the Ripening

Notes & Quotes: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

The following are my favorite quotes from Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.

Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.
The salvation of man is through love and in love.
No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
A man counted only because he had a prison number.[in the concentration camps]
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Often it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself.
Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”
Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
The immediate influence of behavior is always more effective than that of words.
There are two races of men in this world, but only these two—the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man.
No one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.
Suffering has no plans.
There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.
One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment.
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.
The meaning of life always changes, but it never ceases to be. According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways:

by creating a work or doing a deed;
by experiencing something or encountering someone; and
by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.
It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
A given symptom is responded to by a phobia, the phobia triggers the symptom, and the symptom, in turn, reinforces the phobia.
There is a danger inherent in the teaching of man’s “nothingbutness,” the theory that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment. Such a view of man makes a neurotic believe what he is prone to believe anyway, namely, that he is the pawn and victim of outer influences or inner circumstances. This neurotic fatalism is fostered and strengthened by a psychotherapy which denies that man is free.
Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.
Freedom is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.
Man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes—within the limits of endowment and environment—he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.
What matters is to make the best of any given situation.
A human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
To invoke an analogy, consider a movie: it consists of thousands upon thousands of individual pictures, and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning, yet the meaning of the whole film cannot be seen before its last sequence is shown. However, we cannot understand the whole film without having first understood each of its components, each of the individual pictures. Isn’t it the same with life? Doesn’t the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, if at all, only at its end, on the verge of death? And doesn’t this final meaning, too, depend on whether or not the potential meaning of each single situation has been actualized to the best of the respective individual’s knowledge and belief?
There are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating a work or by doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone; in other words, meaning can be found not only in work but also in love. Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.
The priority stays with creatively changing the situation that causes us to suffer. But the superiority goes to the “know-how to suffer,” if need be.
My imperative: Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.
You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to “saints.” Wouldn’t it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

There's a reason that this book is a bestseller. Read it!

Notes & Quotes: The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

The following are my favorite quotes from Gary Keller and Jay Papasan's The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results.

What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?
When you want the absolute best chance to succeed at anything you want, your approach should always be the same. Go small. “Going small” is ignoring all the things you could do and doing what you should do. It’s recognizing that not all things matter equally and finding the things that matter most. It’s a tighter way to connect what you do with what you want. It’s realizing that extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.
Everyone has one person who either means the most to them or was the first to influence, train, or manage them. No one succeeds alone. No one.
Often, the line between passion and skill can be blurry. That’s because they’re almost always connected.
Passion for something leads to disproportionate time practicing or working at it. That time spent eventually translates to skill, and when skill improves, results improve. Better results generally lead to more enjoyment, and more passion and more time is invested. It can be a virtuous cycle all the way to extraordinary results.
The Six Lies Between You and Success:

Everything matters equally.
Multitasking.
A disciplined life.
Willpower is always on will-call.
A balanced life.
Big is bad.

Achievers operate differently. They have an eye for the essential. They pause just long enough to decide what matters and then allow what matters to drive their day.
In the world of success, things aren’t equal. A small amount of causes creates most of the results. Just the right input creates most of the output. Selected effort creates almost all of the rewards.
No matter the task, mission, or goal. Big or small. Start with as large a list as you want, but develop the mindset that you will whittle your way from there to the critical few and not stop until you end with the essential ONE. The imperative ONE. The ONE Thing.
Multitasking is a lie.
Researchers estimate that workers are interrupted every 11 minutes and then spend almost a third of their day recovering from these distractions.
We don’t need any more discipline than we already have. We just need to direct and manage it a little better.
When you discipline yourself, you’re essentially training yourself to act in a specific way. Stay with this long enough and it becomes routine—in other words, a habit. So when you see people who look like “disciplined” people, what you’re really seeing is people who’ve trained a handful of habits into their lives. This makes them seem “disciplined” when actually they’re not. No one is.
The results suggest that it takes an average of 66 days to acquire a new habit. The full range was 18 to 254 days, but the 66 days represented a sweet spot—with easier behaviors taking fewer days on average and tough ones taking longer. Self-help circles tend to preach that it takes 21 days to make a change, but modern science doesn’t back that up. It takes time to develop the right habit, so don’t give up too soon. Decide what the right one is, then give yourself all the time you need and apply all the discipline you can summon to develop it.
The brain makes up 1/50th of our body mass but consumes a staggering 1/5th of the calories we burn for energy.
Foods that elevate blood sugar evenly over long periods, like complex carbohydrates and proteins, become the fuel of choice for high-achievers—literal proof that “you are what you eat.”
If you want to get the most out of your day, do your most important work—your ONE Thing—early, before your willpower is drawn down. Since your self-control will be sapped throughout the day, use it when it’s at full strength on what matters most.
At first, most people worked according to their needs and ambitions. The blacksmith didn’t have to stay at the forge until 5 p.m.; he could go home when the horse’s feet were shod. Then 19th-century industrialization saw for the first time large numbers working for someone else. The story became one of hard-driving bosses, year-round work schedules, and lighted factories that ignored dawn and dusk.
When you gamble with your time, you may be placing a bet you can’t cover. Even if you’re sure you can win, be careful that you can live with what you lose.
In his novel Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas, James Patterson artfully highlights where our priorities lie in our personal and professional balancing act: “Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.
Your work life is divided into two distinct areas—what matters most and everything else. You will have to take what matters to the extremes and be okay with what happens to the rest. Professional success requires it.
Everyone has the same amount of time, and hard work is simply hard work. As a result, what you do in the time you work determines what you achieve. And since what you do is determined by what you think, how big you think becomes the launching pad for how high you achieve.
When people talk about “reinventing” their career or their business, small boxes are often the root cause. What you build today will either empower or restrict you tomorrow. It will either serve as a platform for the next level of your success or as a box, trapping you where you are.
Big gives you the best chance for extraordinary results today and tomorrow. When Arthur Guinness set up his first brewery, he signed a 9,000-year lease.
Don’t fear big. Fear mediocrity. Fear waste. Fear the lack of living to your fullest. When we fear big, we either consciously or subconsciously work against it. We either run toward lesser outcomes and opportunities or we simply run away from the big ones. If courage isn’t the absence of fear, but moving past it, then thinking big isn’t the absence of doubts, but moving past them. Only living big will let you experience your true life and work potential.
One of the most empowering moments of my life came when I realized that life is a question and how we live it is our answer.
Anyone who dreams of an uncommon life eventually discovers there is no choice but to seek an uncommon approach to living it.
The Focusing Question collapses all possible questions into one: “What’s the ONE Thing I can do / such that by doing it / everything else will be easier or unnecessary?"
It’s really a simple process: You ask a great question, then you seek out a great answer.
Your first ONE Thing is to search for clues and role models to point you in the right direction. The first thing to do is ask, “Has anyone else studied or accomplished this or something like it?” The answer is almost always yes, so your investigation begins by finding out what others have learned.
The research and experience of others is the best place to start when looking for your answer. Armed with this knowledge, you can establish a benchmark, the current high-water mark for all that is known and being done. With a stretch approach this was your maximum, but now it is your minimum. It’s not all you’ll do, but it becomes the hilltop where you’ll stand to see if you can spot what might come next. This is called trending, and it’s the second step.
There is a natural rhythm to our lives that becomes a simple formula for implementing the ONE Thing and achieving extraordinary results: purpose, priority, and productivity.
Acquiring money and obtaining things are pretty much all done for the pleasure we expect them to bring.
To be financially wealthy you must have a purpose for your life. In other words, without purpose, you’ll never know when you have enough money, and you can never be financially wealthy.
Hyperbolic discounting—the further away a reward is in the future, the smaller the immediate motivation to achieve it.
Connect today to all your tomorrows. It matters.
In three separate studies, psychologists observed 262 students to see the impact of visualization on outcomes. The students were asked to visualize in one of two ways: Those in one group were told to visualize the outcome (like getting an “A” on an exam) and the others were asked to visualize the process needed to achieve a desired outcome (like all of the study sessions needed to earn that “A” on the exam). In the end, students who visualized the process performed better across the board—they studied earlier and more frequently and earned higher grades than those who simply visualized the outcome.
“Productivity isn’t about being a workhorse, keeping busy or burning the midnight oil... . It’s more about priorities, planning, and fiercely protecting your time.” —Margarita Tartakovsky
If money is a metaphor for producing results, then it’s clear time-managing system’s success can be judged by the productivity it produces.
To achieve extraordinary results and experience greatness, time block these three things in the following order: Time block your time off. Time block your ONE Thing. Time block your planning time.
Block time as early in your day as you possibly can. Give yourself 30 minutes to an hour to take care of morning priorities, then move to your ONE Thing. My recommendation is to block four hours a day. This isn’t a typo. I repeat: four hours a day. Honestly, that’s the minimum. If you can do more, then do it.
Although time blocking isn’t hard, protecting the time you’ve blocked is. The world doesn’t know your purpose or priorities and isn’t responsible for them—you are. So it’s your job to protect your time blocks from all those who don’t know what matters most to you, and from yourself when you forget.
When I first began to time block, the most effective thing I did was to put up a sheet of paper that said, “Until My ONE Thing Is Done—Everything Else Is A Distraction!”
Turn off your phone, shut down your e-mail, and exit your Internet browser. Your most important work deserves 100 percent of your attention.
The people who achieve extraordinary results don’t achieve them by working more hours. They achieve them by getting more done in the hours they work.
“Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.” —George Halas
Achieving extraordinary results through time blocking requires three commitments. First, you must adopt the mindset of someone seeking mastery. Mastery is a commitment to becoming your best, so to achieve extraordinary results you must embrace the extraordinary effort it represents. Second, you must continually seek the very best ways of doing things. Nothing is more futile than doing your best using an approach that can’t deliver results equal to your effort. And last, you must be willing to be held accountable to doing everything you can to achieve your ONE Thing.
Since there is always another level to learn, mastery actually means you’re a master of what you know and an apprentice of what you don’t.
Highly productive people don’t accept the limitations of their natural approach as the final word on their success. When they hit a ceiling of achievement, they look for new models and systems, better ways to do things to push them through. They pause just long enough to examine their options, they pick the best one, and then they’re right back at it. Ask an “E” to cut some firewood and the Entrepreneurial person would likely shoulder an axe and head straight for the woods. On the other hand, the Purposeful person might ask, “Where can I get a chainsaw?” With a “P” mindset, you can achieve breakthroughs and accomplish things far beyond your natural abilities.
The Purposeful person follows the simple rule that “a different result requires doing something different.” Make this your mantra and breakthroughs become possible.
There is an undeniable connection between what you do and what you get. Actions determine outcomes, and outcomes inform actions. Be accountable and this feedback loop is how you discover the things you must do to achieve extraordinary results.
Taking complete ownership of your outcomes by holding no one but yourself responsible for them is the most powerful thing you can do to drive your success.
When life happens, you can be either the author of your life or the victim of it. Those are your only two choices— accountable or unaccountable. This may sound harsh, but it’s true. Every day we choose one approach or the other, and the consequences follow us forever.
When you strive for greatness, chaos is guaranteed to show up.
Personal energy mismanagement is a silent thief of productivity.
It’s dangerous to assume that health and hearth will be just waiting for you to come back and enjoy anytime in the future.
Figure out easy ways to eat right and then plan all your daily meals a week at a time.
When you get to work, go to work on your ONE Thing. If you’re like me and have some morning priorities you must get done first, then give yourself an hour at most to do them. Don’t loiter and don’t slow down. Clear the decks and then get down to the business of doing what matters most.
The Highly Productive Person's Daily Energy Plan

Meditate and pray for spiritual energy.
Eat right, exercise, and sleep sufficiently for physical energy.
Hug, kiss, and laugh with loved ones for emotional energy.
Set goals, plan, and calendar for mental energy.
Time block your ONE Thing for business energy.

If you can have a highly productive day until noon, the rest of the day falls easily into place.
Structuring the early hours of each day is the simplest way to extraordinary results.
Your environment must support your goals. Your environment is simply who you see and what you experience every day...For you to achieve extraordinary results, the people surrounding you and your physical surroundings must support your goals.
The people we see tend to set our standard for what’s appropriate. In time, you begin to think, act, and even look a little like those you hang out with. But not only do their attitudes and health habits influence you, their relative success does too. If the people you spend your time with are high achievers, their achievements can influence your own.
What is around you will either aim you toward your time block or pull you away.
Don’t let your environment lead you astray. Your physical surroundings matter and the people around you matter.
Write down your current income. Then multiply it by a number: 2, 4, 10, 20—it doesn’t matter. Just pick one, multiply your income by it, and write down the new number. Looking at it and ignoring whether you’re frightened or excited, ask yourself, “Will my current actions get me to this number in the next five years?” If they will, then keep doubling the number until they won’t. If you then make your actions match your answer, you’ll be living large.
There is no surefire thing, but there’s always something, ONE Thing, that out of everything matters more than anything.
What would an older, wiser you say?
Success is an inside job. Put yourself together, and your world falls into place. When you bring purpose to your life, know your priorities, and achieve high productivity on the priority that matters most every day, your life makes sense and the extraordinary becomes possible.

So what's your ONE Thing? If you enjoyed the quotes, read the book!

Notes & Quotes: Living with a SEAL by Jesse Itzler

The following are my favorite quotes from Jesse Itzler's Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet.

Most of my successes in life have come from learning how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
The temperature is what you think it is, bro, not what your computer thinks it is. If you think it’s fourteen degrees, then it’s fourteen degrees. Personally, I’m looking at it like it’s in the mid-fifties. —SEAL
I don’t do shit for applauses. I don’t do shit for fanfare. I do shit for me. —SEAL
I don’t think about yesterday. I think about today and getting better. —SEAL
It doesn’t have to be fun. It has to be effective. —SEAL
When you think you’re done, you’re only at forty percent of what your body is capable of doing. That’s just the limit that we put on ourselves. —SEAL
[SEAL] was taught that if you have a job to do, you do it with 120 percent effort. I have been operating under the assumption that if someone that works for me does something 80 percent of the way I would do it, that’s enough. SEAL is teaching me that we can all do so much more.
Any success I have ever had in my life usually occurred when I was not chasing the money but was doing things out of passion.
If it doesn’t suck, we don’t do it. —SEAL
It was Harry Truman who said, “If you can’t convince them, confuse them.” It’s a tactic I still use instinctively. It buys time.
I don’t like motherfuckin’ freeloaders. You better work hard for your shit or we aren’t gonna get along very well. —SEAL
If you want to be pushed to your limits, you have to train to your limits. —SEAL
Any time when you live a little outside of the norm people look at you: (a) with some admiration and (b) like you’re crazy.
I’m not into sit-down dinners and fancy shit like that. I’m into fueling up and being on my way. —SEAL
“I did five pull-ups on the minute for two hours.” “You just did six hundred pull-ups? Just now? Just like that?” “Roger that. So go fuck your bullshit shoulders,” [SEAL] says. “Whatever you got going on, someone else has more pain. You gotta learn how to fight through it. No matter what it is… Think about someone else and take a suck-shit pill.”
If you can’t do the basics, you can’t do shit. —SEAL
SEAL believes push-ups are the single best exercise for strength. He also believes proper form is the key. You get more out of ten push-ups the right way than thirty done improperly.
If you’re hungry, run faster. You’ll be home quicker. —SEAL
My time with SEAL has convinced me the days of the fancy gym memberships are numbered. Things like CrossFit and street workouts are going to prevail in the future. All you really need to do is get your push-up and sit-up routine consistent, and you can see amazing results.
You can be fit without being healthy, but you can’t be healthy without being fit.
SEAL says to me: “It’s not what you do, it’s when and how you do it. It’s all about the conditions. Remember that.”
With SEAL around, I am learning how to be more present. It’s primarily because I have to. If I don’t, there is no way I will be able to finish the tasks at hand. I just go one step at a time. One rep at a time. And when I’m done, I worry about the next step or rep. I’m finding that there’s some crossover to my life as well. Now I finish the first thing on my list with 100 percent focus and then attack the next.
The tougher the conditions, the more I like my odds. —SEAL
Fear is one of the best motivators. Anger is the other. —SEAL
Know what’s important to you and protect it at all costs. —SEAL
If you push the body, the body will respond.
Repetition and consistency equal results.
If you don’t challenge yourself, you don’t know yourself. —SEAL
I don’t stop when I’m tired. I stop when I’m done. —SEAL
Pre-SEAL I sometimes would be on the couch and not want to do whatever needed to be done and I’d be like “Fuck it,” and blow it off. Procrastinate. I don’t think like that anymore. Just get off the couch and do it is what I remind myself. SEAL would never say, “Fuck it.” He’d get off the couch and do it. Regardless of the time, the temperature, or how tired he was. I absorbed some of that just-get-it-done and there-are-no-excuses attitude.
I’ve never had a real résumé. I’ve always believed in a life résumé. I take a look at SEAL, who’s writing in his logbook. He just wants to get better tomorrow. That’s what I want now too.
By constantly doing things that are hard and making myself uncomfortable, I improve my ability to handle obstacles. I get comfortable being uncomfortable—and that’s real mental toughness.

I really enjoyed this book! I suggest that you give it a read.