I’ve noticed something weird –
The phrasing alone of an idea or concept can be the difference between it “clicking” and getting internalized vs. just being forgotten.
You’ve probably experienced this too – you read or hear something and it just hits you – the light bulb goes on and you “get it”. It’s a bit like the feeling of fitting the last piece into a jigsaw puzzle.
The reason this is weird is because it can be the same concept or idea you’ve heard before, but just the way it’s phrased somehow fits and gives it all this meaning. I don’t know why it works this way, but it does.
The result of this is that a simple combination of words can potentially bring about changes in mindset or awareness that are very useful going forward.
When I’ve come across phrases or ideas like this over the past 6-7 years (I read them somewhere, or most often they just “appear” in my head as all thoughts do) I’ve tended to write them down.
Recently I went back over a bunch of these and pulled out what I thought were the best ones. They’ve all had some personal meaning to me at one point or another, relevant to the context of whatever I was doing or focused on at the time, and my hope is that they will for you too.
These are all written as pieces of advice in the second person using “you”. This how I wrote the notes as it is literally stuff I am “telling myself”.
The order is random, nothing is categorized by theme, and I imagine different things will stick for different people. It is subjective.. but likely more will resonate the more similar your personality is to mine.
And finally – some of it might appear obvious, clichéd or so simple as to be meaningless.
But, if that is your first reaction, I would encourage you to just take a minute and think about it, swirl it around in your mind a little bit, and consider how it might apply to your life. That’s where the real value comes in.
Anyway, enough context, here we go –
72 Success & Self Improvement Tips
- There’s nothing better waiting for you in the future than what’s waiting for you right now.
- Success is cooked up in a messy kitchen
- You get what you give, the world is your mirror
- Wanting things to happen a certain way really badly almost guarantees they won’t happen that way. Where as just being chill with it almost ensures things will go your way.
- Getting comfortable being around girls is being comfortable with yourself
- Are you really seeing other people, or just your thoughts about them?
Are you really seeing yourself, or just your thoughts about yourself?
- Being alone too much is comfortable but it’s not healthy
- You know this already but skipping meditation for even two days will fuck you up.
- 4 raw eggs in glass, banana (this is a good preworkout meal)
- Adventure means letting go
- Doing what’s right feels good in your body, while doing what’s wrong feels wrong
- The great illusion is that if you give you’ll run out of things to give. The illusion of the ego. But the truth is that you have an infinite amount to give, because you are infinite
- It’s only a matter of time, now it’s just about enjoying the journey
- Acting based on fear: that doesn’t exist in this world – I shed it like an old skin
- The fundamental truth is that everything happening inside of you is one continuous process with everything in the universe. And the feeling that you are “doing it” – that’s part of the process as well.
- For overall efficiency and powerful days early morning can’t be beat
- You’re as free as you allow yourself to be
- Any time you think about doing something that you don’t want to do, just say to yourself “that’s not who I am anymore”
- Your ego needs a reset ;)
- Big difference between enjoying your thoughts and enjoying your experience
- Seems like you think that by having negative thoughts you are going to solve problems that way.. Or like negativity will lead you to uncover some deep dark truth that will help you solve something serious or help you get out of some pit/pitfall. But maybe all it is is a shitty way of looking at things.
- Judging the world is looking at it through adversarial glasses. Like everything is a conflict, you vs everything vs itself. Non judgement is looking at the world harmoniously; nothing can be in conflict because everything is one
- Expectancy is the root of unhappiness
- Downside of stimulants is that they make you ungrounded
- Minor problems, if left alone and not stressed over, often solve themselves.
- Work hard, but be kind to yourself
- Everything comes from within, make yourself good and everything else in life will be good, you know this deep within you and when you live according to it you are happy and satisfied, but when you lose sight of it you become lost feeling and depressed.
- You’re happiest when you’re busy, busy with a lot of different things at once
BUT ALSO MAKING PROGRESS
- Just show up every day
- Day-tight compartments – literally knocking shit off a list every day – make the list the night before, only that stuff, then everything done, non-negotiable, string together days of efficient action.
- There’s no nobility in purposely not enjoying life
- Forget about what you could be in the future, think about what you could be right now.
- Be barefoot as often as possible
- The best way to predict your future is to create it
- All the time you spend consuming is time that could be spent producing
- Don’t be stressed because it makes you feel important.
- YOU ARE ALLOWED TO FEEL GOOD
- Do not reject opportunities for money to come into your life.
- Thoughts are ALMOST ALWAYS USELESS (99.999999999% of the time) Alternate between BEING and DOING and things will work themselves out. BE and DO. That’s it.
- First hour – no internet. Yeah it’s scary.. that’s the point. It’s a good rule.
- Write first. Write before you do anything, before you check anything. Before you respond to emails, to Facebook messages, before you check twitter, WRITE FIRST.
- When you think about success stop thinking of the glamour, think of the grind instead. That’s what 99% of it is. The event is the tip of the iceberg, what people focus on, ignoring the process the other 99%.
- A life of conventional “success” where you are objectively successful in your own eyes, but not happy most of the time, is not a successful life. In fact it’s a failure.
- You are losing time at every moment, there is not a single moment in life when you have more time than you had before.
- Now is the best moment in your life because it’s the only one there ever is.
- Never forget gratitude. Yes, the future will always be better if you are improving, but it works both ways, this is “better” compared to where you once were. “Better” is the future but it is also now.
- Variety… Variety is important to feel good
- Don’t sell your time! That shit’s priceless..
- Balance mindfulness/awareness and positive self talk & visualization
- When there is a lot to do (too much even) then don’t focus on the macro, focus in on the very next task, only think about what you have to do very next, not everything you have to do at once.
- Good things become easy to do when they’re habits. They’re only hard now because you’re not in the habit of doing them yet.
- Do a little bit extra, a little bit more than you want to, every day.
- Getting discouraged is something you choose to do
- Go out looking to give rather than to take and you’ll find opportunities everywhere
- Ask yourself a question at night before you go to bed, you will get the answer in the morning
- Observing the mind needs to be trained like working a muscle
- As soon as you give up the dream of something you give up any possibility of it ever happening
- What would your future self a year or two years from now want you to be doing right now?
- Don’t allow yourself the time to do the things you don’t want to do
- Perfection is the process of improvement
- Go on the journey that your heart is inviting you to go on
- String together days of effective action
- If you’re not doing something that makes you better then why are you doing it?
- Don’t die wondering
- It’s amazing how much time you have when you don’t waste any
- You don’t make the right choice, you make a choice, and then you make the choice right
- Stop thinking about how to be and just be
- Make a lot of protein readily available to you and it’s easy to eat a lot of protein
- You don’t put shit in your body, why put it in your mind
- Just put in a little bit each day, every little bit counts
- Negativity/depression is a shadow of reality, inaccurate perception/not seeing the real true thing the way it really is
- Life isn’t a problem to be solved, or at least that’s not all it is
- Don’t underestimate how much your environment plays a role
- Changing yourself a lot maybe makes you unsure of who you are – but then, you can be whoever you want
- Rather than trying to get the thing, you need to try and become the kind of person who has the thing. In fact, that’s the only way to get the thing.
- You’re not cold matter travelling through the universe with consciousness “along for the ride”… you’re part of the whole thing – your experience and your sense of being is as integral to the whole as any one of the parts – simply because it’s there.
- Being wrapped up in your own shit is a lower level of consciousness, being more “aware”/more one with everything is a higher level of consciousness
- Being stressed, anxious, worried about your future or something like your goals not turning out the way you want them to, “failure” of yourself, overly concerned with the immediate and the ego centred stuff is low consciousness.
- You don’t worry. The mind worries.
- When you get too wrapped up in yourself do something for someone else.
- A day feels unproductive/useless/a waste of time if you haven’t put measurable/notable work into your #1 goal
- Failure is impossible because by trying you learn something
- It’s easy to feel shitty if you wake up late
It’s hard to feel shitty if you wake up early
- A week from now, today could be what you look back on as paradise
- PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD
If you liked this post, you’ll probably also like my book Self Improvement in Practice – a concise, practical guide to positive personal development