7 hard truths

1. Everyone has an enemy. You dont have to hurt someone in order to gain an enemy. You might be the nicest person in the world and still have someone who prays for your downfall. An enemy stays close, super close. Watch everyone's actions at all times. Don't trust blindly.
2. You will never feel content if you compare your life to others. How successful they are, how rich they are or even how happy they are. You will only feel content if you focus on yourself and your growth.
3. Your mind can be poisonous if all you feed it is negativity. Be kind to yourself. You deserve it! We are far too critical of ourselves. Treat yourself the same way you would treat someone you love.
4. No matter how hard you try, failure is inevitable. But keep going. Persistence is everything. We don't learn from winning but from our failures.
5. Some people are using us. Whether it's for wealth, time passing, or even as a step for their success. Be attentive to how much you support others and people's motives.
6. No one really cares about you (excluding family). Nobody is interested in your life journey. Nobody gives a toss. But that doesn't mean you should stop your journey and fret about people not valuing you. Care about yourself. Look after yourself. Do it for you! Don't woŕry what others think if they don't care about you in the first place.
7. Grow thicker skin. Don't take everything to heart. Your heart should not endure pain given by people who mean so little to you. Sometimes the ones that really matter do everything to keep you happy. Those who hurt you often are the toxic ones. It hurts but showing that you're tough will take you a long way.

Final message worth summarising:

5 principles that truly make someone happy

 There are 5 principles that truly make someone happy:

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#1 - Live your life the way you want to.

When you are totally free of trying to impress anyone and when you can do whatever you want to, when you want to, for whatever reason you want to do it, that is when you can be the master of your own fate.

You will finally be free of the social expectations and the expectations you have of yourself! But with that freedom comes a lot of responsibility.

Your life truly becomes your own and you can live it the way you think is best. You will learn more about yourself this way and step on the fast-track to happiness.

For ages people sought freedom even though it wasn’t always easier. But when we can take control of our own lives then happiness is in our own hands.

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#2 - Worry less about things that don’t matter.

A lot of the joy in our day-to-day lives simply gets restricted by the stress and worries we put on ourselves.

It’s not that we aren’t happy to begin with and have to find happiness, but rather that we were happy and are restraining it right now with stress, worries, fear and anger.

When you realize that most of the things in life won’t kill you, that most of the worries and problems won’t be so bad, that you still have decades of your life left in front of you and that most things will not matter in the end, your happiness will come from within.

When you take it easier you give yourself room to feel joy! It has always been there but you worry too much to let it out. Take a deep breath and know everything will be okay.

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#3 - Be grateful for what you have.

Gratitude and fear or anger cannot exist simultaneously. The only thing that can coexist at the same time with gratitude is joy.

Become grateful for what you have and that you are alive right here, right now. There is a magic to this world that you can only understand when you become happy with what you have.

It will show you that you do not need that much to be happy and that you could have been happy all along. It will reframe what matters and put it in a different light, making it easier for you to experience real joy.

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#4 - Achieve personal success in what matters.

Chasing success, finding victories in the battles that matter and growing to become greater than you were before is closely tied to happiness.

Most of us are sadly chasing the wrong kinds of success because we never thought about what really matters to us. We chase and receive and then chase again, never reaching true bliss because every victory is not what we wanted.

It’s like we are sailing across the ocean without a map and then getting upset that we aren’t where we wanted to be.

Find out where you want to sail your ship first so you can experience the joy of getting closer to where you want to be.

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#5 - Say ‘Yes’ to what scares you and ‘No’ to what bores you.

Getting outside your comfort zone and exploring who you are is frightening but freeing. It allows you to test your limits and remove some shackles that you thought you had.

You have done this before when you worked out more than you thought you could or when you finally asked that person out that you have been crushing on for months.

This is another form of freeing your mind from restricting beliefs!

When you do what you think you can’t it opens you up to more freedom, more possibilities and more power in your life, the same way as saying ‘No’ to things that do not interest you does.

Whether you say ‘Yes’ to what scares you or ‘No’ to what bores you, both strengthen your belief in yourself and your decisions. And when you have more power to match the responsibility of being free, you have more opportunities to truly live out that freedom.

Become so good they can't ignore you

 Ignore the frustration, comparing yourselves to others, and looking for "short cuts." 

 

Instead…

 

Focus on becoming good. Really damn good.

 

When you focus exclusively on that, recognition and success will come so fast, that it might just overwhelm you.

 

Here are the two biggest ideas I got from the book:

 

Big Idea #1 Understand and then Innovate.

 

Putting in the time isn’t enough. Grinding isn’t enough.

 

You must understand and innovate.

 

Steve wasn’t just memorizing punch-lines for standup comedy, he was figuring out the essence of what made things "funny." 

 

He then used these insights to move past the punchline formula that everyone was using in comedy at the time.

 

Without this understand and innovation, Steve would have just been "another good comedian," instead of the legend he is now.

 

Big Idea #2 Stay Focused.

 

Steve Martin is quick to clarify that working hard over a long period of time was not the key to his success.

 

He constantly fought the urge to start working on other projects, jumping into "exciting opportunities," and looking for shortcuts.

 

Martin makes it extremely clear with this quote:

 

"If you don't saturate your life in a single quest, you'll dilute your focus to a point where becoming outstanding becomes out of reach."

 

His three-step system for success is quite simple:

 

1. Understand

2. Innovate

3. Stay Focused

 

If you’re looking to become world-class in whatever it is that you’re doing, there is only one thing you need to focus on:

 

Becoming so good they can’t ignore you

#StayHumble

 It takes zero talent to work hard and zero talent to stay humble; if you get those things right you will always do well in your journey.” Further advice is to “Learn to fail fast” and “Own as much of the supply chain as you can.”

The lessons: Staying humble is far harder the more success and fame you achieve. Keep things as simple as possible for as long as possible, scale with demand, and remember where you came from. Never underestimate the contribution of those around you and the fortune you’ve been granted.

Proudly exclude everyone except your target audience so you can focus solely on them. Double down on the customer experience. Test your site, and test some more. Utilise the best technology to create exceptional customer touchpoints, via your website and in-person. If you do mess up, own the mistake, respond in an exceptional way and carry on.

Plan your calendar of activity far in advance and be prepared to respond to last-minute events with hard-hitting campaigns. Explore everything that your target audience is already talking about and work out how to make it relevant to your brand in a big way.

The global brands set up before the 2000s didn’t have chance to document their journeys in such detail, but if they had they might be stronger today. Documenting every part of a brand’s journey lets its customers feel like they are getting an inside look. Use social media to be transparent. Everything you do can be remarkable content as long as it’s planned and executed exceptionally.

Never too early nor late to learn

 

1. Passion is a love of life not an obsession over someone or something. If you love life you’ll do your best to exercise and stay healthy. If you love life; you’ll see others for the miracle they are, even if they are mean or don’t particularly like you. If you love life; you’ll love to share how great things are with friends. If you love life; your partner will know how wonderful you think they are, and will love your passion.
2. Be kind. If you’re kind you’ll never lack true friends. Be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself when you mess up. Be kind to those less fortunate than you. Be kind to those that depend on you to do the right thing. Being kind doesn’t mean others won’t sometimes betray you. But friends of mean people are always looking to betray them.
3. Defy authority or temptress if they ask you to be mean. If they ask you to Betray those counting on you, don’t do it; no matter the promised payoff. If you do, you’ll become their slave. I’ve seen many live in big mansions, have money and cars but at the end of the day they were some evil persons slave or became that evil person themselves. I have also seen many ruin their lives, and their kids lives for a life of misery for excitement of cheap cheating sex.
4. Forgiving people helps you more than it helps them. Move on.
5. You can rebuild if you’ve kept your passion and love of life you can find other things to be passionate about if you grow too old or lose a position or you simply fail at something.
6. Be vulnerable but do so with your heart, mind and life. Life will always ask you to take risk, you cannot hide from risk. Choose those risk wisely. You can never have anything you will value without taking risk.
7. Perfectionism has great opportunity cost. If you only do things you can be perfect at you will never be great at anything. Greatness requires you to learn and build on failure. Perfectionism guarantees a failed life.
8. Life is full of misery and suffering for all, but don’t let that define you. Let your life be defined by , your Loyalty, Kindness and Passion.
9. Curiosity helps you enjoy the abundance of the world and knowledge show you all the miracle around that are still deep mysteries Giving helps you appreciate that abundance in your life.
10. Find someone you can love completely. But there is nobody perfect for you. Perfectionism in choosing a partner is futile and ensures failure. Don’t play games or try to manipulate people as that’s not Love either.
11. You can live your life either as if Life itself is and everything in Life is a miracle or nothing in life is. Choosing Life as a miracle is much more enjoyable.

No more procrastination

How to avoid ‘precrastination’

The key here, Bailey says, is to identify when zipping through tasks is a good idea, versus when it’ll actually end up costing you more time in the end. Here are his recommendations for getting stuff done without precrastinating:

1. Ask yourself, Would this task benefit from added time? Precrastination happens when we’re working on autopilot. Though it may seem counterintuitive on busy days, stop and consider all the tasks on your plate. Those that require creativity, thoughtfulness or emotion will benefit from a slower response.
2. Know which tasks you can rush through. If a task takes just a few minutes to complete, it can be helpful to get it done quickly in favor of clearing your attentional space.
3. Keep a calendar and to-do list. This might not seem revelatory, but externalizing what’s cluttering your mind is a wonderful thing. Tracking appointments, tasks, distractions and ideas using a notepad or smartphone app allows you to step back and organize. In addition to freeing up mental space, these tools can help you decide where to channel future energy.

Ultimately, avoiding precrastination is all about working with intention—and if that means slowing down, so be it