the energy body regains its vibrancy and will then take on another physical body.
45. This is what every human being should aspire to: discrimination only on the level of action, not involvement. Action is necessarily limited. It involves a certain expenditure of energy, time, competence, and other factors. Discretion is necessary only on the level of action; otherwise you will waste yourself. But involvement is an internal state, and it needs to be all-inclusive. 
46. There has been a great emphasis in the yogic tradition on cultivating the right attitude toward life because, depending on your attitude or quality, you attract that kind of thought, emotion, and experience toward yourself.
47. The moment of death is particularly important in determining the kind of quality you have and the kind of karma you attract. So if you die in anger, in hatred, in misery or in pain, you attract another kind of karma.
48. In the last forty seconds of a person's lifetime, many lifetimes of Accumulated Karma play out in fast-forward. In those crucial forty seconds, if a person manages to stay aware, they can drop lifetimes of karma. It does not matter what kind of life they have lived. If they are in a consecrated space, or if they have done some spiritual practice and manage to stay conscious, that intense phase will wipe them clean and they can dissolve their karma altogether. 
49. Dying in joy or love is a wonderful way to die. Dying in what the yogic tradition calls the samadhi state is the ultimate way to die. This means that while you are living, you walk consciously into death.
50. Tigers have no real choice other than to be a tiger. They go by their instincts. They have no choice as we know them: they cannot transform themselves into vegetarians or get married or become yogis! Their life is fixed, so there is not much karmic action. Certain personality differences still exist: there are angry tigers, docile tigers, lazy tigers. But there are no major differences. Human life, on the other hand, is not fixed. You have the choice and the ability to be any way you want in a given moment. That is the freedom and the curse. Most human beings are suffering their freedom.
51. Every human being is in the process of becoming divine. Every human being is in the process of awakening to their own destiny. Whether this happens today, tomorrow, ten years or ten thousand years later, is always open to question. But once you see that life is moving toward its ultimate nature of its own accord, you also put your energies into it and go faster. That is, you turn consciously spiritual. Collaborating with Nature's plan is all you need to do.
52. What about me? If you are able to completely eliminate this question, you have annihilated the enormous sense of self-significance that most human beings live with. Now you can dismantle the elaborate karmic chains in one swift single stroke. You emerge from the debris of your karma a liberated being.
53. There is a difference between walking out of the body and committing suicide. Suicide means you want to escape a difficult situation. Walking out of something means your term is over and you are stepping out joyfully. If you escape from prison, you will be on the run the rest of your life. But if you are freed from prison because your term is up, you are a free man. That is the difference. And it is a big one. 
54. In order to fly you need to be willing to drop all investments. You need to reach the point where you are no longer interested in saving yourself. You no longer want to take incremental steps toward your liberation. You realize that if you take incremental steps to infinity, you become endless installments and never get there. When you see your limited identity for what it really is--a hollow bundle of thoughts, likes, dislikes, and prejudices--you are ready to abandon it.

Notes & Quotes: The Archer by Paulo Coelho

 The following are my favorite quotes from Paulo Coelho's The Archer.

1. "You have skill, dignity, and posture," said Tetsuya. "You have a good grasp of technique and you have mastered the bow, but you have not mastered your mind. You know how to shoot when all the circumstances are favorable, but if you are on dangerous ground, you cannot hit the target. The archer cannot always choose the battlefield, so start your training again and be prepared for unfavorable situations. Continue in the way of the bow, for it is a whole life's journey, but remember that a good, accurate shot is very different from one made with peace in your soul."
2. What is a master? I would say that he is not someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to do his best to discover a knowledge he already has in his soul.
3. The archer who does not share with others the joy of the bow and the arrow will never know his own qualities and defects. Therefore, before you begin anything, seek out your allies, people who are interested in what you are doing. I'm not saying "seek out other archers." I'm saying: find people with other skills, because he way of the bow is no different from any other path that is followed with enthusiasm.
4. The best allies are those who do not think like everyone else. That is why when you seek companions with whom you can share your enthusiasm for archery, trust your intuition and pay no attention to what anyone else may say. People always judge others by taking as a model their own limitations, and other people's opinions are often full of prejudice and fear.
5. You might think that archery would be of no interest to, say, a baker or a farmer, but I can assure you that they will introduce whatever they see into what they do. You will do the same: you will learn from the good baker how to use your hands and how to get the right mix of ingredients. You will learn from the farmer to have patience, to work hard, to respect the seasons, and not to curse the storms, because it would be a waste of time.
6. Do not allow yourself to be carried away by how you shoot in the morning, whether well or badly. There are many more days ahead, and each arrow is a life in itself. Use your bad moments to discover what makes you tremble. Use your good moments to find your road to inner peace. But do not stop either out of fear or out of joy: the way of the bow has no end.
7. There are two types of shot. The first is the shot made with great precision, but without any soul. In this case, although the archer may have a great mastery of technique, he has concentrated solely on the target, and because of this he has not evolved, he has become stale, he has not managed to grow, and, one day, he will abandon the way of the bow because he finds that everything has become mere routine. The second type of shot is the one made with the soul. When the intention of the archer is transformed into the flight of the arrow, his hand opens at the right moment, the sound of the string makes the birds sing, and the gesture of shooting something over a distance provokes--paradoxically enough--a return to and an encounter with oneself.
8. Visualize the perfect master always by your side, and do everything to revere him and to honor his teachings. This master, whom many people call God, although some call him "the thing" and others "talent", is always watching us.

Notes & Quotes: The Garden by Jon Gordon

The following are my favorite notes from Jon Gordon's The Garden: A Spiritual Fable About Ways to Overcome Fear, Anxiety, and Stress.

1. It didn't matter what challenges and situations they were facing. Whatever the challenge was it was just a symptom, a symptom of a deeper cause. Humans experience many different symptoms, such as addictions, fears, stress, anxiety, insecurity, and destructive behavior that are all tied to one root cause. The key was to help people understand and heal the cause of the symptom and the symptom would disappear.
2. It is the ultimate choice. You can choose to love and obey God and overcome evil with good or you can believe the lie and let evil win again. It's a battle between good and evil and you are in the middle of it.
3. The 5 Ds:
1. Doubt
2. Distort
3. Discourage
4. Distract
5. Divide
4. Remember, God told Adam and Eve that they could eat from all the trees of the Garden. But what did the serpent do? He was able to create doubt that God can't be trusted and as a result got them to focus instead on the one tree they couldn't eat from. God provided abundance and the enemy was able to get them to focus on what they lacked.
5. We don't give up because it's hard, we give up because we get discouraged. The enemy lies to us so that we will make a bad choice or so that we will get discouraged and give up. And in many cases the bad choices come first, we get discouraged by the outcomes our choices produce and we give up as a result. The enemy doesn't beat us. Through the lies we believe, he gets us to beat ourselves.
6. The enemy uses distractions all the time to catch our attention and lead us away from what matters most. In the story of Adam and Eve it says that the fruit was pleasing to the eye and desirable. It looked good and she wanted it so Eve ate the fruit first and then gave it to Adam to eat and he ate as well. The enemy is a master of distraction and getting our attention with things that are pleasing to the eye and desirable but distract us from what matters most.
7. The day we die it won't matter what kind of car we drive, how big our house is, how much money we have in the bank. What will matter is did we live the life God created us to live? Did we develop great relationships? Did we make a difference in the lives of others?
8. If it's not helping you become all God created you to be, then it's the wrong thing. And sometimes the wrong thing isn't even a bad thing. There's a saying, "If the devil won't make you bad, he'll make you busy." He'll get you to focus on all the things that don't matter instead of what does matter. You may not do drugs, commit adultery, or hurt someone, but you may spend way too much time on social media, binge watching TV, or stay in an unhealthy relationship.
9. That's what evil does. It divides in order to defeat.
10. Evil is causing many to look at what makes them different instead of what they have in common. When you look at the world's problems, so many believe the lie that they are separate from each other when actually we are all one. The soul doesn't know nationality or religion or skin color. The soul knows oneness and love.
11. It's a spiritual battle and the enemy uses the Five D's to win the battle against God and us. When we lose this battle, it leads to the sixty D. In a marriage, the sixth D is Divorce. In a person, the sixth D is Destruction. In a team, the sixth D is Defeat.
12. You made a choice and you must make the right one each time. This is how you win the battle.
13. Find your identity in God, not in what others think or say about you. Also, don't let you identity be defined by the world or what the world can provide you. 
14. Don't worry about your greatness in the future. Just be great today. God will take care of the outcome.

Notes & Quotes: The Path by Tony Robbins

The following are my favorite quotes from Tony Robbins' The Path: Accelerating Your Journey to Financial Freedom.

1. Let me fill you in on the biggest secret of financial freedom: you probably won't earn your way to it. 
2. We all seem to wish for a return of the good old days when, in fact--let's face it--the good old days weren't all that good. Four hundred years ago, nearly 30% of the European population was wiped out from a single disease: the bubonic plague. Just 200 years ago, during the time of the stink bomb in London, 45% of children died before reaching the age of five. Having your children survive adulthood in Victorian England was a relative coin flip. Imagine the morale of a society that routinely lost nearly half of its offspring. And we don't need to go as far back as Victorian England. Just 100 years ago, 20 million people were killed in the four years or World War I. In 1918, the Spanish Flu tore through Europe, infecting 500 million people--one-third of the world's population--and killing over 50 million.
3. It's important for us to recalibrate our brains to the blessing of the here and now. Our brains trick us into loving narratives of nostalgia, but these narratives contain a real flaw: they rarely capture the whole picture. History is riddled with war, disease, and famine, and these past times are brutally sobering when compared to our present day.
4. A large part of the issue with financial media is that many people misunderstand the purpose for its existence. Media are businesses, and businesses exist to make a profit. The primary purpose of media is not to inform; it's to make money. Media outlets make money by selling advertisements, and news channels can charge higher prices for advertising placement if they have high ratings. Because of this, the primary purpose of any news outlet is to get as many viewers as possible (they call them "eyeballs") to tune in and to get get those viewers to watch for as long as possible.
5. The stock market cares about only one thing above all else: anticipated earnings (i.e., future profits). If companies make more money, their shares become more valuable and their share prices eventually rise. The stock price is simply a reflection of a company's earning power. Everything else is noise.
6. 6 Human Needs:
1. Certainty
2. Variety/Uncertainty
3. Significance
4. Love and Connection
5. Growth
6. Contribution
7. The law of life says that if we aren't growing, we are dying.
8. The secret to living is giving.
9. "You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give." Winston Churchill
10. If you want to become wealthy, start acting like the wealthy.
11. Begin with a clearly articulated vision, and then point your efforts purposefully in that direction.
12. When it comes to investing, the bolder the prediction is, the less valid the source.
13. If you are attracted to a particular investment, I recommend that you challenge it rigorously. How could this investment go wrong? If this investment were to lose money, how would it happen? And what risks does this investment present? By forcing yourself to acknowledge the potential flaws in a particular strategy, you open yourself up to exploring ideas and beliefs contrary to your own. And that makes you a better investor.
14. Both novice and experienced negotiators understand anchoring. The first price thrown out in a negotiation often becomes the anchor for all future discussions. Marketers have seized on the anchoring effect to influence consumers' spending habits. In a fascinating experiment, Brian Wansink, Robert Kent, and Stephen Hoch set up a display of Campbell's soup, advertising that it was on sale for 79 cents and there was no limit to the number of cans shoppers could buy. They then set up a different display with the same sale but a sign that read, "Limit of 12 per Person." The shoppers who purchased the soup without a limit bought an average of 3.3 cans. The shoppers who purchased the soup with a "limit" of 12 cans purchased 7 cans. The shoppers became anchored to the number 12, assigning meaning to it (for example, "Wow! This must be a really good deal and the grocery store doesn't want me to buy a lot or they'll lose money").
15. Many investors fall victim to anchoring by buying a stock that has come far off its highs ("It's a bargain now!") or not purchasing a stock that has run on to new highs ("It's too overpriced now!") The reality is that the stock is often priced pretty darn close to where it should be, with an equal number of buyers on one side and sellers on the other. The only reason the investor thinks it is a "great bargain" or "overpriced" is the direction it has moved from its past anchor price. With an awareness of the anchoring effect, you can avoid holding losers too long and selling winners too early.
16. When I speak with clients who have an investment they won't sell until it recovers, I ask them a simple question: "If you had cash instead of this stock, knowing what you are trying to accomplish, would you buy the same stock today?" The answer is almost always no, and when it is, we know the investor is hanging on because of loss aversion. Understanding the impact of loss aversion on our decision making can help us become better investors.
17. If you don't need to sell an asset today, its current price is irrelevant.
18. The key to profiting from stocks is to remain fully invested through all the seemingly constant corrections, crashes, and day-to-day movements that cause the fainthearted to jump ship at the worst possible time. Ideally you take the opposite approach and embrace these tumultuous times as buying opportunities!

Notes & Quotes: The Primal Method by Gregory Koufacos

The following are my favorite quotes from Gregory Koufacos's The Primal Method: A Book for Emerging Men.

1. The brain has an entire system, the mirror neuron system, that stimulates growth and change. When two people are in regular contact with each other, there is a mirroring effect, meaning they will be influenced by the other person's energy and direction.
2. Get involved in society. Find the community that breathes fresh life into you. In this way, you will build a life.
3. We make promises until we feel the weight of those promises.
4. What's your level of integrity and initiative?
5. Imagine your life as if it were a series on Netflix. Would you tune in every week to watch it? Would you want binge the whole season? Would anyone else be interested? If the answer is no, then it's a sign that you're stagnating and need to make some major changes. If you yourself would not be interested in watching your own life play out on television, that is a red flag that you are not really engaged with your life. You need to be invested in your story in order to guide it, shape it, and to make it happen.
6. You know what happens when the same man travels down a different road? Unless he really changes, he just repeats his journey. The road changes, but the road runner remains the same.

Notes & Quotes: The Power of Discipline by Daniel Walter

The following are my favorite quotes from Daniel Walter's The Power of Discipline: How to Use Self Control and Mental Toughness to Achieve Your Goals.

1. The best way to build self-discipline is to remove yourself from temptation. For example, if you are struggling with your diet, replace your cupboard of unhealthy foods with healthy choices and meals. When you go grocery shopping, stay away from the aisles selling sweet treats and immediately make your way to the aisles stocking healthy foods. By using these strategies, your willpower is only tested during the time you spend in the store, as opposed to trying to resist the temptation to eat your stash of cookies in the cupboard every evening over and over again.
2. Your level of self-discipline will control your level of success in your place of employment, relationships, finances, academics, etc.
3. Inactivity leads to one place--failure. 
4. A self-disciplined person is confident because, regardless of where they are at the moment, they know that they are the best version of themselves. They are eating properly, exercising, and working towards their goals. They feel good about life because they are in the driver's seat, and they know exactly where they are going.
5. People shouldn't be afraid of failure; they should be scared of regret. The feeling of looking back on your life and wondering "What if..." will torment you worse than the feeling of having tried and failed.
6. There is only one difference between successful and unsuccessful people, and that is the habits they follow each day.
7. Bad habits are developed by failing to do the most important things in the morning.
8. The core of self-discipline is doing what you need to do whether you feel like it or not. Inaction and making excuses and identical twins; there is no difference between them because they both lead to the same destination--failure. If you are going to wait until the conditions are just right, you've already lost the battle because when you want to something, you are not stepping out of your comfort zone. 
9. If you want to win in life, forget about focusing on the outcome, focus on the system you are going to use to get to the outcome.
10. One of the most helpful things you can do right now on your journey to improved self-discipline is to remove the word "try" from your vocabulary. This minor change will transform the way you see yourself and boost your self-esteem. The way you think is not the only thing that shapes your life. Your words have power whether you say them out loud or in your head--they influence the way you see yourself and how far you succeed.
11. There is no escape from pain and suffering, and this is also true when it comes to achieving your dreams. If you are going to achieve anything worthwhile in life, you will need to give up something. 
12. Top performers fail all the time, but they understand that all they need is a couple of major successes to set them up for life--the same principle applies to you too.
13. Your life is a reflection of the decisions you have made, and if you want a better future, it's essential that you start making better decisions.

Notes & Quotes: Make Your Bed by Admiral William H. McRaven

 The following are my favorite quotes from Admiral William H. McRaven's Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World.

1. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right. And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made--that you made--and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.
2. Like the small rubber boat we had in basic SEAL training, it takes a team of good people to get you to your destination in life. You cannot paddle the boat alone. Find someone to share your life with. Make as many friends as possible, and never forget that your success depends on others.
3. It is easy to blame your lot in life on some outside force, to stop trying because you believe fate is against you. It is easy to think that where you were raised, how your parents treated you, or what school you went to is all that determines your future. Nothing could be further from the truth.
4. You will pay for your failures. But, if you persevere, if you let those failures teach you and strengthen you, then you will be prepared to handle life's toughest moments.
5. Life is a struggle and the potential for failure is ever present, but those who live in fear of failure, or hardship, or embarrassment will never achieve their potential. Without pushing your limits, without occasionally sliding down the rope headfirst, without daring greatly, you will never know what is truly possible in your life.
6. At some point we will all confront a dark moment in life. If not the passing of a loved one, then something else that crushes your spirit and leaves you wondering about your future. In that dark moment, reach deep inside yourself and be your very best.
7. Of all the lessons I learned in SEAL training, this was the most important. Never quit. It doesn't sound particularly profound, but life constantly puts you in situations where quitting seems so much easier than continuing on. Where the odds are so stacked against you that giving up seems the rational thing to do.
8. Remember...start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone. Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often. But if you take some risks, step up when times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden, and never, ever give up--if you do these things, then you can change your life for the better...and maybe the world!

Notes & Quotes: Siddhartha

The following are my favorite quotes from Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha.

1. A goal stood before Siddhartha, a single goal: to become empty, empty of thirst, empty of wishing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow.
2. When you throw a rock into the water, it will speed on the fastest course to the bottom of the water. This is how it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolution. Siddhartha does nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. His goal attracts him, because he doesn't let anything enter his soul which might oppose the goal. This is what Siddhartha has learned among the Samanas. This is what fools call magic and of which they think it would be effected by means of the daemons. Nothing is effected by daemons, there are no daemons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.
3. "And what's the use of that? For example, the fasting--what is it good for?" "It is very good, sir. When a person has nothing to eat, fasting is the smartest thing he could do. When, for example, Siddhartha hadn't learned to fast, he would have to accept any kind of service before this day is up, whether it may be with you or wherever, because hunger would force him to do so. But like this, Siddhartha can wait calmly, he knows no impatience, he knows no emergency, for a long time he can allow hunger to besiege him and can laugh about it. This, sir, is what fasting is good for."
4. Out of all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one touched his soul. He saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same and yet new in every moment! Great be he who would grasp this, understand this!
   
5. Slowly blossomed, slowly ripened in Siddhartha was the realization, the knowledge, what wisdom actually was, what the goal of his long search was. It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability, a secret art, to think every moment, while living his life, the thought of oneness, to be able to feel and inhale the oneness.
6. In this hour, Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate, stopped suffering. On his face flourished the cheerfulness of a knowledge, which is no longer opposed by any will, which knows perfection, which is in agreement with the flow of events, with the current of life, full of sympathy for the pain of others, full of sympathy for the pleasure of others, devoted to the flow, belonging to the oneness.

Book Preview: Everyday Mindfulness by Melissa Steginus

TCK Publishing recently gifted me a copy of Everyday Mindfulness: 108 Simple Practices to Empower Yourself and Transform Your Life by Melissa Steginus. 

The book focuses on two main areas. Self-empowerment and personal fulfillment. It spans 108 days and is divided into 6 sections (physical, emotional, rational, spiritual, occupation, and network). Each day offers a new practice followed by writing prompts for journaling and reflection.

Here are a couple of examples that caught my eye while I was flipping through the pages:

Day 18 - Declutter Your Space

Practice: Time for a little spring cleaning! (This may take a few days or a few weeks, and that's fine)

1. Declutter. Sell or donate clothing and household items you don't regularly wear, use, or absolutely need. 
2. Get organized. Once you've rid your space of unnecessary clutter, put everything that's left in its designated place.
3. Tidy up. Sweep, wash, vacuum, or do whatever you need to create a clean and cozy area you'll want to spend time in. 
4. Observe. Spend time in your space and notice how it makes you feel.

Reflection:

1. How did this process change the way you look at what you own?
2. How did you define what was necessary versus unnecessary?
3. What did you learn about your relationship with the space around you?

Day 46 - Detoxify Your Mind

Practice: Detoxify your mind by disconnecting from social media, television, online games, and other forms of digital entertainment. Instead, use today to do one of four things:

1. Connect with yourself.
2. Connect with others in person.
3. Practice a skill or learn a new one.
4. Choose a previous activity from this book to practice again.
   

Reflection:

1. What was most challenging about this exercise?
   
2. What did it show you about your media habits?
3. Which of the four options did you focus on today?
4. How did that benefit you?

Day 81 - Set Boundaries

Practice: Exercise your personal accountability by reflecting on the goals and priorities you've mapped out this past week; keep these visible and let them guide your decisions. For instance, when an opportunity arises, ask yourself if it clearly resonates with your big-picture goals. If it does, you'll know to explore it; if it does not, turn it down.

When you say "no," be polite but firm. Here are some examples of how to kindly but effectively decline:

• "Thank you for asking, but I'm unavailable for X."
• "I appreciate you thinking of me, but I can't commit to Y."
• "Z is my priority, and I feel like X and Y conflict with Z."
• "Thank you, but I have to decline."

Reflection:

1. Where do you want to spend your energy?
2. What might be an example of a "good opportunity" (one that aligns with your priorities)?
3. How will you know when to say "no?"
4. How will you steer clear of distractions or conflicting opportunities?

I'm looking forward to dedicating the next 3.5 months to going through this book. Limited downside, unlimited potential!

More info
Author's website: https://melissasteginus.com/
Publisher's website: https://www.tckpublishing.com/

Notes & Quotes: The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene

The following are my favorite quotes from Robert Greene's The Laws of Human Nature.

1. The ability to gauge people's true worth, their degree of loyalty and conscientiousness, is one of the most important skills you can possess, helping you avoid the bad hires, partnerships, and relationships that can make your life miserable.
2. Like everyone, you think you are rational, but you are not. Rationality is not a power you are born with but one you acquire through training and practice.
3. In the end, people want to hear their own ideas and preferences confirmed by an expert opinion. They will interpret what you say in light of what they want to hear; and if your advice runs counter to their desires, they will find some way to dismiss your opinion, you so-called expertise. The more powerful the person, the more they are subject to this form of the confirmation bias.
4. Whenever you experience unusual gains or losses, that is precisely the time to step back and counterbalance them with some necessary pessimism or optimism. Be extra wary of sudden success and attention--they are not built on anything that lasts and they have an addictive pull. And the fall is always painful.
5. In the backgrounds of almost all deep narcissists we find either abandonment or enmeshment. The result is that they have no self to retreat to, no foundation for self-esteem, and are completely dependent on the attention they can get from others to make them feel alive and worthy.
6. Nonverbal communication cannot be experienced simply through thinking and translating thoughts into words but must be felt physically as one engages with the facial expressions or locked positions of other people. It is a different form of knowledge, one that connects with the animal part of our nature and involves our mirror neurons.
7. Take notice of people who praise or flatter you without their eyes lighting up. This could be a sign of hidden envy.
8. People will tend to leak out more of their true feelings, and certainly hostile ones, when they are drunk, sleepy, frustrated, angry, or under stress. They will later tend to excuse this, as if they weren't themselves for the moment, but in fact they are actually being more themselves than ever.
9. Since your success depends on the people you work with and for, make their character the primary object of your attention. You will spare yourself the misery of discovering their character when it is too late.
10. Nobody likes to believe that they are operating under some kind of compulsion beyond their control. It is too disturbing a thought.
11. The quality of attachment that we had in our earliest years will create deep tendencies within us, in particular the way we use relationships to handle or modulate our stress.
12. People will never do something just once. They might try to excuse themselves, to say they lost their heads in the moment, but you can be sure they will repeat whatever foolishness they did on another occasion, compelled by their character and habits. In fact, they will often repeat actions when it is completely against their self-interest, revealing the compulsive nature of their weaknesses.
13. So often we think that power has changed people, when in fact it simply reveals more of who they are.
14. Another realm to examine is how people behave in moments away from work. In a game or sport they might reveal a competitive nature that they cannot turn off. They have a fear of being overtaken in anything, even when they are driving. They must be ahead, out in front. This can be channeled functionally into their work, but in off hours it reveals deep layers of insecurities.
15. Once you understand you are dealing with someone of the other variety than yourself, you must reassess their character and not foist your own preferences on them. 
16. People of real strength are as rare as gold, and if you find them, you should respond as if you had discovered a treasure. 
17. Instead of focusing on what you want and covet in the world, you must train yourself to focus on others, on their repressed desires and unmet fantasies.
18. More and more people have come to believe that others should simply desire them for who they are. This means revealing as much as they can about themselves, exposing all of their likes and dislikes, and making themselves as familiar as possible. They leave no room for imagination or fantasy, and when the man or woman they want loses interest in them, they go online to rant at the superficiality of men or the fecklessness of women.
19. Remember: it is not possession but desire that secretly impels people.
20. Instead of constantly chasing after the latest trends and modeling our desires on what others find exciting, we should spend our time getting to know our own tastes and desires better, so that we can distinguish what is something we truly need or want from that which has been manufactured by advertisers or viral effects.
21. Avoid deep contact with those whose time frame is narrow, who are in continual react mode, and strive to associate with those with an expanded awareness of time.
22. Put the focus on others. Let them do the talking. Let them be the stars of the show. Their opinions and values are worth emulating. The causes they support are the noblest. Such attention is so rare in this world, and people are so hungry for it, that giving them such validation will tower their defenses and open their minds to whatever ideas you want to insinuate.
23. It is always better to praise people for their effort, not their talent.
24. People often won't do what others ask them to do, because they simply want to assert their will.
25. When it comes to the ideas and opinions you hold, see them as toys or building blocks that you are playing with. Some you will keep, others you will knock down, but your spirit remains flexible and playful.
26. The world simply exists as it is--things or events are not good or bad, right or wrong, ugly or beautiful. It is we with our particular perspectives who add color to or subtract it from things and people.
27. You are not a pawn in a game controlled by others; you are an active player who can move the pieces at will and even rewrite the rules.
28. How to view the world: See yourself as an explorer. With the gift of consciousness, you stand before a vast and unknown universe that we humans have just begun to investigate.
29. Although adversity and pain are generally beyond your control, you have the power to determine your response and the fate that comes from that.
30. Reinterpret the denials as positive expressions of Shadow desires.
31. When people are drunk and behave differently, often it is not the alcohol that is speaking but the Shadow.
32. Behind any vehement hatred is often a secret and very unpalatable envy of the hatred person or people. It is only through such hate that it can be released from the unconscious in some form.
33. In order for enviers to feel entitled to take harmful action, they must create a narrative: everything the other person does reveals some negative trait; they do not deserve their superior positions.
34. Gratitude is the best antidote to envy.
35. We want to feel significant in some way, to protest against our natural smallness, to expand our sense of self. What we experienced at the age of three or four unconsciously haunts us our entire lives. We alternate between moments of sensing our smallness and trying to deny it. This makes us prone to finding ways to imagine our superiority.
36. Weakness comes from the inability to ask questions and to learn. Lower your self-opinion. You are not as great or skilled as you imagine. This will spur you to actually improve yourself.
37. Experimenting with the skills and options related to your personality and inclinations is not only the single most essential step in developing a high sense of purpose, it is perhaps the most important step in life in general.
38. If necessary, manufacture reasonably tight deadlines to intensify your sense of purpose.
39. Always break tasks into smaller bites. Each day or week you must have microgoals. This will help you focus and avoid entanglements or detours that will waste your energy. 
40. No matter the type of culture, or how disruptive it might have been in its origins, the longer a group exists and the larger it grows, the more conservative it will become. This is an inevitable result of the desire to hold on to what people have made or built, and to rely on tried-and-true ways to maintain the status quo. This creeping conservatism will often be the death of the group, because it slowly loses the ability to adapt.
41. Today, in our modern sophisticated world, you will notice this very ancient dynamic continually at play: any group will reflexively focus on some hated enemy, real or imagined, to help bring the tribe together.
42. One faction to pay particular attention to is the one that is formed by those in the higher echelons, which we can identify as the elites in the group. Although elites themselves sometimes split into rival factions, more often than not, when push comes to shove, they will unite and work to preserve their elite status. The clan tends to look after its own, all the more so among the powerful.
43. We must come to the conclusion that the primary group we belong to is that of the human race. That is our inevitable future. Anything else is regressive and far too dangerous.
44. We must understand the fundamental task of any leader--to provide a far-reaching vision, to see the global picture, to work for the greater good of the group and maintain its unity. That is what people crave in their leaders.
45. As the leader, you must be seen working as hard as or even harder than everyone else. You set the highest standards for yourself. You are consistent and accountable. If there are sacrifices that need to be made, you are the first to make them for the good of the group. This sets the proper tone.
46. You have a responsibility to contribute to the culture and times you live in.
47. Human aggression stems from an underlying insecurity, as opposed to simply an impulse to hurt or take from others.
48. We must see this hypersensitivity to criticism as a sign of great inner weakness. A person who is truly strong from within can endure criticism and open discussion without feeling personally threatened.
49. If you stop focusing on people's words and the facade they present, and concentrate on their actions and their nonverbal cues, you can almost sense the level of aggressiveness they emanate.
50. The denial is stronger than ever--it is always the other person, the other side, the other culture that is more aggressive and destructive. We must finally come to terms with the fact that it is not the other but ourselves, all of us, no matter the time or the culture. We must own this fact of our nature before we can even begin to consider moving beyond it. It is only in our awareness that we can start to think of progress.
51. In general, be wary about people's promises and never completely rely on them. With those who fail to deliver, it is more likely a pattern, and it is best to have nothing more to do with them.
52. The more clearly you see what you want, the likelier you are to realize it. You ambitions may involve challenges, but they should not be so far above your capacity that you only set yourself up for failure.
53. What makes anger toxic is the degree to which it is disconnected from reality. People channel their natural frustrations into anger at some vague enemy or scapegoat, conjured up and spread by demagogues. They imagine grand conspiracies behind simply inescapable realities, such as taxes or globalism or the changes that are part of all historical periods. They believe that certain forces in the world are to blame for their lack of success or power, instead of their own impatience and lack of effort. There is no thought behind their anger, and so it leads nowhere or it becomes destructive.
54. Think of yourself as the enemy of the status quo, whose proponents must view you in turn as dangerous. See this task as absolutely necessary for the revitalization of the human spirit and the culture at large, and master it.
55. Some people have even come to entertain the idea that through technology we can somehow overcome death itself, the ultimate in human denial. In general, technology gives us the feeling that we have such godlike powers that we can prolong life and ignore the reality for quite a long time. In this sense, we are no stronger than our most primitive ancestors. We have simply found new ways to delude ourselves.
56. By connecting to the reality of death, we connect more profoundly to the reality and fullness of life. By separating death from life and repressing our awareness of it, we do the opposite.
57. Let the awareness of the shortness of life clarify our daily actions. We have goals to reach, projects to get done, relationships to improve. This could be our last such project, our last battle on earth, given the uncertainties of life, and we must commit completely to what we do.
58. A Philosophy of Life Through Death
1. Make the awareness visceral.
2. Awaken to the shortness of life.
3. See the mortality in everyone.
4. Embrace all pain and adversity.
5. Open the mind to the sublime.