Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
- Decisions
Decisions have immediate consequences, and everything - absolutely everything - is at stake. The right decision, even when all seems lost, can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The wrong decision, even when a victorious outcome seems all but certain, can result in deadly, catastrophic failure.
Peter Ralston
- Not-knowing
The more you can free yourself of countless beliefs - instead staying with a sense of not-knowing - the stronger your sense of the present moment will become. Although the beliefs might be numerous and varied, the not-knowing will always be the same. It is only one experience, and it is always now and always true.
Marnia Robinson
- Deceptive Cues
The real danger of cues is not their power to grab your attention; it's their power to grab your controls with a spike of dopamine in your reward circuitry. High dopamine can put you in a sort of altered stage of strong motivation - but impaired judgement.
Samadhi
- Meditation
When you focus continuously on the breath, your inner energy might be increased. This may generate friction or some uncomfortableness. It may increase whatever pattern are in play. You may experience friction between your intention to stay with the breath and the old patterns of the mind. This friction may make you want to move, to interrupt the meditation process. But know that, this, friction is integral to meditation. It is the friction that creates the fire that burns up the self.
Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
- Principles
The principles are simple, but not easy. Taking ownership for mistakes and failures is hard. But doing so is key to learning, to developing solutions, and, ultimately, to victory. Those who successfully implement these principles run circles around the rest of the world.
Marnia Robinson
- Porn Addiction
Cambridge University addiction neuroscientists have shown that porn addicts brains respond to porn cues much as drug users brains respond to drug cues. Anyone determined to overcome a porn or masturbation addiction, will make more progress by avoiding both orgasm and porn for a while. Each is a cue for the other. Would a recovering alcoholic find it easier to avoid alcohol by staring at open bottles or hanging out in bars? Talk about white knuckles and sweaty palms.
Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
- Good Leader
During my own training and performance as a boat crew leader, I told them, I can remember many times when my boat crew struggled. It was easy to make excuses for our team's performance and why it wasn't what it should have been. But I learned that good leaders don't make excuses. Instead, they figure out a way to get it done and win.
Robert Fritz
- Limiting Beliefs
What are our limits? The truth is we do not know. The fact is that so many individuals have created what they wanted in the face of presumed limitations, that it seems unrealistic to impose limitations on ourselves before testing the waters.
George Leonard
- Mastery
The trouble is that we have few, if any, maps to guide us on the journey or even to show us how to find the path. The modern world, in fact, can be viewed as a prodigious conspiracy against mastery. We're continually bombarded with promises of immediate gratification, instant success, and fast, temporary relief, all of which lead in exactly the wrong direction.
George Leonard
- Mastery
Goals are important. But they exist in the future and the past, beyond the pale of the sensory realm. Practice, the path of mastery, exists only in the present. You can see it, hear it, smell it, feel it. To love the plateau is to love the eternal now, to enjoy the inevitable spurts of progress and the fruits of accomplishment, then serenely to accept the new plateau that waits just beyond them. To love the plateau is to love what is most essential and enduring in your life.
Peter Ralston
- Enlightenment
A deep sense of peace washed over me, and also an unexpected feeling of freedom. No joy I had ever experienced even remotely compared to this awakening. My mind was freed of burdens that I didn't know I had. Assumptions about reality and limitations in my awareness just disappeared. My sense of self was ... open and without location. A sense of calm and lightness saturated my being. All inner turmoil evaporated. All doubts and struggle fell away. It was the most extraordinary moment of my life.
Sidney Harris
- Dishonesty
We delude ourselves that we want to implant honesty in our children: what we really want is to imbue them with our particular kind of dishonesty, with our culture's dishonesty.
Russell Simmons
- Flow
You will find that work itself is making you happy and whole. Not just the results of your labor, but the labor itself. The work itself becomes the process by which you obtain happiness. The work becomes your savior.
Gregory Bateson
- Picasso
Somebody was saying to Picasso that he ought to make pictures of things the way they are - objective pictures. He mumbled he wasn't quite sure what that would be. The person who was bullying him produced a photograph of his wife from his wallet and said, "There, you see, that is a picture of how she really is." Picasso looked at it and said, "She is rather small, isn't she? And flat?"
Peter Ralston
Just as suddenly as a bubble bursting, my mind opened up to a new level of consciousness and I felt my sense of self completely dissolve... In that instant, I became clearly and absolutely conscious of who and what I am...
Richard Feynman & Daniel Goleman
- Self-Deception
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself. And you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard Feynman - "Self-deception covers its own tracks." - Daniel Goleman -.
Bartley Hoebel
- Sexual stimuli and junk food
Highly potent sexual stimuli and junk food are the only stimuli capable of activating the dopamine system with anywhere near the potency of addictive drugs.
Russell Simmons
- 100% Commitment
100% commitment to your life's purpose - "The pain that's created by avoiding hard work is actually much worse than any pain created from the actual work itself."
Wallace Wattles
- Creator vs Competitor
Are you a creator or a competitor? "You must get rid of the thought of competition. You are to create, not to compete for what is already created." - Wallace Wattles -.
Darren Hardy
- Compound Effect
What's simple to do is also simple not to do. The magic is NOT in the complexity of the task; the magic is in the doing of simple things repeatedly and long enough to ignite the miracle of the compound effect.
