Life lesson digest 1 by levai songski

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Life Lessons Digest

CONTENTS HAPPINESS AND POSITIVE LIVING

100 WAYS TO MOTIVATE YOURSELF

10 A COMPLAINT FREE WORLD

HEALTH AND FITNESS

16 BODY MIND MASTERY 22 BRAIN POWER PEOPLE SKILLS AND SOCIAL LIFE

26 A GUIDE TO RATIONAL LIVING 34 DO YOU SPIRITUAL GROWTH

40 A DAILY DOSE OF SANITY 46 A NEW EARTH WEALTH AND ABUNDANCE

52 CREATIVE MIND AND SUCCESS 58 ENTRELEADERSHIP

“AS IRON SHARPENS IRON, SO ONE PERSON SHARPENS ANOTHER” -Proverbs 27:17 “WHAT WE ARE TODAY COMES FROM OUR THOUGHTS OF YESTERDAY, AND OUR PRESENT THOUGHTS BUILD OUR LIFES OF TOMORROW” -the Buddha “YOU WILL BE THE SAME PERSON IN FIVE YEARS FROM TODAY, EXCEPT FOR THE BOOKS YOU READ AND THE PEOPLE YOU MEET” -Charlie “tremendous” Jones “A MAN IS BUT A PRODUCT OF HIS THOUGHTS. WHAT HE THINKS HE BECOMES.” -Mahatma Ghandi

Our lifes are shaped by our thoughts. Whether through books or the influence of ideas from other people we come into contact with. This series will break apart some of the most successful people, their books, and ideas which will help shape your own and in doing so change the course of your life to a much more fullfilliing life.

HAPPINESS AND POSITIVE LIVING

an Johnson’s

hilosophersNotes

More Wisdom in Less Time

100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

BIG IDEAS

Change Your Life Forever

e’s Your Focus?

full engagement.

ion Deficit Disorder

it?

“Aristotle also knew how to create a self through movement.

-depressant.

on vs. Reaction

tters, different mojo.

rom doing.

ews

ws.

the Pessimist Wrong

He once said this: “Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it; men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just: By doing selfcontrolled acts, we come to be self-controlled; and by doing brave acts, we become brave.” This book contains 100 moves you can make...”

s & bouncers in your head.

g Ourselves Lightly

~ Steve Chandler from 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

e will we fly?

100 Ways to Motivate Yourself.

ce Worry

I’m not sure how I found this book but I’m glad I did!

on.

ons & Actions follow behavior.

Steve Chandler’s awesome and this book kinda reminds me of my book! One quick, inspiring, Big Idea after another that helps us get our practical wisdom on and go out and rock it. I’ve mined a few of my favorite Big Ideas for you and, if you’re feelin’ it, I think you’ll really enjoy the whole book! For now, let’s jump in! :)

WHERE’S YOUR FOCUS?

e development and use willpower is the most t access to happiness otivation that I’ll ever have.” ~ Steve Chandler

“There was an interesting motivational talk on this subject given by former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson to his football players before the 1993 Super Bowl: “I told them that if I laid a two-bv-four across the room, everybody there would walk across it and not fall, because our focus would be that we were going to walk that two-by-four, But if I put that same two-byfour 10 stories high between two buildings only a few would make it, because the focus would be on falling. Focus is everything. The team that is more focused today is the team that will win this game.” Johnson told his team not to be distracted by the crowd, the media, or the possibility of losing, but to focus on each play of the game itself just as if it were a good practice session. The Cowboys won the game 52-17.” Love that. This is a theme we come back to in these Notes—specifically in John Eliot’s Overachievement and The Now Habit. In Overachievement, Eliot tells us: “I have found that the top players in every field think differently when all the marbles are on the line. Great performers focus on what they are doing, and nothing else... They are able to engage in a task so completely that there is no room left for self- criticism, judgment, or doubt; to stay loose and supremely, even irrationally,

PhilosophersNotes | 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

self-confident; to just step up and do what they’re good at, concentrating only on the simplest nature of their performance.”

hard to stay motivated when you’re confused. When you simplify your it gathers focus. The re you can focus your , the more motivated it gets.” ~ Steve Chandler

Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit is an extraordinary book. If you experience challenges with procrastination, I highly recommend it. He uses the same metaphor of walking over the board. Fact is, if you’re focused on all the things that can go WRONG with a project, odds are you’re going to be paralyzed. Here’s how Fiore puts it: “To better understand how you learned to procrastinate, I invite you to use your imagination and to accept for a few minutes a metaphor in which the test, job, or task in your life is to walk a board. Situation A. The task before you is to walk a solid board that is thirty feet long, four inches thick, and one foot wide. You have all the physical, mental, and emotional abilities necessary to perform this task. You can carefully place one foot in front of the other, or you can dance, skip, or leap across the board. You can do it. No problem. Take a minute to close your eyes, relax, and imagine yourself in that situation. Notice how you feel about this task. Are you scared or blocked in any way? Do you feel any need to procrastinate? Fear of failing or making a mistake cannot be an issue here, but you might find that you delay starting out of a need to assert your independence and to resist being asked to do even a simple task such as walking a board. Situation B. Now imagine that the task is just the same, to walk a board thirty feet long and one foot wide, and you have the same abilities; only now the board is suspended between two buildings 100 feet above the pavement. Look across to the other end of the board and contemplate beginning your assignment. What do you feel? What are you thinking about? What are you saying to yourself? Take a moment to notice how your reactions in this situation differ from those you had in situation A. Notice how rapidly your feelings about the task change when the height of the board changes and the consequences of falling are

e are each of us angels ith only one wing,” said talian artist Luciano de cenzo, “and we can only embracing each other.”” ~ Steve Chandler

greater.” So... What are you focused on? If you’re finding yourself all freaked out and procrastinating, see if you can change your focus from the *results* of your project to simply being fully engaged in what you’re up to! As we learned in our Notes on the Bhagavad Gita, “The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results.”

INTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER “Once we get the picture of who we want to be, “definitely planned work” is the next step on the path. Definitely planned work inspires the energy of purpose. Without it, we suffer from a weird kind of intention deficit disorder. We’re short on intention. We don’t know where we’re going or what we’re up to.” “Intention Deficit Disorder.” Love it. :) What are you up to? What are your goals and what plans have you developed to achieve them? Get clear and go rock it, yo! Don’t want to fall into the dreaded Intention Deficit Disorder, now do we?! :)

PURPOSE: THE ANTI-DEPRESSANT “It is impossible to work with a definite sense of purpose and be depressed at the same time. Carefully planned work will motivate you to do more and worry less.” Are you feeling depressed? Know that, as Chandler says here, it’s *impossible* to work with a definite sense of purpose and be depressed at the same time.

PhilosophersNotes | 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

HAPPINESS AND POSITIVE LIVING As we know, happy people have goals and projects! I’ve quoted this passage from Sonja

he primary idea was this: e hour of planning saves ee hours of execution.” ~ Steve Chandler

Lyubomirsky A LOT. But, I’m gonna do it again b/c it brings the point home so nicely: “In 1932, weighed down by the sorrows and agonies of his self-absorbed and aimless clients, an Australian psychiatrist named W. Béran Wolfe summed up his philosophy like this: ‘If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert.’ He was right. People who strive for something personally significant, whether it’s learning a new craft, changing careers, or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person, and you will find a project.” What’s YOUR project?

CREATION VS. REACTION “You can create your own plans in advance so that your life will respond to you. If you can hold the thought that at all times your life is either a creation or a reaction, you can continually remind yourself to be creating and planning. “Creation” and “reaction” have the same letters in them, exactly; they are anagrams. (Perhaps that’s why people slip so easily out of one and into the other.)” “Creation” and “reaction.” I never knew they had the exact same letters in them. Perhaps that’s why it’s so easy to slip out of one and into the other! :) As you know if you’ve read many of these Notes, moving from a reacting Victim into a proactive Creator is a H.U.G.E. part of what Optimal Living is all about. Where are you hanging out these days?!

COURAGE COMES FROM DOING

G.K. Chesterton used to ay, “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”” ~ Steve Chandler

“Emerson once said, “The greater part of courage is having done it before,” and that soon became true of my speaking in public. Fear of doing it can only be cured by doing it. And soon my confidence was built by doing it again and again.” What a great line: “The greater part of courage is having done it before.” Emerson also tells us (see Notes): “God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.” Plus: “Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do.” And: “Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.” Powerful stuff. So, what are you afraid of? Know that, as Chandler says: “Fear of doing it can only be cured by doing it.” And, of course, go do it! :)

“If you’re watching too much television and you know it, you might find useful to ask this one uestion: “Which side of glass do I want to live on?”” ~ Steve Chandler

THE NEWS IS NOT NEWS “The news is not the news. It is the bad news. It is deliberate shock. The more you accept it as the news, the more you believe that “that’s the way it is,” and the more fearful and cynical you will become. If we realized exactly how much vulgar, pessimistic, and manipulative negativity was deliberately packed into every daily newspaper and most television shows and Hollywood movies, we would resist the temptation to flood our brains with their garbage. Most of us are more particular about what we put in our automobile’s gas tank than we are about what we put in our own brain every

sophersNotes | 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

oucho Marx once said e found television very ducational. “Every time meone turns it on,” he aid, “I go in the other oom to read a book.”” ~ Steve Chandler

night. We passively feed ourselves with stories about serial killers and violent crime without any conscious awareness of the choice we’re making.” This is Big. Chandler used to work for a newspaper and shares stories about the deliberate efforts of the crew to feature *the* most shocking stuff. Unfortunately, that’s what sells. But let’s not pretend that just because it’s so heavily featured in our news outlets that it’s a fair description of what’s really going on in the world. So, let’s be a little more discriminating about what we put into our minds, eh? And, remember this: “Make your own news. Be your own breaking story. Don’t look to the media to tell you what’s happening in your life. Be what’s happening.”

PROVE THE PESSIMIST WRONG “Start to argue against your first line of reasoning. Pretend you’re an attorney whose job is to prove the pessimist in you wrong. Start off on building your case for what’s possible. You’ll surprise yourself. Optimism is by nature expansive—it opens door after door to what’s possible. Pessimism is just the opposite—it is constrictive. It shuts the door on possibility. If you really want to open up your life and motivate yourself to succeed, become an optimistic thinker.” Optimism. As you know by this stage, it’s Principle #1 to Optimal Living 101. This reminds me of Alan Cohen’s great Idea in his equally great Why Your Life Sucks (see Notes): “Imagine two lawyers in a courtroom inside your head. One is arguing for your possibilities and you achieving your goals. The other is arguing for your limits and why you don’t deserve what you want. Who will win? The lawyer whom you pay the most. The way you pay these lawyers, however, is not with money; it is with your attention.” Cohen has another great Idea from that book that’s worth sharing here as well: “Your real enemies are the self-defeating thoughts, paltry expectations, and beliefs that you must live at less than full throttle. You will experience as much pain as you are willing to accept. You do have control over how much you hurt. Pain happens; suffering is optional. You can choose thoughts that bring you relief rather than imprisonment. To find your freedom, stand at the

Emerson asked, “Why should the way I feel nd on the thoughts in omeone else’s head?”” ~ Steve Chandler

doorway of your mind and monitor your thoughts. Notice which ones lift you and which ones drag you down. Then, like a bouncer at an exclusive party, admit only those on the invitation list and send the others back where they came from. Fate is not a net cast over you by capricious fortune; it is a garden you cultivate by the thoughts you attend to. Shift your attention and you will shift your life.” Here’s to hiring the Optimist Lawyer and her friend the Optimist Bouncer. :)

TAKING OURSELVES LIGHTLY “G.K Chesterton used to say that “taking things lightly” was the most spiritually advanced thing you could do to improve your effectiveness in life. “After all,” said Chesterton, “it’s because God’s angels take themselves so lightly that they are able to fly.”” Love that image!! Reminds me of Rule Number 6 from The Art of Possibility (see Notes): “Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, apoplectic with fury, shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The resident prime minister admonishes him: “Peter,” he says, “kindly remember Rule Number 6,” whereupon Peter is instantly restored to complete calm, apologizes, and withdraws. The politicians return to their

PhilosophersNotes | 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

HAPPINESS AND POSITIVE LIVING conversation, only to be interrupted yet again twenty minutes later by an hysterical woman gesticulating wildly, her hair flying. Again the intruder is greeted with the words: “Marie, please remember Rule Number 6.” Complete calm descends once more, and she too withdraws with a bow and an apology. When the scene is repeated for the third time, the visiting prime minister addresses his colleague: “My dear friend, I’ve seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this. Would you be willing to share with me the secret of Rule Number 6?” “Very simple,” replies the resident prime minister. “Rule Number 6 is ‘Don’t take yourself so g—damn seriously.” “Ah,” says his visitor, “that is a fine rule.” After a moment of pondering, he inquires, “And what, may I ask, are the other rules?” “There aren’t any.”” Hah! Are you taking yourself a little too seriously? If so, lighten up and fly will ya?! :)

REPLACE WORRY WITH ACTION

f something is worrying u, always do something t it. It doesn’t have to e the big thing that will ake it disappear. It can ny small thing. But the sitive effect it will have you will be enormous.” ~ Steve Chandler

“Replace worry with action. Don’t worry. Or rather, don’t just worry. Let worry change into action. When you find yourself worrying about something, ask yourself the action question, “What can I do about this right now?” And then do something. Anything. Any small thing. Most of my life, I spent my time asking myself the wrong question every time I worried. I asked myself, “What should I be feeling about this?” I finally discovered that I was much happier when I started asking, instead, “What can I do about this?”” This is a REALLY, REALLY Big Idea. Seriously. It’s hard to overstate how Big it is. Are you worried about something right now? See if you can shift that worry into constructive action by asking yourself what you can DO about it! And then, of course, do it! :) I love the way Dale Carnegie puts it in his classic How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (see

“The next time you’re orried about something, yourself, “What small g can I do right now?” en do it. Remember not to ask, “What could I ossibly do to make this le thing go away?” That stion does not get you into action at all.” ~ Steve Chandler

Notes): “George Bernard Shaw was right. He summed it all up when he said: ‘The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.’ So don’t bother to think about it! Spit on your hands and get busy. Your blood will start circulating; your mind will start ticking—and pretty soon this whole positive upsurge of life in your body will drive worry from your mind. Get busy. Keep busy. It’s the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth—and one of the best.” And, perhaps my favorite wisdom on this subject is from David Reynolds’ AWESOME book Constructive Living (see Notes) where he says that, regardless of how we’re feeling, the most empowering question we can ask is: “Now what needs to be done?” He tells us: “The mature human being goes about doing what needs to be done regardless of whether that person feels great or terrible. Knowing that you are the kind of person with that kind of self- control brings all the satisfaction and confidence you will ever need. Even on days when the satisfaction and confidence just aren’t there, you can get the job done anyway.” And, here’s a little more practical mojo from Chandler to help us rock it: “I once came up with a system for action that helped turn my worrying habits completely around. I would list the five things that I was worried about-perhaps they were four projects at work and the fifth was my son’s trouble he was having with a certain teacher. I would then decide to spend five minutes on each problem doing something, anything. By deciding this, I knew I was committing myself to 25

ophersNotes | 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

minutes of activity. No more. So it didn’t feel at all overwhelming.”

EMOTIONS & ACTIONS

we leave this world, l ask ourselves one : What’s different? different because I re? And the answer uestion will be the nce that we made.” ~ Steve Chandler

“American philosopher William James put it very clearly: “We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.” Most of us believe an emotion, such as happiness, comes first. Then we do whatever we do, in reaction to that particular emotion. Not so, insisted James. The emotion arises simultaneously with the doing of the act. So if you want to be enthusiastic, you can get there by acting as if you were already enthusiastic. Sometimes it takes a minute. Sometimes it skips a beat. But it always works if you stay with it, no matter how ridiculous you feel doing it.” In Constructive Living, David Reynolds puts it this way: “Behavior wags the tail of feelings... We do, then we feel.” To be clear, this isn’t simply a pom pom self-help pick-me-up. It’s actually one of the 12 scientifically-proven ways to boost our happiness described by Sonja Lyubomirsky in her great book The How of Happiness. She tells us to “Act like a happy person.” Try it out. Next time you’re feeling the funk, see if you can snap out of it long enough to run a little experiment. Get up from whatever you’re doing, shake yourself out and ask yourself, “What would a super happy version of me do right now?” And then, of course, DO IT. Stick with it for 10-15-30 minutes and lemme know how that goes. If you’re like me, you’ll find that feelings do, in fact, follow behavior! :)

Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher

ked this Note, robably like…

ctive Living

About the Author of “100 Ways to Motivate Yourself” STEVE CHANDLER

Steve Chandler is a consultant, trainer, author,and keynote speaker whose clients

Habit

include over 100 Fortune 500 companies. Learn more about Steve and all the

evement

great stuf he’s up to at www.SteveChandler.com!

of Happiness

About the Author of This Note BRIAN JOHNSON

Brian Johnson is a lover of wisdom (aka a “Philosopher”) and a passionate student of life who’s committed to inspiring and empowering millions of people to live their greatest lives as he studies, embodies and shares the universal truths of optimal living. He harts his job.

PhilosophersNotes | 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

HAPPINESS AND POSITIVE LIVING

rian Johnson’s

hilosophersNotes

More Wisdom in Less Time

A Complaint Free World

E BIG IDEAS

How to Stop Complaining and Start Enjoying the Life You Always Wanted

e All Self-Made

hing to recognize.

Mind’s Effect

body. Is huge.

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atisfaction -> Action

mplaining -> inaction.

“Less pain, better health, satisfying relationships, a better job, being more serene and joyous ... sound good? It’s not only possible, it’s probable. Consciously striving to reformat your mental hard drive is not easy, but you can start now and in a short period of time—time that will pass anyway—you can have the life you’ve always dreamed of having.”

Another Day

~ Will Bowen from A Complaint Free World

dise!

Complaint Factory shut it down.

dust & Plank-Checks

yours?

ning

Will Bowen is the lead minister at Christ Church Unity in Kansas City, Missouri who decided to challenge himself and his congregation to go 21 days without complaining, criticizing or gossiping. Nervous about whether he’d get thru them all, he bought 500 purple bracelets and set up the rules: 1. “Begin to wear the bracelet on either wrist.

highest within.

2. When you catch yourself complaining, gossiping, or criticizing, move the bracelet to the other wrist. 3. If you hear someone else who is wearing a purple bracelet complain, it’s okay to point out their need to switch the bracelet to the other arm; BUT if you’re going to do this, you must move your bracelet first! Because you’re complaining about their complaining. 4. Stay with it. It may take many months to reach 21 consecutive days. The average is 4 to 8 months.” 7 million (!) purple bracelets later, he’s made a big dent in his mission to create A Complaint Free World (learn more and get your bracelet at http://AComplaintFreeWorld.org) and his book is a really fun, inspiring, practical look at how we can reformat our mental hard drives and create more happiness and goodness in our lives.

“If you don’t like hing, change it. If you change it, change your itude. Don’t complain.” ~ Maya Angelou

Alexandra and I have been playing the 21 Day Complaint Free Challenge game for just over 10 days now. After shocking myself in the first few days with how much I complain, criticize and gossip, I almost got my first day without a complaint yesterday. I told Alexandra, “Hey, we’ve almost made our first whole day w/out a complaint!” Did a little happy dance and then 2 minutes later I complained about the bath mat (!) being a little weird. The bath mat?! OMG.... D’oh. Too funny. Never fear, though. I shall triumph! For now, let’s enjoy some great Big Ideas from Will and his awesome book! :)

WE’RE ALL SELF-MADE “We are, every one of us, already creating our lives all the time. The trick is to really take the reigns and steer the horse to where we want to go, rather than where we do not. Your life is a movie written by, directed by, produced by, and starring—you guessed it—YOU! We are all self-made. When asked about “self-made millionaires,” Earl Nightingale, the twentieth-

PhilosophersNotes | A Complaint Free World

century motivational master and philosopher, once quipped, “We are all self-made, but only the successful will admit it.””

s vital that we control r minds in order to recreate our lives.” ~ Will Bowen

Love that. We’re all self-made, yo. It’s time to stop COMPLAINING about our upbringing, our boss or whatever challenges we think are getting in the way of creating the lives we want. We talk about this *All. The. Time.* In fact, right after that quote above, Bowen drops some of my favorite Optimism quote bombs: Aurelius (see Notes on Meditations): “The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.” Buddha (see Notes on The Dhammapada): “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think.” James Allen: (see Notes on As a Man Thinketh): “You are today where your thoughts have

ryone who has become a 21-Day Complaint Free ampion has said to me, wasn’t easy, but it was th it.” Nothing valuable ever easy. Simple? Yes. t “easy” is not part of becoming a successful person.” ~ Will Bowen

brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” It’s Principle #1 of Optimal Living 101: Optimism. We’ve gotta be PROactive rather than REactive. We’ve gotta realize that we always have the chance to step in between the stimuli of life and choose our most empowered responses as we steer the horse where we really want to go. And, what’s cool is that playing the 21 Day Complaint Free Challenge game is a GREAT way to start getting more and more control of that little mind of ours. Although I’m a huge fan of meditation (haven’t missed a day in almost 2 1/2 years as I write this and don’t plan to ever miss a day again), this challenge is, in many ways, even more powerful. It’s like a 24-hour meditation as we train our minds to become more and more aware of what’s coming out of our mouths. As we do that we diligently, patiently, persistently and playfully reign in the negativity. And, as a result, our lives transform.

THE MIND’S EFFECTS ON THE BODY “Think about that. Two-thirds of illnesses originate in the mind. Indeed, the word psychosomatic comes from psyche, meaning “mind,” and soma, meaning “body.” Therefore, psychosomatic literally means “mind/body.” There is a connection between the mind and body. What the mind believes, the body manifests. Dozens of research studies have shown that what a person believes about their health leads to that belief becoming real for them. I heard a story on National Public Radio where doctors found that if they told patients the drug held great promise in curing them, the drug had a far greater beneficial effect than it did for patients who received the same drug without the suggestion. The story went on to report one study that found Alzheimer’s patients who had other physical illnesses, such as high blood pressure, did not get the full benefit of the drugs they took because, due to their diminished memory, they could not remember taking their daily medications. The mind has a powerful effect on the body.” Amazing stuff, eh? How about this passage from Herbert (Harvard-MD-proving-benefits-of-meditation) Benson who says: “More specifically and personally, just how powerful can your personal beliefs and expectations be in the healing process? Let’s allow a 2002 study in the New England Journal of Medicine to suggest an answer. In this study, conducted by scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine, 165 patients with osteoarthritis (wear-and-tear arthritis) of the knee randomly received one of three treatments: arthroscopic debridement (removal of dead tissue inside the knee); arthroscopic lavage

11 PhilosophersNotes | A Complaint Free World

HAPPINESS AND POSITIVE LIVING

Doctors estimate that 7 percent of illnesses e a result of “thinking ” Our thoughts create r world and our words indicate our thoughts. laining about an illness will neither shorten its duration nor lessen its severity.” ~ Will Bowen

(washing-out of the knee joint); or placebo “sham” surgery. Arthroscopy involves the use of a fiber-optic device that is inserted to permit observation of the inside of a joint and to facilitate surgical procedures inside the joint. In this investigation, the placebo surgery involved having a physician make a surface skin incision on the knee and simulate a debridement without insertion of an arthroscope. The researchers assessed the outcomes of the procedures over a 24-month period. The results were startling: The investigators reported that at no point did the patients who had the real surgery have less knee pain or better physical function than the placebo group. The sham surgery worked as well as the real surgery. The researchers concluded that there was no clinically meaningful difference among the three groups. In fact, they said, at some points during follow-up, objective physical function of the patients was significantly worse in the debridement group than in the placebo group! This study is by no means an isolated example of the power of belief and expectation. Hundreds of other investigations, involving a wide variety of diseases and health problems, have demonstrated the power of the human mind over disease. The treatment principle might be summed up this way: Just as an antibiotic drug may stop an infection or surgery may eliminate a malignancy, so the mind—your mind—has the capacity to treat or even cure many of your serious physical and emotional complaints.” I don’t know what to say to that other than: “Wow.” And, me thinks it’s a good idea to get our minds right! You? :)

NIT-PICK & GET INFESTED

plaining should happen equenlty; criticism and p, never... Most of the mplaining we do is just lot of “ear pollution” ental to our happiness and well-being.” ~ Will Bowen

“If you’re a person who normally gossips, you’ll find that speaking only praise about those not present takes the fun out of it. In today’s society, gossip usually means nit-picking. Do you know where the term “nit-picking” comes from? Lice eggs are called nits. To “nitpick” means to pick lice eggs from another’s scalp. The thing about lice is that they love to move from one host to another. Don’t pick nits, or you might become infested.” Let’s keep that image in mind the next time we’re tempted to nit-pick. And quit doing it. :)

SLINGSHOTS, RUNNING STARTS & CORAL REEFS “What determines how far a stone from a slingshot will fly? The answer is: how far back you’ve pulled the band of the slingshot. If you study the lives of successful people, you will find that often their success was not in spite of their life challenges but because of them. They took what happened to them and used it to help them grow. They stopped telling everyone how much they were wronged and began to look for the blessings in their challenges. And looking, they found

moved my bracelet so any times that I broke of them before making t 21 consecutive days.” ~ Will Bowen

them. Their slingshot was pulled back far, but as a result, they soared even further.” How awesome is that?! Reminds me of Dan Millman’s wisdom from Body Mind Mastery (see Notes): “Now that you have a better understanding of the mental mechanisms that influence your performance, you’ll realize that although we all find ourselves in slumps occasionally, we don’t need to get stuck in them. And when you feel like you’re going nowhere or even slipping backward, you may actually be backing up to get a running start.” Also reminds me of Denis Waitley’s mojo from The Psychology of Winning (see Notes): “One of the best ways to develop adaptability to the stresses of life is to view them as normal. Earl Nightingale tells of his visit with his son recently to the Great Barrier Reef which stretches nearly 1800 miles from New Guinea to Australia. Noticing that the coral polyps on the inside of the reef, where the sea was tranquil and quiet in the lagoon, appeared pale and lifeless... while

phersNotes | A Complaint Free World

“To be a happy person who has mastered your thoughts and has begun eating your life by design, you need a very, very high threshold of what leads ou to express grief, pain, and discontent. “ ~ Will Bowen

the coral on the outside of the reef, subject to the surge of the tide and power of the waves, were bright and vibrant with splendid colors and flowing growth... Earl Nightingale asked why this was so. ‘It’s very simple,’ came the reply, ‘the coral on the lagoon-side dies rapidly with no challenge for growth and survival... while the coral facing the surge and power of the open sea, thrives and multiplies because it is challenged and tested every day. And so it is with every living organism on earth.’” Fact is, we always have a choice: Will we whine about the challenges in our lives or will we alchemize them into strength and service? If you’re currently facing a challenge, what’s YOUR choice? :)

DISSATISFACTION —> ACTION VS. COMPLAINING —> INACTION ““But every great thing in our country began with people complaining... think about Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King!” an email I received started. I realized that in one respect I agreed with the woman who sent the email. The first step toward progress is dissatisfaction. But if we stay in dissatisfaction, we never move forward to brighter vistas... Were the great leaders of the United States also great complainers? I’d have to say no. These

The way to inspire change s summed up by Benjamin ranklin: “The best sermon is a good example.”” ~ Will Bowen

important men and women allowed dissatisfaction to drive them to great visions, and their passion for these visions inspired others to follow them. Their relentless focus on a bright future raced the collective heartbeat of this nation. Their method of transforming our consciousness as a country and, as a result, our future, was best summarized by Robert Kennedy: “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were and ask why not?”” To be clear, being Complaint Free isn’t about pretending there aren’t any challenges in our lives or in the world. There are. A lot of them. The question is, what do we DO about it?! Let’s say we’re dissatisfied with something. Do we choose to DO SOMETHING constructive about it or do we choose to sit around and complain about it? That’s really what this is all about. Will we be a Victim or will we be a Creator? That moment to moment decision shapes our destiny so let’s choose wisely.

ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE “When asked how they are, I have heard people groan sarcastically, “Another day in paradise.” I decided to adopt this as my own genuine answer to this question. Not being sarcastic, but sincerely responding, “It’s another day in paradise,” when asked about my well-being. It was

“You can best get what you desire by expressing hat you want rather than omplaining about the way things are.” ~ Will Bowen

uncomfortable at first, but it has now become second nature. I’ve noticed that this comment makes others smile brightly, and it reminds me that I have a choice in that moment to be happy or sad; to be in heaven or hell. You have a choice with the words you use to create the life you live. Choose wisely.” “It’s another day in paradise!” Hah. Makes me smile just imagining saying that. :)

SHUTTING DOWN THE COMPLAINT FACTORY “After you have gone the months it takes to become a Complaint Free person, you will find that

PhilosophersNotes | A Complaint Free World

HAPPINESS AND POSITIVE LIVING

mind stretched to a new dea never shrinks back to its original dimensions.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

you will have changed. Just as, over generations, the blind cave fish left behind what was no longer needed, you will find that your mind no longer produces the deluge of unhappy thoughts you used to live with. Because you are not speaking them, you have no outlet for them, and the complaint factory in your mind closes down. You have shut off the spigot and the well has dried up. By changing your words, you have reshaped the way you think. It has now become Unconscious (you don’t notice) for you to be Competent (not complain). And as a result, you are a different person. You are a happier person.” First, love the idea of “shutting down the complaint factory” in our minds. Hah. :) And now seems like a good time to point out that the book is organized in four sections: 1. Unconscious Incompetence 2. Conscious Incompetence

price is too high to pay or the privilege of owning yourself.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

3. Conscious Competence 4. Unconscious Competence Essentially, Bowen tells us that we start in “Unconscious Incompetence.” In other words, we’re not even aware that we complain as often as we do. When we take up the Challenge, we move into “Conscious Incompetence.” In this stage, we become aware of just how incompetent we are—we see just how much we complain! And, trust me, it’s a LOT more than you think you do. :) I consider myself a pretty positive person. And, I was pretty shocked at just how much I complained, criticized and gossiped during the first several days of the Challenge. Bowen stresses something REALLY important though. He tells us that most people quit during their

“Love is unconditional ceptance and looking for the good. “ ~ Denis Waitley

Conscious Incompetence phase. It’s overwhelming and we just want to give up! But we need to EMBRACE this phase. We need to laugh at ourselves and KNOW that we simply need to do the work moment to moment and day in and day out and things will change! I took this wisdom to heart and didn’t expect to go a whole day without complaining for at least a couple weeks. It took me about 10 days for things to settle down a bit and almost get that first Complaint Free day. And now, altho I’m still dropping the complaint bombs, I’m doing it WAY less often and I know I’m bound to be successful as I keep on diligently, patiently, persistently and playfully showing up. From Conscious Incompetence I’ll move into Conscious Competence and, ultimately, into

“Success is going from ailure to failure without losing enthusiasm. “ ~ Winston Churchill

Unconscious Competence—where I will have literally re-wired my being such that I “naturally” show up Complaint Free. Fun! So, remember: EMBRACE the awkward Conscious Incompetence phase—with this Challenge and with EVERYTHING you learn in your life. It’s the only way we grow, yo.

SAWDUST & PLANK-CHECKS “If we want to change the world, it must first come from healing the discord within our own souls... You can’t treat others any better than you treat yourself. It all begins with you. In Matthew 7:3, Jesus said, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” If you are noticing a great number of people around you complaining, you might want to look in your own eye and do a quick plank-check.” We’ve mentioned this before, haven’t we? Indeed we have!

sophersNotes | A Complaint Free World

Gandhi tells us we need to be the change while Benjamin Franklin tells us the best sermon is a good example. While Wallace Wattles (see Notes on The Science of Being Great) tells us the world needs demonstration more than it needs instruction and Michael Beckwith (see Notes on Spiritual

e want to change the , it must first come m healing the discord hin our own souls.” ~ Will Bowen

liked this Note, probably like…

al Liberation

Liberation) reminds us that: “An enlightened society can only be created by awakened beings.” It’s pretty much unanimous. So, back to you. Are you noticing some saw dust in the eyes of people around you? How about a quick plank-check? In fact, how about a 21 Day Plank-Check Challenge? :)

RIPENING TO THE HIGHEST WITHIN “In a vineyard, one grape will begin to ripen and in so doing will send out a vibration, an enzyme, a fragrance, or an energy field of some kind that is picked up by the other grapes. This one grape signals the other grapes that it is time to change, to ripen. As you become a person who holds only the highest and best for yourself and others in your words and thoughts, you will signal to all around you simply by who you are that it is time for a change. Without even trying, you will raise the consciousness of those around you.” Well isn’t that a beautiful image?! Here’s to ripening and inspiring those around us to do the same, my friend!

Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher

About the Author of “A Complaint Free World” WILL BOWEN

Will Bowen is the Lead Minister of One Community Spiritual Center in Kansas

tions

City, MO. In July 2006 he suggested his congregation use purple bracelets

ammapada

to monitor their success at eradicating complaining from their lives. His idea

ychology of g

ence of Being

exploded around the world and more than 7 million purple Complaint Free bracelets have been sent to people in over 106 countries.

About the Author of This Note BRIAN JOHNSON

15PhilosophersNotes | A Complaint Free World

health and fitness

Brian Johnson’s

PhilosophersNotes

More Wisdom in Less Time

HE BIG IDEAS

gor, Vitality & Activity

matter of activity.

Body Mind Mastery Training for Sport and Life

he Fear of Failure

icious circle.

ockin’ It

by-style.

he Moment of Truth

NOW!

acking Up

get a running start.

elax & Stay Focused

“Whether you are a world-class competitor, weekend athlete, or fitness enthusiast, this book will help you overcome self-created hurdles and reawaken the natural athlete—the body mind master—inside you. Body Mind Mastery provides a clear map to a less stressful, more meaningful approach to practicing sport and life. It’s not about dedicating your life to your training but dedicating your training to your life.”

constructive action.

~ Dan Millman from Body Mind Mastery

stant Satori

Dan Millman is a former world-champion athlete and gymnastics coach at Stanford and UC

here now.

aw of Accommodation

ed both to get it done.

Berkeley. He’s also a really cool, wise guy. If you’ve read his classic, semi-autobiographical book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior (that was

uilding New Habits

rting now.

recently made into a cool movie starring Nick Nolte as Socrates), you know how Dan brilliantly weaves Western and Eastern thought into a practical philosophy for our modern lives.

asters

This book is all about integrating our Body and Minds to create a deep sense of wholeness.

ne everywhere.

As Dan says: “You are a dynamic whole greater than the sum of your parts. By integrating your body, mind, and emotions through training, you reshape your life.” You don’t need to be an athlete to dig the wisdom and I trust you’ll enjoy the Big Ideas I’ve selected to help us get our Body Mind Mastery on!

Nature’s way is simple and easy, but men prefer what is intricate and artificial.” ~ Lao Tzu

VIGOR, VITALITY & ACTIVITY “Remember that vigor and vitality is a matter of activity, not necessarily formal exercise. I’m always amazed to see cars driving around and around, looking for the closest space to the health club so they can get on a treadmill and walk three miles! Park the car at the farthest point from the store. Use the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator. Carry your groceries, garden, and do other activities that keep you moving. You will add more years to your life and more life to your years.” Smiling at the vision of peeps waiting for the closest spot to the door at the gym. (And laughing at myself b/c I think I’ve done that at least once or twice back in the day. :) This book is packed with wisdom. AND, if you’ve read any of Dan’s work, you know that he *always* comes back to the simple stuff. So, we’ll start there. What little things can you do in your day-to-day life to increase your activity level to enhance your vigor and vitality?!?

THE FEAR OF FAILURE “Ultimately, fear of failure generates a vicious circle that creates what is most feared. To break this cycle, you need to make peace with failure. It isn’t enough to merely tolerate it; you need to

PhilosophersNotes | Body Mind Mastery

“Competence breeds confidence.” ~ Dan Millman

appreciate the failure and use it… Body mind masters have made peace with failure, treating it like an old friend playing a practical joke. The greatest inventors, artists, and athletes have all failed many times. Babe Ruth was the home run king of his time, but also the strikeout king.” Ah, the fear of failure. Here’s what Michael Jordan, one of the greatest athletes *ever* has to say about failure: “I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” (That’s from a Nike commercial. It’s strong. Check it on the site.) Robert F. Kennedy tells us that: “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” And David Viscott tells us that: “In the end, the only people who fail are those who don’t try.” What’s YOUR relationship to “failure”?!? Have you made peace with it and gone so far as to see it as a necessary part of doing anything, let alone achieving greatness? Sweet. :)

ROCKIN’ IT BABY-STYLE “If babies held the same tendency toward self-criticism as adults, they might never learn to walk or talk. Can you imagine infants stomping, ‘Aarggh! Screwed up again!’ Fortunately, babies are free of self-criticism. They just keep practicing.”

“Obstacles are those ightening things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.” ~ Hanah More

I love that. Looking to babies as an example of how to learn is SO powerful. Throw yourself back into your diapers and then imagine learning how to walk or talk from your current mode of being. It’s an amusing and frightening thing to imagine! And the simple fact is that most of us would PROBABLY NEVER LEARN TO WALK if we treated ourselves then the way we do now. As we move into the domain of the unknown and pick up a new skill—whether it’s physical in sports or emotional in relationships—let’s be a little kinder with ourselves and have FUN, celebrating the tiny improvements and laughing when we fall on our diapers. :) As Dan says: “So be gentle with yourself; show yourself the same kindness and patience you might show a young child—the child you once were. If you won’t be your own friend, who will be? If, when playing an opponent, you are also opposing yourself, you will be outnumbered… You probably would find it cruel and unnecessary to say to someone, ‘You are really stupid; you keep making the same mistakes; you should give up; you’ll never be any good!’ Yet we think it’s okay to say the same things to ourselves.” So, get your baby on the next time you’re bold enough to learn something new!

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH IS NOW! “Freedom from mental distraction equals power. Olympic champion weightlifters not only have

What a caterpillar calls e end of the world, the ster calls a butterfly.” ~ Richard Bach

powerful bodies; they have powerful minds. The same quality of attention frees us, in the moment of truth, from any thought of self-concept, criticism, or fear. Body mind masters eventually come to the realization that this and every moment, on or off the field, is the moment of truth.” Powerful! Some strong statements are packed in that little paragraph. First:—> “Freedom from mental distraction equals power.”

PhilosophersNotes | Body Mind Mastery

health and fitness

“Allow rather than resist what arises in the present oment—inside or out. Let be interesting rather than good or bad.” ~ Dan Millman

Do you think an Olympic weightlifter would be an Olympic weightlifter if only his (or her) body was strong? Of course not! It takes an incredibly strong mind to train like an Olympian. And, perhaps, an even stronger mind to shut out all fear/doubt/criticism in the moment of truth— allowing ALL of one’s power to come thru in their performance. Amazing. Of course, the same holds true with us. Are you free from mental distraction throughout your day? Whether it’s at the gym where you can meander thru a workout or intensely focus your energy or in the car driving your kids to school where you can be fully present or distracted or in the office or the golf course or any and everywhere you find yourself. “Freedom from mental distraction equals power.” … So, how’s your power? I love this one, too:—> “Body mind masters eventually come to the realization that this and every moment, on or off the field, is the moment of truth.” The moment of truth isn’t about the championship game. It’s about THIS moment and this moment and this moment and… Each moment gives us an opportunity to be fully present and fully alive as Body Mind Masters… Or not. Makes me think of the Greek word areté. The word areté (pronounced “are-uh-tay”) literally translates as “virtue” or “excellence” but has a deeper meaning—something closer to “striving to do your best moment to moment to moment.” The classic Greek philosophers like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle said that happiness was the essence of life and that if we want to live with happiness, we need to live with areté. How? Make this moment your moment of truth. And this moment. And… We do that and there’s NO ROOM for regret/anxiety/disillusionment/etc.! So, let’s free our mind of distractions, fully show up in this moment and flex our power, eh?!?

BACKING UP TO GET A RUNNING START “Now that you have a better understanding of the mental mechanisms that influence your performance, you’ll realize that although we all find ourselves in slumps occasionally, we don’t need to get stuck in them. And when you feel like you’re going nowhere or even slipping backward, you may actually be backing up to get a running start.” That’s classic. Dan establishes the fact that we ALL have slumps on occasion. When we can see the dynamics of growth and excellence, we don’t need to suffer the slumps. And, if you feel like you’re going nowhere or even slipping backward, remember that you may just be backing up to get a running start. :) Is there an aspect of your life where you might be able to apply this mojo?

RELAX & STAY FOCUSED ON CONSTRUCTIVE ACTION “Body mind masters do not deny or repress their feelings but learn to stay physically relaxed even under stressful situations. Even when feeling angry, fearful, and sorrowful, breathe evenly and fully. Keep your body relaxed. You have much more control over your behavior than you do over your thoughts or emotions so paradoxically the best way to master your emotions is to let

osophersNotes | Body Mind Mastery

“Those who can have patience can have what they will.” ~ Ben Franklin

them be, stay relaxed, and focus on constructive action. So, accept your emotions as natural to you in the moment, without trying to fix them. Know your purpose or goal—not someone else’s. And, do whatever you need to reach that goal, whether or not your emotions or moods help or hinder you.” That shows up in a chapter entitled “Emotional Talent” in which Dan talks about the importance of mastering our relationship to our emotions. He talks about the fact that: “Motivation, like all states, comes and goes, rises and falls. I certainly didn’t feel motivated all the time during my gymnastics career. But I trained six days a week, for more than four hours a day, for years, by keeping my eye on the goal. Although motivation comes and goes, you can always rely on your will.” Dan’s a HUGE advocate of the fact that, while we don’t always feel great or have the ability to instantaneously alter our mood, we DO always have control over our behaviors. He likes to describe our emotions as kinda like clouds passing by and says that just as you can’t control the weather, you can’t control your emotions. Sometimes you’re fired up, sometimes you’re not. As he says: “Life demands much of us, on and off the playing field. Emotional talent is the capacity to stimulate and draw upon our natural fountain of energy—to learn to blow into our own sails. We develop emotional talent not by relying on motivation all the time but by applying our will no matter how we feel.” Amen. This is a *really* Big Idea Dan explores more in his great book Everyday Enlightenment (see Notes). Plus, he introduced me to an author named David Reynolds who integrates Zen Buddhism ideals with Western psychotherapy in what has become one of my favorite books: Constructive Living. Check out the book and my Notes on it for more mojo. In the meantime, know this: Wherever you are, whatever you feel, remember your goal and ask yourself this question: “Now what needs to be done?” (… Well, now what needs to be done? :)

INSTANT SATORI “Take your keys, a piece of fruit, or any handy object, and go outside. Throw the object up into the air. Staying relaxed and easy, catch it. Be sure to catch it. Then come back inside, and continue reading this exercise. Now consider the moment the object was in the air. At that moment you weren’t thinking of what you’d have for dinner or what you did yesterday. You weren’t thinking of anything else, either. You may have been attending to thoughts before you threw it or after you caught it, but during the throw, you were pure attention, reaching out, waiting for the object’s descent. In that same moment your emotions were open, and your body was alert and vitalized—a moment of satori.” As Dan describes it: “Satori is a word from the Japanese Zen tradition that points to a ‘sudden awakening’ or ‘insight into our fundamental nature.’”

“In a contest between patience and power, bet on patience.” ~ Samuel Johnson

And that exercise is one of the coolest, simplest ways I can imagine to guide us to this state of pure awareness and presence in this moment. Try it out! And may we live in many of those moments.

PhilosophersNotes | Body Mind Mastery

health and fitness

e are what we repeatedly . Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” ~ Aristotle

THE LAW OF ACCOMMODATION “Your body is malleable; you can sculpt it over time with daily habits of diet and exercise. The law of accommodation reminds us that the body may change slowly, but it will change.” The Law of Accommodation. Dig it. It can also be described as “The Training Effect” and basically describes the fact that your body (and mind) will accommodate itself to the load you put on it. So, if you go out and start training for a marathon, although you might not be able to get past the first telephone pole on the first day out, if you consistently show up and go just a bit beyond your current comfortable threshold you will, over time, develop the ability to run that marathon. Alternatively, if you lounge on the couch all day long you’re body will accommodate to that. D’oh! After I sold my first business about a decade ago and first got into living on purpose (largely inspired by Dan’s Way of the Peaceful Warrior btw, which was one of the key books that set me on this path!), I realized I’d have a hard time living at my highest potential if I had a hard time getting out of bed. So, I became a trainer so I could learn nutrition/exercise physiology/etc. One of the coolest lessons I learned was the idea of “consistency over intensity.” It’s MUCH better to show up at the gym regularly for a basic workout than go off for a couple hours every other week. As Dan says throughout his books, it’s MUCH better to do something for a little bit every day than a lot once in a while. It’s better to meditate for a few minutes a day than for an hour once a week. It’s better to move for fifteen minutes (or five!) a day than it is to train hard for a couple hours once a week. Another one of my friends and favorite teachers, Robin Sharma, says that the hallmark of great people is very simple: Consistency on the fundamentals. Our bodies and our minds are malleable. Over time (!), if we’re diligent, patient and persistent, they’ll shape toward our ideals and accommodate to meet the demands we place on them. But we’ve gotta show up! So, what’re your fundamentals? And how’s your consistency? How can you be a little more (a lot more?) consistent? (Starting today, perhaps? :)

BUILDING NEW HABITS “This initiatory period of change may last from one to six weeks, or even longer. Unless the desire to change remains strong, body and mind tend to return to old, familiar patterns. It takes time—from three to six months—for old habits to become obsolete. By the end of that time, you’ll have adapted to a new pattern. In a sense, you’ll have found a new way of life.”

When climbing a mountain, ne each step in the right rection as success. We n the alphabet before we rite words; it works the me in sport and life. Many mall successes add up.” ~ Dan Millman

Reminds me of Seneca, the classic Stoic philosopher born in the Roman Empire about the same time Jesus was born. He says this in his classic Letters from a Stoic (see Notes): “You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.” Translated: you’ve gotta put in the time and demonstrate some strong will power so that your WILL to do the right thing becomes a DISPOSITION to do the right thing. He also says: “How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant and the things that are honorable finally become, for you, the same.” So, are you building some new habits? Keep your goal REALLY clear and your will REALLY strong to shape a new disposition.

sophersNotes | Body Mind Mastery

you liked this Note, ou’ll probably like…

veryday Enlightenmen

One of my tricks? I like to say that certain things are “non-negotiable.” For example, eight months ago I committed to meditating for an hour every morning upon waking. I’d done a 10-day Vipassana meditation but when I got back it didn’t stick. Realizing the importance of training my mind and meditation as a powerful vehicle to do this, I decided to build the practice. Now, in the past, I’d only meditate when I “felt like it.” Hah. This time around I decided the commitment was “non-negotiable.” I KNEW I’d wake up some morning and not “feel” like it. And I knew that it was on THOSE mornings when the habit would either be installed or thwarted. So, when I had the inevitable, whiney “But I don’t feel like it!” mornings (when I was able to conjure up all kinds of really sensible reasons why I deserved a day off, I told that part of myself that the practice wasn’t up for discussion. It was non-negotiable. And, now, 250+ days into it, I’m groovin’ and excited to effortlessly cross the 1,000+ day threshold and beyond! Back to you: What new habit are you gonna rock?

MASTERS SHINE EVERYWHERE “Masters of one art have mastered all because they have mastered themselves. With dominion over both mind and muscle, they demonstrate power, serenity, and spirit. They not only have talent for their sport, they have an expanded capacity for life. The experts shine in the competitive arena; the masters shine everywhere.” As they say, one can have no greater or smaller mastery than mastery of oneself and how you do anything is how you do everything. I say we get out there and shine!

Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher

About the Author of “Body Mind Mastery” DAN MILLMAN

Dan Millman is a former world champion athlete, college professor and coach,

astery

and bestselling author whose books, including Way of the Peaceful Warrior,

trength for Life

The Life You Were Born to Live, and Everyday Enlightenment, have inspired

hrive

etters from a Stoic

millions of people in more than twenty languages. (from the book) Learn more about Dan at his web site: PeacefulWarrior.com.

About the Author of This Note BRIAN JOHNSON

PhilosophersNotes | Body Mind Mastery

health and fitness

E BIG IDEAS

ding Brain Power ways to rock it.

Brain Power

itive Refocusing

mism is key.

rning

for making the most of it!

ular Renewal

great nutrition.

Rule of Nutrition water!

ure

nnect w/the earth.

n-Doing

er the art.

t Deprivation

to deal with it.

y Movement

sential to your well-being.

Your Brain Power On!

mprove your mind as you age.

“Who are your role models for aging? What are your expectations and attitudes about the progress of your mind as you get older? Do you expect your memory to be better or worse in ten or twenty years? How about your sex life? What are your fears, concerns, and worries about getting older? Are you hoping that someone will develop the mental equivalent of Viagra? Let go of the idea of “anti-aging.” Resistance against getting older is futile. Instead, embrace the idea of aging well, with wisdom and poise. In the past thirty years, the scientific evidence supporting the notion that your mind can improve through the years has become overwhelming. Clearly, the question is no longer whether your mind can improve with age but, rather, how you can optimize your mental powers as you get older. This book presents practical, evidence-based wisdom to help you answer this question. You’ll learn new skills to increase memory, intelligence, creativity, and concentration. And you’ll cultivate greater confidence and healthy optimism as you discover how to improve your mind as you age.” ~ Michael Gelb & Kelly Howell from Brain Power Michael Gelb’s How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci (see Notes) is one of *the* most influential books I’ve ever read.

“If we did all the things we are capable of doing e would literally astound ourselves.” ~ Thomas Edison

And, I’ve meditated to Kelly Howell’s amazing Brain Sync guided meditations for literally *hundreds* of hours. (My favorite: Retrieve Your Destiny (get it here) which I’ve listened to 250+ times. Seriously. :) So, when I heard about this book called Brain Power that they created together I was very excited to check it out! It’s a quick-reading, Big Ideas-packed book I think you’ll enjoy. Here’s a great passage from the introduction by one of the world’s leading authorities on optimizing our brains, Tony Buzan: “Many people are concerned, however, that years of bad habits will prevent them from improving mental performance. In other words, they feel that it’s “too late.” But bad habits are simply neurological patterns that build up networks of probabilities by forming “memory traces” along the pathways between your brain cells. The more you repeat the behavior, the more these networks expand and the more the probability of your repeating the behavior increases. All you have to do, therefore, to reverse this trend is to establish new and more positive patterns of connection in your brain. By repeating these, you increase the probability that they will happen, and you decrease the probability that your old bad habits will persist. This book is a manual for the creation of new, more positive patterns of connection in your brain.”

our brain is hard-wired for genius.” ~ Tony Buzan

Me likes! Alright. Let’s have some fun with a few of my favorite Big Ideas, shall we? :)

BUILDING BRAIN POWER The book is organized around eight key ways we can boost our brain power. Here they are: •

“Think Counterclockwise (aka: Be Optimistic!)

•

Be a Lifelong Learner

•

Exercise for More Brain Power

•

Mind Your Diet to Nourish Your Mind

•

Create a Brain-Enhancing Environment

•

Cultivate Healthy Relationships (and Stay Sexy!)

•

Rest Peacefully to Delay Resting in Peace

•

Liberate Your Mind by Synchronizing Your Brain”

Each of those brain boosters comes with its own chapter. On to the Big Ideas!

POSITIVE REFOCUSING

“Resilience in the face f adversity is the most guishing characteristic of those who age cefully and adapt well. esilience is a function of optimism.” ~ Michael Gelb & Kelly Howell

“Dr. Schwartz advises that once you’ve become aware of a negative thought pattern, you should consciously alter the pattern of association by redirecting your attention to something pleasurable, such as listening to your favorite music, working in the garden, or playing with your pet. Even though you might be feeling anxiety or dread, you change the pattern of association in your brain as you willfully focus on something pleasurable. With practice, this positive refocusing gradually rewires your negative neural circuitry.” Optimism. It’s principle number one in aging gracefully. (And, as you know, in Optimal Living 101 in general!) The chapter on getting our optimism on is *packed* with goodness. The tip above reminds me of Pema Chödrön’s wisdom from her great book The Places That Scare You (see Notes) where she tells us: “Acknowledging that we are all churned up is the first and most difficult step in any practice. Without compassionate recognition that we are stuck, it’s impossible to liberate ourselves from confusion. ‘Doing something different’ is anything that interrupts our ancient habit of indulging in our emotions. We do anything to cut the strong tendency to spin out... Anything that’s non-habitual will do—even sing and dance or run around the block. We do anything that doesn’t reinforce our crippling habits. The third most difficult practice is to then remember that this is not something we do just once or twice. Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.” So, step 1: Notice yourself getting off track. Step 2: Do ANYTHING other than your habitual patterns!!! :)

TIPS FOR MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR LEARNING “In school, most of us spent the majority of our time learning history, mathematics, social

PhilosophersNotes | Brain Power

health and fitness studies, and other subjects. But, unfortunately, the standard curriculum neglects the most

f the human brain were o simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.” ~ Emerson Pugh, Ph.D.

important subject — how to learn. Here are some simple ideas that can help you enjoy learning more effectively. •

Let go of the fear of embarrassment and failure.

•

Cultivate childlike curiosity.

•

Embrace the process.

•

Seek new challenges.

•

Stretch your comfort zone.

•

Invest fifteen minutes every day in new learning.

•

Begin it now!”

Being a lifelong learner. That’s the second principle to keeping your brain buzzing while we age. Again, the book goes into detail on each of those sample ideas. For now, which of those can you embrace a bit more? Do you need to let go of fear of embarrassment and failure? Perhaps embrace the process of learning rather than obsessing about the results? Do you need to seek out some new challenges or maybe invest 15 minutes every day into learning something new? Have fun with it!!!

CELLULAR RENEWAL “Scientists estimate that the average human body is composed of fifty to seventy-five trillion cells. And all of those cells, including your one hundred billion neurons, are completely reconstructed more than twice a year. Your diet provides the fuel for this cellular renewal. As Daniel G. Amen, MD, emphasizes, “If you want to have a great brain, you must consistently give it nutrient-rich foods. This is one of the easiest, most effective strategies to boost brain power quickly.”” That’s amazing. Our body is composed of fifty to seventy-five TRILLION cells. * rubs eyes * That’s a lot.

e doctor of the future will no longer treat the uman frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.” ~ Thomas Edison

ophersNotes | Brain Power

And, apparently each of those cells (including the one hundred billion neurons in our noggins) are completely restructured more than twice per year. Wow. That’s inspiring. The key to optimizing our cells’ renewal?! Nutrient-rich foods!!! Check out the Notes on Integrative Nutrition, Clean, Eat to Live, Super Immunity, How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes, The Engine 2 Diet, and The Thrive Diet, for a bunch of Big Ideas on how to rock our nutrition. For now, what’s the #1 thing you *know* you could be doing nutrition-wise to give your brain a nice little boost? ... Now a good time to get on that? :)

THE FIRST RULE OF PROPER NUTRITION “Proper hydration is a critical factor in maintaining and improving your mind as you age. Dr.

on rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses s purity… even so does n sap the vigor of the mind. ” ~ Leonardo da Vinci

“Cultivating healthy onships is one of the important elements of oving your mind as you age.”

~ Michael Gelb & Kelly Howell

Daniel G. Amen explains, “Considering that your brain is 80 percent water, proper hydration is the first rule of good nutrition. Even slight dehydration increases the body’s stress hormones, which can decrease your ability to think clearly. Over time, increased levels of stress hormones are associated with memory problems.”” You drinking enough water? It’s the first rule of proper nutrition! Adequate levels vary depending on a range of factors but go for at least 8-10 glasses of pure water and a lot of water-rich foods! (Which tend to be the nutritionally-dense ones as well! :) * I’m raising my water glass to you! *

NATURE: RECONNECT WITH THE EARTH “Poets and philosophers have always counseled people regarding the benefits of being in nature, and now science is catching up. In a study published in the journal Psychological Science in 2008, neuroscientist John Jonides, Ph.D., and his colleagues measured students’ performance on tests of memory and attention before and after taking a walk. One group strolled through a beautiful arboretum near the campus of the University of Michigan, and the other walked in downtown Ann Arbor. The researchers discovered that those who walked in nature improved their test scores by 20 percent, while those who walked in the city showed no improvement (moreover, they reported a decline in perceived well-being). The researchers concluded, “In sum, we have shown that simple and brief interactions with nature can produce marked increases in cognitive control. To consider the availability of nature as merely an amenity fails to recognize the vital importance of nature in effective cognitive functioning.”” What a cool study! To re-cap: Researchers tested college students’s performance on tests of memory and attention. Then they split them into two groups. One group walked around downtown Ann Arbor. The other cruised thru the beautiful arboretum at the University of Michigan. Then they tested them again and the group that walked thru nature’s beauty scored 20% (!!!) better than the group that walked thru the city. That’s crazy! Want a 20% boost in your mojo? Go for a walk in nature today.

MASTER THE ART OF NON-DOING “The great virtuoso pianist Arthur Schnabel commented, “The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes — ah, that is where the art resides!” Creating a brain-enhancing environment, learning new things, cultivating a vibrant social network, and implementing a program of exercise and diet are all positive actions you can take to improve your mind as you get older. And one of the most important aspects of healthy aging focuses more on the art of non-doing — the space “between the notes” of your positive actions. Understanding how to rest and recharge will help you to achieve greater health of body and mind.” How are the spaces between YOUR notes?! Are you taking enough time for rest? In The Pursuit of Perfect (see Notes), Tal Ben-Shahar tells us: “The problem in today’s corporate world, as well as in many other realms, is not hard work; the problem is insufficient recovery.”

PhilosophersNotes | Brain Power

health and fitness

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz focus on the natural rhythms of life in their great book The Power

“The research team ummarized its findings by ating simply, “The brain is like a muscle, we need to exercise it.”” ~ Michael Gelb & Kelly Howell

osophersNotes | Brain Power

of Full Engagement (see Notes) and stress the importance of proper recovery. They also echo the beautiful wisdom from above about the importance of the space between the notes. They tell us: “Periods of recovery are likewise intrinsic to creativity and to intimate connection. Sounds become music in the spaces between notes, just as words are created by the spaces between letters. It is in the spaces between work that love, friendship, depth and dimension are nurtured. Without time for recovery, our lives become a blur of doing unbalanced by much opportunity for being.” How can YOU build more recovery into your life on a daily (proper sleep + naps + breaks), weekly (a day or two *completely* off) and yearly (2-4 weeks off per year)?! Here are some more ideas on how we can deal with our “rest deprivation”!

DEALING W/REST DEPRIVATION “Matthew Edlund, M.D., is the director of the Center for Circadian Medicine in Sarasota, Florida. Based on his extensive clinical research, Edlund discovered that many people are, as he describes it, “rest deprived.” Although he offers excellent advice on sleeping well, Edlund emphasizes that sleep is just part of the larger spectrum of rest. Our systems are overloaded with stress, and our natural rhythms of rest and refreshment are obscured by the hectic pace of contemporary living. Edlund proposes that we relearn how to rest. The first step in doing this is to recognize that you will feel better and work more effectively if you are well rested. Edlund offers plenty of evidence to this effect, plus guidance on four essential dimensions of rest: •

Physical rest. In addition to sleep and naps, Edlund recommends soaking in a hot tub or relaxing in a yoga pose.

•

Mental rest. Mental rest involves reconfiguring one’s mind to quickly and easily obtain a sense of relaxed control. Edlund recommends self-hypnosis, relaxation exercises, and positive visualization.

•

Social rest. Edlund explains that social rest involves “using the power of social connectedness to relax and rejuvenate.” He highlights the fact that feelings of belonging and togetherness are essential for our well-being.

•

Spiritual rest. Edlund recommends daily practice of meditation, prayer, and contemplation.”

Great stuff. How can you build a little more physical, mental, social and spiritual rest into your life?!

DAILY MOVEMENT IS ESSENTIAL TO YOUR WELL-BEING “Maybe you prefer tai chi, yoga, or Pilates. Or perhaps you just like to walk, run, or swim. In any case, some form of daily movement practice is essential to your well-being, and it becomes even more important as you get older. Whatever your stage in life or your current state of conditioning, you can become fitter, stronger, and more flexible, balanced, and poised, starting today. A regular program of intelligent exercise will raise your core vitality, elevate your daily baseline of happiness, help prevent injury and illness, and — by oxygenating your brain — play a key role in improving your mind as you age.” You want to live optimally and age gracefully? You’ve gotta (!!!) exercise!!

GFH isn’t the latest ormone therapy. It’s n acronym for three ential practices that ove mental acuity and d your life: gratitude, giveness, and humor.”

Michael Gelb & Kelly Howell

liked this Note, probably like…

Think Like do da Vinci

axation Response

Michael and Kelly tell us that “An ideal fitness program incorporates complementary areas of fitness, including cardiovascular conditioning, strength and flexibility training, and the cultivation of balance and poise. These dimensions of fitness all serve to support the vigor of your body and the cheerfulness of your soul.” Whatever it is you love to do, do it. Often. Pretty please. :)

GET YOUR BRAIN POWER ON! “Start by embracing a positive, optimistic, “counterclockwise” attitude toward aging. Find a guiding purpose for your life and focus on gratitude, forgiveness, and humor. Continuous learning is the true fountain of youth, so learn something new every day and embrace fresh challenges. Oxygenate your brain and sharpen your wits by creating an approach to exercise that you enjoy, and be mindful of the simple principles of healthy eating. Surround yourself with beauty and a positive, multisensory, stimulus-rich environment. Invest in your social wealth, and cultivate the practice of relaxation daily.” Well, there ya go. If we want to boost our brain power as we age, let’s be optimistic, learn, exercise, eat well, create a nourishing environment, love, rest, and synchronize our brains! Here’s to flipping the switch to our brain power ON! :)

Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher

About the Authors of “Brain Power” MICHAEL GELB & KELLY HOWELL

Michael J. Gelb is the preeminent authority on the application of genius thinking and a pioneer in the fields of creative thinking, accelerated learning, and innovative leadership. Gelb leads seminars for organizations such as DuPont,

editate?

Merck, Microsoft, Nike, Raytheon, and YPO. He is the author of the bestselling

w of Happiness

How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day.

ces That Scare You

With almost three million audio programs in print, Kelly Howell is highly acclaimed for her groundbreaking work in healing and mind expansion. She is the creator of Brain Sync audio technology and the world’s leading innovator in the practical application of brain-wave research. (from Amazon)

About the Author of This Note BRIAN JOHNSON

PhilosophersNotes | Brain Power

people skills and social life

Brian Johnson’s

PhilosophersNotes

More Wisdom in Less Time

HE BIG IDEAS

e Roots of Neurosis

orted thinking.

A Guide to Rational Living Over 1,500,000 Copies Sold

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“Thus, you may reduce your depression by using drugs or relaxation techniques. But unless you begin to think more clearly and surrender some of your Irrational Beliefs, you will tend to depress yourself again when you stop the drugs and exercises. To effect permanent and deep-seated improvements, philosophic changes seem to be best. Again, we often encourage our clients to use medication, relaxation techniques, movement therapy, yoga exercises, or other physical approaches. We believe that these techniques may help. And we teach, as we shall show later, many emotive, dramatic, fantasy, self-management, and behavior modification methods. More than most other schools of therapy, REBT [Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy] employs a comprehensive, integrative approach to treatment. We still hold, however, that if you would most thoroughly and permanently change your disturbed feelings, you’d better use considerable reasoning. Because a large element (though not the whole) of destructive emotion stems from unrealistic, illogical, and self-sabotaging thinking.” ~ Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper from A Guide to Rational Living Well, that’s officially the longest intro quote I think we’ve had in these Notes and this is #114. But it captures the essence of A Guide to Rational Living quite well so we’ll stick with it. :) Albert Ellis, the co-author of this straight-talking book all about getting our thoughts in order so we can live happier, more fulfilled lives, was one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. In fact, he’s been ranked as the #2 top psychologist ever—right behind Carl Rogers (see

an we really change such well-practiced mental attitudes? Definitely. Will t be easy? No—but those who diligently work with

the cognitive, emotive, and

behavioral “tools” of REBT

ave an excellent chance of success.”

~ Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper

Notes on On Becoming a Person) and ahead of Sigmund Freud. He’s essentially the founder of the modern cognitive behavioral therapy movement that’s been scientifically proven to be one of the most powerful ways to help people get out of a funk and this book is a no-nonsense, kinda old-school guide to rockin’ it. It’s packed with Big Ideas so let’s jump in!

THE ROOTS OF NEUROSIS: DISTORTED THINKING “A discussion of the roots of neurosis is mainly a discussion of distorted thinking. From the point of view of mind/brain as computer, most human beings are innately poor programmers. They seldom succeed in setting themselves up to get along very happily in an imperfect world. Neurotics are especially bad at it. Although irrational behavior is sometimes due to faulty “hardware,” such as neurological impairment, it is also due to faulty “software,” to self-created, self-defeating Irrational Beliefs.” This book is all about challenging our “Irrational Beliefs” and re-programming our software.

PhilosophersNotes | A Guide to Rational Living

Sensible thinking, we end, usually leads to healthy emoting.”

bert Ellis & Robert A. Harper

Insisting that things ht* to go smoothly, hat mishap *must* occur, and that the portant people in our *should* behave as e told them so many we *need* them to ve... is fundamentally al. Yet, as a species, rally tend to think in e distorted and selfdefeating ways.”

bert Ellis & Robert A. Harper

So, how about a couple more computer metaphors? :) T. Harv Eker strikes a similar theme in his Secrets of the Millionaire Mind (see Notes): “Your programming leads to your thoughts; your thoughts lead to your feelings; your feelings lead to your actions; your actions lead to your results. Therefore, just as is done with a personal computer, by changing your programming, you take the first essential step to changing your results.” While Will Bowen says this in his great little book A Complaint Free World (see Notes): “Less pain, better health, satisfying relationships, a better job, being more serene and joyous ... sound good? It’s not only possible, it’s probable. Consciously striving to reformat your mental hard drive is not easy, but you can start now and in a short period of time—time that will pass anyway—you can have the life you’ve always dreamed of having.”

THE ABC’S OF SUFFERING “The mechanism of such an emotional disturbance is not difficult to grasp. It looks, at first blush, as though it’s just a matter of “stimulus” and “response”—as if something unfortunate happens to people (the stimulus), and that, by itself, causes them to get upset (the response). But it looks that way only because, when something unfortunate happens, the key element of emotional arousal—their irrational thinking—leaps into action almost instantaneously and, of course, largely out of sight. The actual mechanism of an emotional disturbance is a stimulus-belief-response, or as we say in REBT: “Action-Belief-Consequence.” These are the terms behind REBT’s well-known ABC model of emotional arousal. Bottom line: it’s not our life events (Actions) that, themselves, directly disturb us (produce unpleasant emotional Consequences). It’s our irrational demandingness, our shoulds, oughts, and musts (Beliefs), that largely do the job.” Well, there ya go. Those are the ABC’s of suffering. :) “Action -> Belief -> Consequence” Something happens (Action). We respond a certain way because of our conscious and unconscious Beliefs. Then we experience the resulting emotions (Consequences). As much as we try to be a victim to our circumstances, it’s never: “Action -> Consequence” As you know, we talk about this all the time. And we have Albert Ellis and his passionate commitment to getting these ideas into mainstream psychology (and therefore into pop psychology) to thank for it. In short: The key is to become more aware of what thoughts/beliefs we have when we’re stressed. We need to practice identifying and challenging them—seeing if we can come up with more empowering responses. And, in the process, we learn how to step in between the stimulus and normal response so we can choose our most empowered response. THAT, my friends, is pretty much what Optimism is all about. I really like the way Sonja Lyubomirsky describes it in The How of Happiness (see Notes): “Write down your barrier thoughts, and then consider ways to reinterpret the situation. In the process, ask yourself questions like... What else could this situation or experience mean? Can anything good come from it? Does it present any opportunities for me? What lessons can I learn and apply to the future? Did I develop any strengths as a result?” And she says this: “Essentially, all optimism strategies involve the exercise of construing the world with a more positive and charitable perspective, and many entail considering the silver lining in the cloud, identifying the door that opens as a result of one that has closed. It takes hard work and a great deal of practice to accomplish effectively, but if you can persist at these

PhilosophersNotes | A Guide to Rational Living

people skills and social life

Positive thinking... allows you to create rational coping self-statements and images that aid your als and enhance your life. However, it is limited, and ometimes even dangerous, b/c you can easily use it unrealistically and polyannaishly. Thus, you n positively tell yourself, “I can accomplish nything I want!” But, of course you can’t. You an enthusiastically think, “Everything will happen for the best.” But, alas, t won’t. Positive thinking, moreover, often covers up and doesn’t really remove your underlying negative thinking.” ~ Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper

“Emotional disturbance ften consists of taking a healthy *wish* for roval and turning it into n unhealthy *demand.* en refusing to do much to win it.”

~ Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper

strategies until they become habitual, the benefits could be immense. Some optimists may be born that way, but scores of optimists are made with practice.” Fun!

A FRANTIC SEARCH FOR PERFECTION “Let us emphasize that we do not believe that any human can, for any length of time, feel perfectly or completely happy. Your frantic search for a perfect anything, in fact, almost dooms you to misery. You aren’t the kind of animal that achieves perfection in virtually anything— especially perfect happiness. Because of your ever-changing experiences, you are subject to hundreds of irritations, pains, ills, diseases, and stresses. So you can overcome many of your physical and emotional handicaps, as we show in this book. But not all.” Here’s another liberating theme we come back to again and again: There are no perfect human beings!! And you’re not going to be the first!! :) So, relax. Or, at least chill out a bit. And know that our frantic search for a perfect anything almost dooms us to misery! Dan Millman puts it well in Everyday Enlightenment (see Notes): “No one feels the same way all the time. Even if you are angry, depressed, crazy, afraid, or grieving, you’ll have moments when you are distracted. There are no enlightened people, no nice, bad, smart, neurotic, or stupid people, either—only people with more (or less) enlightened, nice, bad, smart, neurotic, or stupid moments.” And Tal Ben-Shahar wrote a GREAT book all about it called The Pursuit of Perfect (see Notes) where he advises us to become an Optimalist rather than a Perfectionist. How? Well, the Biggest Idea is to simply realize that we’ll NEVER attain perfection and, working within that constraint, we can then have fun “optimalizing” and see if we can create the best possible life rather than the perfect one. :)

HEALTHY VS. UNHEALTHY NEGATIVE EMOTIONS “Misery, in other words, consists of two fairly distinct parts: (1) desiring, wishing, or preferring that you achieve some goal or purpose and feeling disappointed and irritated when you do not achieve it; and (2) demanding, insisting, commanding, and necessitating that you achieve your goal or purpose and making yourself feel bitter, enraged, panicked, despairing, and selfdrowning when you do not. In REBT, we distinguish between healthy feelings of sorrow or irritation when you lose something you desire; and unhealthy feelings of depression or rage stemming from your refusal to accept frustrations, and from your whining that they absolutely must not exist. If you think rationally (self-helpingly), you will feel greatly disappointed or sad about the loss of a person you care for. But you need not also feel utterly overwhelmed and depressed about the same loss. You may sanely choose to feel strongly annoyed or irritated by frustrating conditions. But you need not make yourself feel very enraged or self-pitying about these defeats. While your feelings of loss or grief are healthy reactions to distinct loss, your feelings of panic or depression are not.” Good stuff. So, we all have negative things that happen to us in our lives. It’s natural and healthy to experience a certain amount of frustration/grief/pain when we encounter these challenges. But, when we move beyond a certain level of “Gah!”-ness into an extended period of overwhelming grief/depression/panic, we’ve gotta look at how we’re interpreting the event.

osophersNotes | A Guide to Rational Living

“Moreover, where stration, sorrow, and piness are frequently hy feelings—assuming hat you greatly desire ething and are deprived t—depression, despair, and self-downing are ally never healthy and ad best be minimized.”

lbert Ellis & Robert A. Harper

eve few outstanding ations without risk taking.”

ert Ellis & Robert A. Harper

What we’ll inevitably find when (or should I say “IF!”) we look is an irrational belief. Namely, we’re telling ourselves that whatever’s happening (whether it’s the car breaking down, our spouse breaking down or the economy breaking down) should NOT be happening. And, well, arguing with reality like that is a one-way ticket to suffering. As Byron Katie so brilliantly says in her great book Loving What Is (see Notes): “I realized that it’s insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100% of the time.” So, if you’re feeling angst because you lost your job or your health or even a loved one, check in and see if you’ve moved beyond the realm of healthy negative emotion into the realm of pure Victim where you’re whining about how what’s going on absolutely must not exist. Then get back to our ABC’s of rockin’ it and choose a better Belief/thought/response, yo!!

YOU’D BETTER THINK *AND* ACT “To modify your destructive habits, you’d better think and act. Deliberately work against the influence of the past; force yourself, for example to act toward your father in a more adult fashion, to risk his disapproval, to say and do things that you previously would have been panicked to do. If you never in all your life talked to a stranger on a bus, went to a party alone, kissed a partner on your first date, or did similar things that you would like to do, force yourself until you keep trying these terrible “fearful” acts. No nonsense! Don’t just think: act! You can overcome years of past anguish and inertia by days or weeks of forced practice today.” This is where the “Behavioral” in Rational Emotive BEHAVIORAL Therapy and Cognitive BEHAVIORAL Therapy comes in. It’s not enough to just THINK about these ideas and transform our thoughts. We need to ACT in line with our new beliefs. In fact, as Ellis and Harper tell us, we need to FORCE ourselves to move through our fears if we want to create a new way of being. Powerful stuff. So... Uh, what might you want to work on in this regard? :)

MAKE THE PLUNGE! “In the final analysis, however, you’d better make some kind of plunge. Make this plunge experimentally, with the full knowledge that it may work out well—and it may not. If you fail, it will be unfortunate, but rarely catastrophic. And failure doesn’t have anything to do with your intrinsic value as a person. Humans mainly learn by doing and by failing—a fact that you can, without liking it, gratefully accept.” I. Love. That. For so many reasons. First, love the practice of taking the plunge and seeing our life as one big experiment. Maslow and Emerson come to mind here. In Motivation and Personality (see Notes) Abraham Maslow tells us: “It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.” While Ralph Waldo Emerson tells us: “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” There’s something SO liberating about seeing our lives as an experiment. It’s an incredibly cool way to tame the perfectionist gremlin and give ourselves room to really explore and, for me anyway, ENJOY life a lot more!

31 PhilosophersNotes | A Guide to Rational Living

people skills and social life Back to you: What can you approach with a little more experimental energy?!

DIFFICULT DOES NOT MEAN IMPOSSIBLE “Difficult, however, does not mean impossible.” ~ Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper

“Difficult, however, does not mean impossible. Of course, you will find it hard to think and to act rationally in an irrational world. Of course you will have trouble reasoning your way out of circumstances which have handicapped you for many years. All right, it is difficult. But it is also difficult for a blind man to learn to read Braille, a victim of polio to use his muscles again, or a normal person to swing from a trapeze, learn ballet dancing, or play the piano well. Tough! But they—and you—still can do it.” Ah. Love that! “Difficult, however, does not mean impossible.” Marcus Aurelius echoes this sentiment (or perhaps they echo him :) in this classic wisdom from Meditations (see Notes): “Because a thing is difficult for you, do not therefore suppose it beyond mortal power. On the contrary, if anything is possible and proper for a man to do, assume that it must fall within your own capacity.” Is there anything in your life that’s difficult, perhaps even very difficult that you’re convincing yourself is impossible? Check in on that. And change your perception if you need to. Difficult does not mean impossible.

THE ESSENCE OF NEUROSIS

“Most people spend so uch time and energy trying to do the impossible— namely, to change and control the actions of others—that they wrongly believe that they cannot achieve a quite possible l—to change their *own* thoughts and acts.” ~ Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper

“We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: blaming—or damning. If you would stop, really stop, damning yourself, others, and unkind conditions, you would find it almost impossible to upset yourself emotionally—about anything. Yes, anything.” Love that one, too. :) And, as it turns out, Note #113 on A Complaint Free World was all about this exact theme. Check it out for more goodness. For now, we’ll let Maya Angelou do the honors: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.”

ACCEPT YOURSELF “Yes, you acted poorly, and will keep getting unfortunate results if you continue to act that way. But don’t, under any conditions, put down yourself, your entire personhood, for making such errors. Don’t blame or devil-ify yourself in any way, no matter how many times you err. Your acts may be foolish or immoral, but you cannot justifiably be damned or downed, or devil-ified for performing them.” That’s a *really* Big Idea. Step back. Notice your behaviors that aren’t producing the results you’d like. Take more constructive action. But always accept your whole self. Period.

GET INTO FLOW “People rarely feel particularly happy or alive when inactive except for short periods of time between their exertions. Although they may get tired and tense when continuously on the go,

osophersNotes | A Guide to Rational Living

“Your present behavior argely stems from your inking. So by determined hinking and practice, you can regulate and control activities of today—and

prepare for an improved future.”

~ Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper

ou liked this Note, ’ll probably like…

How of Happiness

they are easily bored and listless when they constantly rest. Passive “enjoyments,” such as reading, play-going, or watching sporting events, are often entertaining and relaxing. But a steady diet of this kind of “activity” often leads to dullness and apathy. Intelligent people tend to require vitally absorbing activity to stay most alive and happy. They rarely are enthusiastic for any length of time unless they have some rather complex, absorbing, and challenging occupations or interests.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi basically wrote an entire book on this subject called Flow. Check out the Notes for the full low-down but know this: A lifetime of drinks with pink umbrellas on the beach will NOT lead to happiness. Nor will zoning out on Facebook or in front of the TV. We need something that fires us up. As Sonja Lyubomirsky puts it in The How of Happiness (see Notes): “In 1932, weighed down by the sorrows and agonies of his self-absorbed and aimless clients, an Australian psychiatrist named W. Béran Wolfe summed up his philosophy like this: ‘If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert.’ He was right. People who strive for something personally significant, whether it’s learning a new craft, changing careers, or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations. Find a happy person, and you will find a project.” So, what challenge is worthy of you, my friend? As you get your mind right and practice the ABC’s of life, how can you show up more and more fully and give your greatest gifts in greatest service to your family, your community and your world?!

Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher

About the Author of “A Guide to Rational Living” ALBERT ELLIS & ROBERT A. HARPER

Albert Ellis, Ph.D. (1913–2007) was an American psychologist who is generally

pier

considered to be the founder of cognitive-behavioral therapies and one of the

Pursuit of Perfect

most influential psychologists ever (in one 1982 survey, he was #2 behind Carl

structive Living

Rogers and ahead of Freud). Robert A. Harper, Ph.D was trained in psychology, anthropology, and sociology at Ohio State University and taught at several leading universities. He has written more than 100 papers for professional and popular publications and is the author of several unfluential books.

About the Author of This Note BRIAN JOHNSON

33PhilosophersNotes | A Guide to Rational Living

people skills and social life

Brian Johnson’s

PhilosophersNotes

More Wisdom in Less Time

Do You!

HE BIG IDEAS

12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success

at’s Your Vision?

w it. Stick to it.

ntra

s of the mind.

akfast of Champions

“In the end, the overriding factor in whether or not you realize your dreams is going to be you. Not the world. YOU.”

g bowl of gratitude.

tting Fish

t stink up your soul.

n’t Stall

~ Russell Simmons from Do You! I didn’t know much about Russell Simmons until my friend Robin Sharma (author of The

to work.

Monk Who Sold His Ferrari and The Greatness Guide) first sent me this book. There’s no way

pas

I would have guessed Russell would have such a profoundly spiritual, yet remarkably “real” and

, baby, burn!

unquestionably successful expression of his spirituality in the 21st Century.

e & #’s

ain’t nothin’ but a #.

The New York Times calls Russell Simmons one of “the most innovative and influential figures

stacles

in modern American business and culture.”

’s just challenging you.

e on the Path

et the prize.

ng a Blessing before you get.

He’s a hip-hop mogul (affectionately known as the Godfather of hip-hop, in fact), producer, entrepreneur and all around rock star. AND, he’s a yogi, vegan and deeply spiritual guy. I like that combo. And I love his book. (It kinda makes me imagine Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits written by a hip hop mogul for the 21st century. :)

rma Economics

Do You! is packed with inspiring stories, Russell’s wit and wisdom on everything from getting

t good seeds!

your mind right, living with authenticity, dreaming big and doing your best. It’s one of those

ways Do You

ys.

books you read and at the end say to yourself, “That author is a good person!” (which is always a standard by which I measure my favorite books). So, without further adieu, let’s jump in to some of the Big Ideas in Russell’s 12 Laws of Success. (And, of course, don’t forget to “Do You!” :)

WHAT’S YOUR VISION? “In my experience, there’s only one thing that will always steer you toward success: That’s to have a vision and to stick with it… Once I have a vision for a new venture, I’m going to ride that vision until the wheels come off.” That’s powerful. This entire Note could be on the first chapter alone where Russell establishes “Law Number One: See Your Vision and Stick with It.” Discovering your vision is Law Number One for a reason. We’ve gotta have a vision that drives us. So…

“I dream my painting and paint my dream.” ~Vincent van Gogh

What’s YOUR vision?!? “Focus on your vision and keep going until you hit the finish line. Don’t be one of the people who believe in their vision at first but then give up. See it through, no matter how long it takes. Understand that obstacles are just part of the game. Whatever you imagine, you can achieve. Once you realize this truth, no one is going to be able to stop you.”

PhilosophersNotes | Do You

MANTRA

’m just suggesting that you’re faced with fear anxiety, don’t medicate. Meditate instead.” ~ Russell Simmons

“The word mantra comes from two Sanskrit words man, (‘to think’) and tra (‘tool’). So the literal translation is ‘a tool of thought.’ And that’s how mantras are used in Buddhist and Hindu practices, as tools that clear your mind of distractions. Because when you focus on repeating that mantra over and over again, soon the noise will die down and all you will hear is your inner voice.” Mantra. “A tool of thought.” Have you used mantras before? Powerful stuff. One of my favorites over the years includes repeating “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you…” again and again. I did that so much that when my mind was silent this little voice would pop up out of nowhere and say, “Thank you!” :) Three more of my favorites came from Deepak Chopra’s brilliant book The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire. (See Notes for a bunch of other big ideas.) They were: •

I am totally independent of the good or bad opinion of others.

•

I am beneath no one.

•

I fearlessly handle any and all challenges in my life.

I’ve said those (tens of!) thousands of times. Powerful tools. So…

“You’ve got to tell God thank you every day.” ~Russell Simmons

What tools of thought will you introduce into your life starting… Now?!!? “A clear and focused mind will last a lifetime. Getting your mind in shape is nothing less than the key to sustainable success in the world.” … And, speaking of “thank you!” … how ‘bout a big bowl of gratitude?!?

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS “When I start my day by reflecting on all the things I have to be grateful for, I’ll have a much more rewarding day.” Wow. There’s a powerful way to start your day. In our Notes on Positive Psychology, we often talk about the scientific FACT that gratitude is one of the most powerful ways to boost our levels of happiness. My (strong) recommendation (if you aren’t already doing this): Start your day thinking about all of the things for which you’re grateful. And end your day the same way. And sneak in as many other instances as you can. (Especially thank the annoying things/people who are teaching/ challenging you to embody your highest self even when you don’t feel like it. :) So… For what are you grateful?!? I’m grateful for:

“The biggest thing that separates you from the cess you seek is fear.” ~ Russell Simmons

1. _______________________________________________________________ 2. _______________________________________________________________ 3. _______________________________________________________________ 4. _______________________________________________________________ 5. _______________________________________________________________

PhilosophersNotes | Do You

people skills and social life “I’ve heard of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. But I’ve never heard of Someday.” ~ Reverend Ike

Feed yourself like a champ in the morning! :)

ROTTING FISH “Your purpose is to act on the resources God gives you. If God gives you a bucket of fish, you have to distribute those fish. If you don’t, they’re going to rot, attract a bunch of flies, and start stinking up your soul.” Love that. Don’t believe Simmons? How about Joseph Campbell? —> “To refuse the call means stagnation. What you don’t experience positively you will experience negatively.” Not good enough? How about Abraham Maslow? —> “What one can be, one must be!” Still not enough? What about Jesus? —> “If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don’t bring forth what is inside you, what you don’t bring forth will destroy you.” You have gifts to give to the world. Give them.

I knew it was unrealistic to think I could build an institution overnight. But if I took baby steps, entually it would happen.” ~ Russell Simmons

It is the Baby Steps you take, the everyday things ou do, that eventually lead to the manifestation of your outcome”

David Emerald- The Power of TED

osophersNotes | Do You

And, please:

DON’T STALL “The pain that’s created by avoiding hard work is actually much worse than any pain created from the actual work itself. Because if you don’t begin to work on those ideas that God has blessed you with, they will become stagnant inside of you and eventually begin to eat away at you. You might seem OK on the outside, but inside you will be ill from not getting those ideas out of your heart and into the world. Stalling leads to sickness. But taking steps, even baby steps, always leads to success.” So many great teachers remind us of our need to just do it—to just take the next step in this precious hero’s journey of ours. Russell brilliantly articulates the pain we’ll experience if we DON’T. It’s subtle but so powerful. It’s almost like there’s this internal, subconscious computer that’s keeping track of our every action—giving us a point for every time we step forward into growth and subtracting a point every time we step back into safety or fear or laziness. Imagine that. Let’s say you start this morning at Zero. (Which, thankfully, we’re blessed with the ability to do.) So, it’s first thing in the morning. Alarm goes off. Do you do what you’ve committed to doing— whether that’s getting up and out immediately or silently breathing, thinking about your ideal day and everything you’re grateful for? Or, do you roll over and pull the pillow over your head and think about all that’s wrong in your world? You get +1 if you stepped forward. -1 if you went backward. Then let’s assume you said you’d work out this morning. Do you? +1 or -1. And you can keep track moment to moment to moment.

“The key ingredient to any kind of happiness or success is to never give less than your best.” ~ Russell Simmons

+1 or -1. +1 or -1. +1 or -1. At the end of the day, how do you think you’ll feel if you’re subconscious mathematician comes back to you with a report of -8,549? You’ll want to turn on the TV and zone out. Or drink a beer (or ten). Or yell at your spouse and/ or kids. So… Quit stalling and start taking the baby steps and always remember, the pain of not doing your best is ALWAYS greater than the pain of stepping forward.

TAPAS “In the yogic tradition, this principle of using intense effort to burn through life’s distractions is called Tapas. It’s another Sanskrit word, roughly defined as ‘heat’ or ‘essential energy.’ The concept is that through a disciplined approach to work and self-sacrifice, Tapas will burn away the negativity that separates us from God. By working our hardest and happily enduring the hardships of life we are able to create a sense of peace and clarity in ourselves.” Who would have thought a hip-hop mogul would be teaching us so much Sanskrit?!? Tapas. The word literally means “heat” or “essential energy” and, as Simmons brilliantly articulates,

he dictionary is the only ce where succes comes before work.”” ~ Vince Lombardi

as we live our life with discipline, passion and integrity, we burn thru the negativity that can separate us from God. And that’s a straight line to bliss. My recommendation? Burn, baby, burn. … “The person who understands Dharma will have the opposite reaction to a ‘hard’ job. That person will be eager to get started, no matter what kind of work is in front of her, because she understands that she’s doing God’s work. And when you’re working for God, nothing is too hard.”

AGE & #’S “Age ain’t nothing but a number.” How often do you make excuses for why you can’t do something because of your age? You too old to start something? Too young to go for it? Ridiculous. As Simmons advises: “Age ain’t nothing but a number.” And, in the words of Satchel Paige: “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?”

“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give ou equality or justice or nything. If you’re a man, you take it.” ~ Malcolm X

What’ve you been holding back on? Get out and rock it.

OBSTACLES “Whatever obstacles appear in your path, put your head down and get past them. Those obstacles aren’t real. They’re just God’s way of testing you. He’s asking you, ‘Do you want to make it or not?’”

PhilosophersNotes | Do You

people skills and social life

he possession of material ches, without inner peace, s like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake.” ~ Yogananda

How do you respond to obstacles?

Next time you face one imagine that it’s really just God asking you: “Well, do you really want to make it or not?!?” (And, answer, “YES!!!” as you get back to work with a smile. :)

EYE ON THE PATH “I know some people say ‘Keep your eyes on the prize,’ but I disagree. When your eyes are stuck on the prize, you’re going to keep stumbling and crashing into things. If you really want to get ahead, you’ve got to keep your eyes focused on the path.” I love that. And Russell follows it up with “Always focus on your effort, instead of the results of that effort.” Brilliant 21st century application of the classic Bhagavad Gita (see Notes) wisdom: “The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results.” How about you? Once you’ve frozen your ideal vision in your mind, do you obsess about the results or do you put yourself on “super pilot” (as John Eliot would say in his great book Overachievement (see Notes)) and completely immerse yourself in doing your best moment to moment?

BEING A BLESSING

“My purpose is defined by the power of giving back and sharing.” ~ Russell Simmons

“In my opinion, his problem was that every day, he was waking up trying to figure out what he can get, instead of waking up trying to figure out what he can give. Instead of asking for a blessing, he should have practiced being a blessing.” Brilliant. Again, we’ve heard this before. It’s simple. But… are you embodying this ideal? Let’s wake up every morning striving to find more and more powerful ways to give ourselves to the world, shall we?!?)

KARMA ECONOMICS “The science is simple: When you give the world love and respect, the world will give you love and respect back.” It’s Law Number Eight (in Russell’s 12 Laws of Success): “The Science of Success: Plant the Good Seeds.” We’ve all heard this one before. The Bhagavad Gita teaches us: “When we do wrong, we come to suffering. When we do good in

“When you do good by the world, the world will do good by you.” ~ Russell Simmons

osophersNotes | Do You

the world, we come to happiness.” The Bible teaches: “You reap what you sow.” Eric Butterworth in Spiritual Economics (see Notes): “The law is exact: If you give, really work in a giving consciousness, you must receive.” Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay, Compensation (see Notes): “Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.”

takes courage to grow d turn out to be who you really are.” ~ E.E. Cummings

Esther & Jerry Hicks describe the Law of Attraction in Ask and It Is Given (see Notes): “Every thought vibrates, every thought radiates a signal, and every thought attracts a matching signal back. We call that process the Law of Attraction… The Law of Attraction says: That which is like unto itself is drawn. And so, you might see the powerful Law of Attraction as a sort of Universal Manager that sees to it that all thoughts that match one another line up.” And countless others. So, what seeds are you planting? Are you looking forward to their harvest? If not, what’s one thing you need to STOP doing right now that’s no longer serving you? If you’re giddy about the seeds you’re planting coming to fruition, right on! What else can you do? And, in any case, what’s the #1 thing you KNOW you should be doing that you’re not currently doing? Make it a habit. Plant the seeds. Now.

ALWAYS DO YOU “When I talk about Doing You, I’m really just asking you to listen to that voice of God inside of you again.” What’s your voice telling you? Are you taking the time everyday to get quiet and tune into that deep intuition that’s guiding you to your Highest Self? Whether it’s turning off the radio while you’re in traffic and quietly breathing and/or going on hikes and/or sitting in meditation—make sure you’re finding the time to chat with God. And, of course, get out there and Do You!!!

Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher

u liked this Note, l probably like…

hagavad Gita

oseph bell Companion

Spiritual Laws ccess

About the Author of “Do You” RUSSELL SIMMONS

Named one of America’s 25 Most Fascinating Entrepreneurs, by Inc. Magazine and often featured on the covers of major magazines from Business Week and Fast Company to Rolling Stone and Spin, Simmons shares his maverick strategies and personal sources of empowerment in DO YOU!. These are the laws that helped Simmons build Rush Communications, a half-billion dollar

chievement

music and fashion empire that arose from his Hip Hop record label Def Jam and

It Is Given

launched a cultural revolution in the process. (from his site where you can learn

Waldo Emerson

more about everything he’s up to: RussellSimmons.com.)

About the Author of This Note BRIAN JOHNSON

PhilosophersNotes | Do You

spiritual growth

Brian Johnson’s

PhilosophersNotes

More Wisdom in Less Time

A Daily Dose of Sanity

HE BIG IDEAS

A Five-Minute Soul Recharge for Every Day of the Year

ng in Integrity

unapologetically.

nk! lighten up!

e Voice keeps knocking.

plicate Yourself

someone else.

“Acts of genius are less a matter of doing, and more a matter of allowing. Less trying, more flowing. Less forcing, more being. You quit being the doer and you become the vessel.”

For the Light Inside

~ Alan Cohen from A Daily Dose of Sanity

your name in lights.

This is the third Note on one of Alan Cohen’s books and it won’t be the last.

er Fan Clubs

nner critics.

As I’ve mentioned in the Notes on Why Your Life Sucks (and What You Can Do About It) and

gry?

Relax into Wealth, Alan has become one of my favorite writers and people!

at are you afraid of?

He’s awesome. And so are his books.

stering Love

This one, A Daily Dose of Sanity, is precisely what the sub-title promises: “A Five-Minute Soul

ts within.

Recharge for Every Day of the Year.”

ddikulus!

garts begone!

If you’re into more wisdom and less time you’ll love the book. (Amazon it here.)

mboo & You

brace the seasons and grow.

For now, let’s jump in with a quick peek at a few of my favorite Big Ideas!

BEING IN INTEGRITY “I have a very simple definition of integrity: you are in integrity when what you are doing on the outside matches who you are on the inside. I respect people who live unapologetically. I know people who do things I do not agree with or would not do myself, but I honor them for being 100 percent who they are. They are in integrity.”

“Consider a question you are wondering about. If u knew the answer, what would it be?” ~ Alan Cohen

Are you integrity? Does what you are doing on the outside match who you are on the inside? If not, what can you do to get in integrity? As you ponder that, keep this wisdom from Alan in mind: “The secret of success is to be total. If you are going to do something, really do it. Do not second-guess yourself, let guilt undermine your joy, or wonder if you should be somewhere else. Either do it with a whole heart or do not do it. Be total.” Osho has some *great* wisdom about being “total” as well. See the Notes on The Book of Understanding where he tells us: “When you are total, it is good; and when you are divided, it is evil. Divided you suffer; united, you dance, you sing, you celebrate.” And: “It is not a question of which part you follow, it is a question of whether you go totally into it or not. To be total in your action brings joy. Even an ordinary, trivial action done with total intensity brings a glow to your being, a fulfillment, a fullness, a deep contentment. And anything done halfheartedly, however good the thing may be, is going to bring misery.” Buddha echoes this goodness. He tells us: “If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart.”

PhilosophersNotes | A Daily Dose of Sanity

Back to you. How are you living? What can you do to become more “total”?!

BLINK! “My friend Ernie and I were granted an audience with the revered Swami Satchidananda, an enlightened yogi who introduced spiritual practices to America beginning in the 1960s. He opened the legendary Woodstock music festival with his invocation. My friend and I were ushered to the swami’s inner chamber and seated before him. At that time, Ernie liked to make deep, heartfelt eye contact with people and he did his best to peer into the swami’s soul. After a few minutes of our conversation, the swami turned to me and asked, “Why is this guy staring at me?” We all broke into laughter, including the swami’s very serious disciples. It was truly a moment of enlightenment!” That’s hilarious. I don’t know about you, but the “unblinking ones” (as Alexandra and I like to call them) freak us out a bit. :) I’m all about intimacy but, as Michaela Boehm describes in her Art of Intimacy class at the en*theos Academy, locking someone into your penetrating, unblinking gaze isn’t intimacy—it’s more like walking up to someone you’ve never met and shoving your hands in their pants. True intimacy involves respecting social norms and healthy boundaries while allowing a true connection to form over time rather than trying to prove your spiritual superiority through unblinking stares. Ah... Glad I got that off my chest. :) Here’s to blinking normally and not taking ourselves *that* seriously as we lighten up and enjoy the ride! P.S. Swami Satchidananda is amazing. Check out the Notes on The Golden Present for some of his wisdom goodness!

THE VOICE THAT KEEPS KNOCKING

is a circle of which center is everywhere he circumference is nowhere.”

“The difference between those who move the world forward and those who stay stuck in a rut is

~ Attributed to Empedocles

Here’s how Joseph Campbell puts it: “To refuse the call means stagnation. What you don’t

that the world movers trust the voice that keeps knocking, and they act on it. You can and will be among the movers if you listen to the persistent call of greatness and move with it.” We all have a little voice that comes knocking. The question is, will we answer it?

experience positively you will experience negatively.” And, Jesus says this: “If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don’t bring forth what is inside you, what you don’t bring forth will destroy you.” * knock knock * ...Hear that sound? It’s your destiny calling. Time to answer. :)

41PhilosophersNotes | A Daily Dose of Sanity

spiritual growth

“When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.” ~ W. Clement Stone

REPLICATE YOURSELF “My friend Ben admired his spiritual mentor so much that he took a summer to live and study with the master at his retreat in the Northwest. One day Ben asked his teacher, “How can I be more like you?” The healer smiled and answered, “The best way to be more like me is to be more like yourself.” This brilliant answer contains the wisdom of a lifetime! If you are trying to imitate someone else’s greatness, you have missed the point of greatness. The secret is to find your own unique style and talents and bring them forth. No one has ever attained mastery by replicating another. The truly great simply replicate themselves.” Amen to that. Emerson comes to mind. And so does Leo Buscaglia. In his must-read classic, Self-Reliance, which is pretty much an ode to this Big Idea, Emerson tells us: “Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.” —> Insist on yourself! Never imitate!! —> Do that which is assigned to you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. Wow. Leo Buscaglia (see Notes on Love) puts it this way: “You are the best you. You will always be the second best anyone else.” Are you in integrity? Being total? Replicating yourself? How can you be all of those things *even* more powerfully?! (And, as always, is NOW a good time to make that happen? :)

GO FOR THE LIGHT INSIDE “When asked how to remain an individual in the face of great commercialism, Bradbury suggested, “You just live your life and write your stories. If you set out to write a bestseller, it can’t be done.... People who try to make a name for themselves are usually surpassed by people authentically expressing their joy and talents.” Those who live to see their name in lights usually miss the light within themselves. They place fame and glory at the top of the ladder of success and overlook personal satisfaction and creative expression. People who sweat to become stars rarely do, while those who live to share their gifts and enjoy the ride often find their way to the upper echelons of success.” This is amazing: “Those who live to see their name in lights usually miss the light within themselves.”

sophersNotes | A Daily Dose of Sanity

you are struggling, stop ask yourself how you uld proceed if you made ive self-expression the form for your vocation ather than ambition for glory.” ~ Alan Cohen

Fact is, when you obsess about achieving some extraordinary level of fame or power or whatever, you’re less likely to get it. AND... Perhaps most tragically, you’re also less likely to ever discover and live with abiding happiness. It’s the whole intrinsic vs. extrinsic dealio we come back to again and again. Science *unequivocally* shows us that those who go after the fame/wealth/beauty and other EXTERNAL markers of success are significantly less psychologically stable than those who focus on deeper relationships, personal growth, making a contribution and simply expressing themselves authentically—the INTRINSIC stuff we want to pay attention to that leads to fulfilment. Yah? So, where are you putting all your precious energy? P.S. This wisdom from Howard Thurman is good to keep in mind as well: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

INNER CRITICS & INNER FAN CLUBS “Fire your inner critic and reinstate your inner fan club.” Love that. Time for a little role playing... :: You: “Inner critic?” Your Inner Critic: “Yes?” You: * Insert Trump cobra-like hand gesture * —> “You’re fired.” :: With that out of the way, it’s time to promote your inner fan club to the most important job in your head!

ANGRY? WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? “Anger is fear under pressure. Behind every angry upset there is a fear. If you attempt to deal with anger at the level of anger alone-by either venting it or repressing it-you are manipulating the symptom without addressing the cause. If you can discover the fear behind the anger and dismantle it in the light of awareness, the anger dissipates. The next time you are angry, ask yourself, What am I afraid of?” That’s powerful. To repeat: “Anger is fear under pressure.” Are you a tad angry these days? What are you afraid of? Odds are the inner critic is running the show and creating compelling visuals of all the things that will go wrong in your life. That fear bubbles up in anger (usually about something unrelated

PhilosophersNotes | A Daily Dose of Sanity

spiritual growth

to whatever it is you’re supposedly so upset about).

hoose to live, rather than study how to live.” ~ Alan Cohen

So... Next time you’re feeling angry, check in and see if you can identify what you’re afraid of. As Alan so wisely tells us, if we can “discover the fear behind the anger and dismantle it in the light of awareness, the anger dissipates.”

MASTERING LOVE “Psychic self-injury is neither heroic nor practical. You cannot say that you have mastered love until you include yourself in its embrace. If you make everyone in your life happy but yourself, you have missed the point of living and loving. Self-honoring is the beginning of true service. When you practice self-nurturing, others around you will catch the energy and you will create a wave of well-being that far supersedes the illusory benefits of self-sacrifice. Do not do anything to yourself that you would not wish on anyone else. Instead, do everything for yourself that you would do to make others happy ... and the world will be a happier place for everyone.” Reminds me of Ayn Rand’s gem that we cannot say “I love you” until we can say the “I.” As Alan so beautifully shares, love starts within. Tal Ben-Shahar echoes this wisdom in his great book The Pursuit of Perfect (see Notes) where he tells us: “Why the double standard, the generosity toward our neighbor and the miserliness where we ourselves are concerned? And so I propose that we add a new rule, which we can call the Platinum Rule, to our moral code: ‘Do not do unto yourself what you would not do unto others.’” I love that. —> The Platinum Rule: “Do not do unto yourself what you would not do unto others.” Tal also tells us: “When the Dalai Lama was then asked to clarify whether indeed the object of compassion may be the self, he responded: ‘Yourself first, and then in a more advanced way the aspiration will embrace others. In a way, high levels of compassion are nothing but an advanced state of that self-interest. That’s why it is hard for people who have a strong sense of self-hatred to have genuine compassion toward others. There is no anchor, no basis to start from.’” Here’s to including ourselves in our loving embrace and remembering to rock The Platinum Rule as we remember to love ourselves first!! P.S. How can you do that a little more today? (And tomorrow? And... :)

RIDDIKULUS! “The film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban depicts a group of young wizards in training standing before an imposing armoire—a boggart box—which contains terrifying shapeshifters assuming the form of whatever a person fears the most. Luckily, instructs Professor Lupin, a very simple charm exists to repel a boggart: “Riddikulus!” After the students practice the chant, the professor explains that what really finishes a boggart off is laughter. One by one the boggarts come forth, and when the students proclaim them “Riddikulus!” and laugh at them, they shrink to humorous, nonthreatening forms. A truer teaching was never revealed.”

sophersNotes | A Daily Dose of Sanity

That. Is. Awesome. Are you getting all freaked out by boggarts? Time to grab your wand and get your inner wizard on with your “Riddikulus!” charm, eh? :) Seriously. Try it the next time you’re getting harassed by your inner gremlins.

BAMBOO & YOU

cord books never list he score at halftime.” ~ Source Unknown

“Bamboo is a fascinating plant, the fastest growing in the world. A bamboo stalk can grow six inches or more in one day! I know a fellow who swore he actually saw it growing. One of the clever adaptive qualities of bamboo is that it grows its leaves in the summer and its roots in the winter. It takes advantage of each season, and while it appears dormant, it is not. The roots grown in winter prepare for rapid branch and leaf development in summer. We, too, go through seasons, all of which afford us opportunities for different kinds of growth. In a prosperous economic season, there is a lot of building and external expansion. When an economic winter comes, with little activity in the outer world, that is the time for inner deepening.” Are you going through a challenging time? If so, remember that we all go through seasons and be like the bamboo and take advantage of every season as you develop your roots and get ready for your next phase of rockin’ it!!

Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher

liked this Note, probably like…

our Life Sucks

nto Wealth

ph Campbell anion

ursuit of Perfect

About the Author of “A Daily Dose of Sanity” ALAN COHEN

Alan H. Cohen is the author of 18 popular inspirational titles, including The Dragon Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Dare to be Yourself. A frequent guest on television and radio, he conducts life mastery seminars in Hawaii and online, and is an acclaimed keynote speaker for educational, health, church, and corporate groups. He lives on Maui, Hawaii. Visit www.alancohen.com to learn more. (from Amazon)

About the Author of This Note BRIAN JOHNSON

45 PhilosophersNotes | A Daily Dose of Sanity

spiritual growth

Brian Johnson’s

PhilosophersNotes

More Wisdom in Less Time

A New Earth

HE BIG IDEAS

Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

od News

ad news.

ur Consciousness

ven or hell?

aven and Earth

t with consciousness.

e Ego

“‘A new heaven’ is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and ‘a new earth’ is its reflection in the physical realm.”

tification is the issue.

y”

~ Eckhart Tolle from A New Earth There’s a reason Oprah decided to team up with Eckhart Tolle to create an unprecedented 10-

my, my, my, my…

week course to teach the principles in A New Earth to hundreds of thousands of people: it’s a

e-Playing

re NOT your roles.

remarkable book.

n-Bodies

Tolle has a profound ability to take the complex ideas of spirituality and consciousness and boil

ssolved pain.

them down into simple, powerful lessons easily grasped and applied to our lives.

olutionary Support

helps you grow.

I’m excited to share some of my favorite Big Ideas from his book but I’m barely going to scratch the surface of the depth of transformative ideas Tolle presents in this book.

fering

brace the growth.

If you’re feelin’ it, I recommend you take some time to curl up with this gem and dive deeper into

adow

understanding how we can transform our consciousness and create A New Earth.

ck your projections.

First, let’s start with some:

ur Thoughts

ose your response!

GOOD NEWS & BAD NEWS

e With Life

et to the art of living.

“A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.”

husiasm is within!

Tolle starts A New Earth with some good news and some bad news. We’ll start with the bad news. We’ve inherited a collective dysfunction. For the history of humanity, as Tolle bluntly states, we, as a collective society, have been acting

“This book is about you. It will change your state consciousness or it will be meaningless.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

like a criminally insane person—with “chronic paranoid delusions, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty…” Yikes. According to Tolle, the cause of this state is simple: “Fear, greed and the desire for power.” The great traditions have named this dysfunction of the mind. Hinduism calls it maya which means “veil of delusion.” Buddhism calls it dukkha which means “suffering, unsatisfactoriness, or just plain misery” and directly translated points to being stuck like a potter’s wheel that screeches as it turns. And, Christianity calls it “Sin” which, when stripped of all of it’s cultural baggage and properly translated from its Greek origins, means “to miss the mark”—as in an archer missing the target. Tolle’s point is simple: we carry a lot of inherited cultural baggage. The good news? Those same traditions point to the “other” side of the dysfunction—Hindusim juxtaposes maya

PhilosophersNotes | A New Earth

w “spiritual” you are s nothing to do with what you believe but hing to do with your of consciousness.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

with enlightenment; Buddhism juxtaposes dukkha with awakening and Christianity points from sin to salvation. The first step? To recognize our own insanity. As Tolle advises: “To recognize one’s own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.” Can you see it? Can you recognize your own fear, greed and desire for power? And can you see how this results in your own mini-wars within your own consciousness and in relationships with your family, your friends, your colleagues and your community? Pause for a moment and check in with your own embodiment of our inherited insanity. That’s a powerful step toward creating a new earth!

YOUR STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS “How ‘spiritual’ you are has nothing to do with what you believe but everything to do with your state of consciousness. This, in turn, determines how you act in the world and interact with others.” Powerful. Makes me think of my childhood. We went to church every Sunday. (I was raised Catholic.) I always found it extraordinarily odd that, after the service, my dad would be murmuring/yelling

d to understand here ven is not a location t refers to the inner of consciousness.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

about how poorly everyone was driving on the way out of the parking lot. (Rest in peace, pops!! :) Even as a young boy, that always seemed just a little off. :) As Tolle says, what we believe means nothing. How we act—which is determined by our consciousnesss—is what it’s all about. How about you? How do you act? It’s not enough to have noble beliefs. We’ve gotta integrate them into our being so our consciousness shifts accordingly. And, of course with a transformed consciousness our actions follow suit.

HEAVEN AND EARTH Heaven and Earth. The path? First, Tolle establishes the fact that “We need to understand here that heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm of consciousness.” Then? “‘A new heaven’ is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and ‘a new earth’ is its reflection in the physical realm.” Brilliant. … So, how do we transform our consciousness? We need to start by understanding what’s getting in the way.

THE EGO “Ego is no more than this: identification with form, which primarily means thought forms. If evil

PhilosophersNotes | A New Earth

spiritual growth

here are people who have enounced all possessions who have a bigger ego than some millionaires.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

has any reality—and it has a relative, not an absolute, reality—this is also its definition: complete identification with form—physical forms, thought forms, emotional forms. This results in a total unawareness of my connectedness with the whole, my intrinsic oneness with the Source. This forgetfulness is original sin, suffering, delusion. When this delusion of utter separateness underlies and governs what I think, say, and do, what kind of world do I create? To find the answer to this, observe how humans relate to each other, read a history book, or watch the news on television tonight.” Wow. That’s definitely worth a slow re-read. The basic idea is this: To the extent we are exclusively identified with our thoughts (or any other “relative” form), we are separate from Source. When we are separate from Source, we’re in trouble. All the sudden we fail to see the interconnectedness of each of us and everything in our world. We are in maya, dukkha, sin. And from that place, we are insane. We do bad things. You want to see what that looks like manifest? As Tolle tells us, watch the news tonight. Or log on to CNN. (I’m ALWAYS blown away by the insanity of their home page—so and so killed this person, this bomb went off here, etc., etc., etc.)

“MY” “The reason why such acute suffering occurs is concealed in the words “my.” “My.” My toy. My car. My house. My spouse. My country. My life. My, my, my. S.N. Goenka, the teacher who led the silent 10-day Vipassana meditation class I took, had a hilarious story about “my.” Imagine someone else’s watch got stolen. Someone else’s car broke down en route to an important meeting. Someone else’s order was messed up at the restaurant. Someone else’s spouse cheated on them. Unfortunate, but not that big of a deal for you, right? Alright. Now imagine this: “My watch was stolen.” “My car broke down.” “My order was messed up at the restaurant.” “My spouse cheated on me.” Takes on a whole new meaning when we add the “My,” doesn’t it?!? :) It’s time to quit taking ourselves quite so seriously. Let’s witness our reactions to things, develop the ability to see ourselves as an actor in this game of life and loosen our grip on all things “my.” :)

ROLE-PLAYING “When you are completely identified with a role, you confuse a pattern of behavior with who you are, and you take yourself very seriously.” Newsflash: we are NOT the roles we play in our lives. Step back. (Take a deep breath.) Realize you are much bigger than any one role you play. Lighten up. Laugh. Connect to Source.

“Usually people are completely unaware of the roles they play. They are those roles.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

osophersNotes | A New Earth

PAIN-BODIES “Because of the human tendency to perpetuate old emotion, almost everyone carries in his or her energy field an accumulation of old emotional pain, which I call ‘the pain-body.’ Pain-bodies.

hing ever happened in ast that can prevent u from being present d if the past cannot event you from being nt now, what power does it have?” ~ Eckhart Tolle

A fascinating concept Tolle presents in detail throughout the book. In short: “Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is in the moment it arises does not completely dissolve. It leaves behind a remnant.” That remnant shows up in your “pain-body.” It’s that energy that you can almost feel from five feet away when you’re near someone who’s suffering. The key to dissolving it? Accept what is. Become whole as you realize that your pain and your challenges are simply:

EVOLUTIONARY SUPPORT “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.” I love that. :) Reminds me of Byron Katie. She says: “How do I know that the wind should blow? It’s blowing!” She adds: “I realized that it’s insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100% of the time.” Hah.

n you want to arrive your goal more than ou want to be doing at you are doing, you become stressed.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

Guess what? What’s happening is happening. We can fight it or we can embrace the opportunity to grow with it. It’s *always* our call.

SUFFERING “One of the ego’s many erroneous assumptions, one of its many deluded thoughts is ‘I should not have to suffer.’ … That thought itself lies at the root of suffering. Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of ego.” Brilliant. How do you respond to your suffering? Do you say to yourself that it “shouldn’t” be happening? Not a very empowering position to take, eh? What if we could learn to embrace our suffering as a process serving our enlightenment? Let’s embrace Rumi’s wisdom:“This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.” And, as we embrace the noble purpose of suffering in the process of polishing our souls let’s remember another gem from Rumi: “If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?”

he shadow disguises f in our projections, we react intensely to it in others that we to see in ourselves.” ~ Connie Zweig from Romancing the Shadow

SHADOW “The particular egoic patterns that you react to most strongly in others and misperceive as their identity tend to be the same patterns that are also in you, but that you are unable or unwilling to detect within yourself.” This idea that what we find most annoying in others is really an indicator of what we find (unconsciously) most annoying in ourselves is a powerful one.

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spiritual growth

“If you think you are so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents.” ~ Ram Dass

Jung called it our “shadow” and said: “Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a Shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected and is liable to burst forth suddenly in a moment of unawareness. At all events, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most wellmeant intentions.” The fastest way to identify our shadow? Take a look at what bothers you in other people. Many teachers, like relationship experts Gay & Katie Hendricks, call this “projecting.” We project our own issues onto others—we focus on the most unappealing aspects of another’s personality that mirror our own challenges. You annoyed when people are impatient? Guess what? Look at how you show up as an impatient

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about the situation.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

jerk in your life more often than you’d like to admit and your reaction to “impatience” may just dissolve. You annoyed when people are inauthentic? Are greedy? Are self-obsessed? Same thing. Look within. And watch your reactions dissolve. This is a really powerful exercise. Try it out. The next time you’re upset, pause for a moment. Take a deep breath. (Then another one. :) Identify what it is you’re finding frustrating in the other person. Ask yourself, “How am I that?!?” And see how this is really just an issue YOU need to address in your life!!

on’t seek the truth. Just ease to cherish opinions.” ~ Zen saying

Some more thoughts on shadow from Carl Jung: “To confront a person with their own shadow is to show them their own light.” And: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

YOUR THOUGHTS “If there is nothing you can do, face what is and say, ‘Well, right now, this is how it is. I can either accept it, or make myself miserable.’ The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about the situation. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them

ove and do what you will” ~ St. Augustine

osophersNotes | A New Earth

from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is.” Another truth that’s echoed across cultures and across millennia. From Epictetus in his Enchiridion: “We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.” To Shakespeare in Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” To Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning: “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.” Are you a victim to your circumstances, or do you realize that you have the power (always!) to choose how you respond to a situation?!?

f you liked this Note, ou’ll probably like…

he Power of Now

Rumi

even Spiritual Laws f Success

Ralph Waldo Emerson

ONE WITH LIFE “There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness: One With Life.” So true… The essence of Tolle’s work can certainly be distilled into these three words: “One With Life.” Is there something you’re resisting right now that you can embrace a little more?

ENTHUSIASM Enthusiasm come from the Greek “enthousiazein [that] means ‘to be possessed by a god.’ With enthusiasm you will find that you don’t have to do it all by yourself. In fact, there is nothing of significance you can do by yourself. Sustained enthusiasm brings into existence a wave of creative energy, and all you have to do is ride the wave.” I absolutely love that. May we be One With Life and ride the wave of the God dancing within as we create heaven on A New Earth,

Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher

About the Author of “A New Earth” ECKHART TOLLE

Spiritual Teacher and author was born in Germany and educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge. At the age of twenty-nine a profound inner transformation radically changed the course of his life. The next few years were devoted to understanding, integrating and deepening that transformation, which marked the beginning of an intense inward journey. Later, he began to work in London with individuals and small groups as a counselor and spiritual teacher. Since 1995 he has lived in Vancouver, Canada. Eckhart Tolle is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Power of Now (translated into 33 languages) and the highly acclaimed follow-up A New Earth, which are widely regarded as two of the most influential spiritual books of our time. (from EckhartTolle.com where you can learn more about Eckhart and his teachings)

About the Author of This Note BRIAN JOHNSON

PhilosophersNotes | A New Earth

wealth and abundance

Brian Johnson’s

PhilosophersNotes

More Wisdom in Less Time

THE BIG IDEAS

Creative Mind and Success

Divine Presence

Source of power.

Fear Brings Failure

aith brings success.

Forgive the Past

Now’s a good time. :)

Radiate Joy!

Be filled with faith, hope and xpectancy!

“No thought of discouragement or disorder should ever be created, but only positive assurance, strong thoughts of success, of Divine activity, the feeling that with God all things are possible, the belief that we are One with that Great Mind. These are the thoughts that make for success.”

Negative Thoughts

~ Ernest Holmes from Creative Mind and Success

… Begone! :)

Have you heard of Ernest Holmes?

Weak Peeps

Need not apply.

Super cool guy who’s influenced a *lot* of modern self-development teachers. One of the leaders

Visualizations

in the New Thought movement of the early 20th century, in the 1920’s he founded “Religious

And feelingizations.

Life Is Without Bounds

hink BIG!! (BIGGER!! :)

One-Pointedness

And calm determination. .

Science” and published his seminal book, Science of Mind, where he integrated what he called the “Golden thread of truth” that ran through all of the world’s religions. A highly practical guy, he once said: “I would rather see a student of this Science prove its Principle than to have him repeat all the words of wisdom that have ever been uttered.” (My kinda guy. :) In this Note, we’re gonna take a quick peak at the Big Ideas from Creative Mind and Success—a great little book of his packed with wisdom. If you’re new to Ernest Holmes’ work, this would be a great place to start. And, if you’re a long-time student of his work, I trust you’ll dig these Big Ideas!

“What wonderful power, what a newness of life and of power of expression, is waiting for those who really believe.” ~ Ernest Holmes

DIVINE PRESENCE = SOURCE OF POWER “The individual who has the most power is the one who has the greatest realization of the Divine Presence, and to whom this means the most as an active principle of his life.” The essence of Ernest Holmes’ teaching is that there is one Infinite Mind, and, as he so beautifully says: “All is mind, and we must provide a receptive avenue for it as it passes out through us into the outer expression of our affairs.” Love that. Reminds me of Joseph Campbell who, in The Power of Myth (see Notes), says: “What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?” (Ah! That’s currently my favorite description of the relationship between my little “self” and my Big “SELF.” :) In my own life, it’s becoming more and more clear that my ultimate “job” is to see just how much of God I can let flow through me as I increase the wattage I can handle while strengthening the plug into Source. :) I like to think of it like this: Imagine you’re only a 60 watt light bulb. Not gonna shine too brightly, eh? AND, to be clear, you’re not gonna shine AT ALL if you’re not plugged into Source!

PhilosophersNotes | Creative Mind and Success

We can now see how al it is that thought be held one-pointed; hat we should think s and only upon what ant, never letting our well on anything else. n this way the Spirit works through us.” ~ Ernest Holmes

Now, that 60 watt bulb can only handle so much light/love/bliss/appreciation/creativity/etc. before it pops. Hence, I think one of our key jobs is to do all that we can to “increase our wattage” so we can go from 60 watts to 75 to 100 to 1,000 to … and, in the process, light up the world! How do we this? One way we can practice is living in integrity with our highest ideals and creating rituals that allow us to stay plugged in and shining brightly. Currently, for me, this means honoring my morning ritual of getting up with the sun (5am, technically), meditating for an hour (LOVE Holosync), moving for an hour (walk/jog for 20 minutes then 40 minutes of light yoga/strength), journaling and eating by 8am. It means striving to live with more and more authenticity, more self-trust, less doubt/fear/2nd-guessing, more flowing, more kindness and generosity, less negative thoughts, NO gossiping, complaining, criticizing, or blaming. Stuff like that. :) How about YOU? How can you connect to your Higher Self/Infinite Mind/Source/God/whatever you call it and shine more brightly and more consistently from today forward? Let’s rock 5 things, shall we? I will connect and express the Divine within me even more fully/consistently by integrating these practices into my life: 1. _______________________________________________________________ 2. _______________________________________________________________ 3. _______________________________________________________________ 4. _______________________________________________________________ 5. _______________________________________________________________ Sweet. Now a good time to start rockin’ that? (Good answer. :)

FEAR BRINGS FAILURE; FAITH BRINGS SUCCESS “Fear brings failure; faith brings success. It’s just that simple.” What are your greatest visions for your life? I’ll wait for a moment while you conjure up the images of your ideal life in your mind. :) Take a deep breath in, close your eyes and really FEEL into the vision of your ideal life… First issue is whether or not you CAN conjure up visions of your greatest life. If you can’t easily

cannot think one way e day and change our ht the next and hope the desired results. must be very clear in thought, sending out uch thoughts as we to see manifested in our condition.” ~ Ernest Holmes

do that, no big deal. Well, it IS a big deal, but no need to stress out about it. It’s just time to go to the Destiny Gym and get your training on. Like everything in life we want to master, it takes time and practice and the strengthening of certain skills. (So get on that! :) Let’s assume you have a vision of your ideal. How do you relate to it? Are you afraid you’ll never achieve it? (This fear, btw, is the biggest reason why most people never even pause long enough to really dream about what they want!) Or, do you view it with a deep knowing/faith that you have the power to bring it into your life? As Holmes says: “Fear brings failure; faith brings success. It’s just that simple.” Henry Ford says it another way: “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” … So, whaddya think? :)

PhilosophersNotes | Creative Mind and Success

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ere is no doubt, no fear, o wondering; you know.” ~ Ernest Holmes

FORGIVE THE PAST “The person who is to succeed will never let his mind dwell on past mistakes. He will forgive the past in his life and in the lives of other people. If he makes a mistake he will at once forgive it.” Brilliant. Living with shame/guilt/a general inability to let the past go and forgive ourselves for mistakes is one of the quickest and surest ways to keep ourselves disconnected from God and, as a result, miserable. Joseph Campbell’s on the brain today, so how about some more Campbell mojo? He has a great story (see Notes on The Power of Myth): “Ramakrishna once said that if all you think of are your sins, then you are a sinner. And when I read that, I thought of my boyhood, going to confession on Saturdays, meditating on all the little sins that I had committed during the week. Now I think one should go and say, ‘Bless me, Father, for I have been great, these are the good things I have done this week.’ Identify your notion of yourself with the positive, rather than with the negative.” I love that. Do you go around remembering and tallying up your mistakes? Why not switch it around and start keeping track of all the good things you do from now on!

What wonderful power, at a newness of life and of power of expression, waiting for those who really believe.” ~ Ernest Holme

Seriously. Give it a try. At the end of your day, write down all the “Magic Moments” from that day when you felt most alive, when you really felt like you were giving yourself fully to the world. That’s a really simple and *really* powerful way to condition yourself to see the great things in your life and move away from a dominant focus on the challenges. (And, THAT’s the kind of energy you want in your mind before you go to sleep fer sure. :) Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Immediately. Focus on the beauty in your life. Pretty, please.

RADIATE JOY, FAITH, HOPE & EXPECTANCY “The conditions that we attract will correspond exactly to our mental picture. It is quite necessary, then, that the successful business man [or parent, artist, teacher, whatever] should keep his mind on thoughts of happiness, which produce cheerfulness instead of depression; he should radiate joy, and should be filled with faith, hope and expectancy. These cheerful, hopeful attitudes of mind are indispensable to the one who really wants to do things in life.” Amen.

he man who can control thought can have and do t he wishes to have and do; everything is his for the asking.” ~ Ernest Holmes

What are you radiating?!? Joy, faith, hope and expectancy? Sweet. Or perhaps a mix of crankiness, frustration, doubt, and pessimism? Eek. Take an inventory and know that you’re attracting whatever you’re putting out. (And choose the good stuff. :)

ophersNotes | Creative Mind and Success

here is no doubt that creative power of the niverse will answer; it always does.” ~ Ernest Holmes

NEGATIVE THOUGHTS BEGONE! :) “Put every negative thought out of your mind once and for all.” That makes it simple, eh? :) I’m pretty sure it’s Wayne Dyer who says something along the lines of: “Never let a negative thought complete itself in your head.” I love that. Never let a negative thought complete itself in your head. And, I like to say that if the negative thought/sentence completes itself, no sweat… just don’t let the negative paragraph complete itself! And, if the paragraph completed itself, no biggy… just don’t let the negative page complete itself. Too late? Alright, well don’t write a short-story. Too late? Um, ok. Don’t make that a novel!!! Point is simple: we need to “Put every negative thought out of your mind once and for all.” Holmes continues: “Declare your freedom. Know that no matter what others may say, think or do, you are a success, now, and nothing can hinder you from accomplishing your good. All the power of the Universe is with you; feel it, know it, and then act as though it were true. This mental attitude alone will draw people and things to you. Begin to blot out, one by one, all false beliefs, all ideas that man is limited or poor or miserable. Use that wonderful power of choice that God has given you. Refuse to think of failure or to doubt your own power. See only what you wish to experience, and look at nothing else. No matter how many times the old thought returns, destroy it by knowing that it has no power over you; look it squarely in the face and tell it to go; it does not belong to you, and you must know—and stick to it—that you are now free.” Can I get another “Amen!,” please? Thanks. :)

WEAK PEEPS NEED NOT APPLY “This is not a weak man’s job but an undertaking for a strong, self-reliant soul; and the end is worth the effort. The person who can keep his thoughts one-pointed is the one who will obtain the best results.” So much goodness here. First, if you haven’t checked out my Note on Positive Addiction, check it. All about the Psychology of Strength and Weakness. Powerful stuff. And, I can’t read the phrase “self-reliant” without thinking about Ralph Waldo Emerson and his magical essay Self-Reliance. (Get both the Notes (PDF | MP3) on that and the actual essay in PDF and MP3 format in the members’ section!) In fact, Emerson is often considered the Grandfather of a lot of the New Thought movement. His work integrating the ideas of classic western philosophy with Eastern spirituality (particularly Hindu and Buddhist thought) has had a *HUGE* impact on nearly all of the modern selfdevelopment teachers and certainly on Holmes. Emerson says that “God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.” He also says, “And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.” It’s not just Western thinkers who talk about the strength we need to live in line with the Highest. How about Buddha and Lao-tzu and Krishna and Rumi?

PhilosophersNotes | Creative Mind and Success

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We must be consistent in our attitude of mind, never wavering.” ~ Ernest Holmes

Buddha from The Dhammapada (see Notes): “As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.” And, “Little by little a person become evil, as a water pot is filled by drops of water… Little by little a person becomes good, as a water pot is filled by drops of water.” Lao-tzu (see Notes on the Tao te Ching): “Don’t think you can attain total awareness and whole enlightenment without proper discipline and practice. This is egomania. Appropriate rituals channel your emotions and life energy toward the light. Without the discipline to practice them, you will tumble constantly backward into darkness.” Krisha from The Bhagavad Gita (see Notes): “Be fearless and pure; never waver in your determination or your dedication to the spiritual life.” And, “Reshape yourself through the power of your will.” Rumi (see Notes): “This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. This testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.” And, “The intelligent want self-control; children want candy.” And, “Travelers, it is late. Life’s sun is going to set. During these brief days that you have strength, be quick and spare no effort of your wings.” If we want to connect to God we’ve gotta be strong! Diligent, patient and persistent! We’ve gotta put in the work and create the rituals and the consistency. How’re you doing with that? How can you turn it up a notch or ten? :) And, remember: “We all need more backbone and less wishbone.”

fuse to see the negative side of anyone.” ~ Ernest Holmes

VISUALIZATIONS AND FEELINGIZATIONS “One single stream of thought, daily sent out into Creative Mind, will do wonders. Within a year the person who will practice this will have completely changed his conditions of life. The way to practice this is daily to spend some time in thinking and in mentally seeing just what is wanted; see the thing just as it is wished and then affirm that this is now done. Try to feel that what has been stated is the truth. Words and affirmations simply give shape to thought; they are not creative. Feeling is creative and the more feeling that is put into the world the greater power it will have over conditions.” I was reading a great little book called The Soul Mate Secret by Arielle Ford and came across her idea of what she calls “feelingizations.” Fell in love with it immediately. :) Imagine your ideal and see it in your mind: that’s a visualization. Now, imagine that same ideal and FEEL how you’ll feel when it’s arrived. That’s a feelingization. Cool, eh?!? :) Wanna play with me and take Sir Holmes up on his challenge of practicing this for a year?!? Fun! :)

LIFE IS WITHOUT BOUNDS “Let go of everything else, drop everything else from your thought and mentally see more coming to you than has ever come before; believe that Mind is establishing this unto you, and then go

“You can attract that hich you first mentally ecome and feel yourself to be in reality, without any doubting.” ~ Ernest Holmes

about your business in the regular way. Never see limitation; never dwell upon it, and above all things else never talk limitation to any one; this is the only way, and there is no other way to grow a larger thought. The man with the big thought is always the man who does big things in life. Get hold of the biggest thing you can think of and claim it for your own; mentally see it and hold it as a thing already done, and you will prove to yourself that life is without bounds.” Wow. That’s one way to re-orient ourselves to thinking big, eh? :)

ophersNotes | Creative Mind and Success

hose who lean on the outstretched arm of nfinite, life is big with mitless possibilities.” ~ Ernest Holmes

u liked this Note, l probably like…

Holmes also says: “No matter how large the picture that you hold in mind, make it larger.” Why’s he so adamant about it? Simple. In the words of Deepak Chopra: “The universe has much bigger plans for you than you ever dreamed of for yourself.” We’re soooo conditioned to think small that it takes extraordinary courage and diligence to expand, expand, expand!!! So, how can you think a little bigger today?

ONE-POINTEDNESS AND CALM DETERMINATION “When we feel that we have the right leading; when that something inside us tells that we are led; then, no matter what appears like, we must follow it up. Something beyond our intelligence is doing the thing through us and we must do nothing to contradict it… Great men are the ones who get a vision and then go to work to make it come true, never looking to one side but with one-pointedness and calm determination, stick to the thing until it is accomplished.” Ahhhh… So, what idea has hold of you? How is the Infinite Intelligence guiding you? And what steps are you taking with one-pointedness and calm determination, to bring it to fruition?!? Here’s to aligning with the Creative Mind and, to paraphrase my friend and mentor Gay Hendricks, here’s to experiencing an everlasting expansion of success, abundance and love as we inspire those around us to do the same!

Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher

About the Author of “Creative Mind and Success” ERNEST HOLMES

elected Writings of Waldo Emerson

Ernest Holmes (1887-1960) was an internationally recognized authority on

an Who Tapped the ts of the Universe

inspirational books include Creative Mind, Love and Law, The Essential Ernest

ower of Decision

Off from Within

ual Liberation

an Heal Your Life

religious psychology and the founder of the Religious Science movement. His Holmes, The Art of Life, and 365 Science of Mind. (from the book)

About the Author of This Note BRIAN JOHNSON

PhilosophersNotes | Creative Mind and Success

wealth and abundance EntreLeadership

THE BIG IDEAS

20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches

ntreLeadership

efined.

ou Are the Problem

nd the solution.

Manage Activities

“What you are about to read is not a business and leadership book that is theory. This is not a book with formulas based on research. This is a book with principles that were discovered by experience. If you look closely at these pages, you will see they are dotted with lots of blood, gallons of sweat, and many tears. This is the personal playbook of an ultra-successful EntreLeader. You are about to learn from me and my team of leaders what we have learned by DOING IT.”

ot results.

et’s Pull Together

mazing power of synergy.

ight the Enemies

f unity.

ow’s Your Passion?

s time to care deeply!

’s Vision Time

~ Dave Ramsey from EntreLeadership

l the time.

Dave Ramsey is awesome.

ever Go All In

I just love his no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point approach. His words pack a wise punch.

ow and steady wins the race.

ecisions Are Liberating

ake them.

n Overnight Success

ter fifteen years.

We already profiled another one of his great books, The Total Money Makeover, and I’m excited to have some fun taking a quick peek at a few of my favorite Big Ideas from this equally great book: EntreLeadership, where he shares his best “practical business wisdom” he’s learned “from the trenches.” If you run a business, I HIGHLY recommend you read this book. And, if you’re just interested in developing your EntreLeader abilities, I have no doubt you’ll love it as well! For now, let’s jump right in! We’ll start by defining “EntreLeadership”:

So our playbook has truly become “everything you ant to know about building and running a business but didn’t know who to ask.”” ~ Dave Ramsey

ENTRELEADER DEFINED “A leader, according to Webster’s Dictionary, is “someone who rules, guides, and inspires others.” The dictionary says an entrepreneur is “someone who organizes, operates, and assumes risk for a venture.” The root of the word “entrepreneur” is a French word, “entreprendre,” meaning “one who takes a risk.” So for our purposes EntreLeadership is defined as “the process of leading to cause a venture to grow and prosper.”” Love it. So, EntreLeadership = “the process of leading to cause a venture to grow and prosper.” Got it. What’s an EntreLeader look like? Glad you asked. Here’s how Ramsey puts it: “So growing leaders was too refined and calm for me, but growing entrepreneurs was too wild and chaotic for me. So I decided we needed to grow a combination of the two… and thus the EntreLeader was born. I want EntreLeaders who can be •

Passionately serving

•

Mavericks who have integrity

PhilosophersNotes | EntreLeadership

Goals are visions and s with work clothes on.” ~ Dave Ramsey

•

Disciplined risk takers

•

Courageous while humble

•

Motivated visionaries

•

Driven while loyal

•

Influential learners”

I like it. Now, with EntreLeadership and the EntreLeader articulated, it’s time to learn an important lesson:

YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. AND THE SOLUTION. “So the problem with my company then and now is me. The problem with your company is not the economy, it is not the lack of opportunity, it is not your team. The problem is you. That is the bad news. The good news is, if you’re the problem, you’re also the solution. You’re the one person you can change the easiest. You can decide to grow. Grow your abilities, your character, your education, and your capacity. You can decide who you want to be and get about the business of becoming that person.” Good news and bad news. Bad news first. You’re the problem with your company (and your life).

ry Ford said, “Those never make mistakes or those of us who do.”” ~ Dave Ramsey

Good news. You’re also the solution. Fact is, you will ALWAYS be your company’s greatest asset (and/or liability). The exciting thing is that the *one* thing we have the most control over is our own behavior. As Ramsey tells us, we can grow our abilities, our character, our education and our capacity. So... Who do you want to be? Is now a good time to go about the business of becoming that person? (Good answer. :) P.S. You know how much I love the “#1 thing I can do” game. So, let’s play it (again). What’s the #1 thing you could START doing that, if you did it consistently, would have the greatest positive impact in your life? Get on that. And, what’s the #1 thing you could STOP doing that, if you stopped doing it, would have the greatest positive impact in your life? Time to rock it.

MANAGE ACTIVITIES “As a young entrepreneur, before I became an EntreLeader, I often tried to manage results. I would do things like try to get sales revenues up or try to get team morale up or get profits up. I finally realized that results are generated by activities. If I manage my activities then the results I want occur.”

PhilosophersNotes | EntreLeadership

wealth and abundance This is fantastic.

hink there is something more important than ving: Action! The world full of dreamers, there aren’t enough who will ahead and begin to take rete steps to actualize their vision.” ~ W. Clement Stone

We can manage our lives (and our businesses) by results or by activities. We’re conditioned to focus on the results we want to achieve and focus all our energy on that side of things. But, of course, the reality is that those results will only come to fruition if we consistently perform specific activities. As Ramsey advises, if we focus on managing the activities, the results will take care of themselves. That’s one of the reasons I’m such a big fan of what I call “blissiplines”—the fundamental habits that we need to engage in to operate at our highest capacity most consistently. As per the prior Big Idea—YOU are your biggest asset. And, if you want that asset to grow, you need to invest in it. The best way to do that? To honor the activities/practices that you KNOW help keep you plugged in and shining. For me, practices/blissiplines include meditation (haven’t missed a day of 30+ minutes of meditation in nearly 4 years and won’t miss a day for the rest of my life), exercise (haven’t missed a day in 60+ days and I’m gonna see how long I take that streak as well!), nutrition (I don’t eat junk and focus on nutrient-dense foods), gratitude, (I reflect throughout the day on all the amazing things I appreciate in my life), and a number of other creative stuff. How about you? What activities do you need to manage in your life at the most fundamental level? Get on that and watch the results come into place on their own accord.

LET’S PULL TOGETHER “One of the largest, strongest horses in the world is the Belgian draft horse. Competitions are held to see which horse can pull the most, and one Belgian can pull eight thousand pounds. The weird thing is if you put two Belgian horses in the harness who are strangers to each other,

nity, like so many other things in this book, is om found in companies s always found in great companies.” ~ Dave Ramsey

together they can pull twenty to twenty-four thousand pounds. Two can pull not twice as much as one but three times as much as one. This example represents the power of synergy. However, if the two horses are raised and trained together they learn to pull and think as one. The trained, and therefore unified, pair can pull not only twenty-four thousand pounds but will hit thirty to thirty-two thousand pounds. The unified pair can pull four times as much as a single horse. They can pull an extra eight thousand pounds simply by being unified. But unity is never simple or easy.” Wow. Isn’t that an *amazing* story? Reminds me of Covey’s thoughts on synergy (see Notes on The 7 Habits...): “Synergy is everywhere in nature. If you plant two plants close together, the roots commingle and improve the quality of the soil so that both plants will grow better than if they were separated. If you put two pieces of wood together, they will hold much more than the total weight held by each separately. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One plus one equals three or more.” Here’s to creating unity and synergy in our lives! ... And, let’s take a moment to look at what can get in the way of creating unity!

FIGHT THE ENEMIES “If you value unity, then fight, and teach your team to fight, these five enemies of unity. These enemies are so strong that any one of them can cripple your business and two of them can cause

ophersNotes | EntreLeadership

Ziglar says, “People otivation doesn’t last, neither does bathing, why we recommend both daily.””

you to fail. To the extent any one of them has a foothold in your culture they are stealing your fun as a leader. They are worth fighting to the death. 1. Lack of intention and thoroughness about communication. 2. Lack of intention and thoroughness about goal setting and shared purpose. 3. Gossip.

~ Dave Ramsey

4. Unresolved disagreements. 5. Sanctioned incompetence.” So, you want unity in your business (and your life)? Then pay attention to these five enemies of unity! Quick re-cap: •

We need to have clear intention and thoroughness with our communication. (How are you doing with this?)

•

We need to have clear intention and thoroughness with our goal setting and articulation of our purpose. (You and your team (at work and home) clear on your goals and purpose?)

•

We need to eliminate gossip. (Ramsey *fires* peeps for gossiping. As he says: “Hand your negatives up and your positives down. Otherwise it starts to sound a lot like gossip.”)

•

We need to resolve any disagreements. (You have any lingering frustration with someone that you need to address? Get on that. It’s an energy drain.)

•

We need to make sure we don’t tolerate incompetence. (Pursuit of excellence is such a built-in human need that to be surrounded by sanctioned incompetence is incredibly demoralizing to everyone involved.)

Where can you improve? What’s the next little baby step you can take to rock that?

HOW’S YOUR PASSION? “You cannot lead without passion. Passion causes things to move, and passion creates a force multiplier. Passion actually covers a multitude of sins. Real EntreLeaders care deeply, and that is basically what passion is. Passion is not yelling or being wild; it is simply caring deeply.”

We hire and keep only le who are sold-out assionate about our You cannot work on am if you are simply ooking for a J-O-B.” ~ Dave Ramsey

Passion. As Ramsey says, it’s not about yelling or being all out of control. It’s about caring deeply. Do you? ... And, how about your team? Here’s what Ramsey has to say about passion and hiring: “Passion is so key in leading and creating excellence that I will hire passion over education or talent every time. I prefer to have both, but given a choice I will take passion. La Rochefoucauld once said, “The most untutored person with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without.””

IT’S VISION TIME “As the EntreLeader you have to share your vision with your team early and often. It is impossible to talk about it too much. Andy Stanley has a great book out called Visioneering. Andy says you have to discuss the vision of the organization twenty-one times before people start to hear it. He also says you have to restate your vision constantly so that as the organization grows and changes, it continuously reflects that vision.”

PhilosophersNotes | EntreLeadership

wealth and abundance Vision.

Leo Buscaglia said, “Your lent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.”” ~ Dave Ramsey

What’s yours? Are you sharing it and chatting about it ALL. THE. TIME.? If not, get on that. P.S. Remember: This isn’t just about you and your business. It’s about you and EVERYTHING in your life. Are you and your spouse clear on your vision for your lives together? You clear with *yourself* on where you’re headed and what you’d like your life to look like?

NEVER GO ALL IN “When we launch an idea it has to meet at least two minimum financial criteria. One, we can’t borrow money to fund the idea. Two, if it fails it can’t be fatal, meaning if our decision is faulty it can’t have the possible consequence of closing us down. In poker, you call this going “all in.” Too many businesses have closed as a result of going all in on one decision that they just knew would be a success. I’ve spent twenty years building this business; I’m not going to risk the whole thing on any one decision, idea, or product line. We never go all in.” That’s brilliant. Let’s never go all in. Slow and steady wins the race...

“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” ~ George S. Patton

DECISIONS ARE LIBERATING “You will find that decisions are liberating. The paradox is that some of the most stressed people on the planet are people who are frozen by indecision. There is a tremendous energy and peace that decision making brings. Your team is energized by a leader who can make the call as well. Can you even envision a scene in Braveheart where William Wallace would stand in front of his ragtag band of brothers and wring his hands indecisively, pacing back and forth, worried if he should attack or not? Can you imagine the fear that his troops would feel, and can you imagine them becoming afraid because their leader was indecisive?” Want to stress yourself out? Avoid making decisions. Especially on the little stuff. Our team has been focused on implementing David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” approach. There’s a lot of great stuff in there. My favorite Idea BY FAR, though, is his rule to ALWAYS do something when it takes less than 2 minutes. Take your email inbox, for example. Most of the time, the reason we let emails stack up in our inbox is because we’re indecisive. —> “Oh, I’m not 100% sure what to do with that so I’ll just come back to it.” That indecisiveness creates a NIGHTMARE. Simply make a decision: Delete the email. Respond to it. Or delegate it (including to yourself later if absolutely necessary). But don’t open it and then leave it there. Think about it: If we can’t make little decisions with our email do you think we’re going to be able to make bigger decisions in our life? So, next time you’re checking your email (or approaching any other decision in your life), imagine you’re William Wallace and make a decision! :)

osophersNotes | EntreLeadership

WORKING FOR FIFTEEN YEARS TO BE AN OVERNIGHT SUCCESS

To create big-time s you have to stay ed and stay intense extended period of time.” ~ Dave Ramsey

“If you can find someone who can stay on mission, on task, with focused intensity for an entire decade, I will show you someone who is world-class in their chosen area of endeavor. They are likely a national brand, or will be. In his great book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes that one of the keys to unusual heights of success is spending ten thousand hours of practice at your chosen craft. The Beatles spent countless hours playing at summer festivals before you ever heard of them; Peyton Manning, widely regarded as one of the best quarterbacks to ever play football, has been known for his work ethic since he was a child. I just won my first Marconi Award, which is essentially the Academy Award for radio, and afterward counted up that I have been on the air over ten thousand hours. Remember, you work your tail off for fifteen years and you are suddenly an overnight success.” As you know by now if you’ve read many of these Notes, I’m a HUGE fan of the 10,000 hour rule. Check out the Notes on Mindset, Talent Is Overrated, and The Talent Code for more mojo here. And enjoy this gem from Carol Dweck’s Mindset: “Is it ability or mindset? Was it Mozart’s musical ability or the fact that he worked till his hands were deformed? Was it Darwin’s scientific ability or the fact that he collected specimens non-stop from early childhood?” Answer: They worked really hard. :) Here’s to staying on mission, on task, with a focused intensity for over a decade, my friend!

Brian Johnson, Chief Philosopher

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About the Author of “EntreLeadership” DAVE RAMSEY

Dave Ramsey is America’s trusted voice on money and business. He’s authored three New York Times bestselling books: Financial Peace, More Than Enough, and The Total Money Makeover. The Dave Ramsey Show is heard by more than 4.5 million listeners each week on more than 500 radio stations. Follow Dave on Twitter at @DaveRamsey and on the web at daveramsey.com. (from Amazon)

About the Author of This Note BRIAN JOHNSON

PhilosophersNotes | EntreLeadership