Notes & Quotes: Pivot & Go by David Nurse

The following are my favorite notes from David Nurse's Pivot & Go: The 29-Day Blueprint to Redefine and Achieve YOUR Success.

1. "Someday" doesn't exist on the calendar, and it never will. And if we keep adding everything that we want to do "Someday," none of it will ever happen. It will just continue to pile up. We will look back on it years from now with terrifying regret. "Someday" is an excuse we find a million different times to use.
2. Your morning and nightly routines sandwich together the meat of the day, which always has the potential to be the best or worst of your life. It all comes down to your perception and perspective.
3. Routines make us who we are. They shape our entire days; they shape our lives. People who don't make conscious choices about their routines are just welcoming constant anxiety and uncertainty. They allow their days to dominate them from the moment they wake up.
4. I know the best decision I can make is the next decision I make.
5. The ONLY treasures that you will, without a doubt, never have taken from you are your own personal life experiences, your own lessons learned, your own faith developed, and your own memories created.
6. A person's purpose can be wasted pursuing a goal created for them selfishly by someone else. Be aware and wary of other's expectations of you: Do they align with what you want, or are they purely what they want? The same goes for the expectations you place on others: Always make sure your intentions are selfless.
7. Whether we want to admit it or not, our choices and our actions are shaped by our environments and the people we surround ourselves with.
8. Set up your environment the way you want your best day to be set up.
9. We are not in control, no matter how much we try or believe we can be. The desire to feel in control is one of extreme discontent and uneasiness. Understanding there is something bigger that has control over you, your circumstances, and your life plan can be the most freeing realization you will ever have.
10. If you are passionate about something, then balance is BS!
11. No one talks about 80/20 when they are striving to be the best version of themselves, no one says "Everything in moderation" when they are immersed in their purpose in life. No one uses the idea of balance to introduce better things into their lives--they use it to justify keeping the things in their lives that are hurting them, their goals, and their futures.
12. YOUR GOALS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE JOYOUS! If you don't like your diet, your family, or your job enough to be ALL IN, figure out what you have to do to change the dynamic.
13. Life isn't about what we achieve, it isn't about the end goal we are shooting for, it's about the journey and the process of getting there. And if we don't enjoy it along the way, we've missed the entire point.
14. People don't always buy into what you are saying; sometimes, they just buy into how you are saying it. And people never care about what you have to say until they know how much you care about them.
15. Arrogance is thinking you are better than others; confidence is believing in yourself to empower others.
16. Be confident in who you are, but as a servant to others. Pour into others and their needs, and in doing so, you will be filled.
17. I made a choice to take back control of my life. I decided I would much rather be great than watch others be great.
18. That's the mindset pivot--when you are able to fully pour into and lose yourself in the genuine care of others, that is when you find out what you truly are. Lose yourself to find yourself.
19. If you treat each day like a twenty-four-hour pie that you get to fill, you realize that you have more than enough time to live the way you want--every day.
20. Take control of your time by taking control of your options, and you'll build better, more productive, more joyful days.
21. Pivot from being comfortable and just surviving day-to-day to embracing the uncomfortable and thriving every day.
22. No one is bigger than the situations they find themselves in. If you don't embrace your circumstances with everything you've got, you will never reach the next step towards where you want to be.
23. The best gift you can ever give someone is speaking the life of encouragement into their passion.
24. Worry less about what others are giving you, and concern yourself with speaking life into others. When you empower people and help them grow their dreams, you will gain more than you can even imagine. Speak life into others, and life will be spoken unto you.
25. If you achieve your goals very quickly right away, that means one of two things. 1. You didn't set your goals high enough and you should reevaluate, or 2. You probably aren't as prepared for the situation as you should be and it will flame out faster than you would like.
26. Pour into others and you will be filled.
27. Some don't make it, but many do. And if they do, it's all thanks to the people who put others far before themselves, people who understand the servant attitude of character over comfort. There aren't any newspaper articles written about these people, no monetary bonuses, no awards or even pats on the back from a superior. It's a mission, it's a lifestyle, it's the epitome of losing one's self to help others.
28. If there is one thing in life that can steal your joy, it's entitlement.
29. Victory goes to the vulnerable.
30. The true definition of legacy is living for the purpose we were created for and, in doing so, having a positive impact on one person. Yeah, that's right--just one.
31. On the days when you slip into "have-tos," straighten up and remind yourself that you chose to be where you are, and that your choice to pursue your passion was the right decision.
32. Everything we do daily is a preparation for an opportunity to come.
33. TRUE success isn't tied to anything to anything the world has to offer. It's knowing that we are living the life we were created to live. It's living each day with purpose, a sense of comfort that we know we are currently in this exact spot in life for a much bigger reason. Success is not about making a ton of money, being called an "influencer," or having any fleeting worldly possessions. It is ultimately loving your everyday life.
34. TRUE failure is not a loss; it's a lesson. Failure is not a step back; it is an opportunity to learn. Failure is only negative if you get stuck in that rut. But if you look at failure as a gift to pivot to something so much better than your current situation, failure is a pathway to success.

Notes & Quotes: Awareness by Anthony de Mello

The following are my favorite quotes from Anthony de Mello's Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality.

1. Most people tell you that they want to get out of kindergarten, but don't believe them. Don't believe them! All they want you to do is to mend their broken toys. "Give me back my wife. Give me back my job. Give me back my money. Give me back my reputation, my success." This is what they want; they want their toys replaced. That's all. Even the best psychologist will tell you that, that people don't really want to be cured. What they want is relief; a cure is painful.
2. You are never in love with anyone. You're only in love with your prejudiced and hopeful idea of that person. Take a minute to think about that: You are never in love with anyone, you're in love with your prejudiced idea of that person. Isn't that how you fall out of love? Your idea changes, doesn't it?
3. You never trust anyone. You only trust your judgment about that person. So what are you complaining about? The fast is that you don't like to say, "My judgment was lousy." That's not very flattering to you, is it? So you prefer to say, "How could you have let me down?"
4. It's only when you're sick of your sickness that you'll get out of it. Most people go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist to get relief. I repeat: to get relief. Not to get out of it.
5. When you renounce something, you're stuck to it forever. When you fight something, you're tied to it forever. As long as you're fighting it, you are giving it power. You give it as much power as you are using to fight it.
6. Are you listening for what will confirm what you already think? Or are you listening in order to discover something new? That is important.
7. You frequently interpret everything that's being said in terms of your hypnotic state or your conditioning or your programming.
8. Want to wake up? You want happiness? You want freedom? Here it is: Drop your false ideas. See through people. If you see through yourself, you will see through everyone. Then you will love them. Otherwise you spend the whole time grappling with your wrong notions of them, with your illusions that are constantly crashing against reality.
9. The trouble with people is that they're busy fixing things they don't even understand. We're always fixing things, aren't we? It never strikes us that things don't need to be fixed. They really don't. This is a great illumination. They need to be understood. If you understood them, they'd change.
10. The great masters tell us that the most important question in the world is: "Who am I?" Or rather: "What is 'I'?" What is this thing I call "I"? What is this thing I call self?
11. When "I" does not identify with money, or name, or nationality, or person, or friends, or any quality, the "I" is never threatened.
12. All suffering is caused by my identifying myself with something, whether that something is within me or outside of me.
13. Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you're living in an illusion. There's something seriously wrong with you. You're not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? "He is to blame, she is to blame. She's got to change." No! The world's all right. The one who has to change is you.
14. We never feel grief when we lose something that we have allowed to be free, that we have never attempted to possess. Grief is a sign that I made my happiness depend on this thing or person, at least to some extent.
15. Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.
16. Someone once said, "The three most difficult things for a human being are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, first, returning love for hate; second, including the excluded; third, admitting that you are wrong." But these are the easiest things in the world if you haven't identified with the "me."
17. Some say that there are only two things in the world: God and fear; love and fear are the only two things. There's only one evil in the world, fear. There's only one good in the world, love. It's sometimes called by other names. It's sometimes called happiness or freedom or peace or joy or God or whatever. But the label doesn't really matter. And there's not a single evil in the world that you cannot trace to fear. Not one.
18. Think of the last time you were angry and search for the fear behind it. What were you afraid of losing? What were you afraid would be taken from you? That's where the anger comes from.
19. What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you. You are always a slave to what you're not aware of. When you're aware of it, you're free from it. It's there, but you're not affected by it. You're not controlled by it; you're not enslaved by it. That's the difference.
20. Suffering points out that there is a falsehood somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering.
21. The main preoccupation of society is to keep society sick! And the sooner you realize that, the better.
22. The person who is asleep always things he'll feel better if somebody else changes. You're suffering because you are asleep, but you're thinking, "How wonderful life would be if somebody else would change; how wonderful life would be if my neighbor changed, my wife changed, my boss changed."
23. Put this program into action, a thousand times: (a) identify the negative feelings in you; (b) understand that they are in you, not in the world, not in external reality; (c) do not see them as an essential part of "I"; these things come and go; (d) understand that when you change, everything changes.
24. Part of waking up is that you live your life as you see fit. And understand: That is not selfish. The selfish thing is to demand that someone else live their life as YOU see fit. That's selfish. It is not selfish to live your life as you see fit. The selfishness lies in demanding that someone else live their life to suit your tastes, or your pride, or your profit, or your pleasure. That is truly selfish.
25. Someday you will understand that simply by awareness you have already attained what you were pushing yourself toward.
26. Another illusion is that external events have the power to hurt you, that other people have the power to hurt you. They don't. It's you who give this power to them.
27. If you don't look at things through your concepts, you'll never be bored. Every single thing is unique.
28. My country was one country once upon a time; it's four now. If we don't watch out it might be six. Then we'll have six flags, six armies. That's why you'll never catch me saluting a flag. I abhor all national flags because they are idols. What are we saluting? I salute humanity, not a flag with an army around it.
29. The beauty of an action comes not from its having become a habit but from its sensitivity, consciousness, clarity of perception, and accuracy of response.
30. The root of sorrow is craving.
31. A terrorist to you is a martyr to the other side.
32. Ideals do a lot of damage. The whole time you're focusing on what should be instead of focusing on what is.
33. Freedom lies not in external circumstances; freedom resides in the heart.
34. When you have enjoyed something intensely, you need very little.
35. The passport to living is to imagine yourself in your grave. Imagine that you're lying in your coffin...dead. Now look at your problems from that viewpoint. Changes everything, doesn't it?
36. Every child has a god in him; our attempts to mold the child will turn the god into a devil.

Notes & Quotes: Staring Down the Wolf by Mark Divine

The following are my favorite notes from Mark Divine's Staring Down the Wolf: 7 Leadership Commitments That Forge Elite Teams.

1. Staring down the wolf means facing your deepest negative conditioned qualities, or fears, and then staring them down to reduce their impact on your life.
2. By not being clear on what I stood for and then standing that ground, I had established a new, lower standard.
3. No matter how smart and skilled you are, it is your stage of development and emotional awareness that will define your character as a leader. And your character will define how the team responds to you.
4. Failure is to be expected. Be ready for it.
5. Action is the only way to eliminate doubt.
6. There is a saying in the SOF community: "The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war."
7. Developing a stand requires that you first think through all the consequences of your decisions to all parties and to the environment.
8. Strength of character and having no regrets are more valuable than the money.
9. SEALs are fond of saying, "The only easy day was yesterday."
10. He owned the consequences just because he had been there, which was his burden of leadership.
11. Transparency of the facts and ownership of the results, particularly with your fuckups, are crucial in developing trust. Conversely, denying ownership and responsibility and failing to be transparent are the fastest ways to destroy trust.
12. Don't identify with your mistakes. Let go of any attachment to desired outcomes and quickly move on from mistakes that preclude those outcomes. Admit that you're not perfect and that you're going to screw up. And when you do, embrace the suck and learn from it--and then again move on.
13. Develop the muscle of committing only to the most important actions, and then follow through relentlessly.
14. Respect like that is built upon three key character traits: integrity, authenticity, and clarity.
15. The sooner you can appreciate your own limitations and become aware of your shadow, the sooner you can start to integrate and become more authentic, and free.
16. Pay attention to what triggers you in your team or bosses. As the experts, "if you spot it in others, you got it in yourself."
17. Challenging comfort is a lifestyle.
18. Being a good follower means constantly setting your ego aside and letting go of the need to be right or in charge. You will stop judging the effectiveness of the leadership of others, because you don't want them to do that to you. Instead, every instance of leadership, regardless of who is in charge, becomes an opportunity to improve the entire team's effectiveness.
19. One "aw shit" wipes out a thousand attaboys.
20. The curious will never be satisfied and always ask versions of four key questions: Why is this being done this way? What should be done instead? How can we do it better? Who is the right person or team to do it?
21. Travel light and don't get attached to your stuff.
22. Commit now to simplify things and get really clear about what's important and what's not. When you reach that level of clarity--where you're aware of what your immediate mission is moment to moment, things start to really take off. Here are some focusing questions I use myself to keep things simple: Is what I am doing right now (or about to do) in alignment with my (or ours if a team) mission? What's the most important thing I can focus on right now--that will move me toward mission accomplishment? Does this idea or new project pass the FITS (fit, importance, timing, simplicity) test? Can I say no to this in service to a higher yes? Is this process worthy of breaking to improve?
23. The three traits of resiliency worthy of deeper discussion: adaptability, persistence, and learning.
24. Reacting negatively to failure leads to more destabilization, worsening an already bad situation.
25. The power of optimism and a positive mindset cannot be understated.
26. The pecking order is team first, teammate second, and you last. When this practice is instilled in your group, soon the team is taking care of your gear, asking how they can help you, and making your life easier. When your entire team has your back like this, and you have theirs, you tap into maximum leverage. This becomes a habit, and as the team experiences the mutual benefit, they are less likely to go back to self-serving behavior. You are then not doing it for the transactional intent, but because it is who you are as a person.
27. One of the key practices for learning fast is one we've mentioned before: saying no in service to the larger yes, choosing what not to learn so that you can focus radically on what you should know and learn. Develop the courage to say no to the wrong skills and knowledge in order to simplify your life. That way you will have less clutter and more time to learn the right things.
28. Is easy to fall for the notion that you have to expect some big egos when you are working with high performers. That is a stale idea and certainly not true in high-risk industries, or for that matter, in any situation. Egotistical leaders are dangerous and should not be invited to the party.
29. It is effective to ask and answer: What's working and what isn't? How do we fill the gaps? What are the culture and discipline issues? How best do we address them?
30. Trust is diminished when a leader doesn't share.
31. Never rest on yesterday's accomplishments.
32. In the SEALs, we were trained to seek the smallest actions that would lead to the biggest results. Then we would radically focus on those actions to completion. We would repeat this process until we dominated.
33. The distance one places between suffering and breaking is what defines the spirit of an individual.
34. Staring down the wolf requires daily work to evolve your body, mind, and spirit. Embrace the suck of that work, get comfortable with discomfort, and learn to appreciate the accelerated growth that will come from it. On the journey, remember these three things: Self-mastery is an EVERYDAY practice. We must take ownership of our own evolution. This will stoke your courage and breathe fire into your other commitments. This is not just about you. Every time you do the work, you are impacting your team, and humanity, positively.
35. Check your ego and do this for the team. You must discover your unique calling and serve from that place. Humanity needs your unique skills and world-centric care.
36. Your "basic training" is to carve out fifteen minutes each morning. During this time do five to ten minutes of deep diaphragmatic box breathing, followed by five to ten minutes of mindfulness; finish by journaling the patterns and ideas that came up.
37. Acknowledge that you're capable of at least twenty times more than you think you are. Then, go out and prove it.