Notes & Quotes: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson

The following are my favorite quotes from Margareta Magnusson's The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter.

1. Death cleaning is not about dusting or mopping up; it is about a permanent form of organization that makes your everyday life run more smoothly.
2. Going through all your old belongings, remembering when you used them last, and hopefully saying good-bye to several of them is very difficult for many of us. People tend to hoard rather than throw away.
3. Your exhaustion will all this stuff may appear out of the blue one day. When someone cancels a weekend visit or a dinner, you feel grateful--instead of disappointed--because you may be too tired to clean up for their visit. The problem is that you have too much stuff to deal with. It is time to change your way of living.
4. Do not ever imagine that anyone will wish--or be able--to schedule time off to take care of what you didn't bother to take care of yourself. No matter how much they love you, don't leave this burden to them.
5. Life will become more pleasant and comfortable if we get rid of some of the abundance. 
6. Even in a fairly small family, one or several members wander about looking for keys, gloves, certificates, or cell phones. Whatever. All these things have something in common! They should, but don't yet, have a place of their own. Give everything a place and you won't feel angry, irritated, or desperate when leaving the house.
7. To hunt for misplaced things is never an effective use of your time. So, work to keep things organized throughout your life, and death cleaning will be easier for everyone. Your loved ones will not be happy people when they have to do your organizing for you.
8. Had I cleaned with my husband, it would have taken us years. Men tend to save most things rather than throw them away. That goes for even the smallest nuts and bolts. They think, and rightly sometimes, that every little thing will be useful at some later occasion.
9. A loved one wishes to inherit nice things from you. Not all things from you.
10. You really can't take everything with you, so maybe it is better to not try to own it all.
11. There's no sense in saving things that will shock or upset your family after you are gone.
12. To let things, people, and pets go when there is no better alternative is a lesson that has been very difficult for me to learn and a lesson that life, as it goes further along, is teaching me more and more often.
13. The more I have focused on my cleaning, the braver I become. I often ask myself, "Will anyone I know be happier if I save this?" If after a moment of reflection I can honestly answer "no", then it goes into the hungry shredder, always waiting for paper to chew. But before it goes into shredder, I have had a moment to reflect on the event or feeling, good or bad, and to know that is has been a part of my story and of my life.
14. It is hard for me to understand why most people find death so difficult to talk about. It is the only absolutely inevitable happening that we all have in our future.

Notes & Quotes: The 12-Hour Walk by Colin O'Brady

The following are my favorite quotes from Colin O'Brady's The 12-Hour Walk: Invest One Day, Conquer Your Mind, and Unlock Your Best Life.

1. I thought of the Thoreau quote I used to open this chapter: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." It's one my very favorite quotes, a compelling reminder that too many of us are wiling to settle--to give up on our dreams. Too many of us are held back by limiting beliefs, unable to get out of our own heads and commit to living our best lives.
2. The Walk might sound simple--and in a lot of ways it is--but there's power in simplicity. And, one might say, magic. Without a doubt, the directions are simple to follow:
1. COMMIT - pick a day on your calendar to complete the 12-Hour Walk by visiting 12hourwalk.com/commit.
2. RECORD - before you set out on your walk, record a short video of yourself to verbalize your intentions. What limiting beliefs do you want to silence? Describe how you hope to feel when you complete the 12-Hour Walk.
3. UNPLUG - turn your phone on airplane mode before starting your 12-Hour Walk. The 12-Hour Walk is designed to be taken alone, with no external inputs--no companions, no headphones, no podcasts, no music, no email, no texts, no social media--for the entire twelve hours.
4. WALK - begin your 12-Hour Walk. Just like life, you choose the destination. Remain outside for twelve hours, walking in silence. The setting you're walking in doesn't need to be completely silent, but you do. Maintaining your silence is the key. Ambient city noise is okay.
5. REST - The 12-Hour Walk isn't a race. Take as many breaks as you need. It doesn't matter if you walk one mile or fifty; as long as you keep moving when you can, you're winning.
6. REFLECT - record a video as you finish your 12-Hour Walk. Ask yourself: How do you feel? What did you discover? What limiting beliefs did you overcome? What do you now feel capable of with your Possible Mindset?
3. Moments of victory can be built only on top of moments of struggle.
4. Too much of life is settling for good not great, with a lot of time spent in the "eh, can't complain" zone.
5. Discomfort is often the toll that must be paid to achieve fulfillment.
6. You'll rarely, if ever, be criticized by someone who's living their best life. Chances are, those people will know--and respect--the challenges of your pursuit. More often, criticism comes from those who're disappointed by the outcomes of their own lives and need a target for their frustration and insecurity.
7. Why do we spend time with people who don't celebrate our accomplishments and support us in our big dreams? What are we holding on to? If you can't share your good news with an old friend and count on getting back a supportive response, then it's time to swap out that old friend for a new one. Step away from friendships that seem to be running on fumes.
8. Prioritizing self-care is, in fact, selfless.
9. In life, you can choose to lean toward either scarcity or abundance. Those with a Possible Mindset choose abundance.

Notes & Quotes: Relentless by Tim S. Grover

The following are my favorite quotes from Tim S. Grover's Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable.

1. I'm rarely the first guy players reach out to when they want to train; I'm the last. In case of emergency, break glass. There are plenty of trainers who will just give you a workout. That is not me--we train for one thing and one thing only: a championship. Lots of guys say they'll do anything for that ring, but there's a difference between saying it and actually doing it. So when a guy commits to train with me, it means he's really serious.
2. You don't have to love the hard work; you just have to crave the end result.
3. Why should anyone want to be told what to do? The whole point of this book is that in order to be successful, to truly have what you want in your life, you must stop waiting to be told what to do and how to do it. Your goals, your decisions, your commitment. If you can't see the end result, how can anyone else see it for you?
4. Success is about dealing with reality, facing your demons and addictions, and not putting a smiley face on everything you do.
5. From this point, your strategy is to make everyone else get on your level; you're not going down to theirs. You're not competing with anyone else, ever again. They're going to have to compete with you. From now on, the end result is all that matters.
6. It's not about talent or brains or wealth. It's about the relentless instinctive drive to do whatever it takes--anything--to get to the top of where you want to be, and to stay there.
7. Why do I call them Cleaners? Because they take responsibility for everything. When something goes wrong, they don't blame others because they never really count on anyone else to get the job done in the first place. They just clean up the mess and move on.
8. Cleaners understand they don't have to love the work to be successful; they just have to be relentless about achieving it, and everything else in between is a diversion and a distraction from the ultimate prize.
9. When you're a Cleaner:
• You keep pushing yourself harder when everyone else has had enough.
• You get into the Zone, you shut out everything else, and control the uncontrollable.
• You know exactly who you are.
• You have a dark side that refuses to be taught to be good.
• You're not intimidated by pressure, you thrive on it.
• When everyone is hitting the "In Case of Emergency" button, they're all looking for you.
• You don't compete with anyone, you find your opponent's weakness and you attack.
• You make decisions, not suggestions; you know the answer while everyone else is still asking questions.
• You don't have to love the work, but you're addicted to the results.
• You'd rather be feared than liked.
• You trust very few people, and those you trust better never let you down.
• You don't recognize failure; you know there's more than one way to get what you want.
• You don't celebrate your achievements because you always want more.
10. Those who talk don't know, and those who know don't talk.
11. Do. The. Work. Every day, you have to do something you don't want to do. Every day. Challenge yourself to be uncomfortable, push past the apathy and laziness and fear. Otherwise, the next day you're going to have two things you don't want to do, then three and four and five, and pretty soon, you can't even get back to the first thing. And then all you can do is beat yourself up for the mess you've created, and now you've got a mental barrier to go along with the physical barriers.
12. Do the work before you need it, so you know what you're capable of doing when everyone else hits that panic button and looks at you.
13. Make no mistake about this: emotions make you weak. Again: emotions make you weak. The fastest way to tumble out of the Zone is to allow emotions to drive your actions.
14. We're all born bad. Sorry, but that's the truth. Born bad, taught to be good. Or if you prefer: born relentless, taught to relent.
15. Stop waiting to be taught something you already know. How many millions of diet and exercise books are sold every year? I promise you, every single person who picks up one of those books already knows the answer: eat healthier and move your body. You can eat these calories or those calories, you can move this way or that way, but the result is the same, and you already know that. You bought that book already knowing what you had to do, you were just waiting for someone to tell you. Again. And instead of just making the decision to eat healthier and move more--for a lifetime, not just for twenty-one days or five hours a month or whatever the trend prescribes--you sat down with a book to analyze the situation. Trust me: no one ever lost weight sitting on the couch with a book.
16. Cleaner Law: control your dark side, don't let it control you. Do you want to smoke or do you have to smoke? All that nightlife--do you know when it's time to head home, or is it crushing your game? Do you drink because you like it or because you need it to cope with the pressure you feel? Can you be decent at what you do with an alcohol problem? Probably. But you can't be great. Cleaners never perform under the influence of anything; they place too much value on their mental state to allow anything to affect their minds and instincts and reflexes. Who's in charge, you or your dark side?
17. There's a difference between confidence and cockiness: confidence means recognizing something isn't working and having the flexibility and knowledge to make adjustments; cockiness is the inability to admit when something isn't working, and repeating the same mistakes over and over because you stubbornly can't admit you're wrong.
18. When a Cleaner gives you an opportunity, be ready, because he won't ask you again if you blow it. It's easier for him to just do the job himself, and if he's going down with the ship, he's going to make sure he's the captain.
19. Regardless of how you build that team--any team, in sports or business or any endeavor--no matter how you snap the pieces into place, you need that one guy who never needs a fire lit under him, who commands respect and fear and attention and demands that others bring the same excellence to their performance that he demands of himself. He doesn't have to be the most skilled or gifted guy on the team, but he establishes an example that everyone else can follow.
20. Figure out what you do, then do it. And do it better than anyone else. And then let everything else you do build around that; stay with what you know.
21. Interesting how the guy with the most talent and success spent more time working out than anyone else.
22. Each of Kobe's [Bryant] workouts takes around ninety minutes, and a half hour of that is spent just working on his wrists, fingers, ankles...all the details. That's how the best get better--they sweat the details.
23. Trust me: privilege is a poison unless you know how to manage it.
24. That's how you earn respect. Excellence in everything.
25. A Cleaner views people as if they're tools, each with unique, indispensable qualities. A hammer can destroy or it can build; a knife in the wrong hands can kill you, but in a doctor's hands it can heal you. A wrench doesn't do the job of a drill, it only does what a wrench is supposed to do. You're only as good as the tools you've chosen, and your ability to use them to their maximum potential.
26. When you're an A+ person, you want A+ people around you, and everyone has to be accountable for doing A+ work.
27. Fuck "try." Trying is an open invitation to failure, just another way of saying, "If I fail, it's not my fault, I tried."
28. If you aim at excellence, you have to be willing to sacrifice. That is the price of success. You never know how bad you want it until you get that first bitter taste of not getting it, but once you taste it, you're going to fight like hell to get that bitterness out of your mouth.