Lifestyle Design is thus not interested in creating an excess of idle time, which is poisonous, but the positive use of free time, defined simply as doing what you want as opposed to what you feel obligated to do.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
To find the right things, we’ll need to go to the garden.
Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” – Thomas Edison.
If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” – Epictetus.
In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue.” – Thomas L. Friedman.
People are poor judges of importance and inflate minutiae to fill time and feel important.
What would this look like if it were easy?
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Lao Tzu.
What would this look like if it were easy? “This” could be anything. That morning, it was answering a laundry list of big questions. What would this look like if it were easy? is such a lovely and deceptively leveraged question. It’s easy to convince yourself that things need to be hard, that if you’re not redlining, you’re not trying hard enough. This leads us to look for paths of most resistance, often creating unnecessary hardship in the process.
Losers react, leaders anticipate.
18. Notice how I take “you” out of the sentence to avoid finger-pointing, even though it’s implicit. “Normally, you make priorities clear” sounds like a backhanded insult. If this is a significant other, you can skip this formality, but never use “you always do X,” which is just a fight starter.
Hard feelings pass. Don’t suffer fools or you’ll become one.
Losing makes you think in ways victories can’t. You begin asking questions instead of feeling like you have the answers. Questions open up the doors to so many possibilities.
What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn’t have any doubt – it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn’t want to go anywhere else.” – Hal Boyle.
Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. This is hard for most to accept, because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.
Researchers use alloxan in lab rats to induce diabetes. That’s right – it’s used to produce diabetes. This is bad news if you eat anything white or “enriched.
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” – Albert Einstein.
Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask.
Work wherever and whenever you want, but get your work done.