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!